"Keep walking," I hiss. "Do not run."
"Orc! Savage! He killed Mersey! He is getting away!" the naga screams again.
I see him. Twenty yards away, standing by the gate we entered. The Dark Elf guard. He is not smirking now. His headsnapstoward the shouting naga. His ears, long and pointed, prick up. He scans the crowd. His eyes find me. They narrow.
He barks an order to the Minotaur beside him, his voice sharp and carrying. "Stop that orc! He is armed!"
I am still walking.Do not run. Running makes you prey.
But the nFaga is not the only one. The door toThe Drowned Ratvomits out a half-dozen more patrons—a dfam elf, two human mercenaries, and another naga—all drawn by the cry of "murder." They are drunk. They are angry. They smell blood.
"There he is!" the dfam elf shouts, pointing at my back.
"Walk," I hiss again at Aurora, my hand gripping her arm.
We are ten feet from a narrow, refuse-filled alley between a tannery and a batlaz butcher. Thestenchis overwhelming, a wall of cured hides, raw sewage, and old blood. It is cover.
"Now," I snarl.
I grab Aurora andmove, plunging into the alley. Thethudof heavy boots on the cobblestones follows us—the Minotaur guard. He is roaring, a sound of fury and exertion. The alley is dark, slick with filth. My boots slide on something wet and foul. This is bad. I am in a confined space. I have no axe. Just thisclumsy human blade. I need to get to the cross-street, find a new crowd to melt into.
We burst out onto a slightly wider street. It is a market row—stalls of glittering, blue-flecked poisons, cages of snarling worgs, and carts of smoking, unidentifiable meat. For one, single heartbeat, we are just part of the flow. We blend.
Then a small dark elf child, no older than ten, sitting on a crate of caesin eels, points directly at me. His eyes are wide with a strange, delighted terror.
"There he is! Mother, there's the monster!"
All motion stops. A zagfer elf drops a crate of clattering bottles. The worgs in the cages go silent for a second, then erupt in a frenzy of barking.
The Dark Elf guard, his face flushed with anger, emerges from the alley behind us. He sees us. He smiles. It is not a smirk. It is the grin of a hunter who has cornered his quarry.
"Stop him!" he screams to the entire street. "A bounty for the orc! He murdered a merchant of the Market! Ten ipia for his head!"
Bounty.
He just put a price on my head. Noweveryoneis an enemy.
The world explodes.
I do not wait. I do not think. I roar. I grab a wooden table piled high with the smoked eels andhurlit behind me. The table cartwheels, crashing into the legs of the Minotaur, who bellows in rage as he goes down in a clattering avalanche of wood and fish.
I keep Aurora's leash fisted in my hand, yanking her along in my wake. She stumbles, her boots sliding in the mud, but I do not let her fall. She is Iron Tusk. She keeps up.
"Ten ipia! Get him!" the naga shouts
He’s just told the whole market I am easy coin.
But, he is wrong. I do not break stride. I do not even draw my sword. I smash my free fist into his face. I hear his nosecrunch. He drops.
We run, smashing through a stall of vibrant, shimmering silks. The fabric tears, billowing around us like colorful ghosts. "He went this way!" a shout.
I see a naga guard trying to cut us off. I grab a hanging taura carcass from a butcher's hook and swing it like a battering ram. The heavy, skinned body slams into the naga, sending him crashing into his own stall of caged vespids. The cages burst open. The air fills with the high-pitched, furious whine of the insects. The street behind us dissolves into new screams of panic, buying us precious seconds.
I need to getoutof this main thoroughfare. Too open. Too many eyes. I see another alley, a dark crack between two towering, rickety shacks. I yank Aurora hard, pulling her into the darkness. We are running on slick cobblestones, our footsteps echoing. I hear the shouts behind us, growing louder. They are closing.
This alley is a maze. Left. Right. I can hear Aurora's ragged gasps behind me. Thesmellof the alley is rank, a dead-end filled with refuse and piss.
This is wrong. I chose poorly. The sounds are not justbehindus anymore.
