The Light of Heaven by David A McIntee Read Free Book Online Page A

prohibition on drinking spirits? He wouldn't have gone to the gibbet for that. On the day of a Ducal wedding he'd have got away with having his booze poured away.
    Her heart pounded, every other beat feeling as if it was being given a kick by the slam of her feet on the cobbles. The street ahead sloped down towards a shallow grey estuary. Boats bobbed up and down there, making a fence between the slope and the dark muddy pools. Falling snow curtained off the warehouses and docks on the southern side. The clunking of woodwork and distant calls of men floated, muffled, across to Gabriella, under the dark segments of a wooden pontoon bridge which loomed up close, before stretching into the grey void. Ahead, the fleeing man darted left, onto the bridge across to South Cliff and Gabriella followed. At the other end of the bridge, the man darted left, towards another street opening.
    Behind her, she heard horses' hooves booming thunderously on the thick planking. Gabriella was baffled. Who were they chasing? She looked around and saw that several mounted Knights of the Swords had crossed the bridge. The horses heeled around, the leading knight waving to Gabriella. It was a lanky man named Markus. The tone of his hoarse shout convinced her that something major was afoot.
    "Sister DeZantez! Have you seen anyone?"
    "Just the man I'm chasing. Who are you chasing?"
    "Someone put a quarrel through Eminence Rhodon!"
    She had no reason to assume her fleeing drinker was the same man, but some sense told her that it was a good enough reason for him to run.
    "My man went down Three-Tun Alley! You'll never get those horses through there!"
    "Keep after him, and we'll set up a catchment area. Drive him towards us."
    Gabriella threw herself back into a run, wishing she had a bow. It didn't have to be one of those Volonne-designed repeaters either, just something that would bring him down quickly.
    She turned into the narrow opening her quarry had run into, and skidded down a near-vertical alley that was as much a sewer as an alleyway, before bursting forth onto a promenade fronted with food stalls.
    A ruffian suddenly lunged out from the shadow of a hay-wain, slashing at her with a dagger.
    Gabriella pivoted aside, drawing her pair of short swords in the same movement, and catching his wrist between them. His hand, still gripping his weapon, arced to one side, while the rest of him crashed back against the wagon under a heavy kick from her boot.
    She didn't spare him another glance.
    A few travellers and labourers ducked aside as she pushed past them to keep her quarry in sight. As the cold gulps of air burned her lungs, she saw the fugitive sprinting for the base of the south cliff itself, which gave this side of town its name. Gabriella wouldn't be surprised if her quarry started making for the Jolly Sailors, as most criminals seemed to these days. The Jollies was a veritable thieves' den, though none in Kalten called it such by name.
    She stopped trying to work out his course; the Jollies was all she needed to know. Get into that rat-warren of rotgut tap-houses and flophouses, and he could disappear completely. Gabriella would have to keep her eyes and ears very much open.
    The man's footfalls were audible enough for her to keep track of them, and she followed him through an alley barely wide enough for her shoulders to fit through. She burst out into an old yard filled with cluttered little workshops, huddling tight against the base of the cliff. The yard stank like the privy that people clearly used it as, and was surrounded on three sides by the old brickwork of some kind of warehouse, three storeys high. The fourth side was a row of plastered walls with narrow back doors to the shops.
    Gabriella looked around. There was no sign of the man, but she could still hear his footsteps. Something clattered above her, drawing her gaze to the warehouse roof. She couldn't see anyone there, but there was a decaying zigzag of steps leading up the side