Devices and Desires by K. J. Parker Page B

damage was rather less radical. Somewhere, not far away (not far enough), he heard shouts,
     excitement. It was a fair bet that he was the cause of it. Without knowing how he got there, he found himself on his feet
     and running. It hurt, but that was the least of his problems.
    Because he’d never expected to survive the drop, he hadn’t thought ahead any further than this. But here he was, running,
     in an unplanned and unspecified direction. That was no good. The pity of it was, he had no idea where he should be heading
     for. He was somewhere in the grounds of the Guildhall; but the grounds, like the building itself, were circular. There was
     a wall all the way round, he remembered, with two gates in it. The only way out was through a gate. If they were after him,
     which was pretty much inevitable, the first thing they’d do would be to send runners to the gatehouses.
    Every breath and heartbeat is an act of prevarication, a prising open of options.
It’d sounded good when the preacher had said it, but did it actually mean anything? Only one way to find out. The gardens
     were infuriatingly formal, straight lines of foot-high box hedge enclosing neat geometric patterns of flowers, nothing wild
     and bushy a man could hide in long enough to catch his breath, but there was a sort of trellis arch overgrown with flowery
     creeper, a bower or arbor or whatever the hell it was called. He headed for it, and collapsed inside just as his legs gave
     out.
    Fine. First place they’ll look.
    Breathing in was like dragging his heart through brambles. He got to his knees and peered round the edge of the arch. There
     was the wall, a gray blur behind a curtain of silly little trees. He followed its line until he came to a square shape, almost
     completely obscured by a lopsided flowering cherry. That would be a gate-house. He didn’t know what time it was and he couldn’t
     see the sun through the arbor roof, so he couldn’t tell if it was the north or the south gate. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t
     likely to get that far, and if he did the gatekeepers would be on him like terriers.
    He plotted a course. Arbor to the line of trees; using the trees as cover, along the wall to the gatehouse. He could hear
     shouting coming from several different directions, and he wondered whether they’d catch him and take him back to his cell
     to be strangled, or just kill him on the spot.
    I’ll escape, though, if only to be annoying.
He stood in the doorway of the arbor for a moment, until he saw two men running toward him. They were wearing helmets and
     carrying halberds; there goes another option, snapping shut like a mousetrap. He lowered his head and charged in the direction
     of the trees. They’d get him soon enough, but at least he was making an effort, and he felt it was better to die running toward
     something, rather than just running away.
    It was inevitable that sooner or later he’d trip over something and go sprawling. In the event, it was one of those ridiculous
     dwarf box hedges that did the damage. He landed on his face in a bed of small orange flowers, and the two warders were on
     him before he had a chance to move.
    “Right.” One of them had grabbed his arms and twisted them behind his back. “What’s the drill?”
    He couldn’t see the other warder. “Captain said get him out of sight before we do him. Don’t want the Membership seeing a
     man having his head cut off, it looks bad.”
    The warder he could see nodded. “Stable block’s the nearest,” he said.
    Between them they hauled him to his feet and dragged him backward across the flowerbeds. He sagged against their arms, letting
     them do the work; buggered if he was going to walk to his death. He heard a door creak, and a doorframe boxed out the light.
    “Block,” said the other warder. “Something we can use for a block.”
    “Log of wood,” his colleague suggested.
    “How about an upturned bucket?” the first man said.
    “Might as