Domes of Fire by David Eddings Page B

knocked senseless during the course of the altercation. Sparhawk and his friends smoothly insinuated themselves into the crowd, and after ten minutes or so, they reeled out through the door.
    ‘A little unprofessional,’ Stragen sniffed. ‘A staged fight shouldn’t involve the spectators that way.’
    ‘It should when the spectators might be looking for something other than a few tankards of ale,’ Sparhawkdisagreed. ‘The two who fell asleep weren’t regular patrons in the tavern. They might have been completely innocent, but then again, they might not. This way, we don’t have to worry about them trailing along behind us.’
    ‘There’s more to being a Pandion Knight than I thought,’ Talen noted. ‘I may like it after all.’
    They walked through the foggy streets towards the rundown quarter near the west gate, a maze of interconnecting lanes and unpaved alleys. They entered one of those alleys and went through it to a flight of muddy stone stairs leading down. A thick-bodied man lounged against the stone wall beside the stairs. ‘You’re late,’ he said to Talen in a flat voice.
    ‘We had to make sure we weren’t being followed,’ the boy shrugged.
    ‘Go on down,’ the man told them. ‘Platime’s waiting.’
    The cellar hadn’t changed. It was still smoky and dim, and it was filled with a babble of coarse voices coming from the thieves, whores and cutthroats who lived there.
    ‘I don’t know how Platime can stand this place,’ Stragen shuddered.
    Platime sat enthroned on a large chair on the other side of a smoky fire burning in an open pit. He heaved himself to his feet when he saw Sparhawk. ‘Where have you been?’ he bellowed in a thunderous voice.
    ‘Making sure that we weren’t followed,’ Sparhawk replied.
    The fat man grunted. ‘He’s back here,’ he said, leading them toward the rear of the cellar. ‘He’s very interested in his health at the moment, so I’m keeping him more or less out of sight.’ He pushed his way into a small, closet-like chamber where a man sat on a stool nursing a tankard of watery beer. The man was a small,nervous-looking fellow with thinning hair and a cringing manner.
    ‘This is Pelk,’ Platime said. ‘He’s a sneak-thief. I sent him to Cardos to have a look around and to see what he could find out about some people we’re interested in. Tell him what you found out, Pelk.’
    ‘Well sir, good masters,’ the weedy man began, ‘it tuk me a goodly while to git close to them fellers, I’ll tell the world, but I made myself useful, an’ they finally sort of assepted me. They was all sorts of rigimarole I had to go thoo – swearin’ oaths an’ gettin’ blindfolded the first couple times they tuk me to ther camp an all, but after a while, they kinda let down ther guard, an’ I come an’ went purty much as I pleased. Like Platime prob’ly tole you, we figgered at first they wuz jist a buncha amachoors what didn’t know nothin’ about the way things is supposed to be did. We sees that sorta thing all the time, don’t we, Platime? Them’s the kind as gits therselves caught an’ hung.’
    ‘And good riddance to them,’ Platime growled.
    ‘Well sir,’ Pelk continued, ‘like I say, me’n Platime, we figgered as how them fellers in the mountings was jist a buncha them amachoors I tole you about – fellers what’d took up cuttin’ th’oats fer fun an’ profit, don’t y’know. As she turns out, howsomever, they was more’n that. Ther leaders was six er seven noblemen as was real disappointed ‘bout the way the big plans of the Primate Annias fell on ther faces, an’ they was powerful unhappy ‘bout what the queen had writ down on the warrants she put out fer ‘em – nobles not bein’ accustomed to bein’ called them sorta names.
    ‘Well sir, t’ short it up some, these here noblemen all run off into the mountings ‘bout one jump ahead of the hangman, an’ they tuk t’ robbin’ travellers t’ make ends meet an’ spent