“Not interested.”
“No? A pity.” He smiled. Nothing about the smile was friendly; it was not meant to comfort.
The young man shrugged. He was not so sanguine that his gaze did not flicker, briefly, to the backs of the Hawks. He made no attempt to follow them or otherwise draw their attention to his possible predicament. Interesting.
“Whoisthe girl to you?”
The young man shrugged again, as if the shrug was more eloquent than he could otherwise be. And then, before Elluvian could continue, the boy vaulted backward—and onto the edge of a wagon. Given the condition of the road, it was unlikely the driver would notice the momentary weight.
Elluvian smiled; his smile had edges. He did not immediately pursue—there was no challenge, no test, in that. He merely folded his arms and waited as the boy disappeared from the wagon, melting into an alley.Run, boy. Run. If you can evade me for an hour, wewilltalk.
CHAPTER THREE
In the end, to Elluvian’s surprise, the boy evaded capture foralmost two. He had given the boy a sporting chance, a decent head start; the boy had, of course, taken it and made the most of it. But his most and the “most” of the majority of citizens in this sprawling, messy city were not the same.
When the youth finally came to a resigned stop, he was not wielding weapons. His hands were empty, his arms by his sides. He didn’t appear to be exhausted. He had more flight in him; he had chosen to preserve the energy necessary to face what had become clear to him was inevitable.
“Were you trained,” Elluvian told his quarry, “you might have lost me.”
“You gave me a head start.”
Ah. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“So this is a game to you.”
“I am Barrani. Most of what we do is a game of one sort or another.”
The boy’s nod was curt but decisive. “You’re not a Hawk.”
“No.”
The young man’s expression shifted. “You weren’t following them.”
Ah. “I was curious about An’Teela. Among the Lords of the High Court she is...unusual. I assumed you had been paid to follow her and to report on her activities. But you weren’t. You weren’t following An’Teela at all. You were following the child that she keeps by her side.”
Silence.
“You understand that those BarraniareHawks, and even if they were to detain the girl, they would be extremely unlikely to harm her?”
More silence, but this one was heavily saturated in skepticism.
“Regardless, your ability to interfere while wielding two pathetic short daggers of questionable manufacture is less than zero. Ah, no. Your ability toproductivelyinterfere. In the best possible case for you, they would simply break your arm. In the worst case, they would break your arm and deposit you in jail.”
He shrugged.
“Neither of these outcomes would be of any aid to that child should she require aid.”
Silence, but the texture of that silence shifted. “Maybe,” he said, “they’d just kill me. I think—I think that would make her happy. Maybe it would free her.”
Elluvian stared at the young man’s bent head. His hair was dark and unruly; his skin was likewise a shade of gray that implied his living conditions involved the outdoors. There were those who made a home near the various bridges that crossed the Ablayne, but it was not a safe abode for the mortal.
His own safety, however, did not appear to be his primary concern. Or perhaps his concern at all. “Who is she, boy?”
Silence. But the young man closed his eyes, shook his head. There was a subtle shift in the line of his shoulders; they bent in, as if at the gravity of a memory or a history he would not put into words.
Elluvian said, once again, “I wish to offer you employ.”
“I don’t need it.”