Si glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

‘You have a good eye, sir. Very nice piece that,’ said the jeweller. She was a small dark woman, wearing her wealth in gold bands around her neck and arms. ‘Tourmaline is a well-omened stone, I always say. For your wife?’

They were good stones, the colour changing from delicate green to pink as Simon tipped them toward the light. He put the necklace down. ‘Sorry, I can’t afford it.’

The man who had been following him had spotted him at the jeweller’s stall and now loitered on the other side of the gallery, pretending to examine a display of carved jade. Clearly, he was no ordinary thief: no thief was so single-minded, not in pursuit of someone like Simon, who was hardly a prime target. Yet he followed and watched. Why?

House Anemari might have sent him, but that only shifted the mystery. What game were they playing?

The merchant clucked. ‘Perhaps I have something else to suit your budget. What did you have in mind?’

Nothing. He couldn’t afford luxuries. Even the cheapest of her jewellery was beyond his reach. Ignoring her question, Simon stared at the stranger. The irritation which had simmered since the interview with Karina surged into anger. Why would anyone want to follow a nobody like him? He was a noble in name only, had nothing anyone could covet, no power, or influence, or wealth. He was a nobody, and if there was one benefit to being a nobody, it was that you could at least get on with your life without interference.

Yet someone — almost certainly one of the four noble Houses — thought him important enough to watch. Why?

Turning his back on the jewellery, Simon strolled up the gallery. His gaze slid over a stall  selling smoking herbs and fancy clay pipes, pretending an interest he no longer felt. His back itched between the shoulder blades. He resisted the urge to glance behind, to check his tail was still following.

This part of the second-floor gallery was suspended over the main hall, supported by cantilevers and wrought-iron chains. All the stalls were to his left. To the right, one could look over a railing to the crowd of busy shoppers in the concourse below. Ahead, the suspended floor joined the wider second floor of the south wing.

Simon turned left into the south wing. Just as he remembered from his youth, the wide shop-lined throughway narrowed and gave way to blocks of stalls laid out in a grid. He continued in a straight line, lengthening his stride, until he spotted a suitable place for an ambush: a stall selling fabrics, hung with billowing lengths of patterned cotton. He dodged round the corner and halted.

His heart raced. He desperately wanted to peer round the corner to check if the stranger had followed, but he couldn’t risk being spotted. Deliberately, he clenched his fists and slowed his breathing. He had to wait, that was all, to be patient like a fisherman waiting for a bite.

The curtain hanging from the stall tickled the back of his neck. A pair of young women passed him, arguing loudly, jangling arms bright with copper bangles, and after them a stout silver-haired lady leaning on a cane, and after her, he glimpsed the plain dun coat of a dock-worker.

Simon pounced without hesitation, seizing the man by the arm and collar. ‘Who are you? Why are you following me?’

The man shrank in his grip, brown eyes wide with surprise and fear. He was younger than Simon had thought: his face soft, a downy moustache on his upper lip. ‘I’m not, sir. I’m not,’ he squeaked. He had the nasal accent of a low-class Athanorese, a slum dweller.

Simon shook him. ‘Don’t lie. I saw you. Why are you following me? Who pays you?’

The young man lashed out wildly. His fist struck Simon’s eye, a glancing blow which made Simon flinch. Then he kicked Simon hard in the knee. Simon stumbled into the side of stall. Flowing folds of cotton enveloped and blinded him. 

He tore at the loose fabric, which seemed endless. His knee was agony. Of course, it had to be the bad leg.

‘What’s going on here?’ Hands reached for him. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ The stall-holder, a middle-aged man with thinning mousy hair, freed him from the fabric. 

‘Where did he go?’ Simon shook off the merchant’s helping hands. His knee hurt, but he could stand and walk.

‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir.’ The stall-holder pursed his lips. ‘And you know, this really isn’t the place to settle your arguments. You have a whole city to fight in, should you feel the need. The Market has rules, you know? I’ve half a mind to call the guards on the pair of you.’

Simon gave him a hard stare. ‘Perhaps you should save your half a mind for your own business.’ 

Leaving the stall-holder to think of a suitable retort, he strode away at the best limp he could manage. The crowd swirled around him, young and old, rich and poor, laughing and chatting in idle amusement. Simon scanned them irritably, searching for the young man in a dun coat. Though by now, he was most likely far from here, moving much faster than Simon could hope to. He’d lost him, and more importantly, lost his only chance of finding out who had paid the lad.

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He cursed under his breath and kept walking. From here, the shortest way home was to descend the next stairs and proceed to the South Street exit, from where he could cut across the merchants district to the main road. It was a long walk, and it was going to feel even longer with his knee bruised and stiff.

The fashionably bright-clad shoppers parted ahead of him, and between them he glimpsed the back of a dun-coloured coat. Surprise froze him to the floor. The young man hadn’t run, after all. He was ambling at the pace of the crowd, apparently not expecting any pursuit.

A pale woman in a form-fitting blue dress elbowed past Simon, almost knocking him over. He shook off his surprise, and, fixing his gaze firmly on his prey, stalked after the dun coat.

The crowd slowed as they bunched around the stairs to the upper and lower levels. Simon wove among them, never taking his eyes off his target, and was only yards away when the man turned and saw him.

Their eyes met. There was a moment of startled recognition, then the young man dodged into the mass of people. 

Simon ran — or tried to. He managed a couple of strides before the pain in his knee brought him to a staggering halt. ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘Thief! Stop him, thief!’ 

Immediately, everyone stopped and stared. A tall blond-haired dandy in a green cape half-heartedly grasped at the fleeing man, who fended him off and sprinted up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. 

Simon staggered after him, still yelling, ‘Stop that man! Thief!’

Other voices took up the cry. ‘Stop! Thief!’

The young man charged up the stairs, barging past anyone in his way. The commotion was attracting attention on the floor above. Grinning faces peered over the railings, people pointing and laughing. Others moved to block the top of the stairs. 

Realising he was trapped on the stairs with no escape up or down, the young man scrambled over the handrail, hung by his hands, and dropped. 

To jeers and applause from the onlookers above, and screams from the crowd below, he fell straight through a striped canvas awning into a cart piled with toffee apples. The cart collapsed, sending a tide of red, green, and gold apples bouncing and rolling across the floor. Children shrieked in pursuit of the candy. 

While the young man lay stunned among the apples, the vendor — a large, dark-skinned woman — seized up a broken pole from her awning and swung at him. The pole hit his head a glancing blow and snapped. He rolled to his feet and staggered away, fending off the snatching hands of the crowd.

Whistles shrilled over the hubbub. The toffee apple seller screamed insults at the top of her voice. An ever-growing crowd had formed a rough circle, at the centre of which the young man, with his head bleeding and apples stuck to his coat, dodged one eager thief-catcher after another in increasing desperation. 

Simon pushed his way through the press, trying not to step on any apples or small children. 

‘Make way, make way,’ a man bellowed. The crowd shifted. A pair of guards had arrived, and were using their iron-headed staves to clear a path. ‘Give way there.’

The dun coat flapped loose in someone’s hands. Coatless, the young man spun away and sprinted for the stairs to the ground floor. The guards charged after him, swinging their cudgels freely at anyone in their way. Outraged shrieks of injury joined the cacophony.

The young man plunged down the stairs with the two guards hard on his heels, together with some of the more determined (or foolish) volunteer thief-catchers from the crowd. He flipped over the rail.

There was a sudden shocked stillness and a distant thud.

It took some time for Simon to work his way to the railing overlooking the floor below. By then, the guards had already reached the ground floor and cleared the crowd back from the body.

From the second floor to the ground was a thirty foot drop. Buffeted by curious onlookers, Simon clung to the railing. The sickly sweet smell of toffee apples hung in the air. Distant on the floor below, the young man lay on his back, arms and legs splayed at strange angles. 

Surrounded by the familiar rattle of the weavers’ looms, Simon trudged up the stairs. Each step creaked with its own sad note, a little song of wood under stress. Outside his own door, he stopped.

He didn’t want to go in. What was he going to tell them?

No, I didn’t find a job. Again.

A woman told me my father had an affair with her. And that he was murdered. And my family lied to me about it, and sent me away to be sure no one would look for the truth.

A man followed me. I don’t know why. And now he’s dead, and it’s my fault.

He felt old suddenly, and weary. He didn’t want to deal with all this, with any of this. All he wanted was to look after his family, and even at that, he failed. He screwed his eyes shut and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyelids for several breaths.

The colour-shot blackness behind his eyes held no answers and no peace. Only the certainty that he must go on, somehow, as best he could.

He opened the door. Lorie sat at the table, darning a sock. Nana stirred the grey, evil-smelling contents of a pot on the stove. Simon hoped it wasn’t dinner.

‘Where’s Sam?’ he asked.

‘He went out this morning,’ Nana said. ‘Said he was on an errand for you.’

Simon frowned. ‘I didn’t ask him to do anything. Damn the boy. What’s he playing at?’

‘A letter came for you.’ Lorie slid an envelope across the table. ‘A messenger brought it earlier.’

The envelope was heavy, thick paper marked with the Oryche Labyrinth crest. Eranon. Simon tore it open and scanned the letter, then read it more slowly to be sure he’d understood.

‘What is it?’ Lorie asked.

‘Don’t fuss your father, girl. It’s his business,’ Nana said. ‘He’ll tell you if he thinks you should know.’

Simon sat down. He smoothed the creases in the letter. ‘Lord Oryche wants to see me.’

‘That’s good. He’s your cousin, isn’t he?’ Nana pulled something dripping and slimy grey from the pot. She grunted and dropped it back in to stew. ‘P’raps he’ll give you more money. Or a job. I’m sure it’s the least he could do.’

Simon doubted it. In Nana’s world—the small, familiar world of Sark—family helped family. You might wish your cousin dead and buried (and Simon had known Sark families like that) but if you had money and they had none, you had to help them, or face the scorn of the whole town. Eranon’s motivations were certainly not so simple.

‘What are you cooking?’ he asked.

‘Your shirt, the stained one. Should be green when it’s done.’