Luck in the Shadows

breathlessly.
    "Aye, but Master Alben's still at his breakfast," the boy replied without looking up from his work.
    "Call him, please!" cried Alec. "I've been sent for medicine. My poor mother's had an issue of blood since last night, and nothing seems to stop it!"
    This galvanized the apprentice. Setting his pan aside, he disappeared through a curtain at the back of the room, returning a moment later with a balding man with a long grey beard.
    "Master Alben?" asked Alec.
    "That's me," the man answered brusquely, brushing crumbs from the front of his robe. "What's all this fuss about, first thing in the day?"
    "It's my mother, sir. She's bleeding terribly!"
    "Durnik told me that much, boy. We've no time to waste on hysterics," snapped Alben. "Does the blood come from her mouth, nose, ears, or womb?"
    "From the womb. We're in from the country and didn't know where to find a midwife. They said at the inn that you might have herbs—"
    "Yes, yes, Durnik, you know which jars."
    The apprentice fetched three jars from one of the crowded shelves and the apothecary set to work measuring the herbs and powders into a mortar. Alec wandered to the window, wringing his hands with simulated impatience.
    In the courtyard outside he saw other tenants of the place setting out for their day's business. Micum was just across the way, strolling around the court as if looking for a particular address. Seeing Alec at the window, he sauntered over in the direction of a refuse pile in a corner of the yard.
    Alec paced back to the worktable. "Can't you hurry?" he implored.
    "A moment!" snapped Alben, still grinding. "It's of no use at all if it isn't correctly mixed—By the Four! Is that smoke?"
    At that moment a cry of "Fire!." went up in the courtyard, followed by a scream and the sound of running feet. Dropping his pestle, the apothecary rushed to the door. The rubbish heap was in flames.
    "Fire! Arson!" he shrieked, going white.
    "Durnik, fetch water at once! Fire, fire in the courtyard!"
    By now the shout had been taken up through the building and doors flew open as people hurried out to douse the blaze.
    Young Durnik ran for the well, but his master disappeared back through the curtain. Following him, Alec discovered a comfortable sitting room behind the shop. Alben was hovering at the hearth, gripping one of the carved pillars supporting the mantel with one hand, and pulling nervously at his beard with the other.
    Seeing Alec in the doorway, he snarled, "What are you doing in here? Get out!"
    "The medicine, sir," Alec ventured meekly. "For my mother?"
    "What? Oh, the medicine! Take it, take it!"
    "But the price?"
    "Bugger the price, you idiot! Can't you see there's a fire?" Alben gasped furiously, making no move to abandon the hearth. "Get out, damn you!"
    Backing out through the curtain, Alec dumped the contents of the mortar into a parchment cone and hurried out past the crowd that had gathered in the street. A few blocks from the tenement Micum stepped from an alley to meet him.
    "Well?"
    "I think it worked," Alec told him. "As soon as it started he went right to the room behind the shop and wouldn't be moved from the hearth."
    "We've got him, then! It's just as Seregil said the first time we pulled that trick on Old Silverfish: "Shout «Fire» and a mother will race to save her child, a craftsman for his tools, a courtesan for her jewel box, and a blackmailer for his hoard of papers."
    "So now we tell Myrhini?"
    "Yes, and pray to Illior this is the right forger!"
    That night, Seregil found himself with nothing to do but worry. The cell's tiny slit of a window was too high to look out of; he gauged the passage of time by listening to the prison go quiet around him. Hunched miserably on the hard stone sleeping shelf with his blankets pulled tight around his shoulders, he worried.
    Have they gone out yet?
    In truth, he had no way of knowing if Alec and Micum had understood the import of his message.
    Surely Micum would have found some way to get word in to you if he hadn't?
    Unless the Lerans found some way to gather Alec and Micum up in their web, too.
    The two of them were certainly tempting targets: both foreign born, both known friends of an accused traitor. Even Nysander could be implicated on the basis of their long relationship. Seregil's imagination, not always a kind companion at such times, was soon busy painting alarming scenes of forged letters, sudden arrests, and worse.
    Throwing aside the blankets, he stretched his