Stalking Darkness

mapping out all these tunnels would take weeks, months even. But what if you find someone who knows already?”
    “Like a Scavenger!”
    “Or a gaterunner. What did that one who jumped me say?”
    “Something about strangers in the sewers, someone she was afraid of.”
    “Right.” Seregil looked down at the smudged parchment, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder what Tym’s up to these days?”
    “Tym?”
    “You must remember him, the thief who cut your purse for me that time?”
    Alec grimaced. “I remember him, all right. He’s not a gaterunner, is he?”
    “No, but he has connections there, and just about everywhere else among the poor and the criminal. That’s what makes him so useful to us.”
    “I didn’t think it was his charm,” Alec remarked sourly.

19
Tym
    “H ow do you know he’ll come?” Alec asked as they climbed to the empty room over the nameless lower city slophouse the following evening.
    “He’ll come.” Seregil eyed the greasy table with distaste, then sat down on one of the stools next to it. “He’s probably already around somewhere.”
    He hadn’t been hard to contact. An informal network permeated the lowest classes of the city like the roots of a tree; a coin and discreet word with the right party was usually sufficient.
    Almost before Seregil had finished speaking, they heard a light step on the stairs behind them. Tym paused in the doorway, scanning the room suspiciously. With a deferential nod to Seregil, he sauntered in.
    Alec eyed the thief with carefully guarded dislike. The last time Alec had seen him was outside the city that day with Micum and Beka. Cocky with his new skills, Alec had surprised him in a crowd, hoping to pay him back for cutting his purse. Instead, Tym had nearly knifed him.
    He was still thin and dirty as ever, and still cloaked in an air of hungry arrogance. Slinging one leg over the bench opposite Seregil, he favored Alec with a long, appraising sneer.
    “Still with ‘im, eh? Must be gettin’ something you like.”
    Alec returned the look impassively.
    Tym snorted a brief, humorless laugh and turned his attention to Seregil. “You asked after me?”
    Seregil rested one fist on the table and slowly opened it to display a thick silver half sester.
    “Any queer customers about?” he asked, using the common slang for spy.
    Tym snorted again, a harsh, ugly sound. “What do you think?”
    Seregil snapped his hand closed over the coin, opened it again. A second coin glittered in the hollow of his palm. “Are you working for any of them?”
    Tym eyed the coins, an almost thoughtful look smoothing his narrow face for an instant. “Think I’d tell if I was?”
    Seregil’s hand closed, opened. Four coins.
    Alec studied Tym’s face. The aloof mask stayed firmly in place.
    “Could be,” Tym replied cautiously.
    Close. Open. No coins.
    That got a reaction. Tym sat forward, looking like a man who’d just overplayed his game.
    “Bugger! No, I ain’t working for nobody, but there’s them that might be.”
    Seregil opened his hand again. Five coins.
    “Rat Tom come by a stash real suddenlike, wouldn’t say where from,” Tym confided, all crafty compliance now.
    “Where’s Rat Tom now?”
    Tym shrugged. “Turned up dead in an alley not two weeks ago, throat cut.”
    “Who else?”
    “Fast Mickle claims he did a papers job in Helm Street.”
    “What house?”
    “Don’t know.”
    “Where could I find Fast Mickle?”
    Tym shrugged again. “Ain’t seen him for a while.”
    Seregil snatched the coins away with a disgusted sigh and rose, motioning for Alec to follow. “Let’s go. There’s nothing to be learned here.”
    “There’s talk,” Tym added hastily.
    Halfway to the door already, Seregil turned with an exasperated frown. “What talk?”
    “It’s the gaterunners mostly. Some turn up flush all of a sudden, then they turn up dead or not at all.”
    Alec exchanged a quick look with Seregil, thinking of what the woman had told them in the sewers.
    “Madrin, Dinstil, Slim Lily, Wanderin’ Ki, all of ’em dead one way or another just in the last month,” Tym continued. “Tarl’s been lookin’ for Farm the Fish for a week now.”
    “I thought Farm was a breaker?” Seregil returned to the table. Alec remained standing just behind him.
    “He is, but still it’s funny he’s gone. Him and Tarl been together for years.”
    “Any others?”
    “Virella maybe, she’s another runner, but you don’t never know