Jimmy slipped through the crowd.

'Larry,' Jimmy said.

The younger boy gave a well-concealed start and Jimmy felt a small spurt of pride.  Sneaking up on guardsmen was easy, but the boy was a fellow professional.

'I've found something out,' Jimmy said, looking around the crowd to make sure they weren't overheard.  'A way into the dungeon.'  He made a pressing gesture with his hand.  'But there's a problem.'

'What problem?'

'The only one who knows the way is Noxious Neville - so we have to take him along.'

Larry's face went from joyful to sour, as if he'd just bitten into something unpleasant.

'And I had to promise him a half skin of wine.  Which means...'

Ol' Neville was the type to disappear in an instant for reasons of his own, yet come back demanding the promised reward.  Rewards never slipped the old man's porous memory, even when  his recall of deeds performed was vague.

They turned, watching as Neville conducted a conversation with someone who wasn't there.  Jimmy interrupted the conversation and lured Neville out of the Rest by pouring out a stream of raw red wine that Neville hastened to catch in his mouth.  When they were outside Jimmy stoppered the skin.

'Lead us,' he said.

The old beggar smacked his lips, then rubbed his hands over his face and neck and licked up the drops of wine he collected from his fingers.

Jimmy ostentatiously swung the skin over his shoulder.

'Whenever you're ready,' he said.


'That's it,' Neville said.

The three Mockers crouched, straddling the stream of foulness that ran down the centre of the sewer.  Ahead, an oval opening in a wall poured its own tributary into the fetid stream; broad streaks of glistening nitre down the brick showed that the trickle had been larger once.

'Took long enough,' Larry said sourly.

Jimmy shrugged.  Not all of Neville's madness was an act; they'd backtracked more times than Jimmy cared to remember with the old man whining about how thirsty he was.  But the young thief had been adamant; no wine until they found the place.

If he's like this half sober, we'd never see daylight again if I'd let him get drunk.

'Are you sure this is it?' Jimmy asked dubiously.

As he'd said, the tunnel was partially collapsed.  Rubble splayed out in an incline into the main sewer, giving them easy access, but the air that blew towards them from above was more foul than the beggar himself.  Larry said, 'Something's died up there!'