"I like darkness," was the reply, as calm as ever.
Durnan waved at Mirt to get moving, and rehooded the lantern. They went down the stairs quietly.
"Mayhap Yelver just wanted to have one last, lame laugh at me," Mirt mused aloud, as they crossed a fish guts-littered alley where rats scurried fearlessly this way and that, and made for Adder Lane. "Why'd ye bring us this far south, hey? The Portal's a good-"
"To see if all the men strolling along back there were following us, of course," Durnan muttered.
Mirt stiffened, but managed to avoid turning around.
"And-?" he asked.
"They are." Durnan replied. "A dozen, and one may be a mage."
"Watchful Order?"
"Far less official, I'd say. Let's duck into Roldro's cellar."
The innkeeper strode ahead, rapped on a particular panel set into a crumbling wall, and sang a brief, wordless phrase of music. A much smaller panel nearby slid open, and someone uttered a non-committal grunt from beyond it.
"Flashscales," Durnan murmured in reply-and the response was the click of a bolt being slid back.
The door, a few paces along the wall, looked more like a series of boards nailed over a disused hatch than a usable entryway. But the innkeeper snatched it open as he reached it, and was gone through it like a diving sea hawk. Mirt huffed and plunged after, banging the door closed not far ahead of a sudden shout and clatter of hobnailed boots on cobbles.
"Cellar to cellar, and so away," Durnan told his friend several rooms and startled young Roldro children later, as they went down damp steps into a room that stank of rotting tide wrack and mildew. "To rouse the Portal."
Mirt nodded a little wearily and said, "Aye, where they know where to find us."
Something wriggled inside his head, and he stumbled up against the wall of Murktar Roldro's cellar with a groan.
"Magic?" Durnan snapped, putting a steadying hand on Mirt's shoulder.
The moneylender nodded and waved a vague hand struck dumb by a flood of memories-faces, places, names, and amounts owed and due dates and-and-
The invasion was gone, as swiftly as it had come.
"Someone … in my mind," he wheezed, clutching at Durnan's stone-steady arm. "That mage following us."
The innkeeper nodded and asked, "Seeking memories of Yelver?"
"Aye. Turned up everything-gods, my head's a-whirl still-but Yelver, yes, an' our talk with the Keeper. I wonder what Yelver was mixed up in?"
Durnan was already whirling past him.
"Stay here," he said. "Be right back."
Mirt leaned against the wall, groggy, listening to his friend's boots racing up the stairs-and more slowly coming back down again. The keeper of the Yawning Portal wore another of his grim smiles.
"They're all racing away back nor'east, of course."
"To the Keeper of Secrets," Mirt grunted. "Knowing she told us nothing, we're now nothing-but she remains a danger." He slapped his hand to his sword hilt, drew in a deep breath, and started up the stairs himself. "So, 'tis back to Sammarin's Street."
"Way ahead of you," Durnan replied cheerfully, bounding past.
"Aye," Mirt agreed. "Everyone always is."
The flash and the trembling of cobblestones under their feet came when they were still a street away from the Keeper's shop.
Faint sounds of startled cries, curses, and the crashes of things falling and breaking arose in the tallhouses and shops all around. Durnan broke out of the trot that let Mirt keep pace with him, and raced ahead.
Almost immediately he returned with the terse explanation: "Two Watch patrols."
"Rooftops," Mirt replied, waving at a distant tall-house with carved dolphin downspouts.
Durnan flashed him a smile and dropped it off his face as he looked back behind them.
"More Watch coming," said the innkeeper.
Mirt shrugged and replied, "So we're innocents, look ye. Deafinnocents."
"No sort of innocent climbs downspouts in the middle of the night."
"Innocent downspout inspectors do," Mirt growled. When Durnan rolled his eyes, the moneylender protested, "I've a palace badge, and know what names to invoke. I-"
The uppermost floor of the building they'd visited not long before burst apart with a roar, in an eruption of stones, roof slates, and the shattered bodies of men.
A head and what looked like a knee bounced and pattered wetly to the cobblestones nearby. Durnan abandoned any attempt to look innocent and clawed at Mirt.
"Down" he hissed, "and look dazed."
Blinking around at the tumult of running Watch officers and still-rolling shards of stone, Mirt complied.
They crouched together against the wall of what looked to be a toy shop as shouting uniformed men ran past, lanterns bobbing.
"Yelver surprises me more and more," the fat moneylender muttered, "but we'll never know his secrets now. No one could've-"
There was a creaking close at hand as a "downsteps door" opened. Durnan peered down a narrow flight of stone steps past the usual clutter of rain barrels and discarded trash, into one of the many cellar-level entries common to that part of North Ward. After the blasts, someone could come out curious, or wanting to flee, or waving a blade and wild enough with fear to use it on anyone.
Mirt hastily drew back his boots to let the lone cloaked and cowled figure mount the steps, noting bare, empty hands clutching at her-yes, her-cloak to keep her features covered.
She stopped, peering up at the two men, and said, "Stand back, if you please, and let me pass."
It was the calm voice they'd traded words with in the darkness.
"Of course," Mirt squeaked, trying to make his voice sound unlike his own.
He and Durnan both stepped back, lifting empty hands to signal that they meant no harm. But as the woman reached the top of the steps, Durnan whirled back to face her, luring her attention. Mirt plucked back her cowl.