"They're deserted!" she exclaimed, keeping her voice to a surprised whisper.
"My g-guess," Jonny confirmed.
She could only wonder why. Had their wealthy owners decided that what had happened to Orlina could all too easily happen to them and cut down on their households and visibility_or had they decided that Gradford itself was no longer a healthy place for them and gone off elsewhere?
Or had Padrik decided that where Orlina had gone, others could follow? Were the prisons full of other "heretics," waiting to receive their own pendants?
If so, Padrik was going to get a big surprise eventually, when all of them surfaced to testify against him in Kingsford.
Always providing, of course, that the Justiciars at Kingsford did not consider High Bishop Padrik too dangerous a man to cross...
Robin was glad to be out of sight of the Cathedral, and away from a place where so many Guards and Constables were patrolling. The far shabbier quarter where they found themselves had fewer figures of authority in it_and even the street preachers were the kind they were familiar with; the disheveled, ill-kempt, near-lunatics. They found the class of inn they were looking for, as full night descended and the lamplighters made their rounds, giving the street preachers light to see and be seen by. It was small, nondescript, with the barrel that signified an "inn" hanging over the door, in a building flanked by a shop and a laundry. Both of those were, for a miracle, still open.
Robin stopped in the shop long enough to buy candles, sausage, cheese and bread, and despite Jonny's obvious nervousness and impatience, went to the laundry as well, for a spirited bargaining session. It was nice to do something as normal as bargain; for a moment she was able to forget her tension, and stop watching over her shoulder for Church Guards. When she came out, she had several old, but clean, blankets folded over her arm, and it was obvious from Jonny's expression that he did not understand why she had bought them.
"If they give us any bedding in here, it's not going to be much, and it'll be full of fleas," she said, very quietly. "This is stuff that was sent to be cleaned but never picked up. We can get clothing that way, too. That's why I wasn't worried when we didn't have much appropriate clothing. We'll be able to buy things that already look worn, not new." His eyebrows rose, and he nodded shortly.
They went in; the common room had a bare earthen floor, pounded hard and covered with rushes, with the only light coming from the fireplace at one end. That fireplace evidently served as the rude "kitchen" as well, since there was a large pot of something hanging over it that smelled strongly of cabbage, and a stack of bowls over the mantle. Furnished with crude trestle-tables and benches that had seen a great deal of hard use, it held two or three dozen people who looked to be the same class of farming folk that Gwyna and Jonny pretended to be. As Robin had expected, there were no Guards at the door here, but the innkeeper perused their "papers," reading slowly and painfully, with his finger under each line and his mouth moving as he spelled out the words. Then he required them to make their "marks" in a book, copying their names beside the marks, before he would rent them their room.
A scrawny boy, summoned from his station beside the fireplace, led them to it. It lay on the third floor, at the top of a steep and rickety stairway, in a narrow corridor with seven other rooms, and was lit with a single lamp. The lamp did not give off much light, which was probably just as well; Robin wasn't certain she wanted to see just how derelict the place was. They were allotted one tiny stump of a candle for light, given to them by the boy, who flung open the door and vanished after shoving the candle end at Kestrel.
The room was barely large enough for the bed; as Robin had expected, it was nothing more than a thin mattress on a wooden platform, Jonny lit the candle stub at the lamp in the hall, and stuck it on top of a smear of waxy drips, on a small shelf by the door. Robin closed the door, and looked around.
In the better light from the candle, it seemed that her worst fears had been groundless; the place was clean. The thin pallet held no fleas or bedbugs. The floor wasn't dirty, just so worn that there wasn't even a hint of wax or varnish, and gray with age and use.
There was one window, large enough to climb out of; that was good, if they ever had to make an unconventional exit. She dropped her pile of blankets on the bed, and opened the shutters_there was, of course, no glass in the window itself. The window overlooked a roof, and a bit of the alley in back of the inn; a rain-gutter ran beside it up to the roof, and the roof of the laundry was just below.
She smiled tautly in satisfaction. Curfew or no curfew, here was a way to come and go at night without being seen.
She closed the shutters again, and turned back to Jonny. "It isn't The Singing Bird," she said, apologetically.
"It's also n-not th-the g-gaol, or a d-dry s-spot under a b-bridge," he replied. "And it s-seems c-clean."
"Very true." She bent down for the blankets, but he beat her to them, unfolding them deftly and helping her make up the bed. "We'll have to take everything with us whenever we go out openly," she told him, "or it likely won't be here when we come back."
He turned to pull the latch-string in, barring the door to anyone who wasn't willing to break it down. "I t-take it w-we w-won't b-be d-doing a l-lot of th-that?"
"Probably not." She spread out her purchases on the bed. "The food here is going to be pretty dreadful, that's why I bought all this; since neither of us can afford to be laid up with a flux and cramps, we'd better buy our dinners elsewhere. They tend to buy rather dubious foodstuffs for these places _well, look at the candle, they buy these stubs in lots from the Cathedral and the homes of the rich, who won't burn a candle down to the end. The food'll be like that. There won't be any facilities here other than a privy in the alley. The laundry has a bathing room we can rent." She sliced up bread while Jonny dealt with the cheese and sausage. "One of us should stay in the room when the other leaves officially. That probably ought to be you."
He nodded. "B-between th-this st-stutter and th-the f-fact th-that you m-might n-not b-be s-safe here alone, I th-think you're r-right. J-just d-don't let any P-Patsonos s-spot you."
She winced, but he had a perfect right to remind her of that. And a few weeks ago_I would have been angry that he had. Now it simply seems practical.... "Right. Well, it looks as if our plans just got thrown right out. We can't take pleasure parties around to the inns doing magic tricks... and I'm not sure that any of the Houses are still in operation, except in the Warren itself." She frowned with thought. "I'll have to go in the Warren and start spreading the word about how Padrik actually works his 'miracles.' Maybe the people in there can do something. I'll start with Donnar, and see if there's anywhere I can go from there."
He ate several bites before replying_and as their candle-stub threatened to flicker out, took one of the new candles and lit it from the last flame of the old, pushing the unlit end down into the melted wax from the stub. "I d-don't l-like you g-going in th-there alone. B-but th-there's n-no ch-choice." Then he smiled shyly. "B-besides, you're p-probably more c-competent in there th-than m-me."