It had seemed a strange choice of hideaway, but that night when they had fled Quill's townhouse Crope had been in no state to ask questions. Besides, at least they weren't heading north, the direction of all terrible things.
It had been a relief to get off the streets. The area around the Quartercourts was strangely quiet at night; the grand halls and places of learning closed up. There were no street vendors plying their trade on corners or street girls huddling around charcoal braziers for warmth. It wasn't that sort of place. Business was done by day here, and when darkness fell all the fine men in chains, and the judges, officials, armsman, ushers, scholars and grooms moved elsewhere, out of sight of the gibbets and into those parts of the city where you could sup cool ale and feast on sweetmeats and linger over life. Walking the empty and echoing streets, playing tug-o'-war with Big Mox while trying to keep his lord and Quill in his sights, Crope had felt exposed. Actual paving stones had been laid underfoot and his footsteps retorted like crossbolts. He felt only relief when Quill had executed one of his rakish turns into an arch sunk deep into the shadows of the Quartercourts' western facade and rapped lightly on a miniature door cawed from a single chunk of hickory. After a brief exchange of whispers, Quill and his motley band of misfits and dogs was allowed entry into the limestone halls of Spire Vanis' public courts.
Quillan Moxley was the sort of man who had friends in all kinds of places. Associates, he called them, men and women who owed him favors, were involved in various illegal activities with him, or were the sort of people whose silence could be bought for a price. Crope did not know which category the night warden of the Quartercourts fell into, but he did know that the man had gone to considerable lengths to ensure he had not seen Crope.
"Self-protectionl," Quill had told Crope later, after the thief had led them to the second underlevel beneath the limestone compound. "What a man doesn't know for certain he can lie about with impunity."
Crope didn't know what the word impunity meant but he figured it had something to do with being interrogated by bailiffs. They couldn't force knowledge from you that you didn't own. Crope had seen the back of the night warden's head a few times over the past days and concluded that he had clean hair.
"I used to store fruit and vegetables down here at one time," Quill had said, walking through the series of dank stone cellars that would become Crope's home. "It was a good little earner until the Lord of High Granges opened his passes to cheap produce from the south."
Crope had frowned and nodded, attempting to demonstrate to Quill his understanding of the finer points of business.
"Better off without it, really. Carts loaded with cabbages were getting difficult to smuggle past the watch." Quill shook his small head with feeling. "And God help you if you made the mistake of taking possession of perishables. They had to be up and out within a day."
More frowning and nodding was called for, though in truth Crope had got stuck on the word perishables and was no longer quite certain what the thief meant.
Quill had appeared to appreciate the sympathy regardless, "Well I'll be off for now. You have the use of all the space right up to the icehouse door. Only time anyone comes down here is to pick ice so when you hear footsteps move sharpish and lock yourselves in the big stockroom at the back. Night warden's the only one besides yourself who has the key."
The big stockroom had turned out to be the best room out of the lot of them. It was situated against the Quartercourts' exterior western wall and although it was low-ceilinged like the other cellars, two wind shafts provided light from the ground-level windows in the room over head. If you stood just underneath the shafts, which Crope was currently doing, you could look up and see the sky through iron bars. Sometimes Crope saw flashes of people's feet and legs as they hurried down the street. Once he'd looked up and seen a raven tapping against the bars.
It was good to be able to keep Town Dog here. The small room at the top of Quill's townhouse had not been big enough for master, servant and dog, so Town Dog had had to go and stay with Quill. Crope had missed the busy little creature with her offwhite coat and stubby tail. She'd followed him around a town he'd once visited far to the east of here, and when he'd had to leave in a bit of a hurry—owing to an unfortunate incident concerning the removal of a support beam from a tavern—she'd trotted through the gates, right on his heels. Town Dog had been with him ever since. She'd even been with him the night he'd gone to the pointy tower to free his lord.
She hadn't been allowed in this room at first, of course. His lord slept here, in the best, driest and airiest spot, his mattress raised off the floor by a wooden pallet and separated from the damp wall by a nailed-up sheepskin. Grope had been nervous about how his lord would react to the dog for he had no memory of Sarahs treating any animal beside his horse with kindness, Plus, Town Dog was an energetic scrap of dog-ness, disinclined to sit and with a tendency to smell. Deciding it was best to keep them apart. Crope had made a point of keeping the stockroom door shut so that Town Dog couldn't gain access to his lord. This had meant that Town Dog spent a lot of time at the door, scratching, digging and mewling suspiciously like a cat. Grope had been mortified. How would his lord ever sleep? Measures had to be taken, and Crope had begun to leash Town Dog to one of the many iron rings that lay rusting against the cellars' walls. Then a strange thing had happened.
Every night in the darkest and quietest hours before dawn, Crope slipped out of the Quartercourts to walk the streets. He knew what he risked, yet he could not stop himself. For seventeen years he had been chained inside the mines and he had a hardness in him now that would not bow to anyone in matters of his freedom. Going outside each night was his sign to himself that he was a free man and that his comings and goings were his own.
As a precaution against detection he had taken to wearing the special cloak Quill had commissioned from the tailor who created clothing for the Surlord's secret intelligencers known as darkcloaks. Gray for day. Brown for sundown. Falling all the way to his feet, it was longer than he liked in a cloak, and its wool was unaccountably itchy, but if it could help him steal across the main courtyard in Mask Fortress without raising an alarm it probably wouldn't do any harm to wear it on his outings around the Quartercourts. Crope had an inkling that it made him more … shadowy than he normally was. Not invisible or anything fancy like that, just a tiny bit more difficult to see, like a brown lizard on a brown wall.
He didn't like to put the hood up—itchy arms were one thing, itchy ears quite another—but forced himself to do so during those tricky moments leaving and returning to the Quartercourts. Ingress and egress, that's what Quill would have called it The thief knew many fine and impressive-sounding words. To leave the Quartercourts, Crope had to open the door to the ice house where big blue blocks of lake ice were stored between bales of hay and pass through to the other side. Next he had to climb the steps to the servants' level that was used by the Quartcrcourts staff in the daytime to service the finely dressed lords. This was the tricky part, for sometimes potboys and scrubbers would hide from the night warden during his rounds so they could stay in the courts overnight.
Crope aimed for stealth when crossing the servants' level. He aimed, but suspected he fell short. A woman had screamed at him once, and he'd very nearly screamed back. She'd been sleeping on the bench near the door, covered by a scrap of blanket, and had woken when he'd stepped on a creaky board. Crope had hightailed it up the stairs and out of the Quartercourts, and had then spent an anxious hour walking the streets wondering how on earth he was going to get back As it turned out, the night warden had heard the commotion, informed the woman that she was drunk and had seen a ghost and turfed her from the building. Crope knew this because Quill had scolded him about it the next day. "Warden gave me a real fishwifing, I can tell you. Next time you ignore my excellent advice make sure no one is around to see you do it."