Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [55]
Either she'd lost it during this chase, or he'd taken it while healing her. Hissing a curse at him instead, she spun around, ran, and leaped onto the next roof through the thickly rising, scented steam of someone's laundry, coming up from a skylight.
Beyond, the roof was flat, all of metal sheets sealed and patched with thick pitch, ankle-deep in slippery, bird-dung-dotted water- and… and Narnra found herself with nowhere she could safely leap to, on a building with wide streets on two sides, Rhauligan grimly approaching on the third, and a barge heaped high with spear-like, jagged salvage-wood on the last side that it would be sheer suicide to jump onto. She glared around at treacherous Marsember for a moment in the lightening dawn, then spun around and raced back to the open skylight.
Rhauligan was just launching himself at her over its billowing murk. Narnra sat down in her run and skidded over the edge moments before his boots crashed down through where she'd just been.
Her fall was a short one, onto stout metal poles draped with someone's damp tapestries. They gave way like a sling, dropping her down through a roaring stream of air. Chains were clanking all around her as racks of clothes hanging from them were rocked forward and back, forward and back, by levers that vanished down through the floor. By the loud, rhythmic hissing, the Silken Shadow guessed that there was a gigantic bellows in the room below, presumably being worked by the same grunting, sweating coin-slaves who were tugging on the levers and feeding the fire that was warming all this rushing air. My, but the world of laundry was an exciting place…
Or certainly would be, if she didn't get out from under where Rhauligan was sure to land in the next few moments. She debated drawing her belt-dagger and plunging it through the tapestry when he landed in it… but no, she wasn't here to slay Harpers, just to get away from them. Yonder was a row of trap-doors that must offer access to the levels below-probably through shafts nearly dry clothes would be pushed down.
Someone shouted at her as she raced between the swinging racks of garments, and she had a glimpse of a startled old man whose bare arms were a riot of varicolored tattoos waving angrily at her. She gave him a nod and a smile and kept right on running to the trap-door at the… right end.
Flinging it back, she smelled hot fabric and saw light far below-and in it, neat stacks of what looked like folded cloaks or blankets. It was the work of but a moment to launch herself feetfirst down to join them.
Behind her, she heard another shout followed by a grunt and a thud. That would be Rhauligan paying his respects to old Many-brands. It seemed she'd been right: the world of laundry was an exciting place.
Narnra plunged past a room full of all the noisy, sweating activity she'd envisaged and landed gently in a large, brightly lit room below that, toppling and scattering hot, fluffy cloaks in all directions. No one was near, and Narnra rolled enthusiastically, trying to get herself mostly dry ere she waded out to find footing and run on.
Along the way, she snatched up a cloak, shook it open in her hands-and when Rhauligan crashed down into view, she flung it over his head, managed to tug him over into a cascading fall of piled laundry to where she could get a hard knee into his blinded and muffled head, then sprang away, not daring to stay and try to smother him because enraged launderers were approaching at a run from various directions now, all shouting furious curses she couldn't tarry to hear properly. She left them closing in on the thoroughly entangled Rhauligan, sprang over some sort of sorting table where women cowered away from her behind wicker baskets… and found another handy, waiting door. This one was even open.
Still, she was losing count of doors