Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [20]
Breaking from cover, Arvin sprinted across the roof. There were chimneys every few paces, emitting thin, hot smoke laden with glowing sparks that settled on his hair and skin. Ignoring these pinpricks of pain, he zigzagged from one chimney to another, all the while making for the center of the building, which was open to the sky. The open area was a circular courtyard filled with stacks of newly made pots and firewood for the kilns. No one was in it at the moment.
This courtyard looked like a dead end-but Arvin knew it must have doors leading out of it. He could always double back through the factory and escape onto the street again.
As he ran toward the lip of the roof, Arvin scanned the courtyard below, looking for a place to jump down. There: that pile of straw looked soft enough.
Just as he started to jump, something whooshed past his head and the sharp edge of a fletch scraped his ear. The crossbow bolt sailed on across the courtyard, but its close passage unnerved Arvin and threw him off his stride. He tripped over a lip of decorative tile that undulated around the inner edge of the rooftop and fell headlong into the courtyard.
He crashed down onto the lid of an enormous clay pot. It stood inside the courtyard-most of it underneath the overhang of the roof, but with just enough of it protruding that Arvin had landed on it. The wooden lid Arvin had fallen onto was as wide as a feast table. He’d landed facedown on top of it with his head, one arm, and one leg dangling over the edge of the pot. He’d heard something crack when he landed and felt pain flare in his collarbone, but it wasn’t sharp enough for the bone to be broken. Dazed, he rolled onto his back and found himself looking up at the underside of the rooftop. Above, someone was making his way cautiously across the roof, coming in his direction-the sergeant.
Arvin rolled over a second time-farther into the shadow of the overhang-then rose to his elbows and knees, his back brushing the rooftop above him. He glanced quickly around the courtyard. A few paces away from the pot on which he was perched were double doors leading into the factory. These doors were just starting to open-but whether it would be a factory worker or a militiaman who came through them would be a coin toss. Arvin spoke his glove’s command word and his dagger appeared in his left hand. He dropped flat onto his stomach, hoping they wouldn’t spot him.
Suddenly, the lid tilted underneath him. Arvin grabbed for the rim of the pot but missed. Flailing, he tumbled down into its darkened interior and landed in something wet, soft, and squishy. The lid struck the underside of the overhanging roof with a dull thud, teetered an instant, and then fell back into place. It had closed-but not completely. A thin crescent of morning light shone down into the otherwise dark interior of the pot.
Arvin lay in what felt like soft, wet earth. The smell of wet clay surrounded him. The squelch of it between the fingers of his bare hand and inside his trouser legs as he sat up reminded him of the sewers, and he shuddered. For the second time that morning, he was covered in muck. But at least the clay didn’t stink. Instead it had a pleasant, earthy smell.
The running footsteps reached the edge of the overhanging roof then stopped.
“Do you see him?” the sergeant shouted down.
“No,” another man’s voice shouted back-the person who came through the door had been a militiaman, after all. “But he’s got to be hiding here somewhere. Tanju will sniff him out. We’ll soon have that rebel in our grasp.”
“Just remember the bounty that goes to whoever takes him down,” the sergeant