Curse of the Midions by Brad Strickland

Author:Brad Strickland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

CHAPTER 7

Hot Pursuit

On the flat roof of another warehouse, Jarvey lay on his stomach and peered down at the cobblestoned street. Brassy yellow daylight lay over everything, casting weak, fuzzy shadows. Below, on the far side of the street, a few well-dressed Toffs ate at outdoor tables, laughing and chatting. No traffic moved in the street—none except a boxy green carriage, drawn by two midnight-black horses. As it slowly rumbled past, Jarvey could see the rear of the carriage, enclosed in iron bars, like a cage, and three pairs of hands gripping the bars. Shadows hid everything else inside the cage.

A driver wearing the black leather uniform of a tipper hunched like a disgruntled vulture in the driver’s seat, one beefy red hand clutching the reins, the other a whip. Behind him, on a seat up on the roof of the carriage, two more black-clad tippers sat, their heads swiveling constantly as they scanned the alleys and street. Once the wagon had rolled past, Jarvey stood up and looked uncertainly ahead. He had two more flat roofs, and then he faced a wide space that he couldn’t hope to jump across.

Scrambling to the edge of the roof, Jarvey judged the distance to the next one, backed away again, and took a long broad jump across to the roof on the far side of the alley. He hit hard on his heels and tumbled forward, catching himself on outthrust hands, and pushed himself back up. At the far side of the roof he looked down: a two-story drop, too far to leap. But a black iron drainpipe ran down the wall at the rear of the building.

Jarvey swung himself over the edge of the roof and locked his legs around the drain where it slanted away from the roof and down toward the wall. With an effort, Jarvey got his hands on it and eased down. Climbing was hard, hanging at a backward forty-five-degree angle like a sloth, but then it got harder. The drain pipe had been fastened to the bricks with iron straps, and Jarvey couldn’t keep a grip all the way around it. He half slid and half fell twenty feet, landing on a squelchy, stinking mess around the foot of the drain, a mound of dirt, leaves, and garbage.

He edged forward in the dark alley, wondering if the tippers’ wagon had caught up to him. No, he could hear the slow clop-clop of the horses from away to his left. The three tippers were probably still looking for other members of the gang. The wagon wouldn’t race. They had all the time in the world.

Jarvey sank back into the shadows and watched the horses and wagon lumber past in a long streak of black and green, and then he chanced a look outside. His heart sank as he saw Betsy’s face up against the bars, and next to her little Puddler’s. He couldn’t make out who the third captive was.

When the wagon turned right far down at the corner, Jarvey darted out of the alley and sprinted.

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