Still, he approached the opening with caution. Street noise now included the toneless loud singing of “Gird’s Cow” along with the angry shouts and wailing of forlorn parents. He could hear nothing when he put one of his “donkey’s ears” to the planks that filled the opening. The wood was weathered but solid, oak by the grain, clearly an actual door, though small: it had hinges on one side and a lockplate on the other.
Not, as it happened, a very good lock. A few moments with his picks, and he felt the lock give. Was there an interior bar as well? He paused to pour oil from his flask onto the hinges and then pushed. Slowly—for it was thick and heavy—the old half door moved. Arvid clambered over the tall sill into a long, high room that ran the full length of the building from street to wall. High round windows let in dim light along the left side, and a single tall window at the front let in more. Toward the front, sacks that smelled like wool formed an irregular mound, but much of the floor was covered with a jumble of old furniture, boxes broken and whole, and a layer of thick dust. To his right, the floor slanted down abruptly … a ramp that led down into dimness.
Arvid chose the ramp; he suspected that the front had either a staircase beyond the wool sacks or a crane arrangement over that window for lifting heavy loads. The window would be visible from the street below—someone might look up, then they all would, and watchers within the warehouse would guess someone was above.
The ramp, dust-covered and unobstructed, revealed to his sensitive feet linear gouges … tracks? Wheel marks? They might have used a cart or barrow to move things up and down. A single thin rail marked the inside of the ramp; Arvid stayed near the back wall.
The ramp ended a scant two armswidths from a wall. Around the turn, the floor was flat … but he suspected another ramp led down another level. The space he came into was darker than that above … it would have, he recalled, common walls on both sides. Two small narrow windows at the back, opening into that shaded space between the back wall and the city wall, gave little light, just enough for dark-adapted eyes to see that a cross-wall closed off any view to the front. In this space, he saw more sacks of wool and also stacks of hides with cropped fleece still on. He could smell both distinctly.
“Mmrow?”
Arvid started, almost allowing a gasp to escape, before he realized it was a cat. Of course a warehouse would have a cat to keep down mice and rats … but a cat might reveal him to those he wished to evade. He felt the cat—a dim shadow—swipe against his legs. He reached down; a damp nose touched his hand, then withdrew.
He had killed cats to prevent discovery in his days as a thief, but he had no desire to kill an animal now just for his own convenience. Experience told him, however, that finding a sack or box to shut the cat into would only increase its noise and lead to investigation by those holding the children. That might be useful if he had a way to set up a trap for them … but at the moment he was simply exploring, learning what was and was not possible.
The cat moved away—dimness moving in dimness, more visible when it crossed the paler dimness of the two small windows, then jumped up onto a stack of hides and down onto whatever lay behind them.
What lay behind them let out a gasp, then a small sound more like a tiny moan or whimper. Soft-footed, Arvid eased across the floor to the same stack of hides. That did not sound like someone left to guard this floor but like … a child?
He leaned on the stack of hides and pitched his voice to carry no more than a handlength or two. “Are you hurt?”
Nothing but a silence so full of meaning it could not be anything but a person in hiding, trying not to breathe or move.
“I am not one of those below,” Arvid said. “I came by roof, hoping to keep children safe. Can you help me?”
A shaky whisper then, more carrying than his own practiced voice: “They’ll kill me! Da said run hide.”
“Quiet voice,” Arvid said. The cat jumped back up, landing on the hides with a tiny thump, and rubbed itself on Arvid’s arm. “I am Arvid. You hurt?”
“N-n-o.”
“Good. Tell me where in the building they are.”
A rustle of clothing, of someone uncoiling … the faint scrape of a shoe on wood as the child stood—hardly as tall as the stack of hides. Arvid could make out nothing of the face except the smudge of eyes, nose, mouth, and a shock of dark hair.
“I—think—in our—where we live.”
“You are?”
“Cedi.” The voice was steadier answering a familiar question.
“Your da’s the wool merchant?”
“Yes, and Grandda.” A faint glow appeared; the boy gasped. “No!”