[Thrawn Trilogy] - 02(29)

“I’ll send Mara to get it; can you have someone come in to pick it up?”

“Sure, no problem. I’ll send Dankin-he hasn’t got much to do at the moment anyway.

“All right. The netting will be ready by the time he gets here.”

Karrde gestured, and Mara keyed off the channel.

“You know where the Number Three dump is?” he asked her.

She nodded. “Four twelve Wozwashi Street. Three blocks west and two north.”

“Right.” He peered out the window. “Unfortunately, it’s still too early for repulsorlift vehicles to be on the streets. You’ll have to walk.”

“That’s all right,” Mara assured him. She felt like a little exercise, anyway. “Two boxes be enough?”

“If you can handle that many,” he told her, looking her up and down as if making sure her outfit conformed to local Rishi standards of propriety. He needn’t have bothered; one of the first rules the Emperor had drummed into her so long ago was to blend in as best she could with her surroundings. “If not, Lachton can probally make do with one.”

“All right. I’ll see you later.”

Their townhouse was part of a row of similar structures abutting one of the hundreds of little market areas that dotted the whole congested valley. For a moment Mara stood in the entry alcove of their building, out of the busy flow of pedestrian traffic, and looked around her. Through the gaps between the nearest buildings she could see the more distant parts of the city-vale, most of it composed of the same cream-white stone so favored by the locals. In places, she could see all the way to the edge, a few small buildings perched precariously partway up the craggy mountains that rose sharply into the sky on all sides. Far up those mountains, she knew, lived loose avian tribes of native Rishi, who no doubt looked down in bemused disbelief at the strange creatures who had chosen the most uncomfortably hot and humid spots of their planet in which to live.

Dropping her gaze from the mountains, Mara gave the immediate area a quick scan. Across the street were more townhouses; between her and them was the usual flow of brightly clad pedestrians hurrying to and from the market area to the east. Reflexively, her eyes flicked across the townhouses, though with each window composed of mirror glass there wasn’t a lot there for her to see. Also reflexively, she glanced across each of the narrow pedestrian alleyways between the buildings.

Between two of them, back at the building’s rear where he was hardly visible, was the motionless figure of a man wearing a blue scarf and patterned green tunic.

Staring in her direction.

Mara let her gaze drift on as if she hadn’t seen him, her heart thudding suddenly in her throat. Stepping out of the alcove, she turned east toward the market and joined the flow of traffic.

She didn’t stay with it long, though. As soon as she was out of the mysterious loiterer’s line of sight, she began cutting her way across the flow, heading across the street toward the townhouse window. She reached it three buildings d,own from the loiterer, ducked into the alleyway, and hurried toward the rear. If he was indeed monitoring Karrde’s place, there was a good chance she could take him from behind.

She reached “The rear of the buildings and circled around : only to find that her quarry had vanished.

For a moment she stood there, looking around her for any sign of the man’s whereabouts, wondering what to do now. There was none of the insistent tingling that had gotten them away from Myrkr at the last second; but as she’d told Karrde, it wasn’t a talent she could turn on and off.

She looked down at the ground where the man had been standing. There were a few faint footprints in the thin coating of dust that had collected at the corner of the townhouse, giving the impression that the man had been there long enough to shuffle his feet a few times. A half dozen steps away, right in the center of another layer of dust, was a clear footprint pointing toward the west behind the row of townhouses.

Mara looked in that direction, feeling her lip twist. A deliberate lead-on, obviously-footprints in dust never came out that clear and unsmudged unless carefully planted. And she was right. A hundred meters directly ahead, strolling casually along the rear of the buildings toward a north-south street, was the man in the blue scarf and patterned tunic. A not-very-subtle invitation to follow him.

Okay, friend, she thought as she started off after him. You want to play? Let’s play.

She had closed the gap between them to perhaps ninety meters when he reached the cross flow of traffic and turned north into it. Another clear invitation, this time to close the gap further lest she lose him.

But Mara had no intention of taking him up on this one. She’d memorized the geography of the city-vale their first day here, and it was pretty obvious that his intention was to lead her up to the more sparsely populated industrial areas to the north, where presumably he could deal with her without the awkward presence of witnesses. If she could get there first, she might be able to turn things around on him. Double-checking the blaster beneath her left sleeve, she cut through an alley between the buildings to her right and headed north.