Drowned Ammet by Diana Wynne Jones Page B

three years back and joined a hurrying group of total strangers. With them, he was swept right across the waterfront to the other side of the harbor. And when we’re there, I bet we hurry all the way back again, he thought.
    He was right. An officer stopped them near the harbor wall. “Only authorized persons past this spot.”
    Mitt’s group obediently turned away. “Alham must have gone up Fishmarket then,” someone said, in a worried, busy voice, and they all set off again in the opposite direction.
    Mitt lagged and let them hurry away. He could see the masts of the smaller boats from here, sawing the sky as heavy soldiers jumped from one to another, hunting the murderer. Even the masts of the big ships were swaying sedately, so many were the soldiers searching them. A group of seamen who had been on the ships were being herded and prodded roughly along the harbor wall. They’ll catch him all right, Mitt thought resentfully.
    A new group of people surged up beside him. These were clearly important. They were officers in braid, well-nourished men in good cloth, with, in their midst, a tall, thin man with a pale jagged profile. The man’s clothes had a wonderful sober richness. Mitt saw the sleek glint of velvet, and fur, and the flicker of jewels, worn where they did not show, because the man was too used to having them to bother with their value. Mitt knew that pale, jutting face, though he had never, to his knowledge, seen the fellow before. It had the same bad-tempered lines as Hadd’s. The nose was the one he had whirled his rattle under. The rest of the features were like the ones he had seen advancing on him behind Libby Beer to kick the bomb away. This could only be Harchad.
    Proper flinty flake off the old block, he is, Mitt thought, looking up at him with interest. Wearing six farms and ten years’ fishing on his back, and he don’t care!
    â€œOh, stop bleating, man!” Harchad snapped at the man with the most braid. “Those seamen are to be questioned till we get something. I don’t care if you kill them all. And I want the brat who threw the bomb, too. He was obviously an accomplice. I want him brought to me when you find him.”
    Mitt’s stomach, for the first time in his life, gave a cold little jolt. He lowered his eyes from Harchad’s face and gently backed away. Wonder how he’d look if he knew I was right beside him, he thought. Accomplice, was I? O flaming Ammet! I think everything’s gone wrong. He tiptoed hurriedly sideways to join the nearest group of hurrying citizens.
    The man in braid shouted. “There he is now! That’s him!”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe brat who threw that bomb.”
    Mitt had the merest glimpse of them all staring at him. Harchad’s face jutted out of the rest in a way that dried Mitt’s mouth, tongue and all, and almost wrung a scream out of him. It was as horrible as his nightmares about Canden. He turned and ran, mindlessly. His only idea was to make his legs go faster than their fastest. He had to get away from the gathering shouts behind him. He had to escape from that face. He shot across the waterfront, not knowing whether he hit people or avoided them as he ran. He dived into the nearest road and ran there for all he was worth. It filled with banging feet behind him. Mitt ran harder still, turned a corner and ran, and ran again, and went on running. The only thing in his mind was the shouting and ringing feet behind him, and he did not stop running until they had grown faint and died away.
    When his breath came back, he wandered wearily round a corner into the next street. He was deeply ashamed of himself. What had got into him? What had made him, the free soul, fearless Mitt, who had never turned a hair during all the errands he had run for the Free Holanders—what had possessed him—to panic at the mere sight of Harchad and run away? Mitt could not understand it. What