Bloodforged Read Online Free PDF Page B

would likely break her ankles or legs, inhuman strength or not.
    No. The walls were not an option. She must find some other way out of Nuln, and quickly, for it was too confined a place to hide for long. It would only be a matter of time before Hermione and Gabriella or the witch hunters tracked her down.
    She started down the alley, avoiding reeking puddles and keeping an ear out for horses, while cudgelling her brains for an escape route. If she were human, she could just disguise herself and slip through the main city gates once they opened in the morning and the crowds began to stream in and out, but that was impossible for her, for she would burn to a cinder under the sun’s angry rays. Worse, this would never change. Every night the gates would close, trapping her inside Nuln at the only time she was able to move around, and then open again just after she was forced to seek shelter indoors. Aristocrat of the night? What a joke! More like prisoner of the night.
    But then, in the middle of the Handelbezirk, just as she was about to give up and start to seek shelter for the coming day, she walked into a thick, spreading fog, and the rank, wet stink of the river hit her. Her head came up as she inhaled it. The river! Now there was a gate that was difficult to guard.
    She cursed as she started through the muffled streets towards the docks. Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? She and Gabriella had travelled from Eicheshatten to Nuln in a riverboat stateroom and never once had to fear the sun. Of course, booking passage on a passenger ship, even under an assumed name, was not wise. If the Lahmians came asking after her, Ulrika did not have a face and manner a purser was likely to forget. She would have to stow away. But that was even better. No sun ever reached the holds of cargo ships. She could get away in perfect safety, and she wouldn’t have to wait until tomorrow night to do it.
    Even before sunrise, the riverfront was acrawl with industrious activity – both legal and illegal. Captains and harbourmasters checked manifests by lantern light and pried off the lids of crates to inspect the goods inside, while skulking figures made more furtive exchanges in the shadows of the grey wood warehouses. Longshoremen loaded cargo nets and rolled barrels up gangplanks, while in the dark places between the bigger docks little skiffs, hidden by the fog, offloaded contraband directly into the broken-gated outflow pipes of the sewers, through which it would be distributed to a hundred destinations across the city. Women with little wheeled grills rolled them up and down the quayside, selling river trout and hot chowder to the crews, while women in more colourful clothes sauntered at a slower pace, ready to sate the men’s baser appetites. Beggars clutched at Ulrika’s cloak, moaning for coins, as she edged through the crowd, and hard-looking men eyed her fine clothes and beautiful rapier as they lounged in the doorways of the dockside taverns.
    The furious bustle of it all surprised her. She had expected the wharfs to be quiet at this time of day, and had hoped to be able to climb on board an unmanned ship and slip down into the hold without much difficulty. But there were no unmanned ships. All of them were swarming with men.
    She glanced to the east. There was a definite orange glow to the fog in that direction now. If she didn’t get on board something soon she would have to give up and try again tomorrow. Then she saw her way – the grill women. When they trundled their little barrows up before a ship and called their wares, the men aboard would drop their work and hurry forwards for a hot mug and a quick bite. All she had to do was time it right.
    She began trailing a woman who pushed a bright red barrow and wailed, ‘Hot chowder! Couldn’t be prouder! Hot chowder! I’ll sing it louder!’
    The men from a long, flat riverboat got the nod from their bo’sun and filed down off the gangplank, rubbing their hands and