Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen (The Abhorsen Trilogy Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page B

sign at the intersection there showed a faded picture of something unidentifiable, which Valannie assured Clariel had once depicted three needles and some thread.
    “Three Needles Street,” she explained. “Merchant Tailors Guild territory. We’ll go down to where it crosses Shearer’s Lane, which is Clothworker’s, that’s where Parillin’s shop is. The best shops for cloth and the best tailors are all around the cross.”
    The street was busy, though not nearly so busy as the fish market. Most of the traffic was on foot, for horses were forbidden in the city for all but a few special purposes. But there were palanquins being carried by sweating porters, and many of the ubiquitous handcarts, though here they were loaded with bundles of clothes, rolls of uncut cloth, barrels of buttons, and giant spools of thread, and did not reek of fish and the sea.
    The street broadened again as it continued west, and the houses grew larger, and began to have signs indicating the businesses within, most of them tailors. Unlike at the fish market, Clariel also started to see other people accompanied by guards, wearing the livery of various guilds.
    “Am I supposed to say hello?” Clariel asked Valannie doubtfully, as she caught the eye of one imposing-looking woman coming down the street toward them, who was wearing the only other blue headscarf Clariel had seen, though many women wore scarves of other colors. This woman was also preceded by a bodyguard, resplendent in a surcoat bearing the mortar and pestle sign of the Apothecary’s Guild.
    “No, no, you’re not dressed yet!” replied Valannie quickly. “Look the other way! Don’t give her a reason to notice you.”
    “But I am dressed,” protested Clariel.
    “Not properly!” hissed Valannie. She moved to interpose herself between Clariel and the apothecary. “Just keep walking!”
    Clariel kept walking, but peered at the apothecary as she passed, just to see what on earth Valannie was talking about when she said she was not properly dressed. She’d seen women wearing all sorts of clothes, some like her own. But the apothecary was wearing what looked like several tunics of differing length. The main outer one was a dark yellow silk, but with at least three others of different colors beneath, the layers showing at the knee and wrist.
    Belatedly, Clariel realized that this was pretty much what her own mother had been wearing that morning, but in different colors again.
    “Do the colors mean something?” she asked. “And the blue scarf?”
    “Of course,” replied Valannie. “Guild colors for the two outer and two inner dresses, in the right order, and the blue scarf without embroidery means a close relative of the guild, a spouse, son, or daughter, not a Guild member yourself.”
    “Different colors for every guild?” asked Clariel. “How many are there?”
    “Seventy-four guilds,” replied Valannie. “And the five Great Companies. Don’t worry, milady, you’ll learn to recognize all the combinations at the Academy.”
    Clariel was about to say she probably wasn’t going to be in Belisaere long enough to bother, when she was suddenly grabbed by Roban and thrown violently to one side. An instant later, she saw the bright blur of a blade swish through the air near where she’d been, wielded by a man whose face was hidden by his shabby hooded robe.
    Before he could strike again, Roban was on him, grabbing the man’s knife-hand at the wrist with his left hand as he punched him in the stomach very quickly twice, accompanied by a gasping wheeze from the young man as he arched back, avoiding the main strength of the blows.
    Then Roban twisted and threw the attacker across his hip, sending him sliding across the road, between several astonished bystanders. The knife went clattering, more people started shouting and screaming, and Clariel added to the tumult with a scream of rage as she leaped after her attacker, the slim knife from her boot in her hand, though