Free The Grieving Tree: The Dragon Below Book II by Don Bassingthwaite

hand hovering close to her sword. The druid was drenched in sweat and trembling, his fingers gripping his hunda stick. Geth nodded to both of them. “Easy,” he said. “I think we’re safe—”
    “Geth! Twelve bloody moons, what have you done?”
    Geth leaped up like a rabbit, lunging for Singe where the wizard stood in the street and dragging him under cover with a hand over his mouth. Dandra and Natrac were with him—Ashi swept both of them into hiding as well.
    Geth eased his hand away from Singe’s face. “What are you doing here?”
    Singe’s eyes went from wide to narrow. “We
were
coming to see what all the commotion was. Did you have something to do with this? What’s going on?”
    “Vennet and Dah’mir are in Zarash’ak,” Geth told him with a growl.
    Dandra tensed. “What? How?”
    “Dah’mir’s in human form—he was with Vennet at the docks. We just got away.” Geth jerked his head toward the bridge. “Vennet’s still in the plaza over there. He might still figure out where we’ve gone. Dah’mir’s herons are hunting for us from the sky. We need to find some place to hide—the sooner the better.”
    “Lords of the Host,” cursed Natrac. He stepped back out into the street, looked quickly in the direction of the bridge, then gestured for the others to follow him. “This way. Quickly!”
    The half-orc ducked across the street and, brushing aside a hanging curtain, squeezed between two stalls. Geth sent Orshok and Ashi after him, then Dandra and Singe. Dandra’s face was pale with fear, her jaw set with determination. Singe’s hand hovered near his sword. They crossed quickly, heads down, Singe walking to shield Dandra’s red-brown skin and distinctive clothes from anyone who might be watching. Once they had disappeared behind the curtain, Geth stepped cautiously into the street and glanced back at the bridge.
    Ashi’s description of the aftermath of their passage as a mess was accurate. People were still milling about on the bridge. A few were down. More people were gathering to see what had happened. Geth felt a twinge of guilt and hoped that his desperate play hadn’t left anyone badly injured.
    He couldn’t, however see Vennet or any of his crew, and that was all he could have asked for. He eased himself through the knots of people who had stopped to gossip, then, as soon as he was under the cover of the stalls on the other side of the street, dove through the curtain and after the others.
    The stalls had been set up across the mouth of a narrow passage—probably deliberately. One of the stallkeepers was vanishing back into his tiny place of business with clinking coins in his hand. A moment later, the curtain ruffled as crates were shoved across its street side. Anyone passing would be unlikely to guess at the passage beyond.
    “How did you know this was here?” Geth asked Natrac.
    “It’s a pickpocket’s bolthole,” said the half-orc. “Spend time in Zarash’ak’s markets and you start to recognize them—and to keep a hand on your purse. Pickpockets like to stick close to them.”
    Geth’s hand twitched toward his belt, but Natrac shook his head. “Any pickpockets will have gone straight to the crowd on the bridge.”
    He led them a little further down the passage. Geth couldn’t have called it an alley—it was just barely big enough to squeeze down sideways. After a short distance, however, it opened up into a tiny, stifling hot courtyard no larger than a small room and with walls rising high enough around them that it felt like being at the bottom of the hole. Laundry had been hung on lines overhead, obscuring any view of—or from—the sky. Two other passages no wider than the first let out from the courtyard in different directions. Natrac lowered himself onto a crude bench someone had knocked together. “We should be safe here for now.”
    Singe turned to Geth, Ashi, and Orshok. “What happened?”
    Geth related everything they had seen and heard on the