Time was not in his favour. Neither was luck, it seemed. Circumstance had somehow conspired to win him a moment of conversation with the one woman at the market who would ask the questions he wasn’t prepared for. Or maybe it was his fault for pausing here. There was no true rush for the cloth. No real need for it either. It was meant as a memento, but there would be no one to claim it when the rite was done. But stop he had.

Now, Curdle blanched at her short barrage of questions. He didn’t know how she knew, he didn’t even know [i]what[/i] she knew. All he understood was that she was asking what he couldn’t answer. He [i]was[/i] mourning his master, but he couldn’t say it out loud. Not least of which was the little matter of secrecy. He had to be outside the city gates before they found out. Otherwise… 

He wouldn’t be going anywhere. 

Yet, just as suddenly as she started, she stopped, midsentence, and he was left staring at her, rather lost. But while she’d managed to strike him speechless, he hadn’t lost all his faculties. He knew how to read expressions, and he saw her softening demeanour tighten again as she noticed something behind him. 

Who was she? What had made her lash out in so particular a way? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have time to ask. Instinct, or perhaps simple pessimism, told him that if he turned around, he wouldn’t have the chance to do anything else either. But he shut his eyes, took a deep breath and turned around anyway. Her mysteries she could keep. If she was looking at something bad, however, he’d like to know. 

He should have trusted his instinct. His movement caught the woman’s attention, and they recognised each other at the same time. She raised her hand to point, and he flinched back from that well-manicured nail. [i]”There he is!”[/i] For so small a lady, she had powerful lungs. The guards raised their weapons, but he didn’t stay to hear them command him to do anything. He blocked his ears, turned, and ran. 

Curdle cursed as he went, wasting precious breath on imprecations. He should have done it last night. Just walked out the gate, dumped Fiira’s ashes in a pile somewhere and walked away. He could have been sleeping comfortably in his cot then, instead of that spine stiffening chair! And his duty to his master would have been completed. Done with. Finished! But he hadn’t. He’d hesitated. So, now he was going to be caught, and probably tried for escape if not for murder. There were enough witnesses to know that Fiira had been sick for a while, dying slowly. But humans seemed to like a good story. Simple truth might not satisfy them. 

And why hadn’t that girl just told him no and been done with it? No use wasting her breath on a jinni, he usually wasn’t worth the trouble. Bah! He turned down a side street and held his breath as his pursuers, the two guards minus the woman of course, ran past, then bent double coughing as the air burned his throat. Too old for this, he’d told himself that a hundred times. Here was proof. A little illusion magic was too much effort.

As quickly as he could, hoping they hadn’t heard his outburst, Curdle put more distance between himself and the guards, using the winding streets to his advantage, though it would have gone better if he’d known them more. Fiira hadn’t been one for wandering through back alleys…

More than once an outburst sent him doubling back, whether or not he knew it was guards or just someone else having a bad day, caution might at least win him some time to think, if nothing else. Eventually, he found himself near the square again, and damned the routine his feet had decided to follow. Always visit the market. He’d done that! Look what it had got him. No more, he needed somewhere to hide, and never mind trying to get out. If he just waited until things calmed down again, maybe he could go back to the Lady’s house and explain things. He’d still be in trouble, but less than if they caught him trying to get out of the city without knowing why. Though… That still left him with an incomplete promise. 

Cursed no matter what he did, but a promise he’d meant was worth more than one he’d been forced to make. That decided it. Though it was helped in part by the winding of a horn that seemed to echo off even the clouds. They weren’t calming down, things were escalating instead…

A full turning out of the guards meant that walking on the streets wasn’t a good idea. Continuing with his harebrained attempt to get out of the city was an even worse idea. But while he did stop wandering around, climbing into a mostly empty cart while a donkey eyed him suspiciously, he didn’t change his mind about getting out of Renna. If he let himself be caught, they’d take her ashes and put them in the catacombs. Hiding the urn wouldn’t work, they’d only bind him to the truth. And even if they didn’t, it would be the same as being buried in the catacombs. The urn was only meant to be a temporary container. 

He’d wait until dark, try to get some rest, maybe have an epiphany, maybe he’d befriend the donkey, maybe he’d be found out. But until then, he pulled a heavy canvas over him, checking to be sure there were no bits of him poking out, and took the urn out of his bag, running knowing fingers over its smoothed edge in the dark. If they did find him, he’d leave it behind. Whoever owned the cart would find it then, and maybe dump it out so they could use it for something else. An undignified method of achieving his goal, but so long as it worked…