Kara dashed around one corner and another, mentally cursing her terrible luck.  The boy behind her was not losing ground.  His nice clothes were quite dust covered and his hair was coming loose, but he was not giving up.  Kara was beginning to suspect he knew these alleyways.  She didn’t, not yet.  This place was still new.  But no bespectacled little pretty-boy was going to catch or find her when she wanted to disappear.  She found a set of uneven steps around another corner, and dashed up them to the roof tops.  The boy followed.  Kara ran along above the narrow streets, upsetting birds, and hopping up and down levels as they changed.  The boy stayed right behind her. 

            Kara growled.  Time to shake him up a bit.  She leapt a narrow alleyway across to another network of roofing.  He made the jump.  She took a riskier one.  He did too.  She looked back.  He was grinning.  That was it.  Kara jumped headlong off the next rooftop, rolled down an awning and landed just right, with her knees bent, in a crowded street below.  She began to weave through the crowd, looking back.  No sign of him on the rooftop.  She grinned and hefted the handbag.  It had a good weight.  She wondered what the pretty little girl had in it.  There was a nice jingle of coins somewhere in the depths.  A small and dirty urchin lifted a hand beseechingly, hearing the coins.  Kara frowned.  “Steal your own,” she told the child. 

            Everyone wanted something for nothing.  Kara looked for landmarks, scanning the colored shop signs and searching for the wells that marked certain squares.  There was one ahead, and there was the annoying little boy with spectacles.  He had taken them off and was scanning the crowd with sharp green eyes.  He looked a little the worse for wear.  His long hair was loose and tangled and he now had a skinned knee, but he seemed quite cheerful.  To Kara’s surprise and horror, he spotted her.  He moved to one corner of the square, and she darted off to the other.  The chase started again, this time through busy streets.  Kara wove in and about the crowd, shoving people out of the way when necessary.  To her great annoyance, the boy did not lose ground.  He dodged people rather well.  It was time for a different tactic.  Kara took to the less crowded alleyways again. 

            Sometimes you had to convince people to stop following you the hard way.  Kara crouched down behind a rain barrel after rounding a corner into a convenient alley.  The boy dashed by but began to slow, not seeing her.  She put her foot out as he was passing her hiding place and tripped him.  He went sprawling, but intelligently, rolling with his fall.  Kara sprang at him before he could regain his feet.  She got in a good blow that bloodied his nose, but then he set her off balance and they went rolling in the dust, fists flying.  Kara got the upper hand by kicking him in the shin.  She grabbed about as they careened past a rubbish heap and found something solid to hit with.  After a scuffle for it, which was dangerously close, Kara came out on top.  She sat on the boy, holding her weapon, a large empty glass bottle.

            “If you don’t stop following me, I’m going to break both your glasses and your face,” she informed the boy.

            He looked up at her, wide-eyed.  “I believe you.”  Then he grinned.  Kara was taken aback.  Then someone grabbed her arms from behind, taking the bottle from her grasp and pulling her up bodily into the air. 

            “Mind his feet, Tam!  He kicks hard!” the boy on the ground called.

            Kara found herself hauled around by the collar and held up against the alley wall helpless and kicking, by none other than the lout boy.  The two girls in their pretty frocks and the little bug-eyed boy were looking on.  From somewhere nearby Kara could smell the aroma of tea.  She swore.  She’d been tricked.  The smug little boy in spectacles had driven her right into a trap.  She swore at him explosively, feet dangling.

            He was picking himself up off the ground, and touching his bloody nose gingerly.  He looked up at her in surprise.  “You know Kardu?”

            The older girl, the new one in lace and blue ribbons, ran to the injured boy’s side with a worried cry.  Kara hated her immediately. 

            “Djaren, you look terrible!  Did he hurt you badly?”

            “I’m all right, Anna, thank you.  There’s your bag.”  Djaren pointed proudly. 

            Kara swore at him some more. 

            Djaren looked at her, amazed.  “And Alendi?  We have to talk.” 

            The big boy had some trouble restraining Kara as the pretty girl retrieved her bag from where it had fallen and brushed it off officiously.  The girl looked inside, and the other one, tiny princess hair ribbons, came over to look too.

            “Look here, you’re a bad sort,” the lout informed her.  “But now you’re fair caught, and we want some answers.”

            “I don’t speak idiot,” she told him.

            The lout’s face reddened several shades, and a vein appeared on his neck.

            “Don’t let him rattle you, Tam,” Djaren advised, taking the handkerchief the older girl offered, and clamping it to his bleeding nose.

            “You have minions, good for you,” Kara told Djaren, trying to kick Tam the lout boy.  He tightened his grip on her collar.  “Five to one is sporting, isn’t it?  You must be nobility.”  She gave the word an acid edge.

            “There’s no nobles in Shandor,” Tam said, angry.  “And you weren’t fighting fair.”

            “You like playing the man when the girls are watching, don’t you?”  Kara hissed at Tam.  “They don’t much notice you otherwise, do they?”

            His face turned redder.  Kara grinned at him.  Get him mad enough and he would let go with one hand to hit her. That was all she’d need to escape.  She’d kick him in the--

            A new voice interrupted the proceedings.  A woman’s voice.  “And just what are you all doing?  Can’t I leave you safe for half an hour?  Put the little girl down at once!”

            “Mother, he stole,” Djaren began.

            “Girl?” Tam asked, blanching.

            “Lady Blackfeather, this is the pick pocket!” the bug-eyed boy sang out.

            The tall and finely dressed lady with amazing copper hair advanced on them and took charge of the situation at once.  “That’s a little girl, yes, Tam.  Don’t let her go, but please don’t shake her so.  She may have an awful mouth, but she’s half starved and in a bad state.”

            “Ma’am, I never meant--” Tam’s grip weakened, and he looked with horror from the lady to the pretty girl in blue ribbons.  Kara took the opportunity to try and kick him, but Djaren intervened, and grabbed her legs.  “Sorry,” he mumbled.  “But Tam, be careful.  Girl or not, she’s mean.”

            The tiny girl stepped up to glare at Kara.  “I am not princess hair ribbons,” she declared.  Kara frowned.  She did not remember speaking those words.

            The little girl sniffed, and went to go hold the lady’s hand. 

            Kara struggled uselessly, held by the two boys.  She swore at them with the worst words she knew.  They did not appear to comprehend them.  The lady, however, did.

            “Interesting,” she said.  “I think we’d better take her back with us.  She could use a good meal.  Are you from Corestemar, dear?”

            Kara spat at her.

            “Yes, I thought so.”  The lady smiled.  “Djaren, dear, you look a mess.  I don’t even want to know how you captured her.  Is your nose all right?”

            “Yes, Mother.”

            “Then if you have quite finished getting into trouble here, I suggest we go home.”

            “Yes, Mother.”  Djaren grinned around the handkerchief.

            “You can’t kidnap me.  You’ll be sorry.  I have friends,” Kara snapped at them.

            The lady looked at Kara with a very insulting look of sympathy.  “You don’t lie very well yet, dear.  You do better with threats.  We don’t mean you harm, but I think you should have a talk with Doctor Blackfeather.”

            “You can’t make me talk,” Kara growled.

            Djaren coughed.

            Kara attempted to kick him.

            “We may need a second carriage,” the lady said.  “Anna, can you see to that?”

            “Certainly, Lady Blackfeather.”  The pretty girl nodded.

            Kara found herself stuffed, not un-gently, into a carriage with the lady and Djaren.  She had been bound carefully, with belts and hair ribbons.  She mocked her captors throughout the process, but accepted the mint water the lady gave her before they tied her hands.  The others were in the next carriage and out of kicking range.  Kara found Djaren and the lady a bit harder to anger.  The boy kept asking her questions like “Can you pick locks?” and “Can you teach me?” and the lady didn’t ask her anything at all, which was more unnerving.  Kara had thought of a hundred escape plans by the time they reached the dig site, but decided not to try them just yet.  She was determined not to come away from this empty handed.  If they were going to drag her home, she was going to take a bit of that home back with her.  Archeologists had valuable things.  And then she would go get that bracelet back.