With guards converging from all directions, there is only so much cover that can be afforded by the maze of halted or capsized palanquins. Negotiating their way around them, is slow going, and as liverymens’ heads sway in the rain, between watching a strange couple dashing past and then moments later a slightly slower but more methodical movement of guards, Hood makes a decision, veering off the King’s way at the nearest opportunity, in the vain hope that the rain and darkness will cover their tracks. All they need, he reasons, is a few moments respite and then they will be able to extricate themselves from this mess.

“Stepss” rasps Hood as they leave the thoroughfare, warning Hy-Jinx of what’s to come. Hood latches Hy-Jinx’s hand onto a cold and wet metal handrail, before crossing to her other side. The two dash, as best they can, down a set of stone steps, luckily far less slippery than the cobbles of the King’s Way. The steps lead down to the artisanal quarters of the Inner Fayre, and afford a view across the ‘Lesser’ a part of the city on the opposite side of the library where the affluent and minor nobility have their houses and manses - as opposed to ‘The Grand’ where the filthy rich nobility have, well, much grander abodes. The artisanal quarter, sandwiched as it is between the rising stone embankment of the Rise, the rear ornamental gardens of the Crescent and the back of the Library of Aspartemane, and the looming shadow of the Keep, is a place of darkness, compared with the ‘Lesser’ from which a warm and hazy glow emanates - glimmering lights shining from hundreds of windows - and it is into this darkness, and a maze of narrow streets, that Hood and Hy-Jinx descend.

It looks like luck is with them, and that they have lost their pursuers, but just as they reach the bottom of the steps, splashing into a large puddle, a shout from above - a guard spotting them from a vantage, looking down from the ‘Rise’ through the rain streaked night - and in an instant, the lights of lanterns appear at the top of the steps, shining through the wet darkness.

Even though his energy is flagging, coldness seeping into his skin, robes weighing him down, drenched and heavy, hips hurting from the fall, boots soggy and feet painful, Hood wastes no time and drags Hy-Jinx, by the hand again, desperately peering along the rain drenched street for somewhere to hide.

As they make their way along the cobbled street Hood spots a narrow gap between two adjacently abutted shops - a shadowed fissure between the walls of two buildings. He is about to dismiss it as too narrow a squeeze when at the end of the street, which takes a sharp left turn, a flickering of torches and the dull glow of more steady lantern light illuminates the walls. Clearly they are not just being pursued from behind. Making a snap decision, Hood unslings his backpack and pushes Hy-Jinx into the opening before him, warning her with single rasp of “Squeeze.” Following quickly behind her, his wet, heavy clothes dragging against the masonry and threatening to halt him in his tracks completely, as rain water pours from the rooftops above them, spluttering and tapping in sodden repetition.

“Err, Hood. This is more than a squeeze,” a wet and increasingly cold Hy-Jinx whispers a few moments later, similarly jammed, and struggling to inch her way sidewards. “I can’t even turn my head. And where are we going? And there’s water dripping down my neck.” She shudders involuntarily as she says this, the trickle of water causing her nerves to react.

Hood suddenly remembers something - one of the main reasons for his return - and with his left hand, still holding Madeleine’s mask, pats down his saturated robe’s pocket. Within the narrow confines of where he stands, he leans carefully to his left, the back of his head coming to rest on Hy-Jinx’s soggy shoulder, and slowly bringing his arm up along the plane of his body, drops the mask into the crook of his neck to free his hand before returning it to his robes and fishing in his pocket. His fingers feel for the object there, caught by and pushing aside the squelch of material, and with relief he finds that it is still intact. Carefully teasing the object out, he lifts his hand over the top of his head, his arm curling about the mask, and then taps the back of his head up and down on Hy-Jinx’s shoulder.

“What is it?” Hy-Jinx asks, feeling Hood’s tapping, the gap along which they traverse momentarily illuminated, as guards and watch move past, first in one direction and then another.

“They can’t have got far, CHECK THE DOORS AND WINDOWS!”

“A gift,” Hood rasps, “for you.”

“I can’t see.”

Hood doesn’t respond, just taps the back of his head on Hy-Jinx’s shoulder again. “Take…quick,” he rasps - the guards pass again, more slowly this time, lights and shadows flickering through the rain.

“Take what?” says Hy-Jinx.

“Reach…wear.”

Hy-Jinx, slowly gets the message and worms her right arm up, tapping out along Hood’s arm to his shoulder, then feeling the back of his head, and as she lifts her hand slightly further, reaches the intended target. Her fingers feel around what seems to be thick and strong folded wire and then a smooth thin oval shape and then another. “Got it,” she says, taking whatever it is from Hood’s hand.

“What is it?” she asks, beginning to become intrigued

“Glasses…wear.” Hood begins to cough with the exertion of speaking, bringing his right hand to his face in an attempt to muffle the sound lest it give away their position, Madeleine’s mask still balanced in the crook of his neck and shoulder.

“Glasses?!” Hy-Jinx is rightly confused but realises now how the sensation of the object matches its description. Being a good humoured sort, she humours Hood with little question and passes the glasses over her head with her right arm into her left. “What are these supposed to do? Make me blend in and look less blind?” she asks, unhooking the legs using her teeth and then carefully slipping them onto the bridge of her nose. “Cos I don’t think a pair of glasses constitutes a disguise,” she says, continuing on with a sentence that begins to slow, ”unless you’ve brought a rather far out wig…” and then trails to a halt…before exclaiming: “HOLY SH…”

“THERE THEY ARE!” screams a rather over enthusiastic guard, as if he’s going to get some sort of monetary bonus, both hands thrust forward, one with an outstretched finger, the other with a torch. In a fit of over enthusiastic guardsmanship and not realising the relative deviation in his body type compared to that of Hood and Hy-Jinx, the burley guardsman, additionally encumbered by armour and sword, rushes into the gap with a nerve juddering screech, as metal and stone scratch against one another and the laws of physics eventually overcome his forward motion.

“I CAN SEE!” continues Hy-Jinx with euphoria. “Hood, I can see! I can see! And the world is so…rosy…and bright!”

Hood’s eyes narrow to pin points, as he squints in the blazing torch light. “Aarargh!” he screams, the torch having been thrust barely a foot from his head. Hood, feeling the heat radiating from it and cognisant of how close he is to being burnt or caught or both, rasps another single word: “Move!” and taking Madeleine’s mask in his right hand, his satchel still in his left, shuffles his feet, pushing himself against Hy-Jinx, who does her best to continue their forward motion.

Straining to gain any further leeway, Hy-Jinx starts to laugh. “I don’t think I can go any further!” she says in a voice devoid of concern, seemingly not caring about their predicament, grateful only for the return of her sight.

“HELP, HELP! PULL ME OUT!” screams the guardsman, panic and claustrophobia beginning to set in as he realises with the exception of his fingers, he can’t move a thing.

Voices from behind waft past him: “What an idiot!”, “Here, you lot! Go around the back, see if you can head them off, we’ll try and pull this one out.“

“PULL ME OUT, PULL ME OUT!” the guardsman continues to scream and in his panic drops the torch which falling to the water logged ground begins to gutter and die with a dull ‘pfizzzz’ing, sound.

“Give over will you!” “Wilberfore, stop behaving like a baby,” “Just leave him here, he’ll act as a barrier to those two and as warning to idiots.” “Problem with idiots thought, they don’t heed warnings.” “Yeah that’s what makes them idiots.” - gruff voices behind the guardsman seem to be suggesting to him to shut up and calm down.

Hy-Jinx strains some more and manages to literally inch her way forward. Stopping her effort for a moment as she takes in the sight afore her. Her head is jammed forward with Hood behind her. Even though there is little light in the direction she is facing, she can clearly see the outlines of the stones that make up the walls. They all seem to glow with a strange rosy glow as if they’re smiling at her. She smiles back and what she perceives gets clearer and brighter, and it looks like there might be potential salvation. “I think it gets a bit wider!” Hy-Jinx exclaims.

Hood grateful at last for a bit of luck tries to push against Hy-Jinx in an attempt to free her but Hy-Jinx doesn’t seem to move.

“OW! YOU’RE PULLING MY LEG OFF!” Things are obviously not going well for the guardsman.

“It’s okay you’ve got another.”, “What a fusspot!”, “Just pull the other one.”, “Why did he tell a joke or summing?” “Haha!” “Neh! Let’s try both at once!”

“DON’T YOU DARE!”

“This is what it must feel like to be constipated on bread buns,” Hy-Jinx continues with her giggles, “If you’re the bread bun! Oh wait, let’s try again…Deep breath out!”

Hood hears Hy-jinx expel her breath in one large huuughh, followed by a strange squeak of a voice:

“Give me another push Hood!”

Hood strains like a bread bun in a line of tightly packed bread buns and something eventually gives.

Haarghh!

With a deep inhalation of breath, Hy-Jinx stumbles, splashing forward into a small pocket of an opening between the two walls where one of the walls has bowed inwards somewhat, water collecting at their base. She turns to assess Hood’s situation and stands momentarily surprised at what she sees. It is not that Hood has his head pinned in the opposite direction, or that he cuts a rather comical figure, stuck, as he is, between the stonework with one of his hands flailing up and down, that surprises her. No, this is what she was expecting, rather it is the colours that swirl about him like some sort of strange living painting.

“Err Hood?”

“Hmmm?”

Hy-Jinx thinks for a moment, observing how the colours ebb and flow, then shrugs. “Err, it’s nothing. Let’s get you out of there,” she says, the colours changing somewhat, almost, it would seem, in response to what Hy-Jinx has just said.

Hood feels a hand grasp his upper arm and begin to pull him, the walls on either side of him scraping against his head, not wishing, it would seem, to relinquish him or the sodden cloth of his robes, which is not doing anything to help the situation.

“Keep coming, keep coming, there’s a bow in the wall here, it widens somewhat if you can just…”

“Oi, Wilberfore, what’s going on? Are they still there or what?” a gruff voice from the street inquires.

“YES, they are still here. They’re just in front of me. NOW ARE YOU GOING TO GET ME OUT OF HERE OR WHAT?”

“I think maybe we’re just going to have to leave you till morning, come back with a crew if necessary, or maybe you’ll have lost some weight by first bread!”

With another pull from Hy-Jinx, and amidst a raucous chorus of laughter at the predicament of Wilberfore from the guards in the street, Hood splashes forwards into a slightly wider space, a growing pool of muddy water at his feet, and breathes a momentary sigh of relief.

“WAIT, WAIT YOU CAN”T LEAVE ME HERE!”

With the bowed wall in front of him, Hood looks to his left, beyond Hi-Jinx, at the gap that continues to narrow. He looks to the right, back to the wide eyed, panic crazed Wilberfore, and then finally glances upwards and smiles, seeing what looks like a window, though it is boarded with wood.

Hy-Jinx watches Hood, and the swirling colours that seem to cover him - in some instances almost sit within him. Watching as he glances up, she sees the colours change to more rosy hues as he spies the window. Turning to her he points upwards as means of a plan.

“I concur capt’in!” Hy-Jinx salutes.

Hood looks at Hy-Jinx, water running down her face, at her bared teeth of a grin, right hand held in salute, the pair of rose tinted spectacles that he has handed her firmly in place, and smiles. They suit her, and her personality well, he thinks - another one of Albo Pomegranite’s secrets.

Hy-Jinx watches as Hood’s ambiance turns orange. Lowering her hand from its salute and casting her gaze up at the window. “I’ll go first and pull you up,” she says, wiping her face and flicking her hands to get rid of the water.

The flickering torch lying near the guardsman splutters it’s last and Hood and Hy-Jinx fade into shadows and darkness, and only the sound of rainfall bouncing off their heads, the scrabbling of feet, a grunt of effort, and a short splintering of wood indicates that they are there at all.