Adventures of David Clarkson

The Guild Master jerks against the guards’ grip and turns his face down the market line, desperate to keep his voice low. His eyes find David Clarkson among the laborers.

David stays folded into the queue, head bowed, staff tucked tight under his cloak as the line shuffles forward. The gate beyond the lane looks crowded with steel and suspicion.

One guard leans in at once, following the Guild Master’s stare. The other tightens his hold, and the market noise seems to thin around the point of attention.

David has a narrow gap, the kind that vanishes if he breathes wrong. The guards watch the Guild Master, but their suspicion is starting to swing toward the line.

David lowers his head and moves with the laborers as if he belongs to the churn of bodies. The queue compresses, then loosens, and the gate drifts to his shoulder instead of his face.

A guard’s stare slides past him, caught instead by the Guild Master’s struggle and the press of hands at the bars.

The line shuffles again. David is carried under the gate’s shadow, where the noise changes and the air tastes of iron and sweat.

Above them, the Woman at the Window leans a little easier, still watching, her curiosity sharpened by the shift.

Behind David, the laborers close ranks, and the torn strip of sleeve still hanging near the tannery edge marks where he came from.

David slips through the gate mouth with the laborers, his shoulder brushing rough wool as the line spills him into the outer side.

A guard’s hand snaps out, but it catches only air and the edge of a sack. Someone curses, and the lantern light jolts across the bars.

David keeps his pace steady. The crowd swallows him in a breath, and the first clear steps beyond the threshold open under his boots.

Behind him, the Guild Master strains against the bars, still pointing, while the torn sleeve by the tannery edge flutters in the draft like a dropped clue.