Author's Note: Nope, not dead. And the story lives as well, as you can see. And yes, this is the right chapter - there has been no mistake.

"Alive! I want him captured alive!" growled Thierry behind him. Xavier stumbled briefly, unfastening hurriedly his cudgel and dropping it, then quickly picked up speed as he was relieved of five pounds of dead swinging weight.

The prisoner had discarded his red jacket somewhere on the way and was now clothed, apparently, in brown and gray: even Xavier's keen eyes had trouble spotting him on the winding path along the cliff-side.

How the hell did he get out of the city? wondered Xavier as he watched the escaping prisoner leap over yet another boulder, and where the hell did he procure the civilian garb? That sneaky fox. Well! there will be no escaping on my watch. It would not look good on my record.

Both the underfed milksop sergeants and the lieutenant had long fallen behind – Xavier had not heard his wheezing since they started down the edge of the cliffs. They have now been running for a full quarter of an hour, and number 24601 showed no sign of fatigue, leaping boldly and precisely from stone to cliff and back and legging it hard whenever a stretch of half-overgrown trail presented itself.

Xavier's hopes for aid from a mounted city guard were dwindling fast. There were no hooves to be heard behind him, and the prisoner was already beyond the point where he could be apprehended by a horseman. The road turned left where the prisoner turned right; the only way off the cliffs was a long and impossibly dangerous climb down the face of the rock to the water.

He aims to climb down, realized Xavier. He had scaled a smooth stone wall like a lizard three years before, so what's thirty feet of uneven rock? A piece of cake. And if he gets to the sea, reasoned Xavier, I've lost him for good – he swims like a fish, and there has been no boat sent out from the docks after him. I can swim, Xavier reasoned further, but I can't climb. Therefore, either I jump after him, surely breaking my legs, or I fall after him, with the same result. God damn it.

"Hey!" he yelled out after the man, hoping to distract him. "Hope you're not too winded, because I'm right behind you!"

The prisoner paid him no mind and, with the final leap, disappeared from view.

Xavier recovered sight of him within a minute, but the distance between them was already immeasurable. Number 24601 was suspended off a stone shelf about twenty feet from where Xavier fell upon the rocks breathing hard.

"Get back up here this minute!" barked Xavier as soon as he had breath enough to spare.

Number 24601 did not reply, as he was busy feeling below the shelf cautiously with his right foot.

"Don't make me climb down after you," warned Xavier.

The ex-galley slave raised his head and gave Xavier's scrawny figure a brief appraising look.

"I will do it!" reiterated Xavier, mentally gauging the height of the cliff and dismissing it immediately as too overwhelming to ponder.

When the prisoner did not answer, Xavier took a final deep breath, said a quick prayer for his soul under his breath and cautiously began his descent.

"What are you doing?" suddenly said the convict, watching him worriedly.

"Contemplating the fucking view!" snarled Xavier, making a futile attempt to bid his trembling calves to quit shaking. "For the last time, come back up here, or I'll come down, and then both of us will suffer!"

"Don't be stupid, Tocsin – you'll never make it. I barely made it, and I can climb. You couldn't find your feet in broad daylight with a lamp!"

"Call me that idiotic nickname one more time and I'll…" Xavier's words were lost along with his balance. Barely recovering, the young man clung desperately to a rocky protrusion, averting his gaze hurriedly from the frothy waves lapping at the rocks below his precarious perch.

"What's so idiotic about 'Javert'?" asked the convict teasingly. "Fine name for you. Well-deserved. Javert, the Tocsin. By concurrence, Proclaimer of Universal Truths and Captain of the Bloody Obvious."

"You are going to get it but good from me, you lousy whoreson," growled Javert, advancing slowly towards the prisoner, bits of chalky limestone crumbling under his hobnailed boots.

"You do realize that as soon as you get within an arm's reach of me I'll just move further away and down, right?"

"I'll follow."

"Will you swim after me as well?"

"I will."

"Didn't know you could swim, Tocsin."

"There's a lot you don't know about me, shit-britches," hissed Xavier, face flushed beet red with the effort of clinging to the slippery rock.

"And suppose I hurl this here tidbit at you for all the name-calling?" remarked the convict, lifting a medium-sized chunk off the rock shelf. "It won't take much to loosen your grip – limestone is slimy this time of year."

"You wouldn't risk unbalancing yourself."

Immediately, the limestone pocket next to Xavier's head shattered, powdering his face with chalk dust. A sharp sliver opened a gash at his temple; Xavier felt the tickling of blood drops rolling down his cheek.

"Unwise move," murmured Xavier. "I would've been more inclined to mercy before."

"The next rock will break your nose," calmly said number 24601.

"Who knows, it might turn out to be an improvement. My nose is not exactly pretty."

No more than seven feet separated them now: Xavier was two good handholds away from the convict's shelf, but the man was not moving.

"Tocsin, be reasonable!" The convict's voice was suddenly serious and pleading. "You're young still. This will be a pointless death. And I don't want you dead, I never did -- I just wanted out of the damn chains!"

"We all want on occasion that which we cannot have," panted Xavier. "I want things too. It passes. And this too will pass. Give it three years or so."

"No! Stop at once!"

The free fingers of Xavier 's right arm searched the rock surface desperately for a hold. His right foot was slipping; he could feel the foothold underneath giving way under his weight. And then he was tipping over backwards, and the convict was shouting frenzied warnings, reaching out to steady his pursuer, but Xavier was already falling.

And then there were rocks, and there was salt; and all was suffocating liquid pain and darkness.