3rd of Eylestre

The room was quiet. A beam of moonlight filtered through the slats of the shutters, gilding silvery lines across the carpet on the floor. The lines formed a V where they met the edge of the bed, marching up over the coverlet in strict angles until they reached the plane of the mattress. There, a definite wobble in the terrain revealed something large and lumpy beneath the blankets.

The lump let out a reverberating snore.

I released the breath I was holding, then ever so carefully relaxed my death-grip on the squeaky shutter that had brought me to a dead stop on the windowsill. I left it unlatched. It was a small risk, outweighed by the possibility that I would need to leave in a hurry.

Easing all the way into the room, I crouched on the padded window seat before gliding one foot at a time to the floor, using every remaining shred of my grace and deportment lessons to maintain my balance as I kept my body close to the wall. An absurd urge to giggle crept up my throat as I imagined Mistress Floratina clapping her hands in a long-ago dance class, droning, "you are the wind, you are the water, you must flow."

This is a test, you idiot, focus. With a quick shake of my head I kept moving, ducking swiftly into the inky shadows beyond that mote of moonlight, keeping my soft-soled boots silent on the carpet as I stole across the bedroom.

My 'mark' let loose a gusty sigh and rolled over.

Instantly, I found the dark angle of the upright bureau and froze there, my heart clamoring in my throat. I stayed like that until the man's mutterings subsided into steady breathing. Then I darted forward again.

My target wasn't in this room. It was his study I was after. In five smooth, fluid strides I reached the door.

It was locked; for some reason the key was in the lock plate. I eyed it suspiciously for a moment, a little prickle of warning running along the back of my neck. I could take the key with me. It might prove useful later, but this could be the 'leave it as you found it' portion of the test. I bit my lip. It could also be something we hadn't gone over yet that Orrelian wanted to make me 'learn by doing.' One of those lessons had been 'don't be standin' round thinkin', make a decision' so I turned the key, opened the door, slipped through, then closed it behind me, leaving the key on the inside.

Glancing quickly up and down the hallway, I pulled the forceps out of its slot in my sleeve and took a second to lock the door again from my side, sliding the narrow pincers through the keyhole to grab the end of the key and turn it. I was going to leave through the study window anyway.

The study was supposed to be across the hall to the right.

Sticking close to the wall where the floorboards were less likely to squeak, I prowled quietly down the hallway, every sense sharp.

This was the most exposed area in the plan. There wasn't a scrap of furniture, which meant there was no place to hide, no shadows to meld with, nothing but two straight green walls and a bare wood floor. With the door locked behind me, the best I could do if someone came out of their room was to drop like a rock and hope.

No one came out, though, and I stole across to the study door.

It opened in – no hinges to tamper with – and it was locked. It was a high-end lock, too, that required a double-angled key.

I slipped my set of picks out of their spot next to the forceps and set to work, concentrating on the feel of the hook as it navigated the pins inside the lock. One. Two. Three. The fourth turned to the right, and the latch gave way with a faint snick.

With another wary glance up and down the hall, I began examining the door frame.

There. Faint signs of wear at my mark's eye level. He wasn't a very tall man, fortunately. He was also paranoid, according to the file Orrelian had handed me. Thus, the top of the door would be unlikely, but I kept checking and found a second, slightly more obvious scuff mark at the bottom. How fun.

Working quickly, I teased the edge of one of my metal cards through the crack between the frame and the door and drew it upward, following the slide pattern left by whatever my mark used to disarm the alarm on the other side. There was a mechanical whir, but nothing more. No blare of klaxons or clang of bells.

One down.

I wedged the point of my dagger beneath the door, lining it up with that scuff mark, and tapped it through the crack. There was a click, and then the door began swinging open.

For a heartbeat I waited, listening for any sign of disturbance down the hallway. Everything was quiet. On a hunch, I gave the doorway a thorough scan, searching for tripwires or triggers before stepping warily into the room and gently closing the door.

I rolled my eyes when I saw the 'booby trap.' Two buckets perched on a platform. The dagger had pushed a recessed button on a small triggering device, allowing it to roll easily over the floor. If it had been stable, the door would have hit it, which would have knocked over the pole holding up the platform, and I would have been covered from head to toe in glue and feathers. I had to smirk a little. Someone had probably just lost a bet.

The smirk disappeared. When I did this for real, it wouldn't be anything so harmless.

I reset the alarm and the trap. With the door shut, there wasn't as much chance that anyone was going to hear me sneaking around, but I still kept my footsteps quiet as I shook my ambient torch and took stock of the 'study' by its pale green glow.

Finding the information Orrelian wanted wasn't difficult. The letter was sitting in the 'outbound' tray on the desk, all ready to go for the morning's post. Careful not to touch anything but that, I peeled the flap open, extracted the piece of stationary inside it and pressed the letter flat on the carpet, my ambient torch next to it. Another precious minute passed as I took out the portable silvocapture tucked into a pocket of my vest, popped an exposure disk into the slot, centered the letter in the lens, and opened the capture portal. It would be grainy without the bright light of an exploding element, but Marin did wonders with fixing such things. I repeated the procedure from a different angle, then folded the letter up and returned it to its envelope, sealing it again and placing it back in the tray exactly as I had found it.

Now for the second-layer things.

My mark kept his account book neat and tidy. Too tidy, as if he had been copying numbers into it from somewhere else and didn't have to do the math or make an erasure. I found his real books on the bookshelf, disguised as a periodical, and used several more exposure disks, recording pages that had interesting payments being made. The 'periodical' went back into the shelf it had come from, also exactly as I had found it.

Third layer, then. What else didn't the mark want anyone to know about?

He left every third weekend open in his date book. Going somewhere interesting? I rifled through the bin and came up with a receipt from a boutique. Huh. Someone liked expensive candies and white roses.

Next, I removed the top sheet from the notebook I found in his desk and added that to my pile of goodies for Marin to work with. Then I got out one of my rubbing papers and covered the leather of the blotter with it, scraping it gently with a metal card to make the transfer.

Of note: the mark had a snub barreled pistol in his right-hand desk drawer, and there was a hidden compartment that held false papers under the name Aulin Berrush and a thousand marks in a neat little bundle fresh from the bank.

My timekeep said I was nearly out of time.

I closed the hidden compartment and made a last sweep, going backwards through everything I had touched. No wiping patterns on the blotter, no footprints in the carpet, no smears in the dust on the bookshelves or the outbound tray. Then I checked the window for more tattle tales or triggers, unlocked it, attached a piece of waxed string to the lock, doused my ambient torch, slipped out onto the ledge, and closed the window. A quick pull on the waxed string tugged the lock back down into its housing.

Tada. No going back.

And now for the worst part.

I knew better than to look down, but my stomach still cramped up, and I had to take a breath or two. The longer I stood there, though, the more likely it was that someone would see me, either from the alley or from another apartment, and the last thing I needed was to have a run-in with the Magis on a test run. Steeling my nerves, I shuffled sideways till I reached the end of the ledge, and the gutter pipe that ran down the side of the building.

The pipe was more than an arm's length from the ledge.

I ground my teeth tight and reached for it, swallowing that familiar, sickening lurch in my middle as my torso leaned out over a four-story drop to the alley.

Height is irrelevant. Just pretend you're a meter off the ground. The physics is the same.

For one, awful second my fingertips found nothing, Then my hand hit cold, rigid metal.

Breathe.

I dragged in another breath, brought my other hand across and got a good hold on one of the brackets that held the pipe to the wall.

Good. Swing over. Now left arm, right foot. Keep your weight on your stationary leg and maintain that outward pressure with your alternate hand.

Was it a good thing that I could hear Arramy's voice in my head?

My palms were sweating. My arms burned, my muscles starting to tremble with exertion. "Hand over hand..." I recited under my breath, "Height is irrelevant... you're a meter off the ground... physics is the same... you can do this... hand over hand...height is irrelevant..."

A few seconds after I started descending the pipe, I was in the inky shadow cast by the tenement on the other side of the alley. Ten seconds after that, my feet touched gravel and I was gone, darting toward Lister street, dodging piles of discarded shipping crates and mounds of garbage. While I ran, I opened my side pocket and pulled out the brown felt hat and saggy cape I had packed, then adopted a hunch and a wobbly gait. By the time I stepped onto the cobblestones, I was an old homeless woman who had been drinking.

NaVarre would have been proud.

I slouched along Lister until I reached the apothecary on the corner of Parmenter, then ducked into the deep-set entryway with five minutes to spare before Orrelian arrived.

Something was off, though.

There was a subtle warmth in the air behind me.

Body heat.

I reached for my dagger at the same instant that something stirred in the near-total darkness right next to me. Something large and clad in a long, dark, hooded cloak. Something that brought with it the scent of pinewood and coconut.

Hissing out a choice expletive I sheathed my dagger again. "Why do you insist on doing that? You really should wear a bell."

There was a raspy chuckle and a flash of teeth, then a familiar Altyran brogue whispered, "You're early."

I shot a glare in the general direction of Arramy's soot-blackened face but couldn't resist a smirk. "Awww. Disappointed? You weren't, by chance, hoping I would take longer, and come back covered in... feathers."

"That would have been entertaining," he murmured. "But why would I hope you failed?"

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. Then turned to watch the street again, already going over the 'raid' in my mind, trying to anticipate what new thing Orrelian would use as a teaching moment this time.

Never one for an excess of conversation, Arramy didn't say anything more, and the two of us stood there in the silence, just an old beggar woman and her over-large shadow blending into the night on the streets of Vreis.

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Eylestre: (eye-less-truh) the first of the summer months.