6th of Eylestre

Larosh Razhan's pre-war mansion rose from the hill above Northside in a massive five-story jumble of heavy rose granite walls and ornate scrollwork. The grounds around it were beautifully manicured, with neat hedge gardens and a lovely, rolling lawn stretching out on all sides like a soft, velvety green carpet. Countless windows twinkled and glimmered gold in the waning purple of a late-summer sundown.

At first glance, it was all much too pretty to be the home of a cut-throat murdering thug – until one caught sight of the men in dark grey jackets and black pants patrolling the yard near the main house and outbuildings. There were more men walking the three-meter-high stone wall that marched along the entire streetside perimeter of the property before disappearing into the dense forest that stretched to the north and east of the city.

That wide-open expanse of lovely velvety lawn was a spy's worst nightmare.

A quavering moan brought my attention back to the grey-clad thug sprawled on his backside beneath me. Slowly, he stopped struggling, his body going unnaturally relaxed against Arramy's torso.

Carefully, Arramy lifted the knock-out rag from the guard's face, then smacked the man's cheek a few times before pressing two fingers to his jugular, making sure he wasn't faking it. Or dead. 

After a moment, Arramy tucked the rag into his pocket and gave me a nod.

I shifted my weight and moved off the guard's legs. Then Arramy proceeded to muscle the fellow's unresisting body up into a sitting position at the base of the burl oak we had dragged him under.

None too soon. Orrelian – dressed in a grey jacket and black pants – had nearly reached the end of the guard's patrol, and was about to start back toward us, the guard's lantern swinging from his hand.

Arramy looked at me. "Ready?"

Whether I was or not, it was time. I dragged in a breath, my heartbeat rising to thunder in my throat. With a shaky nod I got into position, sinking into a runner's stance in the deep shadows beneath the oak, facing the south-east corner of Razhan's fortress of a house.

There wasn't any other conversation. As soon as Orrelian had reached the right point in his route, and Arramy whispered, "Run!" I bolted forward, feet flying up and over the hill Orrelian had just walked along. It was an exercise in trust. Trust that Ynette and Rugga had gotten the rotation of the guards right; trust that Orrelian's pretense at being one of those guards was working, and my ragged green velvet cloak would be enough camouflage; trust that I was approaching the walls of the manor in the 'blind spot' Arramy had found in Razhan's defenses. The only thing between me and being caught by Razhan's thugs was a pile of long odds and split-second timing.

Twenty-eight seconds. I had twenty-eight seconds before the guards patrolling the garden turned and walked back the way they had come, and I became a fully visible target on an open shooting field.

Twenty-five seconds. Twenty seconds. Legs pumping at a full-out run. Fifteen seconds. Ten. Five. The mansion loomed ahead of me, windows gleaming in the dusk like long yellow eyes.

Two seconds. One. I flung my cloak wide, dropped to the ground facedown, made like a velvety green lump in that velvety green grass, and began counting to thirty, my pulse a heavy staccato in my ears.

I got to twenty-seven. Then twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. I had to move. Smothering a moan behind my lips I shoved myself back up onto rubbery legs and lurched forward again, sure there was going to be a shout, the blinding sweep of a searchlight, a bullet, even as I raced across the last stretch of lawn and dove into the low ornamental shrubs growing below the windows of the east wing.

I had never really appreciated all of Marin's insane obstacle courses until I was belly-crawling through the mulch to the corner where a veranda jutted out of the southfacing wall of the mansion. I had only just managed to huddle in the dark behind a planting of decorative grasses, hood pulled low, cloak pulled close, before I got to twenty-eight again.

At thirty, I watched the thug patrolling that end of the house turn and start coming back. A few seconds later, Orrelian appeared from my left, walking up from the tree line where Arramy was hiding. At twenty-eight seconds, they met in the middle with only a few meters to spare. Orrelian even nodded to the other guard before they both turned and began pacing away from each other.

That was my cue. I sprang to my feet, reached up above my head and scrabbled for the seam in the stonework, working more by feel than by sight. My fingertips found the crevice where the molding of the veranda continued on along the wall, and I became a quick, silent spider, climbing up the inside angle of the corner, using the flourishes at the end of a window casement here, a decorative ledge there, gaining footholds and toe-holds and handholds wherever I could find one, my only goal getting to the veranda roof.

Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. With a gasp, I hauled myself over the ornate fascia and flattened myself into the curve of the old antebellum roofline. None too soon. By daylight I would have been clearly visible when the guard turned and started back again. The sun had set, though, and the moon was hanging behind a skim of clouds, casting watery silver counterpoints and thick shadows.

My cloak was working. Holding perfectly still, I watched as the guard came walking along the outer edge of Razhan's garden. He looked at the house more than once, but his gaze slipped right over the veranda, returning to the grounds he was being paid to watch.

A smile tugged at my lips. Arramy had been right – they were more worried about what was outside.

He met Orrelian at twenty-eight seconds. By thirty, he was heading back the way he had come.

With a quick curl of my body, I peeked over the curve of the veranda roof. The veranda itself stopped short of the end of the east wing, but the row of windows above it continued marching along in regular rectangles of diamond-paned glass, each topped with a scroll of marble.

The one I was aiming for was the last before the corner. Ynette and Rugga swore it would open into Razhan's study.

That window was dark.

None of the others were, though, and beams of lantern light spilled into the garden.

They hadn't drawn the drapes yet.

I swallowed.

Two men stood in the hallway outside the study.

Twenty-eight: I hunched back down into the shadows and began counting again. 

Thirty: I got to my feet and pressed my front up against the granite of the wall, shuffling sideways along the top of the molding that ran beneath the windows, a scant hand-span of marble the only thing between me and a four-meter drop to the ground.

Twenty-eight: stop dead still in the black space between two windows, trusting my cape and the fact that human eyes would struggle to adjust to the dark with those lights so bright inside.

Those were the longest thirty seconds of my life. My fingers were slippery with sweat inside the supple leather of my gloves. I closed my eyes; concentrated on keeping every breath shallow and slow; the smell of the granite, the grit of it harsh against my cheek. Anything but the burning ache in my fingertips, the tremble in my calves, and the empty space behind me.

Thirty. I inched to the window frame. There was no way to get below it. Pulse jittering, I peered around the casement.

The guards were talking to each other, but they weren't exactly not looking at the window. There was only one way to find out if they were.

With a swift glance upward and a whispered prayer, I stepped onto the broad shelf of the windowsill, brought my left foot up to join my right, then sidestepped again onto the molding on the other side, smooth and quick, there and gone.

No shout came, and I kept creeping. Twenty-eight seconds had me frozen between the next two windows again, with only the one to the study left.

Another count of thirty, and I was at the study, working the flexible edge of one of my steel cards beneath the wooden frame between two of the windowpanes while chewing a piece of gum wax to warm it up. It took two more intervals to pull the pane quietly from its place with a glob of gum wax and a bit of string, another to make sure there weren't any tripwires to deal with, and then I had the window unlocked and I was in.

I drew the pane snug into its frame again from the inside, then turned around.

And promptly clamped my hand over my mouth to smother the involuntary cry that threatened to tear out of my throat.

A massive northern bear stood in the corner, rearing on its hind legs, jaws opened wide, six-inch long fangs bared.

But no roar came.

The bear wasn't moving.

There was a mountain cat sprawled beside the hearth. It wasn't moving either. Hawks and eagles hung on walls and perched on pedestals all around the room, and a Tettian boar's great, wrinkly head was mounted above the fireplace.

All those practice sessions, and I had nearly undone everything over Razhan's taxidermy collection.

Lips pressed into a grim line, I paused for a count of ten, listening, taking stock of hiding places.

The guards were still talking, their conversation a quiet, muffled cadence outside the door. They hadn't heard anything.

There wasn't any other noise, not even the clicking of a timekeep.

I pulled out a rubbing sheet and moved to Razhan's desk, working by the scant light of the moon.

With the rub securely folded back into its pocket, I began poking through the things on his desk. The fact that this was not a test was making my hands shake, but the mental checklist Orrelian had drilled into my head night after night made it surprisingly easy to focus. I went through the desk drawers but found nothing of interest. There weren't any letters incoming or outgoing. His appointment book didn't have anything suspicious in it, but I took some silvos of it anyway.

And that was it for the desk.

There hadn't been a safe, or even a secret compartment.

A man like Razhan would have a safe. He had too many valuables and illegal enterprises not to.

Pursing my lips, I looked around.

None of the furniture was pushed up against the walls and there weren't any bookcases, but there were several large paintings hanging in display alcoves in the far wall of the room.

The guards were still talking; one of them laughed.

On stealthy feet I stole across the floor and began checking picture frames.

Either Orrelian had exaggerated the number of traps I would find in the field so I would learn to look for them everywhere, or Razhan was extremely confident in the abilities of his armed guards. There hadn't been a wire on the window, and there wasn't a wire on the portrait of King Alfeonides the Eighth.

There was an alarm on the safe behind it.

With bated breath, I got out my glimmer and shook it, keeping it between me and the safe to shield the glow from the massive floor-to-ceiling east-facing windows overlooking the garden.

The alarm was of decent make, the kind rigged to go off if someone didn't get the combination right on the lock dials.

It was also relatively easy to disable. The only problem would be that once I disabled it, it wouldn't work anymore – which wouldn't necessarily be a problem since Razhan was likely to get the combination right. If he didn't though, he would know the lock had been tampered with.

It couldn't be helped.

Biting my lower lip, I got out my lock picks. My goal wasn't to cut the alarm's trigger wire, but to shorten it so it didn't touch the gears inside the lock. The alarm would still be armed, just hobbled.

I was in the middle of untwisting the first knob from its dial when footsteps sounded in the hallway, and the guards stopped talking. Hissing out a curse I rehung the portrait, whipped around, and dove for the nearest piece of furniture big enough to hide under, scooting beneath it just as a key rattled in the door and someone came in.

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