Authors: Douglas Hulick
“There is that.” Points reached over and placed his hand on a small pile of thin wooden slats. They were of various widths and thicknesses, and his hands moved over their ends
deftly. “I don’t suppose you have time for me to make a quick mock-up of the blade, do you?” he said as he drew one of the slats out, ran his fingers along it, and shoved it back
with a frown. “Even a wooden dummy would make it—ah, here we are, I think.” He pulled a pale piece of mountain pine and hefted it.
“How long will it take?” I said, glancing out of the shop at the night beyond.
“Not long. An hour, maybe. Maybe a bit more.”
I looked out into the darkness and considered. Even if I left now, I wouldn’t be able to get everything done before first light. I had people to talk to, arrangements to make, a lost set
of plays down that should have been recovered from Dirty Waters by now to check on. That all took time. But if I decided to hold off on those, if I stayed here and got the scabbard fitted, I
wouldn’t have time to worry about all that. Instead, I’d be able to look into the city’s social calendar, maybe even find a time when the Baroness Christiana Sephada of Lythos
wouldn’t be at home. Much easier to search a house when the mistress isn’t in, especially when you’re looking for private missives that could give you an idea where your former
friend, who was also the baroness’s new want-to-be paramour, might be holding up. Degan and my sister had been hungering for one another ever since they’d first met. That had always
bothered me—still did, for that matter. Degan being with the woman who had sent two assassins after me aside, I’d just never liked the idea of my best friend getting involved with my
little sister. Degan had understood; as for Christiana, well, it gave her one more reason to resent me—not that she needed any more.
Now that Degan and I were done, though, I figured it had opened the door between them. I didn’t know that for certain, mind, but it seemed a safe bet, especially since my sister had been
in a good—no, not good,
gleeful
—mood the last two times I’d seen her. And considering there wasn’t much I could think of besides Degan that would get her feeling
quite
that happy . . .
Yes, I definitely needed to find out when my sister wouldn’t be in.
“Fine,” I said, sitting down across from Points. “You have your hour.”
“A wise choice,” said Points as he put the sword and the wood in his lap and picked up a bone stylus. “You won’t regret it, I assure you.”
I smiled and didn’t comment. Regret was one thing I didn’t worry about when it came to annoying my sister.
The irony has never been lost on me: Because I helped set up the security at my sister’s home in Ildrecca, it has always been easier for me to break in than anyone else.
She knows this, mind you, and has taken precautions against it over the years, but still, there’s something to be said for knowing about the broken pottery cemented not only at the top of the
garden walls, but two and a half feet down on either side, set so the shards blend in with the decorative carvings while still being perfectly placed to lacerate an unwary scrambler. Or that the
locks on all of the doors are Kettle-makers, which means you might as well try and carve your way through the walls as pick the locks, since the first stands a better chance of success. Or that the
catch on the second-floor east-facing window, fourth in from the corner, has a trick spring I’d installed to make sure I had easy access on nights like tonight.
No, the irony has never been lost on me. Just as it was not lost on me now when, with my toes jammed onto a four-inch ledge and my fingers straining to keep their grip on the even thinner edging
around the window, I discovered that Christiana had replaced the latch.
It was never easy with my sister. Never.
I stared at the pane of glass before me, my night vision illumining its details in the darkness. A bit bigger than my hand, it was high of quality: Blown and then quickly spun to draw it flat,
it had less distortion to it than most of the glass you would find in the city. If I had known I was going to be drawing teeth, I would have brought putty and gloves and probes for removing the
panes, not to mention choosing a window with a wider sill.
This was going to be a pain.
Of course, I could always just knock on the front door and have Josef show me to the salon to wait; but I also knew I stood a better chance of getting out of the Imperial prison at Athakon than
I would leaving that room unobserved. Nor did I relish the idea of sitting through the lecture I would get from Christiana—again—about why I shouldn’t come calling at the front
door. She had gone to great pains to keep our relationship secret even before she’d married into the nobility, and I’d agreed with the sentiment. A baroness with a brother deep amongst
the Kin didn’t make for easy times at Court, either socially or politically; nor did I relish what would happen if it became known that I called a member of the Lower Imperial Court
“sister.” Blackmail aside (for either of us), the kind of leverage she could provide my enemies, or even the random Kin with a thing against Noses, wasn’t something I cared to
consider.
Which left me here on the ledge, with my calves beginning to burn and my fingertips going numb.
I studied the panes again. Nary a wrinkle in them. They must have cost a fortune.
Oh well: It was her fault for changing the latch, after all.
I slipped my wrist knife free and, hanging on with five white-tipped fingers, inserted its point into the lead glazing. After a bit of wiggling and prying, I got the tip where I wanted it and
slowly began to lever the steel against the glass. A faint click rewarded me, along with a pair of long cracks running from the corner up to the opposite side of the pane.
I smiled to myself as I picked the lower corner of the lead glazing away. It wasn’t fun or easy hanging here, popping teeth with a knife better suited to stabbing than prying, but the
thought of my sister’s reaction when she found the break kept me at it. That, and the fall looming at my back.
When the bottom third of the pane came free, I flicked it outward into the garden beneath me, cringing at the faint tinkle it made on the walkway. I heard Lazarus and Rinaldo and
Acheron—the hounds that patrolled the garden at night—snuffing about below, but we were old friends ever since I had gotten them hooked on
ahrami.
A little rubbed into some
choice scraps of pork, and the boys were nothing but wags and slobber when it came to me poking about the place.
The second fragment of glass slipped out easily. It was the third that gave me the most trouble. I ended up slicing open my middle finger getting it free, but once it was done, I was able to
reach in and release the latch.
The window opened out. It took a bit of interesting gymnastics to get myself beneath its swing, but, aside from a few smears of red on the wall and casement, I managed to slip inside easily
enough.
Where I settled myself onto the floor with a groan. I hadn’t done any hard draw-latching for years, and I could tell. My thighs and calves were trembling, and I could still feel the
stonework pressing into the fingers of my left hand. I closed my eyes for a moment, relishing the feeling of not clinging to something for dear life, and then remembered my finger.
I had come in through the music room window, which meant there was a fair supply of paper about to use as a compress. The first page from Paulus’s’s
The Enchanting of the
Bridgemaker’s Daughter
—something all the rage at Court, I was sure—was the easiest to hand, and did a passable job as I pulled out my herb wallet and dug through it. It
wasn’t nearly as well stocked as it had been when I was living above Eppyris’s shop, but I managed to find a small envelope of powered woolman’s weed and a long strip of clean
linen. The woolman helped slow the bleeding, and the linen finished the job, giving me fairly unrestricted use of my hand.
Leaving Paulus bloodstained and crumpled on the floor, I crept to the door and cracked it open.
Dark. Quiet. Good.
I briefly considered the downstairs study, then rejected it. Christiana might keep her accounts and receipts and records of minor treacheries and betrayals down there, but what I wanted was of a
more personal nature. And for a woman who had spent over half her life working as a courtesan, secrecy and privacy meant one place: her bedroom.
Still, just because Christiana was gone didn’t mean the house was empty.
I crept to the head of the stairs, then partway down, and listened. Laughter from the kitchen, and light shining out from beneath the door to Josef’s room off the main foyer. The mistress
was away, and her butler was allowing the mice to play. It wasn’t impossible that someone could come wandering up to Christiana’s room while I was there—more dodges than I cared
to think about have been ruined by a servant or a repentant spouse delivering a vase of freshly cut color at an inopportune time—but judging by the tone and volume of the talk, I didn’t
expect anyone to be tearing themselves away anytime soon.
I padded back upstairs and along the hallway. No light showed beneath the maid’s door, but I kept it slow and silent as I slipped past and cracked the gold-accented cream-colored double
doors farther along. Which was a good thing, since Sara, the maid, was there, curled up on the window seat in Christiana’s receiving parlor, snoring softly.
I froze, and then slowly let out my breath. This was a problem.
If this were another Kin’s ken, or even some other noble’s pile of rocks, I would have had a knife to the maid’s eye and a gag in her mouth in an instant. But this was my
sister’s servant, in my sister’s house: If I damaged the goods, I’d never hear the end of it.
Besides, the girl had a nice smile. I’d only ever seen it once, and then mostly out of the corner of my eye, but she’d flashed it my way in the middle of one of my sister’s
tirades, when I’d delivered a particularly good comeback. I figured that kind of sympathy—not to mention spirit, given what would have happened if Christiana had caught the
look—deserved a measure of respect.
So instead, I pulled out a vial of Budger’s oil, scattered some across a strip of linen, and gently laid it down on the window seat near her face. In a strong enough dose, the
distillations and herbs in the oil could drag a wakeful man into unconsciousness, but that required a well-soaked rag being clamped to the face for a good minute or more—a tactic I
didn’t relish just now. Used like this, though, the Budger would deepen the girl’s sleep, so that only a sound shaking would rouse her, and then damn slowly.
I crouched, counting my heartbeats and trying not to pick at the fresh wound on my finger, until enough time had passed. Then I took the rag from near her face, laid it far away on the floor,
and got to work.
Turning a room can take a long time, or very little—it all depends on the experience of two people: the one doing the hiding, and the one doing the looking. My sister didn’t lack in
training when it came to secreting away things she didn’t want found—our stepfather, Sebastian, had seen to that—but all of her practice, at least early on, had been against me.
First in our cabin in the Balsturan Forest, and then later in the dives of Ildrecca, Christiana and I had made a game of hiding things from each other, both in typical places—nooks and spots
that hadn’t required construction or modification—and in more practiced locales. Eventually, the game turned serious, especially once Christiana had become a courtesan and had had
things worth hiding. Even later, I’d still gotten plenty of practice against her while her late husband, Nestor, was alive.
Nestor had delighted in all things Kinnish, and had insisted that I both train him how to secret away the odd bit of paper as well as teach him how to discover other people’s hiding
places. Of course, Christiana had been the natural target for our lessons, and Nestor and I had spent many an afternoon and evening rooting through the house, poking into corners and prying back
baseboards in search of his wife’s hidden marginalia. She had played along well enough, even going out of her way to leave special messages and false trails for us—that is, until our
search had turned up a small packet of papers from behind a loose piece of paneling in Christiana’s armoire.
I was the one who had found the parcel, but Nestor was the one who had read the papers within it. I’d been politely but sternly excused after that, and hadn’t quite made it out the
front door before the yelling started. Christiana didn’t speak to me for months after, and Nestor was dead within the year. I couldn’t help but wonder if my missing that piece of
molding might have resulted in him still being here.
Past and gone, Drothe. Mind on the matter at hand.
Even though it was obvious, I started with Christiana’s desk. I decided to focus on finding any hidden papers first, and only worry about striking a light later, once I had things to go
through. I can read with my night vision, but not well, and I don’t welcome the headaches and nausea the effort brings with it.
The secretary, armoire, bookshelves, and side tables followed. Going through her closet was like diving into a cave filled with lace cobwebs and silk stalactites, assuming it’s possible to
find caves that smell of talc and cedar. After that, I moved on to the bedding, baseboards, decorative carvings, and pictures on the wall, not to mention the seams in the curtains.
By the end, I had a small pile of papers and a fair amount of splinters to show for my effort. I found a small firebox next to the fireplace, put a candle wick to the carefully banked coals
inside, set myself on the floor at the foot of the bed, and examined my plunder.
Nothing. Or, rather, plenty of somethings if I were looking to blackmail any number of people at Court, but that wasn’t what I was here for.
I considered the closed doors and the parlor beyond. Sara wouldn’t be a problem if I wanted to turn the room, but was there really a point? If Christiana was going to secret something
personal away, she wouldn’t do it out there, where the practiced eyes of a visitor mighty notice something out of place. If it were anywhere, it would be here. And I hadn’t been able to
find it.