The Penitent Damned(2)

"Of course."

"In that case I would like to borrow some of your … 'special assets'."

The Duke's expression darkened. "Matters at court are coming to a head. I may not be able to spare them for long."

"We won't have long to wait. The thief won't risk being in the city any longer than he has to. It'll be tonight, or tomorrow at the latest."

Orlanko hesitated a moment, then nodded. "As you wish. But I expect good results."

"Of course, Your Grace." Andreas bowed, coat flapping. "I will begin immediately."



· · ·



Alex grabbed the lip of crumbling brick and hauled herself up until she could swing one leg over and lever herself up to lie flat on the narrow surface. The bricks made up a battlement-like rise perhaps a foot wide. Beyond them was the building's roof, a sloped, irregular surface of wooden shingles, but she dared not trust that with her weight. Most of the the tenements of the Newtown district still had their original hundred-year-old roofs, patched inexpertly and sporadically as they rotted and started to leak, and the ancient shingles were likely to shatter under her weight.

Instead, she rose to her feet, as smoothly as a dancer. She looked around for a moment, taking her bearings from the lights of the city, and then started to pace easily down the narrow strip of brick.

On her right hand was the roof, and on her left was a sheer drop — five stories to the street below, without even the hope of catching a convenient clothesline to slow her fall. The winding streets of Oldtown and the narrow alleys of the Docks were always thick with ropes, which could be quite useful for a second-story man — or woman, in Alex's case. Here, though, the long-dead Farus V had decreed that the boulevards be wide and straight, in accordance with the latest Rationalist principles, and though the area had gone a bit down-market since the old boy's day, the buildings were still too far apart to string washing-lines.

Alex's heart was beating fast, but it wasn't from the precariousness of her foothold or the prospect of a hundred-foot fall. Young as she was—another month would see her twentieth birthday—this sort of work had become so second-nature to her that a few inches of moldy brick might as well have been a broad highway. This, the rooftops of a great city at night, was her world, into which she'd been born and in which she'd spent her entire life. Anyone who had asked her about the possibility of a fall would have gotten only a quizzical stare in response.

Her nervousness had quite another source. This wasn't Desland, with its brightly painted shingles and sleepy constabulary, or even Hamvelt, with its terraced archways and sharp-eyed sell-mercenary guards. This was Vordan City, home to the Last Duke's Concordat, who watched from every shadow. Ever since she'd started working with the Old Man, some three years now, he'd been telling her dark stories about the city of his birth, to which he'd sworn up and down he'd never return.

Everyone knew what a thief's oath was worth, of course, and it was no surprise that enough money had made a liar out of the Old Man. They'd been at a loose end after a successful job in Hamvelt had produced more heat than they'd bargained for and sent them fleeing south and west towards the mountainous country near the border. Even still, when word had come through the Old Man's labyrinthine network of contacts that a proposition was on offer in Vordan with an almost ludicrous sum of money attached to it, he'd come close to turning up his nose at it. Alex had worked hard to convince him that they should take the deal; the fact that the job was obviously impossible only sweetened the pot.

Besides, she thought, if it's impossible, they'll let their guard down.

Alex liked impossible things. It was impossible to jump from one tenement block to the next, for example. You'd need a grappling hook and a lot of line, and even if it found purchase on the rotten shingles crossing would be a dangerously long and noisy endeavor.

She herself was impossible, after all. In this day and age, who believed in magic?

At the corner of the tenement roof, she paused, perched like a gargoyle. Twenty-five feet across the way, another hulk of a brick building loomed. A few lights flickered weakly in window frames on the upper stories, but lower down the shutters were tightly closed. It certainly wasn't impossible to climb one of these buildings from the outside—indeed, with their flaking mortar and crumbling bricks, it wasn't even a challenge. It was reasonable to assume, therefore, that the targets had taken some precautions against a stealthy approach from below. But from above?

Alex spread her arms like an orchestra conductor, raised her hands, and smiled. Liquid darkness rushed out of her cuffs, flowed over her hands like ink, and spread outward.