The Penitent Damned(5)

There were two doors, at the near and far ends of the room, and it was the closer one that had opened. Alex saw a figure in dark clothes outlined against the lit room beyond, but she herself was crouching in a dark corner, a shadow in a deeper shadow. That gave her a moment to act. She raised a hand and sent a shadow-line to snag the door and yank it shut, and heard a heavy lock clunk into place as it closed.

The startled man turned to look, as she'd know he would, and Alex surged forward. She crossed the space between them with noiseless, cat-like steps, cannoned into the man from behind, and threw her hand up and across his mouth to stifle his surprised cry. At the same time, she brought her other hand up, palm flat, against the base of his neck. A needle-thin wedge of darkness punched out with the force of a miner's pick, drilling through bone to open like a vicious, dark flower into a dozen sharp-edged strands inside the man's skull.

He jerked once, then subsided, and Alex caught his dead-weight and lowered him gently to the floor. Her throat was dry. This was the fifth man she'd killed in her career, and only the second who hadn't actively been trying to kill her at the time. He would have tried, though, if he'd gotten the chance. She reminded herself sternly that this wasn't some nobleman's household guard, standing watch for the look of the thing before going home to his family. He's Concordat. God knows what kind of blood is on his hands. It made her feel a little better.

Once he'd stilled, she listened in silence for a few moments, hoping no other guards were nearby. Luck was with her there; she could hear a faint murmur of conversation, but it was distant, possibly on the story below. She got to her feet and prowled along the rows of cabinets, reading the labels affixed to them by the Last Duke's meticulous clerks. She couldn't figure out their system on a moment's notice, so she padded down one side and back up the other, checking each in turn.

Finally, she found what she was looking for. One of the cabinets was labeled with a neat list of names, and "De Farnis" was among them. That was the client's name, and whatever was inside the cabinet was apparently so dangerous to his reputation that he was willing to pay an absurd price to have it back. Alex rolled her eyes at this typically noble sense of priorities, and extended a finger-thin sliver of darkness toward the lock. Lock-picking was not among the thief's skills she'd studied, but that rarely posed a problem. She closed her hand into a fist, concentrating on honing the edge of the narrow wedge of shadow until it was harder and sharper than any steel blade. When she brought it down on the hasp of the lock, the solid iron parted as neatly as butter, and she tugged the broken pieces apart and set them carefully aside.

De Farnis had been very insistent that she not examine the material she was recovering too closely, which only made Alex all the more curious as to what it was. She pulled the cabinet doors open, not sure what to expect. A stack of letters, perhaps. A signed confession. A skull? That was needlessly melodramatic —

The cabinet was empty. A couple of dust motes danced in the faint light filtering in through the hole in the roof. She could see where something had been, a square pattern in the dust, with streaks where it had been recently removed. Someone knew I was coming. And that meant—

The door at the far end of the room rattled and started to open. Alex didn't hesitate. She was too far from the hole in the roof to make it out that way, but all she really needed was a window. The other door was only a few steps away. She wrenched at the handle, found it locked, and tore it completely away from the door with a frantic burst of shadow. The door shuddered open, and she tumbled through, blinking in the light of several lanterns.

"That's far enough, Master Metzing," a deep voice said.

Alex froze. It wasn't the command that halted her, but the sight of two Concordat agents, in their long black leather coats, with muskets raised to their shoulders and trained on her. She was in some kind of common room, with the outer wall of the building behind her and wooden table in the center. An open doorway in the opposite wall led into a stairwell, and the two guards were standing squarely between her and a chance to run for it. She couldn't see any windows.

Behind the two black-coats was another pair of figures. One of them wore a grey habit, like a monk's, that concealed its figure and hooded its face. The other looked more like a priest, but instead of the familiar dusty white or deep burgundy, his robe seemed to be made of black velvet. There was something strange about his face, as well—he was wearing a mask that reflected the light of the lanterns as myriad fractured gleams and sparkles, as though it were made from a smashed mirror.

A third black-coat, pistol in hand, stepped back in from the archive room and added his weapon to those leveled at Alex. He had a thick, puffy-cheeked face, a black mustache, and cold, dark eyes. He walked toward Alex in measured strides, aim never wavering. She saw his eyes narrow.