The plan worked. Three turns and four ducts later she was back on track. She knew she was back, because now that she was concentrating she found she could smell Alison's scent on the breeze moving across her snout.
Five minutes later, she turned one final corner to see a small flashlight illuminating the duct and the open space where a grille should be.
Thirty seconds later, she was home.
She had expected Alison to be furious with her, especially after spending so much time being lost. To her relief, her host turned out to be mostly just glad she was back safely.
Though Taneem could tell she was a little angry.
"For starters, someone might have seen you," Alison told Taneem as she fastened the grille back in place. "There are also a lot of very unpleasant things that could have happened to you in there."
"It seemed safe enough," Taneem said.
"That's because everything was running smoothly," Alison said. "If, say, there'd been a drop in air pressure—for any reason—there are a whole set of hidden sealant doors that would have kicked in across the ducts, cutting the whole system into a bunch of small pieces. You'd have been trapped in one of them until they'd fixed whatever the problem was."
She eyed Taneem over her shoulder. "That's assuming you weren't unlucky enough to have been in the way of one of the doors when they slammed shut," she added. "In that case, you'd probably have been cut in half. You understand?"
"Yes," Taneem said. In truth, she only understood about half of what Alison had just said. But she got the idea. "I won't go off like that again. I'm sorry."
"I just don't want you getting hurt," Alison said in a gentler tone. Finishing with the last bolt, she hopped down from the chair and ran her hand along the side of Taneem's neck. "If for no other reason than that Draycos would kill me if you did."
"He wouldn't do such a thing," Taneem insisted. A shiver ran through her. "Though even if he wished to, he might never have the chance," she added quietly. "What I heard just now—"
"Hold that thought," Alison interrupted. Picking up the chair, she lugged it back to its usual place and then put her tools away. "Let's get back under the blankets," she said, holding out her hand toward Taneem as she headed back to the bed. "Then you can tell me all about it."
Alison listened in silence as Taneem described the conversation she'd overheard between Frost and Neverlin. "Okay," she said when Taneem had finished. "So they're going to test me. No big deal."
"Yet it worries me," Taneem said. "They have had over four months to open the safes, yet they're still searching for someone to do the job. Are you truly better than all the others who do this sort of thing?"
Alison grimaced. "Not even close," she admitted. "Even Jack's better at it than I am."
"What will they do if you fail?"
Alison had been trying hard not to think about that possibility. "I won't fail," she said firmly. "For one thing, my father trained me himself, and he is one of the best in the business."
"The business of theft."
"Everyone has to make a living," Alison said. "Besides, none of the people he targets will even miss what he takes." Which was not, of course, strictly true. In fact, even non-strictly it wasn't true. But there was no reason to burden Taneem with any more truth than she was already stuck with. "Besides, I have a secret weapon," she said instead. "You."
"Me?"
"Exactly," Alison said. "You and that K'da trick where you lean off your host's back and look through a wall."
"Over a wall," Taneem murmured.
"Whatever," Alison said. "The point is that you'll be able to get a look at the actual lock mechanism, which is something none of the other safecrackers will have had."
"But I know nothing of such mechanisms."
"That won't matter," Alison said, frowning in the darkness. "Well, no, actually you're right. You'll be able to draw me a better picture if you know at least the basics."
"We have only four days," Taneem reminded her.
"No problem," Alison assured her, trying to hide her own misgivings. It had taken her two whole years to learn these skills.
But then, Taneem wasn't going to have to actually open the safe. "First thing tomorrow, we start your lessons," she told the K'da. "In the meantime—" She yawned wide enough to hear her jaw crack. "I'm going back to sleep. Pleasant dreams."
"Yes," Taneem murmured. "And to you."
CHAPTER 11
The days under the desert sun quickly fell into a rhythm. At sunrise Jack would be awakened by Thonsifi, he would shower and eat, and then it was off to the Great Hall for the morning judging session. At noon there would be a break for lunch, at which time the boy sometimes quietly discussed the thornier cases with his hidden K'da companion. After lunch would be the afternoon session, and then Jack would return to his apartment for dinner, a quiet evening of talking and perhaps a little exercise to help him keep in shape.
It was in the evenings that the white stones and light shafts finally came into their own. The reflectors on top of the pillar were obviously angled to catch the rays of the sun as it dropped across the western sky, sending light down the shafts to set the white stone aglow. The effect lingered on for nearly two hours before the sun finally vanished below the horizon, giving a welcome bit of additional light where the canyon floor had already grown dark.
Once the glow faded from the white stones, it was usually bedtime. Sunrise and Jack's Judge-Paladin duties came early.
And when Jack and the rest of the canyon populace were asleep, Draycos set off on his night's patrolling.
He'd been doing this since their second night in the canyon, though he hadn't yet told Jack about it. His original goal, after the first night's shuttle incident, had been to watch for further activity by Foeinatw or other possible informants.
But Foeinatw stayed out of trouble from that point on. Or at least he stayed out of Draycos's sight.
Nor, apparently, did any of the other Golvins stir once they'd retired to their homes at sundown. Not really surprising, given the long climb most of them had to reach those homes in the first place.
And so, with the canyon floor apparently deserted, after the first three nights Draycos switched from watching for trouble to looking for a way out of the canyon.
Only to find that there wasn't one.
Certainly the steep canyon walls were climbable, at least for Draycos himself. The vine mesh that covered the stone pillars didn't grow on most of the cliff faces, but there were enough cracks and claw openings in the stone itself to provide a patient K'da with a path to the surface.
But without his climbing equipment, Jack didn't have a hope of doing the same. Draycos could carry him for short distances, but as he and Jack had already concluded, there was no way he was going to climb three hundred feet of cliff with the boy on his shoulders. There was a line of small caves about fifty feet up along the eastern cliff, but they were too low to make a convenient halfway resting point. Draycos didn't climb up to examine them, but from the pathways of ivy mesh that had been set up between them and the ground, it was clear they were being used for something by the Golvins.
The ends of the canyon were no better. At the upstream end the river rose sharply into a series of impassable waterfalls, while the downstream end cut through a narrows that would be as tricky to climb as the cliffs themselves.
On the first night of his scouting Draycos spent so much time traveling back and forth across the canyon that he nearly got caught out in the open when the sky began to lighten. The second night, he made sure to watch his time, returning to Jack's apartment well before dawn.
He arrived to find the apartment brighter than when he'd left, the white stones in the wall giving off a soft glow as the reflectors above sent down the light from the larger of Semaline's two moons. Draycos slipped through the doorway fringe, and he was padding his way to the bedroom when the light subtly changed.