The streetlight’s influence didn’t reach the alley, so Sicarius had to find the door lock by feel. Scratches marred the metal around the hole, suggesting others had attempted to pick it before. Perhaps Amaranthe had gone inside. Or perhaps hungry university students had attempted infiltrations in the past.
Either way, it wouldn’t take long to check. The lock proved simple by his standards, and he entered through the side door a couple of minutes later. He tested the air with his nose again, searching for the team members’ familiar scents, but the heady smells of cinnamon, cloves, and maple overpowered lesser odors.
The light from the corner streetlamp provided enough illumination for Sicarius to glide through the interior, skirting counters and tables up front and cupboards and baking racks in the back, without making a sound. There wasn’t anybody else in the building. A pointless diversion.
Sicarius headed for the door again, though a raised glass-covered tray next to a cash register caught his eyes. It contained a tidy arrangement of pastries, including a couple he thought might be of the “Emperor’s Buns” variety. Though he could not condone the eating of sweets, he knew Amaranthe liked them. She’d risked exposing herself on that riverboat to acquire pastries from the kitchens-and gone to great lengths to try to hide those pastries from him. With good cause. Such food was hardly appropriate to one seeking to regain mental and physical stability. Sicarius took a step toward the door but paused again. Such treats did bring inexplicable pleasure to Amaranthe.
Hoping he wasn’t setting a precedent, he selected a pair of tongs, opened the lid, chose a pastry that looked like it might survive time spent in a pocket, and deposited it in one of the paper bags next to the register. Though he could only guess at prices, he left a couple of ranmya coins on the counter.
Before he reached the door leading to the alley, a faint noise drifted to his ears. Footsteps. Not from inside, but from the sidewalk in front of the building. Suspecting a pair of enforcers on patrol, he crouched behind the counter. A single slender figure in black came into view. Wraps covered the person’s hair and face, leaving only eyes visible, but he had the impression of a woman beneath the clothing. She looked both ways down the street, then pressed her face against the window, peering into the bakery.
Sicarius had long ago learned how many shadows it took to hide him-and his short blond hair, which he usually left uncovered-so he didn’t bother lowering his head. He knew she couldn’t see him. After taking a long look, the woman left the window and headed for the alley where the side door was located.
She would see him if she strode through the entrance that was two feet from his side. He’d locked the door after entering-one didn’t leave sign of trespass, even if one was still inside the building-but if this person had a key, she could be in momentarily.
He’d already committed the layout to memory, so he took a few steps into the half of the open room dedicated to baking and scaled a sturdy rack mounted to a wall. He climbed into the rafters, finding a spot between two parallel beams. Scratches sounded at the doorknob. Lock picks. Interesting. Feet and hands pressed against opposing beams, the shadows cloaking his body, Sicarius found a position that he could hold for hours-though he hoped she proved a more apt lock picker than that.
A few minutes passed with nothing except the soft scrapes of metal tools probing within the doorknob. He couldn’t hear the rest of the team from inside, but while he waited motionless in the rafters, he thought of Amaranthe. It had to be an hour after midnight by now. It was time to find her.
He was of a mind to hop down, open the door, and confront-or perhaps stalk past and ignore-the other intruder. That was when the lock thunked. The door eased open, and the woman’s head poked inside. Sicarius had left himself a clean line of sight to the entrance, and he could have hurled a throwing knife, even from the precarious position in the rafters, but the woman hadn’t done anything to prove herself an enemy yet.
Once she believed the building was empty, she hustled inside, heading straight for an office in the rear. She didn’t bump any of the racks or counters in the dark, so Sicarius surmised she’d been there before, perhaps at night. He remembered the scratches around the lock.
The office door was open. The woman stepped inside only for a moment, then slipped out again, weaving back through the kitchen and toward the exit. Having no reason to suspect her errand had anything to do with him, Sicarius let her go. The lock thunked again, and she was gone.
After waiting a few moments, he dropped to the floor. On the chance it was relevant, he headed for the office to see what the woman had done. Though shuttered, the wall window let in an iota of light, enough for him to see an envelope on the desk. It might have been there all along, but the woman hadn’t been inside long enough to do more than grab something or drop something off, and she hadn’t left with anything noticeable.
After taking note of its exact position on the desk, so he could return it to the appropriate spot, Sicarius picked it up and explored it with his fingers. A wax seal secured the flap, so he couldn’t break it without revealing that the contents had been read. He probed the pattern with his fingers. The elegant calligraphy style of the single letter gave him trouble at first, but he eventually identified it by touch. An F. His mind went straight to Forge. Was the owner of the bakery a member of the organization?
He thought about breaking the seal to see what was inside, but there wasn’t enough light to read by anyway. He held the envelope to his nose. The scent of the wax, freshly pressed, was the most prominent odor, but something else underlay it, something very old and distantly familiar, a unique mix of staleness and antiseptic cleanliness and-
Sicarius lowered his hand, almost dropping the letter. It was the smell of those strange alien tunnels he’d been sent to almost twenty years prior. He’d been little more than a boy, but the week he’d spent up there in the Northern Frontier was indelibly imprinted on his mind. He doubted this letter had come from there, but that aircraft Amaranthe had been in had the same scent. The smell of it had been in her hair, along with the dirt and blood, when he’d retrieved her.
He eyed the letter. This meant the craft was no longer in the wetlands, hundreds of miles to the south. It was here.
Curi, Sicarius decided, wasn’t going to get her mail. He tucked the envelope into his pocket. He’d wait to read it until he could share it with Amaranthe.
Reminded of her missing state, he jogged out of the bakery. Once outside again, with the door relocked behind him, he strode toward the others. It was time to check the Gazette.
A few steps before he reached the group, the sound of low voices drifted to his ears. Enforcers? Or the rest of the team? The voices were coming from the street on the other side of the bakery, a block away. Sicarius glided past Yara, Books, and the others without them noticing and eased around the corner.
Amaranthe led the approaching group; he’d recognize her gait at any distance. Thanks to the feminine curves that the military fatigues and weapon-laden belt didn’t quite hide, there was a touch of hip sway to her determined stride. Further bundled in a parka with the fur-lined hood pulled around her face, she spoke with the man beside her as they walked. Even without the swordstick and the confident but lopsided gait, Sicarius would have known it to be Mancrest. He refused to acknowledge any residual jealousy that stirred at seeing them together; he’d made his interests clear to Amaranthe and offered himself as a mate. When she decided she wished such a thing-not, he reluctantly admitted, guaranteed to be soon, thanks to Pike-he trusted she’d choose him.