It was to be expected after the first two murders. Alzena and Nurhar had provided for it. This Rokat's protectors were no more imaginative than the Rokat guards in Bihan and Janaal had been.
They had not thought to put more than one disguised guard in front of the stable on Cod Alley that served the Tapestry Lane houses. They had not thought that Nurhar could pass the guard unseen, to leave a small keg of the very flammable jelly called battlefire in the hayloft.
They had not thought that the bunch of rough types—draymen, coal carriers, and the like—that came roistering down Tapestry Lane now, after a night of spending Nurhur's coin in a nearby wineshop, might have an argument not far from Rokat's house. Hiring the rough folk had been the trickiest part, unless watched they would drink up their fee before they were needed. Nurhar had stayed with them until half an hour ago, doling out coins one at a time, buying food to make sure a few heads would be clear enough to remember their orders,
Alzena stepped onto a window ledge on Rokat's neighbors house. Her target's roof was less than a story below. Scouting the areas around some of the less wealthy Rokats' homes had been a task she and Nurhar had done before they went near Jamar. This location had been the best; they had saved it for when Duke Vedris decided to give protection to the Rokat scum. Before dawn Alzena had. walked across roofs; to get here, unseen and unsuspected, by the 'archers, and had entered her current place: through the rooftop door. The house's occupants were up and around, but Alzena ignored them. Her sanctuary was their unused nursery. No one had entered it yet that morning, which saved her the trouble of killing them. From here it was a, four-foot leap to her target's flat roof.
The roughs were a hundred yards away, lurching closer' as they argued.
Peering through the slit in the spells that hid her, Alzena saw a cloud of smoke rise behind the houses. Nurhar's fire arrows had set the Cod Alley stable roof ablaze.
The roughs were fifty yards off. A hamlike fist swung; Alzena heard furious snarls. Two of them waded into each other. Their friends tried to pull them apart, then joined in. Alzena watched. A few house doors opened: those suspicious looking servants peered out. If they were Provost's Guards in disguise, they would be uneasy. This was a prosperous street. Peacekeepers here moved troublemakers on in a hurry. It would go against their training to stand by during a brawl.
Here came the supposed beggars to watch, maybe to interfere. Now all of the roughs were punching, kicking, wrestling. One of the beggars moved in and went flying. A manservant ran out of a house and dove into the fight, as did the second beggar.
Alzena grinned. Now the other false servants would watch their comrades in the fray—not Rokat's house, or anything that took place three stories overhead.
Hot air patted her; a flat boom sounded from the alley. The keg of battlefire in the burning stable had caught and exploded. Bells pealed and horns called, summoning everyone to fight the blaze. The archers on top of Rokat's house ran to the back of the fiat roof.
Alzena checked her rope to make sure it was properly anchored, then jumped out and across from her window to her target. She landed with a thud that went unheard in the fire alarms' racket. Off with the rope. Walking cat-footed, Alzena reached the door to the house, and eased herself inside. The archers, watching the fire as it tried to jump from the stable to the neighboring buildings, never looked behind, them.
Two guards in the garret below had gone to stare out of the tiny dormer window at the fire. Alzena was past them and down the stairs, into the house proper, with no one the wiser.
The family's protectors had moved them to the nursery, the biggest room on the floor below the garret. A nursemaid was playing with the baby in its crib while the young mother spun and told a story to the little girl. Fariji Rokat paced, his dark, face tight.
Alzena drew her knife and killed the baby first, one cut, while the maid stared. When she screamed, the mother leaped up so quickly that she knocked over the little girl and the spinning wheel. The mother raced over to see what had become of the infant. Alzena killed the girl-child as she began to cry..
Fariji looked right at them. What did he see? Her knife was spelled with unmagic, like the, sword she now drew from, the sheath on, her back, Rokat wouldn't see the blade, only his little girl as she fell over, bleeding.
He gasped and lunged for the child, just as his wife had gone for the baby. Alzena stepped into his rush and cut at his neck, smiling. He had seen his children die. That was good.
She stuffed his head into her carry-pouch and turned to regard the woman and the maid. They stared at Fariji Rokat's headless body, screaming. Alzena hesitated. Was the woman pregnant again? She was young; they had seemed much in love.
No use taking chances, Alzena thought, and ran the woman through. Going to the side window, she climbed out. Below her was a first-story addition to the house. She dropped onto it with a clatter of tiles.
She felt an arrow's bite. It took her in the calf, punching through the bulge of muscle to the other side. Alzena cursed and rolled off the tile roof. She landed easily on the pile of hay that lay on the ground, waiting for the servants to cover the garden for the winter. More arrows flew around her—the quick-witted archer was shooting fast, trying to hit what he couldn't see. She waited until a man ran out the back door, then slipped into the Rokat house. The real servants had been sent away—only warriors in street clothes were here now, and most of them were running upstairs in answer to the nursemaid's shrieks.
In the room near the front door Alzena stopped to deal with her injury. First she broke off the arrowhead, then yanked the shaft from her leg. Both went into her carry-pouch with the head; she dared not leave them for any harrier-mages to use. There was some blood, not a lot, and most was going into her boot. If she tried to bandage it here, people would see the bandage apparently floating in midair outside the nothingness spells.
She limped out of the house and into the street. The roughs were still fighting. From the sounds that came from Cod Alley, the fire was out of control. She hobbled down Tapestry Lane, shaking her head.
There ought to be fun in this victory over the hated Rokats. Even the prospect of her family's pleasure in what she did seemed unimportant now. Before corning to the house she had worried about killing the children, but when her work got to that, she had been cold. What was the point to any of this, if she felt nothing?
After lunch, Sandry remembered that she needed some copper beads for a trim on one of her uncle's tunics. Like any noble she could have asked the merchant, whose shop lay on Arrow Road in the eastern part of the city, to send a clerk to her with a selection, but it was too nice a day to stay indoors. The bead merchant, a woman she and Lark dealt with often, was delighted to see her, and had a dozen new types of bead to show her. With a number of packages tucked into her saddlebags, Sandry and her guards turned back toward Duke's Citadel. They decided to crosstown on Yanjing Street rather than tangle in the afternoon crowds on streets like Harbor, Gold, and Spicer. They were a block west of Market Square when Kwaben pointed out a billow of smoke ahead, marking a fire. As they rode closer—the blaze was on one of the little streets that emptied onto Yanjing—they began to hear talk a bunch of drunks brawling had started it, some people argued. Others said that Provost’s Guards were protecting a merchant from assassins, and the killers had started the fire.
Hearing that, Sandry and her guards followed the gossip past the alley where the fire was and onto Tapes try Lane. The Provosts Guards had set wooden barri cades there. Inside them a group of tavern roughs sat, faces sullen, roped together as prisoners under three Guards eyes. Another Guard questioned a young woman in a nursemaid's cap and apron who sat on the steps to a house. She rocked back and forth, weeping, scarlet hands pressed to her face.