His senses were immediately on alert. There should not have been guards here at the foot of the tower: the ones at the top and the gauntlet of lethal chambers in between were more than enough protection. A last-minute doubling of security? A failure on the part of his informant? No matter now; he was committed.
The men were beyond the door that he listened against. They were static, and judging by the tone of their voices and their conversation they were not particularly alert. But still, they presented something of an inconvenient obstacle.
He lay down with his eye close to the floor and drew out two tiny, flat mirrors attached to long, thin handles. By sliding them under the door and angling them in sequence he was able to obtain a view of the room. It was a large atrium with a domed and frescoed ceiling and a floor of clouded coral marble, overhung by a balcony which created a colonnade all around its edge. In the day, they would be lit by the light shining through the teardrop apertures in the walls, but at night they were cool and dark. Perfect cover.
Now that he had judged it was safe to dare, Keroki was able to ease open the door without a sound, lifting it on its hinges so that they would not whine. Once there was enough space to fit his head through, he peered out. Three guards, talking amongst themselves in the centre of the atrium, dressed in baggy silks of crimson and with nakata blades at their belts. The lanterns that hung from slender golden chains in the central space cast a dim and intimate illumination. The edges of the room were brightened with free-standing lamps of coiled brass, but it was not enough to dispel the patches of shadow.
Deciding that the guards could not see the doorway well enough to notice that it was slightly ajar, he slipped out and behind one of the broad pillars of the colonnade. His heartbeat had barely sped up at all with the proximity of danger; he trod with the calm ease of a jungle cat. The guards' voices echoed about the atrium as he glided from pillar to pillar, timing his crossings to when their talk would become particularly animated, or one of them would laugh, so as to cover even the slightest noise he might make. He knew how to move in such a way that he could evade the eye's natural tendency to be drawn to an object in motion, so that unless they were looking directly at him they would not detect him passing along the dim recesses of the cloisters.
His intention was to skirt the room and leave undetected through the door on the other side, which would bring him near to Barak Reki's bedchamber. In all probability he would have managed it had he not triggered the pressure plate that was hidden behind one of the pillars.
He felt the infinitesimal give in the stone beneath his foot, the fractional slide and click as he depressed it. His body froze, his pulse and breath going still.
Nothing happened.
He exhaled slowly. He was not foolish enough to think that trap had malfunctioned, but it appeared to be designed in such a way that it triggered when it was released. Standing on it merely primed the mechanism. Stepping off would activate it. Most people would not even have noticed the tiny shift that betrayed its presence; but Keroki was sharper than most people.
He cursed silently to himself. The colonnade had been left dark to tempt an intruder, and at its most inviting point a trap had been laid. Keroki's informer had known nothing about it. He should have realised that it was too easy.
Despite himself, a chill sweat began to form on his brow. He assessed his predicament. He was safely concealed from the guards, but he was also stuck here. Taking the weight of his foot from the pressure plate would undoubtedly not be pleasant for him. But what kind of trap was it? He could not imagine it would be anything fatal or overly dangerous, since this was a functional room and hence visited by people who would not know about the trap. Perhaps it was only rigged at night? Even so, he found it hard to believe that anyone would run the risk of accidentally killing a guest. An alarm, then; most probably a loud chime struck by a hammer that was cocked by putting weight on the pressure plate. But an alarm was just as fatal to him, for he had little chance of escaping alive if his presence was discovered.
The sweat inched down his cheek, and minutes crawled by against the background murmur of the guards. He had already wasted enough time negotiating the deadly false rooms in the tower; he could not afford to lose any more. Too soon the dawn would be upon them, and he had best be gone by then if he wanted to see another one.
He was still searching for an answer when the tone of the guards' voices warned him that they were ending their conversation. Then they fell silent, and he heard their soft footsteps heading away in different directions. It took him an instant to realise what they were doing.
They were splitting up and patrolling the colonnade.
He felt a dreadful flood of adrenaline, and mastered it. Years of brutal training had made him ruthlessly discliplined, and he knew when to take advantage of his body's reflexes and when to suppress them. Now was not the time for excitement. He needed to be calm, to think. And he had only seconds in which to do it.
When the guard found him, he was lying flat on his back and in such a way that the shadow of the pillar and the dim light combined to make him hard to see. The guard did not spot him until he was several feet away, and then he had to squint to be sure. It appeared to be a house servant by the garb, unconscious at the base of the pillar as if laid low by an intruder. And if the servant's foot happened to be still pressing down hard on the invisible pressure plate, then the guard was too surprised to notice.
He gave a peremptory whistle to his companions and leaned closer to investigate. Foolishly, he did not imagine any threat from the prone figure. He assumed that the threat had already passed on and left this poor servant in its wake. The assumption cost him his life.
Keroki twisted his body, bringing the small blowpipe to his mouth and firing the dart into the guard's throat. The poison was so fast-acting as to be nearly instantaneous, but even so, the man had a moment to let out a grunt of surprise before his vocal cords locked tight. By the time he had thought to draw his sword, the strength had left his body, and he was slumping. Keroki shifted to catch the falling guard's arm, pivoting on the foot which was still holding down the pressure plate. He pulled the man's weight so that he fell towards his killer, and Keroki muffled the sound of the impact with his own body. The guard was dead by the time Keroki pulled him onto the pressure plate. He sent a silent prayer to his deity Omecha that the mechanism was not especially sensitive, and then slipped his own foot off the plate.
There were no alarms.
The other two guards were calling in response to their companion's whistle now. Keroki slipped another dart into his blowpipe. Looking round the edge of the pillar, he saw one man starting across the atrium from the colonnade, and another in the shadows who had not reacted quite so decisively. Keroki aimed an expert shot and fired across the width of the chamber. The dart flitted invisibly past the first guard in the gloom and hit the man behind him, who slid to the floor with a groan. The sound was loud enough to make the remaining guard turn around. He saw his collapsed companion, swung back with his sword drawn, and took Keroki's third dart just below his eye. He managed a few seconds of defiant staggering before he, too, went limp and thumped to the ground hard enough to crack his skull.
Keroki stepped out from behind the pillar, glanced around the room, and clucked his tongue. The inside man who had provided the poison for his darts really did have a remarkable talent.
He dragged the corpse of the last guard behind the colonnade and used a piece of fabric to wipe away the smeared trail of blood and hair that he left behind him. Then, satisfied that the bodies would not be seen if anyone should casually enter the room, he headed onward. Dawn was pressing on him, and he still had to get back out through the trap-laden false rooms before the household awoke.