“Why us?” Locke’s excitement was tempered with genuine puzzlement. “If he’s only got two guards, anyone who wanted to could go in there with a gang.”
“Never in life,” said Chains, chuckling. “Barsavi won’t have it. The Razona’s a quiet district where doors don’t get kicked in. That’s the Peace. Anybody breaks it, they’re liable to have their precious bits cut off and stitched to their eyeballs. So instead of sending in brutes through the door, we send a quiet type through the window.”
Chains turned the slate toward Calo, Galdo, and Locke. The top half was taken up by a rough diagram of houses and their surrounding streets and alleys. Beneath that was a sketch of a necklace, with large ovoid shapes dangling from a thick central collar. Chains tapped one of his fingers against this sketch.
“One piece,” he said. “That’s all we’re after. One from twenty or so, and they won’t have time to put up much of a fuss about it. A gold necklace with nine hanging emeralds. Pop out the stones, send them nine different directions, and melt down the gold. Untraceable profit.”
“How do we do it?” asked Locke.
“Well, that’s half the fun.” Chains scratched at his chin. “You said yourself, it’s a test. You’ll be working with Sabetha, since she’s had more experience at this sort of thing. Calo and Galdo will be your top-eyes; that is, watching the area to cover your ass. I’ll be on the ground nearby, but I won’t be directly involved. My crooked little wonders get to sort the rest out for themselves.”
Locke’s heart raced. Test or not, a chance to work together with Sabetha, on something exciting? The gods loved him!
“Where is she now?”
“Here.” Chains pointed to a square sketched on the upper portion of the slate. “On the Via Selaine. Four-story house with a rooftop garden. That’s our target. She’ll be nearby until dark; at first moonrise she’ll meet you in this alley.” Chains ran his finger up and down a set of chalk lines, blurring them. “Once the Sanzas are in position to keep an eye on the street, the rest is up to you and Sabetha.”
“That’s it, then?”
“That’s it. And remember, I want one emerald necklace. I don’t need two, or the deed to the townhouse, or the bloody crown jewels of Camorr. Tonight’s definitely a night for you to underachieve.”
6
FULL CAMORRI night at last, after a twilight spent nervously fidgeting in an alley, waiting for Sabetha to make contact. Now Locke was with her, up on the roof of the house next door to their target, crouched among the old wooden frames and empty pots of a long-untended garden. It was just past second moonrise, and the wide-open sky was on fire with stars, ten thousand flickering white eyes staring down at Locke, as though eager to see him get to work.
Three feet away, a low dark shape against the stone parapet, lay Sabetha. Her only words to him at their meeting had been “Shut up, keep close, and stay quiet.” He’d done that, following her up the alley wall of the house they now sat upon, using windowsills and deep decorative carvings to haul himself up with little effort. Since then his urge to speak with her had been overruled by his terror of annoying her, and so he fancied that he’d done a fine imitation of a corpse from the moment they’d arrived. When she finally did speak, her soft voice actually startled him.
“I think they’ve gone to sleep at last.”
“Wh-what? Who?”
“The three old women who live here.” Sabetha set her head against the stones of the rooftop and listened for several moments. “They sleep on the second floor, but it never hurts to be careful.”
“Oh. Of course.”
“Never worked a roof before. Isn’t that the case, boy?” Sabetha moved slightly, and so quietly that Locke couldn’t hear a single ruffle of her dark tunic and trousers. She peeked over the parapet for no more than the span of a few heartbeats, then crouched back down.
“I, um, no. Not like this.”
“Well, think you can confine yourself to stealing just what we’ve been sent for? Or should I have the yellowjackets rouse out bucket-lines in case you burn the Razona down?”
“I—I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll be careful.”
“Whatever I say?” Her face was in silvery-gray shadow, but her eyes caught the starlight as she turned to him, so he could see them clearly. “You mean it?”
“Oh, yes.” Locke nodded several times. “On my heart. Come hell or Eldren-fire.”
“Good. You might not fuck this up, then.” She gestured toward the parapet. “Move slow. Raise up just high enough to get your eyes over the edge. Take a good look.”
Locke peeked out over the southern parapet of the townhouse; their target house with its thick rooftop garden was to his right, and four stories below him was a clean stretch of cobbled road washed with moonlight. The Razona seemed a gentle, quiet place—no drunks sprawled in gutters, no tavern doors banging constantly open and closed, no yellowjackets moving in squads with truncheons drawn and shields out. Dozens of alchemical globes burned at street level, behind windows and above doors, like bunches of fiery fruit. Only the alleys and rooftops seemed wrapped in anything like real darkness.
“You see Calo and Galdo?” asked Sabetha.
“No.”
“Good. That means they’re where they should be. If something goes wrong—if a squad of yellowjackets shows up in the street, let’s say—those two will start hollering ‘The master wants more wine, the master wants more wine.’ ”
“What then?”
“They run, and we do likewise.” Sabetha crawled over beside him, and Locke felt his breath catch in his throat. Her next words were spoken into his ear. “First rule of roof work is, know how you’re getting down. Do you?”
“Um, same way we came?”
“Too slow. Too risky. Climbing down at speed is more dangerous than going up, especially at night.” She pointed to a thin gray line in the middle of the roof, a line that Locke’s eyes followed to a mess of pots and broken trellises. “I anchored that line when I came up. Demi-silk, should get us down to five feet off the ground. If we need to run, throw it over the edge, slide down as fast as you can, and leave it behind. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Now, look across here.” She nudged his head up above the parapet again, and pointed at an alley across the street. “That’s the escape route. You’ll have to cross the road, but one of the Sanzas should be in cover there watching for you. Chains is another block or two past that. If it all goes to hell, find a Sanza. Understand?”
“Yeah. But what if we don’t get caught?”
“Same plan, boy. We just do it slower. Ready?”
“Sure. Whenever you say. How do we, um, get across?”
“Fire plank.” Sabetha crawled toward the parapet facing their target house, beckoning for him to follow. She gently tapped a long wooden board that rested snug against the stone wall. “In case the place burns up beneath you, you swing it across to the neighbors and hope they like you.”
Working quietly and slowly, the two children lifted the fifteen-foot plank to the edge of the parapet and swiveled it out over the alley, Sabetha guiding it while Locke put his full weight on the inner edge. He felt uneasily like a catapult stone about to fly if the other end should fall, but after a few chancy moments Sabetha had the far end of the plank settled on the parapet of their target house. She hopped gracefully atop it, then got down on her hands and knees.
“One at a time,” she whispered. “Stay low and don’t hurry.”
Across she went, while Locke’s heart raced with the familiar excitement of a crime about to get under way. The farm-field smell of the Hangman’s Wind filled the air, and a warm breeze caught at Locke’s hair. To the northeast loomed the impossibly tall shadows of the Five Towers, with their crowns of silver and gold lanterns, warm artificial constellations mingling with the cold and real stars.
Now came Locke’s turn. The board would have been unnervingly narrow for an adult, but someone Locke’s size could turn around on it without bothering to stand up. He went over with ease, rolled off the edge of the plank, and crouched amid the wet smells of a living garden. Dark boughs of leaves rustled above him, and he almost jumped when Sabetha reached out of the shadows and grabbed him by the shoulder.