Tarrin shapeshifted absently as she reached them, and her gloved hands started moving in the Selani Code, the hand-language her people had developed. That put Allia back on her heels. The Selani didn't teach that to outsiders. -Alright, are we all ready?- her hands asked.
– How did you learn that!- Allia's hands asked with a snapping motion that betrayed her disbelief.
– Sister, there's very little that the Wikuni don't know,- Keritanima replied with a smirk. -I was taught the Code at the same time I was taught the spoken tongue. It was so I'd have an advantage when dealing with Selani.-
– That's quite an advantage,- Tarrin noted.
– This is the first time I've ever used it. I was afraid I was getting rusty.-
– You are,- Tarrin noted.
She glared at him. -Let's move. We're on a tight schedule.-
One thing Tarrin had to admit. She may be a Princess, she may be smart, but she moved like Allia. Keritanima's flowing movements made absolutely no sound, and her flowing style produced no sharp movements that tended to attract the eyes, even when the eyes couldn't see. That she could alter the very way she moved, seemingly at will, was yet another example of just how remarkable she was. Keritanima was always graceful, but the perfect ease in which she moved without making a whisper of sound made her grace in a dress look like a cow trying to two-step by comparison.
They reached the fence without incident, having to wait for a few moments for them to move between the roving patrols, and they moved with quiet, efficient stealth. Tarrin first heaved Allia up and over, then tried to be gentle as he pushed Keritanima's foot as she lept off of his boost. But he realized that there was no reason to be gentle with her. She landed on her feet on the far side of the fence, then expertly tucked in and rolled through her momentum to prevent injury. She knew what she was doing.
After squirming through the fence, they were off. The city of Suld never truly slept, but the night streets were not nearly as crowded as they were during the day, and that allowed Keritanima to lead them unerringly towards the Hammer Cathedral. She had memorized a map of the city streets, and it allowed her to guide them on empty streets and through dark alleys, staying out of sight from anyone who may want to watch or follow.
They stopped to wait for a trio of drunken Wikuni to stagger down the street, hiding in the shadows of an alley. The lamps on poles that illuminated the street kept them back a bit in the alley, out of the direct light, and the rough voices of the sailors echoed on the walls lining the street. From behind the wall, faint sounds of giggling could be heard.
"Someone's having a good time," Keritanima whispered in a chuckle.
"Let's hope they stay focused on what they're doing," Tarrin whispered back. "There's a window right over us."
"Well, I guess that'll depend on him," the Wikuni said with a wink.
"You never had to fight off Jesmind," Tarrin replied absently.
"I certainly am glad of that," Keritanima said with a grin.
Tarrin gave her a look, then snorted.
"They are gone," Allia whispered from behind. "Let us move."
The Hammer Cathedral was surrounded by a large iron fence, much in the same way as the grounds of the Tower were. But this fence only came up to Tarrin's waist, a decorative boundary, and its simple gatehouse and gate, which were more normal sized, were neither ornate nor functional. Tarrin didn't understand why full sized gates were placed on a fence an eldery woman could climb over. They went over that fence directly across from the servant's entrance, but had to hide behind a row of small trees while armed men wearing the livery of the church marched by. The huge sculpture of the Scales of Justice were visible to his night-sighted eyes not far away, and he took a moment to be impressed by them. The pans hung from chains as thick as his leg, and the stand from which they were suspended towered of the large hammer-shaped building which rested beside it. Each pan had to be twenty spans across, and they hung perfectly level with each other. It was said that a single raindrop could make the scales dip to a side, so perfectly balanced they were, but they never did. His father had told him the legend of the scales, that only living things placed upon them made them move. They were used to try criminals against the church, where the power of Karas pronounced judgement on the accused by placing them in the scales. If the accused was guilty, the scale dipped. If he was innocent, the scale rose.
And now they were about to commit a crime against the church. Tarrin mused on that as they darted across the gravelled pathways of the grounds around the cathedral, reaching the small door used by servants and acolytes when performing their daily chores. That door was locked from the inside, but Keritanima knelt by the door and reached into the leather bracers on her arms, and withdrew narrow steel prods. Lockpicks.
It only took her a brief moment to give the lock, set directly into the door, a few expert nudges and pokes, and then she turned the lock. The door creaked open slightly, and she gave her friends the slightest of smiles before they slipped inside.
The interior was much different than the grim stone people saw outside. Banners hung at regular intervals along the walls, both symbols of Karas and tapestries, breaking up the dark monotony of the gray stone. Karas was a god of justice and law, but Karas didn't feel that the pursuit of law and justice had to be sober and taciturn things. The interior of the cathedral, even the servants' passages, were well lit and decorated, seeking to raise the spirits of all who tread the shaped, polished slate stones beneath their feet. There was a long red rug that ran along the center of the passage, starting just in front of a straw mat set by the door so that entrants could clean their shoes, and then trailing off towards the juncture between the three wings of the building.
According to Keritanima's plans, Tarrin remembered that the two flanges of the building were used as storerooms, quarters for the inhabitants, and places of spirtual enlightenment and entertainment. In other words, it was just like the barracks, or the Initiate's Quarters. Behind the doors lining the walls were storerooms, quarters, chambers of peace for prayer, and places where they taught the tenets of their faith. The main section of the cathedral, which formed the handle of the hammer, was the nave and main cathedral area where the services for the public were conducted. Because they were in the residential areas of the building, that meant they ran a better risk of being discovered. But they didn't have far to go.
His every sense alert, Tarrin scanned the torchlit passage with his eyes, sifted through the air with his sensitive nose, listened for even the tiniest sound, seeking to learn of the approach of a resident or guard well before they saw his group. But they encountered nothing as Keritanima led them twenty paces up the wall and then pointed quickly to a large, nondescript section of stone wall. That was the location of the door to the secret passage. Their main task now was to find how it was opened before someone wandered along the passageway and discovered them.
Allia pointed along the door's very faint outline, for it was built so well that only Allia's sharp eyesight could make out its borders. That gave Tarrin and Keritanima a place to look. Tarrin and Keritanima leaned in near the wall and sampled its scent with their noses, sorting through the smell of stone and cloth, the lingering traces of man-smell that permeated the passage, until Tarrin found an area of the wall that had human smell on it. He reared back and looked, and saw the slightest impression of some kind of round button or mechanical device in the narrow crack between two shaped building stones. Reaching between the seams of a stone with the tip of a claw, he pressed that little button.