“I do.”
“Well, then. Have your slaves water your mounts while we look over the herd. Are they safe to leave on their own?”
“Oh, yes. No worries there.” Micum turned to the others and curtly ordered them to see to the horses.
Seregil and the others bowed and led the string over to a long trough beside the corral. They stayed there, hooded and silent, while Micum and the man headed up into the meadow beyond the house.
“Yhakobin’s widow must be selling off her herd for capital,” murmured Seregil.
“I don’t understand. Why are you doing this in broad daylight?” Rieser asked.
“Micum is finding out how many people live here, so we know what to expect if we come back tonight. This place is part of Yhakobin’s estate.”
“Where is the tunnel?”
Seregil pointed to the stable. “It comes up in there.”
Micum and farmer returned and went into the house together. Micum came out again after a time, smiling and smelling of beer and sausage. He’d brought them some of the latter in a napkin. A woman and a young girl with dark braids stood by the open doorway, smiling as they watched the men go back to the stable.
“Oh hell, a child!” Seregil muttered under his breath.
Micum? Alec signed.
Seregil gave him a slight nod. The girl looked to be the same age as Micum’s youngest daughter, Illia.
“If the time comes, I will kill them,” Rieser whispered.
“Because they’re only Tír?” hissed Alec.
“We’re not killing anyone unless it’s absolutely necessary, and leave out the girl and the woman,” Seregil told him. “We’re not murderers.”
“And yet you kill?”
“Only when necessary. This lot shouldn’t be any problem. I haven’t seen anyone else around.”
“There was a drunken stable hand the night we escaped,” Alec reminded him.
“Let’s hope he hasn’t improved his habits.”
Micum struck a deal for three fine Aurënfaie horses and parted on the best of terms with the master of the house. Alec tied the new ones into the string they already had, and they set off the way they’d come.
“Well?” asked Seregil when they were out of sight of the house.
“It’s just the family you saw, a hired man, and a stable boy,” Micum told them. “There’s a front room as you go in, with a kitchen on the left and the bedchamber at the back. I assume the hired man sleeps in the front room or the barn.”
“Good to know. Hopefully it won’t come to needing it, though,” Alec said.
They reached the thick stand of trees and took their horse string to the heart of it, tethering them there. Then they waited for night to fall, watching the bow of a waxing moon sinking in the west. Seregil took a spare shirt from his pack and cut it into strips with Micum’s knife, then wrapped them around the iron hooks of the grapple, to deaden the sound of it when he used it on the wall.
“I guess it’s time,” he said when it was full dark. He tied the neck of his cloak more tightly to cover his collar. “We should be back by sunrise if everything goes according to plan. If we’re not and you don’t find us between here and the farm, ride into the city and see if they’re burning our entrails and gouging out our eyes.”
“You shouldn’t joke about such things,” warned Rieser.
“He jokes about everything,” Alec explained.
“It’s better than worrying,” said Seregil. “Micum, if we’re not captured, go to an inn by the south gate and we’ll find you. Come on, Alec. We’ve got risks to face and books to steal.”
CHAPTER 27
Nightrunning
SEREGIL and Alec were doubly careful as they rode back toward the villa, keeping well away from the road. It was a clear night, and the stars cast enough light for them to be seen. If they were caught now, with no master and no papers—not to mention the bag containing the grappling hook and the rope slung from Seregil’s saddlebow—then they would find themselves back in the slave market pretty damn quick.
But Illior’s luck was with them; they reached the villa lane without encountering anyone. Avoiding that, too, they flanked the hill. It took some searching, but they found the mouth of the gully that ran behind the villa. It lay at the end of a farm road, and the mouth of it was choked with rubbish. From here they could see a bit of the villa and torches burning there.
Picking their way over discarded crockery, broken tool handles, furniture, and a few rotting bed ticks, they led their horses as far in as they could, then left them tethered when it grew too narrow. As hoped, the gully brought them in back of the house directly behind the workshop. They stayed there, watching the stars wheel an hour’s time and talking in signs. Sounds came to them on the still night air—the banging of pots being washed in the kitchen, guards talking in the courtyard above their heads, the flittering of bats and yipping of foxes on the hunt.
Seregil wondered who was tending the children now. Their nursemaid, Rhania, had killed herself while helping him escape, and he still felt the loss. He’d known her for such a short time, but she was a brave woman who’d deserved better than dying with a collar around her neck.
A little after midnight, Seregil climbed the side of the gully and pitched the muffled grapple up with practiced ease. It caught on the first try with only a small scratching sound. He and Alec grasped the rope together and put their weight on it to be sure. It held.
“Here we go, then,” Seregil whispered, then caught Alec by the back of the neck and gave him a kiss.
“Just in case?”
A chill ran up Seregil’s spine. “No, talí. For luck. Wait for my signal.”
“Luck in the shadows,” Alec whispered after him as he started up the wall.
“And in the Light,” Seregil whispered back, though he hoped light wasn’t going to be a factor.
He made it easily to the top of the wall; from there it was a short jump to the low-pitched roof of the workshop. Fortunately, one of the shuttered skylights was on this side of the ridgeline. If he could get it open without alerting the entire household, it was a safer way in than climbing down to the front door.
Lowering himself onto the roof tiles, he climbed up to the ridge to scan the courtyard. There was no one there that he could see but a sleeping watchman.
He crawled back to the skylight. The shutter was six feet high and about half that across. Fortunately it was lifted by means of a pair of pulleys mounted on a post on the hinge side. The thick rope that operated it passed through an opening in the roof, and there was enough space around the rope for Seregil to see that no light was coming up from below.
He went back to the wall and hissed softly for Alec, who climbed nimbly up. Seregil signaled silently and together they hauled on the shutter rope. It opened smoothly on well-oiled hinges. The workshop below was pitch-dark, so he took a lightstone from his tool roll and dropped it in. It bounced off something and rolled under something else, but they could still see the glow of it. As far as they could tell, the place was deserted.
Alec pulled up their rope and reset the grapple so they could climb down into the shop. Seregil slid down first and retrieved the stone. Going to the cellar door, he opened it enough to see that there was no light there, either.
Alec came down and took out a light of his own. “Look,” Seregil whispered.
There were footprints in the dust around the bookcases and a chair beside a lamp stand. A few others showed that people had walked around the room and gone to the small tent at the far end. It was painted with rings of what were most likely alchemical symbols of some sort. The dust was disturbed in front of it, showing where someone had knelt down, presumably to investigate its contents.
Curious, Seregil went to the tent and pulled back the flap while Alec began searching the bookcases. In addition to a few leather bags and a gold chalice, there was a locked casket that looked large enough to hold a book like the one Alec had described.