Samlor turned and strode back to his companions. Behind him, he heard the fellow diving for the gold which he could at last safely retrieve.
Well, the fool had already outlived the caravan master by a couple decades, so it wasn't absolutely certain that possession of that much money was the kiss of death. They'd made a bargain, and Samlor had kept his part of it. The results beyond that weren't a concern of his.
"If\ a fool follows his heart," said Tjainufi from the Napatan's shoulder, "he does wisely."
Samlor started, looking at the manikin with appraising eyes. "Do you think so?" he asked, then grimaced to find himself talking to the unnatural little-thing. "Khamwas," he said gruffly, "come help me with the window."
Star was curled in the corner of the door alcove, dozing with the Napatan's cape for a pillow. Khamwas stood in front of her, watching the street as well as the caravan master. He was very slim without the bulk of the outer garment, and his bare chest was no garb for this night.
"I, ah," he said, looking down at the child. "I thought it would be good if she got some rest, so… She's very like my own daughter, you know."
"Wish I had more talent for what she needs," said the caravan master quietly, staring at the child also. "Wish I knew what she needs, what any kid needs. But you do what you can."
He grimaced again. "Bring 'er along, will you? I need you at the side to hand me this jack when I'm ready for it-" he fluffed his cloak open to display the tool " – and I don't want her in plain sight on the street, even though it means getting her up again."
The sky had closed in above the passage between the two buildings. It was as dark as a narrow cave, and for the time being the air was as motionless as that of a cavern miles below the ground. Samlor found his location by subconscious memory of the six cautious paces which had brought him beneath the window when he could see it.
He put down the jack and began the task of ascending the wall.
The houses were built close enough to one another that the caravan master could brace himself against opposite walls, first with his hands and then by wedging his hobnails into narrow cracks in the masonry. He mounted to the second floor window like a frog swimming, his legs lifting him each time his arms had locked on a fresh hold.
When Samlor's left palm touched the window ledge, he explored it by touch with all the care required of a possible trap with razor edges. Beneath him he heard his companions, Khamwas murmuring a response to Star's whine. He was glad he had the other man along on this business, not least because Khamwas could look after the child.
The bars were set solidly into stone lintels, and they were just as tight together as Samlor had thought. There were glazed windows within, swung back in sashes and apparently hooked to keep breezes from banging them to and fro.
There was no light in the room beyond, and utterly no sound.
Samlor set both his feet against the wall of Setios' house and braced his back on the adjacent building. If he'd thought things through, he might have redoubled his cloak before he set his shoulders on the rough stone, but he'd be all right for the brief while he expected to cling here. The important thing was that his hands were free.
"Khamwas," he called softly, "hand me up the jack. And don't let the handle fall out of it, right?"
"Just a mo-oh," said the Napatan. "There. .»
Samlor twisted his torso against the wall and reached down as far as he could with his left hand. He could not see Khamwas, but the scrunch of wood suggested that the Napatan had wedged his staff between the walls and was using the slant to raise himself, even though one of his hands was full of the heavy jack.
"Hold it," Samlor whispered. His fingers brushed one of the crossholes by which the jack was turned. By squeezing down a fraction further, the caravan master managed to hook the rod between his index and middle fingers, though the strain on them and the web of his hand was agonizing.
"There, you bitch!" he snarled at it as he lurched up against pain that he had to ignore for the instant before his right hand closed on the barrel of the jack and took the strain. Straightening up was difficult-at one angle, the chain closure of his cloak threatened to throttle him-but it felt so good not to have a tearing weight on his fingers that he could easily ignore lesser problems.
He set the jack sideways on the window ledge, angling it so that the screw top touched a bar while the base was firmly against the^tone sash. The handle rotated the screw slightly before binding against the ledge. Samlor removed the handle, set the end into the other crosshole (offset ninety degrees from the first) and cranked the screw up another quarter turn. The base scrunched and the top gave an iron-to-iron squeak.
The caravan master grinned and began pumping the screw higher. The bars protecting the window were sturdy, but Samlor's powerful arm muscles were multiplied by the handle's leverage and the shallow-pitched threads of the housejack. The combination would have torn apart the stone sash if that were necessary.
It wasn't, but chips of cement spalled away before the bar set in it fractured. The jack slipped. Samlor swore and clamped it with the hand that had been resting on the barrel more for his support than its.
"Are you all right?" Khamwas whispered in concern.
"Yeah, it's all right," the caravan master replied. He didn't want to arouse people in the house behind him-by this time he was convinced that Setios had decamped with all his household in the past three weeks-but explaining the situation to his companion calmed both of them. "The bars're brittle, cast instead of worked. It surprised me when it broke, but it makes the job simpler.
"A single plowing does not produce the crop," said Tjainufi.
"Don't get your bowels in an uproar," the caravan master grunted back.
He began levering more furiously, each stroke requiring him to reset the jack handle. The crack of metal breaking had been unexpected; and right now, the things the caravan master did expect included some that were really unpleasant.
The bar had broken at its lower end, where it took the strain of the jack. The top, where the displacement was less acute, remained in its stone transom-but it was just a matter of time before that gave way as well.
Each thrust of the handle now was against increased resistance. Samlor's shoulders were more than equal to the job, but the palm of his right hand felt as if it might be starting to bruise under the strain. The calluses were no help in this.
The second bar, driven by the broken end of the first, bent ahead of the jack's thrust until it touched the third. Samlor continued to crank.
Cement pattered down from the transom in bits ranging as large as fingernails. The bars were crushing their setting under a sidethrust which they had not been designed to resist.
The bar which had broken initially pulled free. Only luck and Samlor's reflexive grab kept it from dropping to the ground with enough inertia to crush any skull it met in its path.
"Heqt," the Cirdonian muttered as he found himself with a firm grip on the length of iron. "Heqt be praised." Before he resumed work, he pulled the silver medallion and its thong outside his tunic, so that the embossed face of the toad goddess could watch his eiforts.
After a moment's consideration, he slid the bar inside Setios' house instead of trying to pass it on to Khamwas. The clunk-cling! it made on the hard flooring within was less noticeable than the squeal inevitable as the screw jack forced its way onward.
The grill was beginning to collapse. The bars were set in a trough in the hard limestone of the sill and transom. Any attempt to hammer the iron inward would be resisted by three inches of rock. The daubs of cement which held the bars apart within the trough were not nearly as strong.