Idrian gave himself a fifty-fifty chance of a guard being posted at the bottom of the gully against exactly this sort of thing. Why wouldn’t they? But, on the other hand, who would be insane enough to try to sneak into a Grent garrison alone?
He took the gamble, proceeding slowly up the gully, stepping lightly so as not to dislodge even the smallest stone. Each movement seemed painstaking and the forgeglass he wore caused his muscles to scream in protest that they weren’t being used to their full potential. He took deep breaths as he went, reminding himself he used to do this all the time hunting crag cats as a kid in the highlands of Marn.
Of course, that was thirty years ago.
Ten yards. Then fifty. Then a hundred. The gully got deeper and wider as he proceeded, and he watched the edges continuously for any sign of a sentry. He could hear talking; smell the waft of a late-night cigarette. Despite the forgeglass he wore, he felt naked without his armor – deeply exposed to the point where discovery was almost certainly a death sentence. Thankfully the gully proved empty.
He was almost to the palace itself, less than a stone’s throw away, when the sound of laughter stopped him in his tracks. He crouched and froze, looking up, watching for movement. Two shadows appeared just ahead of him. Six more feet and he could have reached up and yanked them down by their ankles. They were backlit by nearby torches, paused on the very edge of the gully.
“Glassdamn, man,” one said, “I swear I’m never drinking that stuff again. Barely gives me a buzz but I have to piss all the damn time.” As if to accentuate his statement, the sound of a stream of urine pattered on the stones just in front of Idrian. Idrian swallowed his disgust and didn’t move.
“Your choice,” the other chuckled, “I can’t get enough of it. Hey, did you hear that rumor that the Ossans are pulling out?” Another stream of urine joined the first.
“No. What’s going on?”
“Supposedly a few battalions withdrew just after dark, and more are going to retreat tomorrow.”
“Cease-fire?”
“Nah. They’re shifting troops to oppose Kerite’s Drakes.”
“Thank piss for the Drakes. Duke must have spent a fortune to hire her.” He made a disgusted sound. “We’ll have to go on the offensive tomorrow. Last thing I want to do with the Ironhorns sitting front and center.”
“No kidding. Did you hear what they did to the Two-Seventy-First? Absolutely cut them to ribbons. The Ram leapt off a four-story building and landed on their glassdancer!”
“I don’t believe that.”
“My cousin is in the battalion that was supporting them. Said it was the scariest thing she’s ever seen, and one of those damned grenades blew off her hand.”
The other snorted. By now both streams of urine had finished, and the two men left the gully, continuing their conversation as they went. Idrian let out a sigh of relief when he was finally alone. Even knowing that a single sound might get him killed right then he’d nearly laughed at them talking about him. What a damned way to go out that would have been.
He proceeded to the genesis of the gully and pulled himself up over the lip, checking carefully before rolling across the ground and sprinting to the dubious cover of one of the big, decorative square columns that marched down the face of the palace. He remained there for as long as he dared, listening carefully for any sign of more sentries. There would be fewer here by the palace proper, but they’d also be more likely to catch him in torchlight.
Idrian tried to assess the situation within the palace itself. An officers’ garrison could mean anything: well-ordered and quiet from sundown to sunup, or a damned festival with bottomless drinks and whores dancing on the duke’s billiards tables. It seemed, much to Idrian’s relief, that it was the former. Other than the occasional officer going for a piss, the palace was relatively quiet.
Somewhere in the distance he could hear a child’s laughter. He ignored it petulantly.
Idrian found a servants’ entrance and slipped inside, treading carefully down the darkened hallway. Everything was still. No sign of the officers or the servants. Could it really be this damned easy?
He answered that question himself after winding his way through the servants’ passages, getting lost twice, before finally entering the main foyer. This room was well-lit by gas lamps, causing him to double his speed lest a stray messenger find him here. He hurried to the middle of the room, looked up, and had to choke down a shout of frustration at the sight above him.
The case that had held that cinderite upon his visit just a few months ago was empty.
Idrian hurried back to the dark servants’ halls and swore quietly in every language he knew. The cinderite wasn’t the only piece missing. The walls were conspicuously bare of art and tapestries, the display tables bereft of vases. They must have moved all the valuable art as soon as the Foreign Legion got close. Maybe even at the beginning of the war. It made sense.
A fool’s errand. He would have to return to Demir empty-handed, and hope that Demir gave him another shot. He leaned against the wall for a quick breath, pressing on his godglass eye to get rid of the headache creeping across the front-center of his skull. The child’s laughter was getting closer, as if it were coming from the next room. Time to go back the way he’d come.
Or …
Idrian could hear the soft, steady footsteps of someone patrolling the marble hallways just around the corner. Should he risk it? Was it worth his damned life? He crept forward, head cocked to follow the source of the sound, until he reached an open door into one of the main hallways. It was darker than the foyer, but he could see a tall woman in orange-and-white ducal livery walking slowly down the center of the hall.
She faced away from him, hands clasped behind her back, and she didn’t seem to be listening for anything in particular. One of the duke’s staff? A chaperon for the officers borrowing his palace? The woman stopped at the bottom of a staircase, half toward Idrian, looked around once, and sank to sit on the bottom stair. She looked exhausted, her hair mussed though her uniform was spotless. She gave a yawn and set her head against the banister.
A few minutes later, her eyes were closed.
It was the opportunity Idrian needed, though quite risky. He crept out of his hiding spot and hurried across the hall. He was on her before her eyes could even open, and he yanked her up into his grip with one hand on her neck and the other on her mouth. She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled into his hand.
“Your silence or your life,” Idrian hissed.
To her credit, she kept trying to scream. Nerves of glassdamned steel, and it called Idrian’s bluff. He wasn’t going to kill a servant just for a piece of information. He would give her a good shake, and he did exactly that.
“Tell me where everything is,” he whispered. “The tapestries, the art. Did they move it to a warehouse? Is it in the city, or secreted to the countryside?” The woman glared back at Idrian over his hand. She’d stopped trying to scream, and it was clear she was readjusting her line of thinking – an assassin might be worth losing her life over. But a thief? He slowly took his hand off her throat to encourage thinking of him as the latter. “Tell me and you’ll live through the night.”
She looked down at his hand. Slowly, ready to clap it right back into place, he pulled it away from her mouth. In a low voice, disgust dripping from her tone, she said, “It’s all downstairs, moved to the undercroft in case of Ossan shelling.” Idrian held in a sigh of relief. Right under his damned feet. She stared at the strip of cloth covering his eye, and he hoped she didn’t make the connection between a large Marnish man without an eye and the Ossans’ most famous breacher.