Never mind how well the shutters fit, it was the window itself that featured prominently in Skif's plans.
He flung open the shutters to let air in, and unrolled his pallet of blankets on the floor, adding his spare clothing beneath as extra padding, and untied the kerchief in which he had bundled the rest of his few belongings. Including the one, very special object that he had gone to a lot of trouble to filch.
A glass. A real glass.
He set it in the corner out of harm's way, and laid himself down on his pallet, closing his eyes and opening his ears, taking stock of his surroundings. Bazie would have been proud of him.
Not a lot of street noise; this house was on a dead-end, and most of the other places on the street also supplied rooms to let. Skif identified the few sounds coming from outside and ignored them, one by one.
Above him, footsteps. Four, perhaps five children of varying ages, all barefoot. A woman, also barefoot. That would be Widder Koil, who made artificial flowers with paper and fabric. Presumably the children helped as well; otherwise, he couldn't imagine how she alone would earn enough to feed them all. The voices drifted down from above, edgy with hunger, but not loud.
Below, nothing. The first-floor tenant was still asleep; he was a night carter, one of the few tenants here with a respectable and relatively well-paying job.
To the left, the wall with no fireplace, four shrill female voices. Whores, four sisters sharing two rooms; relatively Prosperous and without a protector. They didn't need one; the arsonist slept with at least two of them on a regular basis, and no one wanted to chance his anger.
And to the right…
Snores. The chimney echoed with them. Not surprising; like Skif, the arsonist worked at night The question was, which of the two rooms was the man's bed
Skif's hope was that it was not the one with the fireplace, but there was no way of telling if the man was snoring very loudly in the next room, or not quite as loudly in the fireplace room.
At least I can hear him.
Well there was nothing more to do now. He let his concentration lapse, and consciously relaxed the muscles of his face and jaw as he had learned to do when he wanted to sleep. He would be able to learn more in a few candlemarks. And when his target went out tonight, so would he.
* * * * * * * * * *
He woke all at once, and knew why. The window above his head showed a dark-blue sky with a single star, his room was shrouded in shadows, and next door, the snoring had stopped.
Jass-Taln was awake.
He sat up quickly and felt in the corner for his precious glass. He put it up against the wall and put his ear against the bottom of it.
The man moved like a cat; Skif had to give him that much grudging credit. He made very little noise as he walked around his rooms, and unlike some people, he didn't talk to himself. No coughing, no sneezing, no spitting; how ironic that a cold blooded murderer made such an ideal neighbor.
Ideal. Unless, of course, you actually wanted to hear what he was up to.
Now there was some noise in the fireplace! Skif frowned in concentration, isolating the sounds.
Whiffling. Shavings hitting the bricks. The sound of a hand scraping the shavings together, then putting them in the grate.
Then the rattling and scratching of a handful of twigs. A log coming down atop them.
A metallic clunk startled him, though he should have expected it. Taln-Jass had just slapped a pan down onto the grill over his cooking fire.
A while later; the sound of something scraping and rattling in the pan. Eating sounds. Frequent belches.
All of which were sweeter than any Bard's music to Skif's ears. The trick with the glass worked, just as his teacher had claimed it would! And it sounded as if the room with the fireplace was the arsonist's “public” room, for all of these noises were nearer than the snores had been. Which meant that when the man brought clients here for private discussions, it would be the room nearest Skif where those discussions would take place.
A fierce elation thrilled through him, and he grinned with clenched teeth. Who needed drink, drugs, or even threats when you could listen to your target at will, unnoticed?
Now all he needed was time and patience, and both were, at last, on his side.
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ALTHOUGH Skif' spatience was taxed to the uttermost by the lack of any concrete progress in his quest, he at least was collecting a great deal of personal information on his “neighbor,” Jass. The arsonist, it soon developed, had as many names as there were moons in the calendar.
Not only was he known by the two Skif knew, but he was addressed variously as “Hodak” by his landlord, “Derial” by the whores, and various nicknames derived from the slight squint of one eye when he was thinking, his ability to move silently, the fact that a small piece was missing from his ear, and some not-very-clever but thoroughly obscene epithets that passed for humor among his acquaintances.
Skif decided on “Jass.” Easy to remember, it had no associations for him other than his target. But he was careful never to personally address the man at all, much less by name, since he wasn't actually supposed to know any of his names. The few times they met on the stairs or the landing, Skif ducked his head subserviently and crammed himself to the wall to let the arsonist pass. Let Jass think that Skif was afraid of him — all that meant was that Jass had never yet gotten a look at anything other than the top of Skif's head.
A man of many trades was Jass. Over the course of three fortnights, Skif listened in to his conversations when he had someone with him in his rooms — pillow talk and business talk, and boasts when deep in his cups. He wasn't “just” an arsonist. If he had been, he'd have gone short more often than not, as that wasn't a trade that he was called on to practice nearly often enough to make a living at it. Together with all four of the whores he practiced a variation on the ketchin' lay where one of the girls would lure an unsuspecting customer into Jass' clutches where the would-be lecher soon found himself hit over the head and robbed.
He was also known for setting fires, of course — though, so far since Skif had moved in, they were all minor acts of outrage, designed to frighten shopkeepers into paying for “protection” from one of the three gangs he worked for, or to punish those who had refused to do so. On rare occasions, he sold information, most of which Skif didn't understand, but seemed to have to do with intrigues among some of the city's wealthier folk. Where he got these tidbits was a mystery to Skif, although there was a direct connection with the darker side of Haven, in that the information generally was about who among Jass's cronies had been hired by one of the upright citizens, and for what dirty job.
The craggy-faced sell-sword was not the only one interested in Jass' information. There were at least three other takers to Skif's knowledge, two of whom transacted their business only within the four walls of Jass's fireplace room.
But to Skif's growing impatience, not once had Jass been commissioned by the same person who had put him to igniting the tenement house.
Skif might have learned more — this summer brought a rash of tiny, “mysterious” fires to blight the streets of Haven — but he had to eat too. Frustratingly, he would sometimes return to his room after a night of roof walking only to hear the tail end of a conversation that could have been interesting, or to hear Jass himself come in after a long night of — what? Skif seldom knew; that was the frustrating part. He might learn the next day of a fire that Jass could have been responsible for, or the discovery of a feckless fool lying coshed in an alley, who had trusted in the blandishments of a face that drink made desirable that might belong to one of Jass’ girls. But unless Jass boasted specifically, there was no way of telling what could be laid at his door and not someone else’s.