She slowly lifted the window and froze when for a moment it screeched and stuck and she thought it wouldn't move any more. In that endless moment she heard steps and knew it this time and they were coming down the hall. Not quickly. Perhaps another guest simply walking out to relieve himself or leaving some woman's room to slink away in shadows rather than wake with her. But she didn't think so and she pushed the window again and it barked and slid up.
All below still quiet. Far off a wolf again howling at that full moon and the sound everywhere of the insects in the thick vegetation along the river. A wild and tangled place broken further on by docks and the mill. But no soldiers in their armor or anything else.
Going back to the door she checked to make sure it was latched and then grabbed the post of the small bed and dragged it across the room. Nothing to wedge it against, but it would buy her a second if she needed one. The footsteps stopped at the noise and then came on quickly. At least two of them.
She returned to the window and looked out again and the first man hit the door. He tried it without striking and the lock held and she heard him curse and then the snap as he slammed his shoulder against it. The lock still holding, another curse, and sounds in the hall as others woke up.
It was twenty feet to the ground and nothing between her and it but she looked up and the beams holding the short overhang were rough and open. A beam every two feet running down the roof. She put the knife in her belt and reached out and grabbed the nearest beam and pulled herself into the air. That feeling of everything changing in the world as the support fell away beneath her. Legs swinging forward and a stretching in her arms.
But she'd climbed that damned ladder of bricks and stones to get out of the prison and this distance was nothing to her and she swung out to the edge of the roof. Lanterns coming on in the windows running down the length of the building. Inside the sound of both men kicking at the door and then the thunderous sound as one shouldered it. The crack of the slide lock breaking free and the clatter as it fell to the floorboards.
She couldn't remember the slope of the roof or if it was flat and she swore silently. The bed grinding on the floor behind her. Then she knew she had no choice and she had to hope it was flat or die here and she reached out with one hand and grabbed the edge.
It wasn't flat, but it was a slight slope, and there was a metal brace running along the outside edge. A place for them to stand in the winter when they climbed up and removed the snow. Just a thin strip but enough to get her fingers around. She swung forward with that dark river lurching below her and grabbed the edge with both hands and turned in the air to face the inn – for one moment holding on with just one hand and her heart in her chest and her fingers grinding as they spun – and heard the bed slam into the wall as they shoved the door open.
Two men, both in black cloaks and riding boots. Not soldiers at all but bounty hunters. Both with short swords in hand and one with a crossbow strapped to his back. Her eyes met the taller one's and he didn't blink but started to shout and his jaw was square and thick and his teeth rotten and then she summoned all the strength she had and lunged up onto the roof. Pulling her body up to her chest and dragging it along the rough wood shingles and her arms screaming. Then throwing herself forward to get one elbow up and swinging her legs after it.
He got a hand on her boot, but only for a heartbeat. Then she kicked it away and swung the rest of her body up and sideways and rolled onto the roof.
Below her the inn a cacophony of screaming and yells and she could hear the cook yelling over all else for everyone to be quiet and she wondered how many of them there were in the hall. The hunters alone were silent and she didn't doubt that they were already pushing their way through the hall and for the stairs.
She pulled the knife from her belt and watched the edge of the roof and waited for his fingers to come over so that she could cut them from his body but he hadn't lived this long in his profession by being stupid and they never came. She forced herself to wait five seconds longer and then rolled to her feet and looked out.
The roof rose in front of her and gave her cover from the street, but it also pinned her against the riverbank. If he went down there with the crossbow and could shoot worth a damn he could take her off the roof and collect her body from wherever it landed. But no one could see her yet. To her left another building the same height as this one. She could not remember what it was, but the roof was the same. After that a shorter building with a flat roof and then nothing where a road went down to a dock.
She stood up and ran, boots cracking on the shingles, and threw herself over the gap with that drop below, stretching for the second roof and feeling all the air go out of her and perhaps the world and there was no sound. It seemed even her heartbeat hammering in her ears had stopped. In that moment something stirring within her that was memory but that was also something more and deeper.
A dark shape twisting in wrath. A light over the far mountains and all below them darkness. Here at this mountain pass her and the others standing and her with a sword in her hand and eyes on the sky and it was then that the very mountain shifted like some foundation deep below of pillars and marble had at long last and in neglected decay began to crumble and this world they knew, built as it was upon the worlds of the dead, was starting to fall into that space with the memory of bones and dust and she lost her balance there as the ground lurched and for one moment could see deep down the long cliff face of sheer stone and that endless drop before her. And then someone had the neck of her chainmail and hauled her back to the path and her sword falling end over end, silver washed in that breaking light, and for hours afterward she had that feeling inside her chest of having nothing below her that man was never meant to feel and instinctively feared above all else.
She hit the other roof hard and fell and rolled and pushed herself back up. She knew she was bleeding but she didn't feel any pain yet and that's how it always was. Once she'd killed three men in a church as they were trying to come in through the barred doors and only after everything was done and they were piling the bodies in the street had she noticed the gash running the length of her arm.
They were in the road now and many others as well and lights on in the buildings. She put her head down and ran hard across the roof and tried to gauge the distance to the lower one and almost did and landed hard on it. Pain flaring through her ankle. She didn't know if they'd seen the way she ran or if they were still looking at the roof, but she knew they'd heard that and she rolled down to the edge and jumped. Below her the rocky falling shoreline running down to the river and there the dock and the road going to it.
She landed in the shrubs and rocks and when she got up her forearm was numb and she stumbled down toward the river and then he was on her. She heard him before she felt him and she tried to stop and he hit her in the small of the back with his shoulder. Driving them both to the ground. She felt his hand coming up and she grabbed it both with the hand she could feel and the one she could not and she brought her head down to it and bit into the flesh at the base of his thumb. The taste of blood and salt and sweat and the man screaming. The knife falling from his hand.
Twisting over she threw him aside and pushed herself away, scrabbling in the dirt and gravel. He rolled and came up hunched and holding his hand. She looked for the knife and did not see it and looked back. In that moment all still and quiet and a decision before her that must be made instantly and the whole world turning on it. Or sitting perhaps on that driven axis and waiting to see which way it would turn.