Using one hand to hold his mouth wide, she dislodged a piece of rat skin with the tip of her knife. Tossing it into the air, Jynx downed it in a single gulp. Out of the corner of her eye, Aeryn saw Will take a step backward and draw in a hissing breath.
Though most people found the idea of eating rat repulsive, Aeryn wished she could find an entire building chockfull of the things. That or pigeons; Aeryn vastly preferred pigeons to rats. Jynx’s ribs stood out even further than Aeryn’s. Though that was a mixed blessing—everyone assumed the draven was a hound because he was so emancipated—Aeryn wished she could fill Jynx’s belly and see him grow to his full size. Even if that meant he would have to be kept well away from crowded areas, soldiers, guards, sellswords, Lords, Ladies, women, and the like.
“Is that better, boy?” she asked, sheathing her blade.
Licking her face and brushing against her chest, Jynx loped off, fading like mist into the shadows. Hopefully he would find another small meal or two as he followed along, out of sight.
“You’re bloody crazy. That thing could have taken off your hand with a sneeze,” Will said as he started walking.
A growl sounded out of the fog.
Will jumped and frantically swiveled his head. He found nothing, of course.
Aeryn chuckled. “I think he heard you. Good boy, Jynx,” she said to the shadows, getting a rise at the shivers that racked Will’s head and neck. A barely audible yip in return made Aeryn smile.
Will lengthened his strides and doubled his pace.
Before long, Aeryn watched as Will kicked gravel off a cracked and weathered beam lying among a pile of debris on the far side of a stable. Climbing onto the stable’s low roof, he laid it down to span the gap between the building and inner edge of the Lord’s Wall.
Will chuckled. “Rickon would have a blasted heart attack if he knew what we were doing. And using the stable where he works at that.”
Following swiftly after, Aeryn frowned. She was not as devout as Rickon—not by a long shot—but the stableboy was a friend. Additionally, no few street urchins went to the pudgy boy for help when they needed someone handy with a needle and thread. Rickon never turned anyone away.
Aeryn waited for the telltale creaking of the board as Jynx ambled across before pulling it over and handing it to Will, who had already dropped to the ground on the other side. The draven could scramble up the four pace high Lord’s Wall without help, but claws on stone made an awful racket. She would rather not be spotted by the soldiers manning the wall further down, nearer to the gate.
Carefully hiding the makeshift walkway beneath a layer of dirt, Will hurriedly led Aeryn towards a broad-roofed, three-story house. They strained their ears and ducked away at the slightest whisper of a footstep, flicker of a bobbing lantern, or creaking of leather armor as soldiers and guards made their rounds. If anyone saw them, they would find themselves drowning in a pool of their own blood. And that would pale in comparison to their fate if a Shade—or worse yet, Voice—mistook them for a Shadow.
Back pressed to the head-high, foot-thick curtain wall surrounding the estate, Will peeked over the top. “This is it,” he whispered.
Aeryn looked over and performed a quick survey. An expansive array of courtyards and gardens, fountains and meticulously manicured shrubs, the house at its center was a veritable palace. She concentrated specially on the richly decorated interior visible beyond the lighted windows. Aeryn could not even begin to imagine how life would be different had she grown up here and not on the streets. She could however, imagine exactly how much Will’s coin would help sate her stomach after she finished this job.
“Same as last time?” she asked.
Will shook his head. “Even better. My informants tell me we’ll have no problems,” he said, as if his “informants” were not just disgruntled servants or sellswords too low on coin to buy another round for themselves. “With the anniversary of Nameless’ rule tomorrow, the nobles are gathered for a fancy dinner gala at a mansion owned by some Lady named Mareen. They even took most of their guards with them. We’ll have all the time in the world.” He pointed toward the far side. “There’s a small servants’ entrance over there that is perfect.”
Aeryn chuckled. “I don’t know where you find the time to scout all the places you do.”
“It’s easy when you don’t spend all your time counting your fingers to make sure they are all still there.” Will looked into the darkness to where he thought the draven was. He was not even close.
Loping off before Aeryn could form a retort, he paused when he reached the far side of the wall, glanced around to ensure there were no guards lurking nearby, then hopped over and sprinted to the nearest shrub. Aeryn was right behind, Jynx glued to her side the whole way.
“That’s it,” he said, panting.
“How often do they use it?”
“A couple times an hour; they keep it propped open for that very reason. See those barrels at the side?”
Aeryn nodded that she did, then said, “Yes,” when she remembered how much better her night vision was than his.
“That’s where the servants dump their sweepings and dirtied wash water. I’ll hide over there. When you come out with the goods, hand them to me and I’ll ferry them to the bushes here.” He grinned from ear to ear. “If we’re careful, they’ll never even know we were inside. We’ll make out like Nameless himself.”
“You’ve been preparing for this for a while, huh?” Aeryn asked, impressed. Most of the jobs were involved little more than sneak in without being seen, get out without being caught, then run before an alarm was raised or a sword descended toward their neck.
“Naw, I’m just that good,” Will said with every ounce of false modesty he could muster. The boy would boast himself into his grave. “We’ll wait here one cycle so you can get a hand on the servant’s timings, then get started. I want to get enough to set myself up like a king.”
He might just be able to, Aeryn mused as they waited. If what she had seen thus far was any indication, he could get enough coin to set himself up as a minor merchant. Not that that life was for Will, but—
“Annette? Annette?” came a shout.
Aeryn raised her head and watched as a straight-backed girl about her age emerged from the door and tossed out a pail of water.
“Yes, mother?” the girl—Annette—shouted back.
“Don’t forget to draw clean water when you come back.”
“Yes, mother.” Walking a few paces into the dark, Annette began to work the metal pump handle of a well. When the pail had been washed out and filled again, she headed back inside.
“Now,” Will hissed.
Together, they dashed to the door, keeping low and to the deeper shadows to avoid anyone that might have chanced to look out a window. Aeryn was just leaving Will behind the barrels when he grabbed her arm.
“I’ll squawk like a skree if anyone returns. Oh, and don’t forget to grab a few canvas sacks while you’re in there. See you in a little bit.”
Aeryn sighed. For all his boasting and planning, he forgot to bring bags? “Keep an eye on him, Jynx,” she said to Will’s back. She grinned when she heard Will suck in a breath at finding the draven standing right behind him breathing down his neck.
Aeryn relaxed her mind and let it wander. She moved fluidly, one with the shadows. The world grew slightly brighter. Will’s form blurred to a gray mist while Jynx’s became sharply visible. Opening the servants’ door, she stepped inside.
Unlike everyone in the outer city, nobles never had squeaky hinges. That alone made her job vastly easier, though wide halls free of clutter also helped immeasurably. Staying to the darker corridors, lit only by the reflected glow of lanterns, Aeryn cautiously crept along. For whatever reason most people, even those that lived in smaller two and three room houses, only ever used certain small segments while avoiding others areas all together.
That went doubly so for nobles. Even with scores of servants at their bidding, they typically only
used a small fraction of their estates. The other parts seemed perpetually dark; their contents covered in white linen cloths, standing around like ghosts awaiting permission to live again.
Living in a leaky shack pressed up against an abandoned and mostly collapsed building, Aeryn would never understand their motives. Why pay for a house if you were not going to use it all? Why not spend the money on other things? Things like food and clothing?
Aeryn made a handful of trips to those lesser-used parts, pillaging a mirrored lamp stand, a pair of gilded candelabras, and a handful of some bronze trinkets. Will ferried each in turn to their makeshift hidey-hole.
After the fourth such trip, Will spoke up. “Alright,” he said. “We’ve got just about all we can carry. Now try for the good stuff.”
“It is too risky,” Aeryn whispered back. “There are servants everywhere.” Cleaning and polishing, with cooks stoking the stoves for the morning’s sweetbreads, pastries, and puddings, it looked like they were readying for when their Lord arrives back home. “I’ll be spotted for sure.”
Will rubbed his hands together, eyes hungrily flicking from their stashed goods, which in all probability would not be noticed missing for months. “We’ll split whatever you find; fifty-fifty.”
Aeryn’s eyes widened. With that kind of coin. . . Well, suffice it to say she and Jynx just might get a decent meal for once. “Give me ten minutes. You hear any shouts of alarm and you give me a distraction. A loud one.”
“Done.” Will licked his lips.
This time when Aeryn went back in, she very nearly crawled down the lighted corridors. Hardly daring to breathe for fear of alerting one of the many servants to her presence, she searched for bedrooms, dressing rooms, studies, and clean, dusted cellars. If the estate had coins, jewelry, silks, gold medallions, or anything of the like lying around—and it bore all the indications that it did—they would be surely stored in one of those places.
Ducking down a side hallway at the echo of footsteps from ahead, she had to sprint around the next corner and the two halls after. Pausing for a moment and listening to the fading footsteps to ensure she had not been discovered, she cautiously worked further into the interior.
A few minutes and she found herself on the top floor, halfway down a long, tapestried hall. Set with marble busts of a middle-aged woman and what was no doubt the woman’s child, Aeryn felt hope blossom in her chest. This was exactly where she would find a bedroom littered with bejeweled necklaces, gold rings, earrings, and other precious gems.
“. . .really have to go get it now?” came a dim voice from around corner at the end of the hall.
Aeryn pivoted on her heels with a small sigh. So much for filling my stomach. Three steps and she stopped cold.
“Do you want to tell Lord Merek why he can’t have his tea when he gets back? You know how he gets after staying out all night,” continued the conversation at her back.
In the silences between the words, Aeryn caught the scraping clunk of a servant awkwardly laden with full pails of water. Only this time, the sounds came from her front. She was trapped.
Casting her head back and forth, Aeryn weighed her options: confront the voices or the footsteps. She could see no other way out. The problem was that either was sure to set off an alarm. Aeryn could probably sprint out of the house before someone caught her, but unless Will had all their loot packed and ready to go, it would cost them a night’s worth of work. Moreover, it would cost her Will’s employment.
With time running out and a decision to make, Aeryn decided on the footsteps. Counting on an overworked, underpaid servant, and a fair amount of luck, she strode forward, dropping her head to her chest and staring at the floor tiles. If it worked, she might just salvage something from the rapidly worsening night. If not, well. . . She tried not to think about how furious Will would be, running away empty handed.
“You’re right, of course,” said the voice. “I just wish I didn’t have to go out again at this time of night.”
Aeryn kept moving, trying to blend into the background as just another servant about her nightly chores. The sounds on either side of her grew louder. Only a few paces now. . .
Something tugged at her eyes.
Focus! If she got distracted now, she would give herself away as surely as a mouse in a snake’s den.
Another step and the tug became a sharp pull.
Born on the streets, Aeryn knew better than to ignore her instincts. She spun and searched for what had drawn her attention.
“Be thankful for what you have, girl. At least you’re not in some rundown hovel—”
Aeryn’s eyes locked onto the floor near the wall. At first, she saw nothing, just a small arc, barely deep enough to be visible, scored in the tile. She kept looking, ever conscious of the trap’s rapidly closing jaws.
“—can’t afford to pay—“
Wait. Her eyes snapped back to the tile. That was what had drawn her attention. She had seen its like before, though typically accompanied by a handle.
“—your tithes.”
It was the work of a door, tightly set in its frame, sliding open. Running her hands along the seam—visible now that she knew what to look for—she found a cleverly hidden clasp and pulled it open. Stale air rushed to greet her. She ducked inside and quickly pulled it shut.
“Lord Merek pays the Voices well enough for the protection of entire household. After all, he doesn’t want a repeat of what happened decades ago. Poor man. The thing still weighs heavily on him. I wouldn’t wish what happened to him on anyone,” finished the woman’s voice as she rounded the corner. “Annette! What are you doing up here?”
“Filling the wash basin,” Annette said. A loud thunk and a few drops of water seeped under the door’s edge.
“You better step too. Reeve arrived a minute ago. He said that Lord Merek is on his way back.”
A high-pitched squeak and footsteps faded rapidly down the hall. “What’s she running for, Marilyn?”
Marilyn laughed. “My daughter forgot—”
A shark triple call of a skree filtered into the room. Aeryn pulled her head from the door. Lord Merek was not on his way back, he was back.
She had to find another way out, and fast. With the two women out in the hall gabbing away as if they were twins separated from birth, Aeryn faded into the darkness, trying to become one with the shadows.
The room brightened just enough that she could make out its contents without a candle. It was nothing like what she had expected. Some kind of dressing room, only one like she had never expected a Lord to have. Except for a plain, fine-stitched white wool tunic and breeches, soft, well-worn leather slippers, and a simple dagger, the room was dusty and empty.
Aeryn picked up the dagger and turned it over in her hand. It was even simpler than she had realized. Unlike hers, with its weather worn cracks packed with dirt and nicks adorning the blade, plain did not mean cheap. Not by a long shot.
Perfectly balanced, the steel folded back on itself time and again, creating a wavy pattern that ended in a razor sharp edge. Instead of common pine, the hilt was dark mahogany. She was just able to make out the letters I and B in flowing script enameled with care into opposing sides of the blade itself. The skree called again, insistent.
Stuffing the blade into her corded waist band—she did need a new one—Aeryn ran her hands along the walls, searching for another way out. She found it just as a man’s voice stopped the women’s conversation short. There was only one person that deep tenor could belong to: Lord Merek.
Heedless of what was on the other side, only thinking to escape as quickly as possible, Aeryn pushed the door open. She stepped into an ornate bedroom complete with gold washbasin and silk-canopied bed. She crept out into the far hall just in time to hear an exasperated sigh.
“No, Nameless was not there,” Lord Merek said. “Do you really think a God, who has ruled so long his name has been forgotten to all but the Voices, would show up to drink, eat, and gossip with a fe
w Lords and Ladies? Though, I did hear a Voice and see a few Shades with a number of soldiers standing guard.”
Aeryn shook her head. Here she had begun feeling bad for taking the blade that was obviously worth more than just its sharp edge to its owner. Just the tiniest sliver of guilt. Of course, overhearing the Lord talk so casually about cavorting with Shades and Voices, never mind Nameless, Maerilin’s God, had sent those thoughts flying.
She walked briskly down the lighted corridors, trying hard as she could to become a shadow herself. It was past time to be on her way.
“Who has been in my bedroom?” Merek bellowed.
Before the shout registered, a servant carrying an armload of towels and sheets rounded the corner. Aeryn gave up all pretenses at blending in and ran, barreling past the startled man as he dropped the fabric into a pile at the floor.
The exact moment the sound of shattering window panes swept through the hall—that would be Will’s diversion—the servant’s voice cried out.
“Shadow!”
Like a series of cascading waterfalls, one twinkling crash after another hit Aeryn’s ears. A chorus of panicked women’s screams rolled but a moment behind.
Aeryn picked up speed, her feet practically floating over the rug-covered stone floors. Half a dozen twists and turns later, scaring even more servants along the way, and she burst out of the door and into the night.
She nearly ran Will over in the process as he wound back to hurl a rock. He dropped it and rushed off to the pile of loot. Jynx was at her side in an instant.
“Leave it,” Aeryn said. If life on the streets had taught her one thing, it was to keep moving forward. Never stand still, never go sideways, and never, ever go backward; those were sure ways to end up on the wrong side of the earth.
Will froze, indecision painted clear as day across his face. Aeryn could almost hear his mind clicking away the possibilities. He looked toward the loot. Then to Aeryn. Then back to the loot.
“No time,” Aeryn shouted.
“Bloody rat guts!” Will wisely chose following her and vaulted over the curtain wall surrounding the Lord’s estate.
Shadowborn Page 2