Shadows of Sanctuary978-0441806010 (17 page)

Andrew Offutt

1

A minaret topped the Governor's Palace, naturally. The narrow, eventually pointed dome resembled an elongated onion. Its needle-like spire thrust up to pierce the sky. That spire, naturally, flaunted a pennon. It bore the device of Imperial Ranke (Ranket Imperatris). Below, the dome was clamped by a circular wall like upended herbivorous teeth. If ever the palace were attacked, that crenellated wall promised, beware archers in the embrasures between the merlons!

Beware dumpers of boiling oil.

Every bit of it was haughty and imperious, insultingly imperial. And high. Even from the top of the (lower) wall of the granary across the avenue from the wall surrounding the Governor's Palace complex, no grapnel could be hurled, for no human was so strong.

An arrow, however, could be shot.

On a night when the moon over Sanctuary was not a maiden's pale round breast but a niggling little crescent hardly worthy of the business end of a scythe, a bow twanged like a dying lute. An arrow rushed at the pennon spire of the Governor's Palace. After it, like the web-trail of an industrious spider or a wind-blown tent caterpillar, sped a silken cord so slim as to be invisible. And then it was laboriously and time-consumingly drawn and dragged back, for the archer had missed his shot.

He aimed anew, face set for curses rather than prayers. Elevating his bow a bit, he drew to the cheek and, daringly endangering the springy wood, drew even further. Uttering not a prayer but a curse, he released. Away sped the arrow. It trailed its spidery line Hke a strand of spittle in the pallid moonlight. It proved a night for the heeding of curses, if not the answering of prayers. That was appropriate and perhaps significant in Sanctuary called Thieves' World. The shaft streaked past the spire and reached the end of its tether if not its velocity. It snapped back. The line forced it into a curving attempt to return. It snapped around the spire. Twice, thrice, four times. The archer was dragging hard. Keeping taut the silken line bought at the expense of a pair of lovely ear pendants of gold and amethyst and chrysoprase stolen from -never mind. The archer pulled his line, hard. That maintained and increased tension, tightened the arrow's whipping about the spire which was, naturally, gilded. Then all motion ceased. A mourning dove spoke to the night, but no one believed that dolorous call presaged rain. Not in Sanctuary! Not at this time of year. The archer leaned into his line, and braced his heels to lean his full weight on it. The cord was a taut straight-edge of immobility and invisibility under the un-anposing one-ninth moon.

Teeth flashed in the dimness. The archer's, standing atop the granary behind the Governor's Palace of Sanctuary. His mop of hair was blacker than shadowed night and his eyes nearly so, under brows that just missed meeting above a bridged nose that Just missed being falcate.

He collected his other gear, collected himself, swallowed hard, choked up all he could on his line until he was straining, stretched, on tipetoe. Then he thought something rather prayer-like, and out he swung. Out above the street made broad enough to accommodate several big grain wagons abreast he swung, and across it. The looming wall rushed at him. Even with the bending of his knees until they were nearly at his chest, the jar of his impact with the unyielding wall was enough to rattle teeth and turn prayers to curses. Nothing broke, neither legs nor silken line. Certainly not the wall, which was of stone, quarried and cut to form a barrier four feet thick.

He went up the rope in a reverse rappel, step after step and hand over hand. Dragging himself up the wall, walking up the fine perfectly set stones, climbing above death, for that was the penalty for slipping. The street was far below and farther with each pulling step.

He never considered that, or death, for he never considered the possibility of slipping.

A mighty warrior he was not. As an archer he had many peers and many betters. As a youth he was perfect, lean and wiry and strong. He was a highly competent thief in a citylet named for thieves. Not a cutpurse or a street-snatcher or an accoster; a thief. A burglar. As such, he was a superb climber of walls, without better and possibly without peer. He was good at slipping in by high-set windows, too.

His colouring and clothing were for the night, and shadows. They were old friends, he and shadows.

He did not slip. He ascended. He muscled himself atop the broad wall of the Governor's Palace, of Sanctuary. Unerringly, he stepped through the crenel, the embrasure between two merlons like blunt lower teeth. And he was at home, in shadow.

Now, he gazed upon the palace itself; the palace of the golden prince sent out from Ranke to (pretend to) govern Sanctuary. The thief smiled, but with his mouth closed. Here there were tigers in the form of guards, and young teeth would flash even in this most wan of moonlight. That precaution was merely part of his competence.

At that, he had lived only about a score of years. He was not sure whether he was nineteen or twenty or a bit older. No one was sure, in this anile town the conquering Rankans called Thieves' World. Perhaps his mother knew - certainly not the father he had never known and whom she had known casually, for this thief was a bastard by birth and often, even usually, by nature - but who knew who or where his mother was?

Below, within the wall lay ancillary buildings and a courtyard the size of a thoroughfare or a small community common, and guards. Across, just over there, rose the palace. Like him it was a shadow, but it loomed far more imposing. He had broken into it once before. Or rather he had previously gained nocturnal entry in manner clandestine, for that other time he had help. A gate had been left unlocked for him, and a door ajar.

Entering that way was far easier and much preferable to this. But that time the opener of the gate had been bent on the public embarrassment and downfall of the Governor, and the thief was not.

Prince-Governor Kadakithis was no enemy, as a matter of fact, to this youth spawned in the shadows of the wrong end of town. The thief had rendered the Rankan prince two considerable services. He had been rewarded, too, although not in such a manner that he could live happily ever after. Now, on this night of the most niggling of crescent moons, he stood atop the wall and took in his line from behind and below. It stretched upward still, to the pennon spire. It remained taut. He had to believe that it would continue to do. Elsewise he was about to splatter on to the pave below like a dropped pomegranate, a fruit whose pulp is plentiful and whose juice is red. When the line was again taut he yanked, dragged, braced, yanked, swallowed hard, and kicked himself off the wall into Space. His stomach fell two storeys to the pave; he did not. His soft-booted but padded feet struck another wall of cut fulvistone. Impact was no fun and he had to stifle his grunt. Then he went up.

'D'you hear something, Frax?' A voice like a horse-drawn sledge gliding over hard earth. Not stone, or sand, but packed dry earth.

'Mmm? Hm? Huh? Wha'?' A deeper voice.

'I said: Frax, did you hear something?'

Silence. (At sound of the voice the thief had frozen. Hands-forearms-torso atop the very palace; tail in space and legs adangle.)

'Uh-huh. I heard something, Purter. I heered her say "Oh Frax you han'some dawg, you're the best. Now suck on thisun awhile, darling," and then you woke me up, you bastard.'

'We're supposed to be on guard duty not sleeping, Frax, damn it. - Who was she?'

'Not gonto tell you. No I din't hear nothing. What's to hear? An army of Downwinders comin' over the friggin' walls? Somebody riding in on a hootey-owl?'

'Oh,' Purler's higher voice said, with a shiver in it. 'Don't say that. It's dark and creepy enough tonight.'

'Stuporstishus rectum,' Prax accused, with more austerity than skill, and lowered his head again on to his uplifted knees. During their exchange the thief had got his rangy self on to the wall. He made hardly any sound, but those idiots would have drowned out something even as loud as snapping fingers. He wriggled through another embrasure and on to the defence gallery that ran around the top of the palace, below the dome and spire that rose on up, higher than the outer wall. Men trusted with guard duty, he was thinking contemptuously, heard something and blabbered. He shook his head. Idiots! He could teach these stupid soft-butted 'soldiers' a thing or three about security! It took a civilian to know about the best security measures, in such a town as this. For one thing, when you thought you heard something, you shut the hell up and listened. Then you made just a little noise to pretend unconcern, and froze to catch the noise-maker in another movement. The shadow of a shadow, he moved along the gallery, between the smooth curve of the dome and the crenellations of a wall. After thirty-one paces he heard the scuffing footsteps and tap-tapping pikestaff butt of a careless sentry. That persuaded him to squat, get as close to the wall as he could, and lie down. Flat, facing the wall, whose merlons rose above the gallery. He lay perfectly still, a shadow in shadow.

A spider wandered over his shoulder and up his cheek and began struggling in his black mop of hair, and was unmolested. The spider felt warmth, but no movement, not so much as a twitch. (If mental curses could have effect, the spider was a goner.)

The sentry ambled by, scuffing and tapping. The thief heard him yawn. Dumb, he thought, dumb. How nice it was of sentries to pace and make noise, rather than be still and listen!

The sentry having moved on leftward along the perimeter of the wall, the thief moved on rightward; northwestward. He'd an armlet of leather and copper well up his right upper arm, and a long bracer of black leather on that wrist. Each contained a nasty leaf-bladed throwing knife of dull blue-black. There was another in his left buskin, where sheath and hilt were mere decoration. He wore no other weapons, none that showed. Certainly he bore neither sword nor axe, and the bow lay at the base of the granary wall.

He stopped. Stepped into a crenel just above two feet deep. Stared, off into the darkness. Yes. There was the spire of the Temple of Holy Allestina Ever Virgin, poor thing. It was the first of the markers he had so carefully spotted and chosen, this afternoon.

The thief did not intend to enter the palace by just any window. He knew precisely where he was going.

The task of regaining line and arrow was more difficult than he had anticipated. He silenced snarls and curses. Knot a rope ten times and try swinging on it and the accursed thing might well work itself loose. Shoot an arrow to wrap a cord slimmer than a little finger around a damned gilded brass flagpole, and he had to fight to get the damned thing to let go!

Within four or six minutes (with silenced snarls and curses) he had sent enough loops and twitches ripple-writhing up the line to loosen the arrow. It swung once around the spire, twice, encountered the line, and caught. More curses, a sort of prayer, and more twitches and ripples riding up the line. Reluctantly the arrow ended its loving embrace of the pennon spire. The line fluttered loose. Down came the arrow. It fell with a clatter that, to a shadowy thief in shadows, sounded like thunder on a cloudless day. Sleepy sentries heard no thunder. Only he noticed. He reeled in line and arrow. In a crouch, he reached behind him into hi snugly fitted backpack. From it he drew two cylinders of hard wood wrapped with black cloth. Around them he looped his line arrow detached. He held silent for a time, listening. A fly hummed restless and loud. The thief heard nothing to indicate that any o his actions had been noticed with anything approaching alarm. Rising, he went on his way. Along the perimeter of the palace along the flagged walkway betwixt dome and toothy wall.

Moving with a cat suppleness that would have been scary to an] observer, he reached his second marker. Nicely framed betweer two merlons, he could see it, away off in the distance. The purple' black shape ofJulavain's Hill. Again he smiled, tight of lip.

A merlon became a winch, aided by the two wooden cylinders brought for the purpose. They would pay out the silken cord and prevent the stone from slicing it. Its other end he secured to his ankles. And froze, waiting while the sentry clumped by. He was not importantly thumping his pike's butt, now. He no longei cared to keep himself awake. The thief gritted his teeth against the ghastly noise of the hardest of wood grating over harder flagstones. The porker was dragging his pike!

Then silence was thick enough to cut with a knife, of which the thief owned an abundance. He waited. And waited.

At last he stepped, still crouching, into the crenel. Turning, he carefully winched himself, backwards, down the wall. Down and down, until he came to a particular window. It was cut in the shape of a diamond. That decision had involved more than aesthetics; the damned thing was harder to enter. Most carefully indeed, he turned. He paid out the cord with his hands until he was quite upside down outside that window. Blood flowed into his head while he strained muscles and vision until he was assured that the chamber was uninhabited.

Then, grinning, Hanse the thief flipped down and dropped lightly into the bedchamber of H.R.H. Kadakithis, Prince-Governor of Sanctuary. He had done it again! And this time all on his own and without aid. He had breached the wall, eluded the guards, broken into the palace, and was in the very privatemost chamber of the Prince-Governor himself!

Well, lord Prince, you wanted to see Shadowspawn - here he is, awaiting you!

Thus he thought while he freed his ankles of expensive silken line and removed his gloves. At least this time no bedmate waited here for her youthful lord. It was all Hanse could do to keep from laughing aloud in sheerest prideful delight.