The Grave Thief: Book Three of The Twilight Reign (36 page)

Showing a breathtaking lack of loyalty, Lesarl had suggested that last so that if Mihn were seen, his build, coupled with the plait, would lead observers to direct any possible blame towards the Temple of the Lady and her devotees. The Chief Steward hadn’t been impressed that his agents there had recently ignored his orders; he was quite happy for any potential problems to land on the temple’s doorstep rather than his own.

Mihn had skirted the perimeter earlier and had a fair idea of where the guards would be stationed. Even while taking care not to be seen - he was, after all, suspiciously foreign-looking, as Isak was always quick to point out - he’d made an extra effort to keep clear of the patrolling penitents. The crucial detail of the mission was to avoid being detected; Lesarl’s other available agents were better at murder than subtlety, hence his current position.

But as was often the case, subtle also meant convoluted. Lesarl had been vague on the details of what would happen when Mihn unbound the wire and removed the vase lid, but he did at least suggest that Mihn beat a swift retreat and make his escape in the ensuing confusion.

Mihn slid off the oilskin he’d been wearing, kicked off his boots and set off through the darkness. Immediately he felt a change, an altering of his perceptions of the Land. He couldn’t hear his own footsteps against the drumming of the rain falling on the cobblestones, and yet only an occasional discordant drop fell on his shoulders. The pain from his tattoos had been replaced with a warm tingle as he walked from one shadow to the next. It was disconcerting at first, but it wasn’t long before Mihn was enjoying the sensation. It was not comforting, nor even comfortable, but it sparked inside him a thrill like he’d experienced when his father first taught him to track and stalk: the excitement of a predator hunting.

Mihn had mastered the art with such remarkable speed that his father had known years before time that his son was easily agile and deft enough to be trained as a Harlequin. Now he had the witch’s magic, which enhanced his skills even further, beyond any normal human talent.

The cold was painful on his toes but he blocked out the discomfort and focused instead on his journey. The first patrol loomed out of the darkness and Mihn veered closer to the warehouse . . . their gazes washed over him without registering.
In darkness it is less shape that betrays the prey than movement
. The spell woven into his skin did not mask what he was - the magic required for that was beyond the witch’s abilities - but it did hide his actions. Wearing black in the shadows, Mihn could have stood still in a shadow half the distance from the two sodden penitents without being spotted.

As their heads turned to check the other direction, Mihn broke from the shadow and continued on his journey with swift, silent strides. He smiled underneath his hood as he saw the high priest’s palace up ahead. The tattoos had done everything Mihn had asked from the witch. Now it was time to see what trouble a ghost with a mission could stir up.

The palace was not a building designed to prevent intruders, and the increased security of the past month was founded upon complacency. Reaching the end of the warehouses, Mihn took a few moments to check one last time. There were guards at the temple entrance of course, as Death’s house must remain always open, but the palace of the high priest had only a single patrolling penitent doing slow circuits. Mihn waited for the man to stray into a blind spot where he would be out of sight of the outer guards, then raced soundlessly up behind him and used one fighting stick to deliver a hard blow to the back of his head.

He dragged the unconscious guard into the shadows and pulled out the moonshine. He poured most of it into the man’s mouth and massaged his throat until he swallowed. If he did wake up again he’d have twice the headache. Then Mihn spilled a liberal amount down the penitent’s robe, and dabbed a bit of the man’s blood on the wall nearby.

Bastard was well-known and popular with the more serious drinkers, being a fast road to blackouts and near-comatose sleep. Lesarl’s informants had told him the priests had restricted supply within the compound, so the most likely question to be asked here was why the guard hadn’t shared with his mates. If he woke to tell a different story, it would just as likely be viewed as weaselling out of a charge, rather than the truth.

That done, Mihn checked there were no patrols in sight before he took a run at the nearest wall; momentum carried him to the raised ground-floor windowsill. The bite of icy-cold stone made Mihn hiss softly as he dragged himself up on to the ledge, but he didn’t intend using his grapple on such a clear, silent night unless absolutely necessary. The ceilings of the ground-floor rooms were at least twenty feet high, grand enough for receiving important guests, but with the added bonus that the windows went up almost to the ceiling.

Once he was upright, supporting himself on the window embrasure, Mihn could see the sigils scratched into the thin panes of glass that would amplify the sound of breaking glass, and it was fair to assume that there would be more on the thick oak frame to do something similar if the whole window was broken or removed.

Carefully, Mihn turned himself around so that he was facing out towards the street. Ancient Tirah was a magical sight with its spired halls and imposing towers illuminated by Alterr’s light. Tirah in the middle of a winter rainstorm was something else again: a miserable city of hateful streets and uncaring, lofty arrogance.

A city of snobs, looking disdainfully down on everyone else - especially everyone who has business outside on a night like this
, Mihn thought with rare petulance as he watched a patrol wander past in the distance, not even bothering to look up at the palace. His fingers and toes were starting to ache with the cold, and they complained further as he flexed them to keep the blood flowing.

But then again, I’ve spent more nights like this outside than I can remember, and everywhere looks pretty awful when it’s raining
.

The life of a wanderer had taught Mihn one thing above all else; bitterness would kill him if he let it. As an automatic reaction he argued the point in his mind, aware that complaint would poison his mood and allow mistakes he couldn’t afford.

Gods, I’d almost forgotten what it was like at home; the freezing rain coming down off the northern coast that felt like it could strip the flesh from your bones
. Slowly a smile forced its way onto his lips.
And Pirail in the Elven Waste - how stupid to forget to leave that place before winter set in . . . damn wind didn’t seem so awful in summer
.

He shook his fingers out.
Time to go
. He put flattened palms against the wall on either side of the window, braced, and lifted himself up until he could do the same with his feet.

And Tio He
, he continued in his head to distract himself from the pain of the stone’s freezing, rough surface on his skin as he edged his hands upwards and repeated the movement.
Air so thick and heavy you could almost take a bite out of it.

He manoeuvred one hand under the lintel and wedged the fingers of his right in the crack above it so he could pull his feet up further, ignoring the screaming complaints from his fingers as they took so much of his body-weight. He wasted no time in pushing himself clear of the window and up, grabbing the windowsill of the first floor with his left hand.

Mihn gave a quiet grunt as he got his forearm onto the windowsill and pulled himself up until he could twist and sit down.
Ter Nol
, he thought as he filled his lungs with air and flexed his hands again, this time checking for cuts as much as keeping the circulation going.
Perhaps I could go back to Ter Nol and enjoy the view for a few years. Summer and autumn both, some of the most beautiful evenings I’ve ever seen were while I was sitting on Narwhale Dock. I’m sure after a year or two I’d hardly even notice the smell.

He stood on the windowsill and leaned out to check the window above him. The second floor was a fair way off. He pulled a pair of what looked like broken daggers from a leg pocket. They each had a fat inch or so of metal, like hooked blades, and were designed for climbing rather than fighting. Reaching above the lintel he stabbed one between the stones and pulled it gingerly, gradually letting it take his weight. The blade was strong enough, but he felt his wrist wobble slightly - the blade didn’t have enough purchase. Sighing, he jerked the dagger out of the mortar and slipped them both back into the pocket.

‘Grapple it is then,’ he whispered, his lips brushing against the stone of the wall as he leaned to the right to gauge the distance. ‘Let’s hope they didn’t bother securing every window in the whole damn building.’

The double-headed hook was securely bound to his back, but even with numb fingers Mihn managed to free it quickly. He hadn’t wanted to use the grapple, but the distance was short enough to the next windowsill that he was confident it wouldn’t be too obvious except to anyone already watching, and if that were the case, he already had a problem. Within a minute he was crouched in the shadow of the second-floor window and smiling at the pristine surface of each pane of glass.

He stowed the grapple carefully before removing the lead around one pane with his knife so he could ease out the glass and slide a hand inside to open the bolt. Soon he was standing in a barely furnished office, thanking the accuracy of Lesarl’s information as he put the window pane back and redrew the heavy curtain against the winter air. As an after-thought he dried as much of his body as he could on the inside of the curtain - it would dry long before anyone might check, and it was certainly safer than leaving damp footprints in the corridor.

He left the room and ventured out into the corridor, taking a moment to place himself on the map he’d memorised, then setting off left for the servants’ stair. He went up two flights and quickly found the high priest’s bedroom, which, together with the man’s vast private office, occupied half the floor.

The ornate patterned curtains that hung over the three doorways to the room had been drawn back from the middle entrance which, by tradition, lacked a door, in imitation of the temple. This was where High Priest Bern received formal petitions. Mihn stepped silently through and checked his surroundings. The single oil lamp hanging in the corridor gave only a little light, enough to reveal the bare outlines, but that was sufficient for him to make out the shelves against the walls, and only a desk and a couple of chairs standing in the centre of an otherwise clear floor.

On the right was another doorway, which led to the high priest’s bedroom. Mihn guessed it would be locked, despite the weak security he’d encountered thus far, but he didn’t bother trying it - he didn’t need to. He pulled a sheaf of papers from inside his shirt and scattered them around the desk, then unstrapped the jar and set it on the floor.

Above him was a long beam running the length of the room, almost as wide as his body and certainly big enough to perch on while he watched events unfold - he was pretty sure anyone entering the room soon wasn’t going to be bothered about looking up, and he had the witch’s spell if they did. He carefully unknotted the wire holding the jar’s lid on. The jar itself was little bigger than a flattened palm, and twice the thickness. It had a dark green swirling pattern on it that Mihn didn’t recognise. Once the lid was dislodged he didn’t wait around but launched himself off Jopel Bern’s desk. He grabbed the beam above and quietly swung himself up until he was lying flat along it. Then he kept very still and watched the jar.

It did precisely nothing. One heartbeat stretched into five, then ten. Mihn realised he’d been holding his breath and let it out softly . . . and as he did so a dull green glow began to build around the mouth of the jar. Without warning it rose in the air and expanded into a cloud larger than a man before coalescing into a figure.

Merciful Gods, let the witch’s magic work here too
, he prayed as he gripped the beam tighter.

The daemon was the size and approximate form of a large man, and naked, with irregular clumps of spines like a mangy porcupine. While its left hand was relatively normal - if you ignored the over-long fingers and claws - the right was much larger, with two stubby, finger-like protrusions from which extended a spray of long, thick spines.

As Mihn watched, the daemon twisted its body left and right. It had no neck on which to turn its flattened head, but it did have an assortment of eyes to cover most angles. For a moment he wondered why it was turning - until he heard a snuffling sound and saw the hanging flap of skin on its face twitch up and jerk first in one direction, then the next.

Realising what it was doing, Mihn readied himself to leap from the beam the moment he saw the quill-arm rise. The daemon continued to look around, sniffing the air with increasing vigour, taking a step forward towards the neatly stacked shelves on the opposite wall. It continued by fits and starts, following a scent Mihn couldn’t fathom, until it reached a corner shelf.

The daemon sniffed hard, grabbed the end book and flung the entire row of files and books onto the floor, then gave a growl and swept something else aside - a wooden panel, Mihn guessed, from the way it clattered to the floor - and peered at the wall.

Mihn couldn’t see what it was looking at, but whatever it had found didn’t worry the daemon. Nor, it appeared, did the sound of a muffled voice from the high priest’s bedroom. With a heavy, rolling sound that might have been a chuckle, the daemon reached out and wiped its hand against the wall before reaching into a recess and pulling out a thick book. In the faint green-tinted light of magic playing around the daemon, Mihn saw the corners of the book gleam.

The daemon turned back, hefting the large book in one hand with an appreciative grunt. Though he couldn’t see its mouth, or even if it had a mouth beneath that strange, oversized nose, Mihn could tell it was pleased: it had found what it had been looking for.