than himself to look down into that abyss and feel no vertigo.
When the guard had finished and moved on, Malden looked back up, toward the top of the wall. It was close now. One quick sprint and he would be on top. But his hands were so painfully cramped he knew he would arrive unable to use them for anything but climbing. He needed to rest a moment, to rub the blood back into his whitened fingers. He also needed to make sure he would not be seen when he reached the top. Looking around, he saw a window off to his left, no more than a dozen feet away. Moving carefully, as silently as a cat on a carpet, he shifted himself over in that direction. The window was broader than the others he’d seen, though it was also lined with iron bars. Still, it would make a great place to stand for a while. Just a few minutes, he promised himself. Just until he could feel something in the balls of his thumbs.
Yet as he approached the window he heard someone moving around inside. He had to freeze in place again and wait for the people there to go away. And that could have been when his luck ran out.
For exactly at that moment Bikker provided the promised distraction.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Croy hated subterfuge, but sometimes the direct approach was just not appropriate. For instance, when one needs to recover one’s property from a locked room inside the palace, and one is under an order of execution, it behooves one to act in a clandestine fashion.
So instead of marching up to the Burgrave’s door and asking politely, he had come to this. Masquerading as the lover of a lady-in-waiting, and then sneaking into the most secure room in the city.
“I have the key here, somewhere on my person,” Lady Hilde said, and placed a hand on the bodice of her gown. She seemed to be breathing very hard and her eyes were wide as she stared into Croy’s face. “It wasn’t easy to get, you know. I had to wait until the castellan fell asleep at his desk. Luckily for you he’s so old and decrepit, he didn’t wake up even when I took it from his belt. But now—where did I put it?”
He supposed she might be frightened. It was an understandable emotion. They were inside the Burgrave’s counting house, a place no one of any rank was permitted to enter after it was locked up for the night. Even by day only the castellan and the bailiff had keys to the place. It was so secure that the castellan hadn’t bothered posting guards out front—after all, anyone approaching it from the courtyard would have had to pass dozens of guards already.
Of course, if you had access to one of the Burgravine’s ladies-in-waiting, and she was willing to do you a favor, there weren’t a lot of places in Ness that were off-limits. Croy felt distinctly uneasy about what he was doing. This was very much counter to his moral code, and he was a man for whom ethics meant everything. Still, he was able to assuage his conscience a bit. He wasn’t hear to steal—he was no thief. He had only come here to recover that which belonged to him. That which he was pledged to honor and uphold, in fact: the sword he counted as his soul.
The counting house was built into the wall that surrounded the palace grounds, and had to be the most secure structure in the Free City, because it was where the Burgrave kept his gold when he wasn’t spending it. It was a vast trove, stuffed full of bags of coin, coffers overflowing with silver plate, great heaps of gems, and the jewelry of Ommen Tarness’s wife, the Burgravine.
None of which was what Croy had come for. His swords had been taken from him when he was arrested, and brought here, placed with the most important relics and treasures of the Free City of Ness. Just behind the locked door he faced. Hilde had claimed she could get the key for him only if he brought her inside with him so she could see the treasures for herself. Lacking a better plan, he had agreed.
“I seem to be having trouble finding the key,” she told him. “Perhaps you can help me look?”
He knelt with his lamp and looked around the floor at her feet.
“No, you foolish man,” she said. “It’s somewhere in my dress.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and then found he could not close it again. Hilde was unlacing her corset. “Well? You were so handsome yesterday in Market Square, Croy. So dashing. It made my knees tremble. And other parts of me as well. Of course, it might just be that I haven’t had a man all year. My mistress keeps me so busy. Maybe if the Burgrave could perform better his own husbandly duties, I could slip away more often. Oh, no, that’s exactly where I want you,” she said, as he began to rise to his feet. She giggled and put a finger on his shoulder, pressing him back down to a kneeling posture.
“Milady,” he said, jumping up, “I fear I misheard you.”
Hilde rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those men who doesn’t know what to do with a naked woman.” She twitched her shoulders and her kirtle fell to the floor. Underneath it she was wearing nothing but a chemise and knee-length hose.
Croy blushed and averted his eyes. “Milady, I would never spurn, ah, true affection from your quarter, but … my heart belongs to another.”
“You’re … serious.”
He bowed his head and tried to keep his thoughts pure. It was not easy with Hilde’s underthings rustling so close to his face.
“Here,” she said, and pressed a long iron key into his hand. “Do what you have to, while I put all this back on. I have no idea how I’m going to lace up this corset without a big, strong man to help, but—oh, never mind.”
“Thank you,” Croy said, and quickly opened the locked door. Beyond was a tiny room with a barred window. For a split second he thought he saw a shoe outside the bars, but that was quite impossible—outside that window would be a sheer drop to the river Skrait, more than a hundred feet down. He turned to look around the room, expecting to have to search high and low for his swords.
In fact, they were the only things present. Where were the religious relics the Burgrave was required to parade through the streets every Ladymas? Where the city’s charter, for that matter? Perhaps they’d gone to the same place as the city’s gold reserves. The swords lay perfectly alone on a shelf below the window, two long blades in shagreen scabbards. They were all he’d brought with him when he returned to the Free City. He hung them in their proper places on his baldric and stepped back out of the room.
Hilde waited for him near the door, tapping her foot with impatience. “Come along,” she said. “I’ll take you through the kitchens so no one sees you. Though it would probably do my reputation some good to be seen in connection with you.”
“I’m a wanted criminal,” he protested.
“You don’t understand this city at all, do you?” she asked. “Surely you—”
A high-pitched scream of terror and pain split the darkness outside the door. Croy leaned over Hilde’s shoulder to look out into the courtyard just in time to see a man of the city watch come staggering through the main palace gate. A dark stain spread across his cloak-of-eyes as he clutched at an arrow sticking in his side. Before he’d taken a dozen steps he collapsed face first onto the flagstones.
A second scream followed close, and a guard toppled from the battlements of the palace wall. An arrow had pierced him through the neck.
“Murder!” someone shouted. “Murder!” And then an alarm bell started to ring, high-pitched and wild.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Malden
