Orianna is as fast, and as nimble, as Zerris. Although every movement Orianna makes is Orianna, not Zerris, she has lost no ability. But she has gained gracefulness, which she secretly hopes Kalle notices.
They reach the Merchants' Quarter quickly. Here, the houses occupy the space of as many as ten of those in Zerris's part of Saradakh, and are designed as a square around a great central courtyard. Wetlander influences are visible as elaborate external murals, balconies, or even large windows.
But roofs are flat, and easily reached.
Kalle, whose previous visit here had gained him knowledge of these rooftops, leads Orianna to a roof from where they can see enough of Gabrio's house to be able to plan. Alone among all the rooftops around them, Gabrio's has guards visible. Among all the doorways along this long and wide avenue, Gabrio's has two guards standing to attention outside it. Clearly, the incident at the party still rankles.
In the Merchants' Quarter, there are many who have built small gardens or additional courtyards upon their roofs for nighttime entertainment. Gabrio's neighbour has such a rooftop garden, allowing Kalle and Orianna to hide behind a potted palm. Gabrio, who came from the wetlands and made an effort to become a man of Molos, has kept his roof clear, allowing the armed men upon it to be outlined against even the light from a half moon.
"Four guards," Orianna hisses, in a voice that will not carry farther than Kalle's ears. "Not even Gabrio has so many guards that he can spare four to patrol the roof at once. Two I have seen when it is known a merchant has a new shipment in, but never four at once. He has hired more."
"They will not be familiar with his house or its routines," Kalle muses.
"No, and he will leave his own guards inside, where they are less likely to come to harm and more likely to be trusted."
Kalle laughs softly. "And those on the roof will be less loyal to a temporary master, should it come to blows."
"Which it will not," Orianna snaps.
"Gods willing," Kalle mutters. "How were you planning on entering the second time?"
"There is a street behind the house, where waste is taken away and deliveries are made," Orianna responds. "In that wall is one door with a solid lock, also imported, that nobody in Molos knows how to open. It is monitored by guards, but the lock makes them lazy."
Kalle nods. He is serious now, no joking or grinning. He has not pulled his veil over his face, but Orianna can see no flash of teeth and barely even any glimmer of pale-blue eyes.
"You have reached an arrangement about the door?"
Orianna shakes her head. "I have a key. It took many careful years to arrange, and involved bribing no staff or smiths. There is such a way into the home of all rich merchants in Molos."
She can just see Kalle raise his eyebrows.
"'Years'?" he asks. "How long have you been planning this?"
"Zerris has targeted the Egg since he first discovered that houses are more lucrative than picked pockets. It has been a good exercise," Orianna says, her eyes fixed on Gabrio's house. "All he needed was his fence to have a buyer. But he has many such keys, to many such houses. I am here now because Zerris is thorough."
"Ah." Kalle nods again. "I can reach one of the outside windows and enter without being seen—and am sure you could too—but should it be needed, in order to let you in, I would need to find my way down to the back door. I am not familiar with the house. Let us hope your door is not also barred. I was afraid we would have to bribe staff."
Orianna shakes her head emphatically. "Only as an absolute last resort. I do not wish to be seen. I cannot rely on someone not changing their mind, or getting their timing wrong, or having their own deception discovered."
"Once inside?"
"You follow me. I have memorised the inside of the house, and seen much of it already. There should be few guards patrolling, but there may be some servants. The Egg is kept in a vault underground, in one wall of a treasury. The treasury itself has no door, and I can now open the vault. I would appreciate it if you waited until after we have the Egg before seeking your own targets."
Kalle nods. "Lead on, then."
Orianna takes them back to ground level, then from street to street in a series of rushes until they are creeping along the base of Gabrio's walls.
Once within sight of the door, Orianna stops to listen intently as her gaze rakes the surrounding walls and rooftops. Kalle, a mere patch of shadow behind her, leaves her to lead in her own time.
She slips forward to the door, leaning her head against it for more intense listening. She raises her hand in a "wait" gesture.
After many silent minutes, Orianna introduces some oil into the lock from a small can, oils the key as well, then eases the lock open. It is not silent, but not very loud.
They both strain their ears to listen again. Orianna waits several more minutes before easing the door open. The hinges are all internal, but Gabrio's house is well maintained and they do not squeak much.
They find themselves in a storage room of sorts.
There is little light inside Gabrio's house. Kalle has his veil drawn, so Orianna cannot begin to guess how he can see at all. She herself has to creep by feel as much as sight, too afraid of bumping something and creating a noise to entirely trust her own considerable skill with darkness.
They see no patrolling guards at all, nor any on station.
Orianna frowns. Gabrio's walls are solid and his doors well-guarded, true, but this luck seems too wild to last.
"Gabrio has placed all his guards upon the outside," Kalle murmurs in her ear, making her heart nearly leap into her mouth, "leaving none to patrol his halls."
"All? Possible, but unlikely," she breathes in response.
Orianna varies neither her caution nor her silent footsteps as she continues on into Gabrio's house.
Their luck holds, and they meet nobody before reaching the staircase leading down to the treasury.
Most houses in Molos have a storage room underground. For the poorest, it is often merely a hole underneath a trapdoor, lined with shelves and with enough room for one person, who descends via a ladder.
In the most opulent houses, it is an underground grotto used for storing riches as well as food.
Gabrio's house, which is far older than he, has two such cellars: one for food, accessible via a trapdoor in the kitchens, and the other, a cave full of riches. The entrance to that cave was guarded during the party, for only select guests were allowed down the tiled stairs to marvel at the grotto's contents, but it has no door to lock. Locks are rare inside houses in Molos, where none are permitted entrance unless they are trusted, and where no invited guest would violate the conventions of hospitality. The paranoia of the jealous rich is usually strong enough to ensure one locking vault for the most desired of valuables, but the fact that Gabrio has a locking desk, let alone a safe, in his bedroom says much about his life before coming to Molos.
There is no guard at the head of the staircase, but light from many lanterns shines out of Gabrio's cellar. Orianna creeps down the narrow stone tunnel towards the decorated arch that leads into the grotto itself, but freezes before reaching the bottom.
Kalle cannot see into the cellar from the staircase, but he does not need her signal to know the vault itself is guarded.
Orianna slips back to the top of the stairs so they can put their heads together.
"The vault is built into the left wall." Orianna's voice is barely more than a breath. "One guard I could see, standing at attention on the side of the door. I suspect a partner. Walls lined with goods."
"So we need to kill?" There is more teasing than bloodlust in Kalle's voice.
Orianna sighs. "Unless you see another course to silence them."
"I can render a man unconscious for the space of several hours, but doing so to both, without the other raising a cry, will be difficult indeed. Even if you distract the second, he may hear something, or turn his head at the wrong moment. At least one of us may have to kill."
Orianna groans, but cannot see another way.
"If there is one guard, leave him to me. If there are two, do what you must," Kalle says.
Orianna sighs again. "Very well."
"Is there any chance you are dressed like the servants?"
Orianna just laughs softly. Then she rearranges her mantle to leave her face uncovered. "But I may be able to distract them. Will you be able to get close?"
Kalle lifts his veil just enough to let her see him grin, then holds up a long, thin length of pipe. "Distract them, and I will not need to get close."
Orianna takes his jaw to pull him into a soft kiss. "For luck."
Kalle pulls her back into a second kiss. "For certainty," he says.
Orianna leads him down the stairs with a faint smile upon her lips, which part to let her tongue run over them quickly. Orianna has far more licence than Tiglis to flirt and is enjoying this freedom immensely, but she is not ignoring that Kalle is not doing his suit with Tiglis any favours.
Objects in gold and silver, and statues and paintings from throughout the Empire, line the walls not in any neat, organised way, but in the haphazard jumble of a bandit's cave. The grotto reveals not just Gabrio's wealth, but that he is so wealthy he is able to be careless with it. Orianna despises him with a passion.
She leans forward just enough to be able to see the guard, then glances back at Kalle, who gives her a single nod.
She composes herself before stepping out.
There are indeed two guards. Their eyes lock on her instantly. She looks around wide-eyed, giggles, then rushes on light feet over to a mirror mounted in silver worked to resemble vine leaves. "Oh, how lovely!"
The guards share an expression of acute astonishment before one of them hurries towards her.
Orianna admires her face in the mirror, turning this way and that, then skips on.
Orianna needs the guards conflicted and uncertain. Inside the house, with no commotion heard from upstairs, someone who does not look like a thief (and how indeed could a thief possibly gain entrance?) must be a guest. The guards will have been told of no guest, but Orianna knows of no house in Molos where guards are thoroughly briefed on their master's (or, indeed, mistress's) recreations. She is betting Gabrio could have invited half of Molos's prostitutes to his bedroom without lowly guards getting told.
She darts further along the pile of goods, to a painted vase. "So beautiful!"
She does not look like a prostitute, she knows. She is wearing too much, and behaving like a rich man's spoiled daughter. All to her benefit; a guard who behaves the wrong way could find his career cut short—probably via his neck.
She is reassured when he settles for, "Are you lost, my lady?"
Orianna turns the full force of her smile upon him, feeling a secret glee to see him swallow involuntarily. "Oh, Gabrio has such lovely things! I could not sleep for needing to see!"
The guard looks reassured. "I do apologise, my lady, I was not informed you may be touring the house."
Orianna laughs. She glances past the guard, her eyes opening wider. "Oh! Is your friend all right?"
The guard jerks around, hand going to the hilt of his sword, which makes it much easier for Orianna to draw her longest dagger and employ it to open his throat from behind.
Kalle, blowpipe once more hidden about his person, and Orianna, purloined key in hand, arrive at the vault together.
Orianna steps over the fallen body of the second guard with her attention fixed on the door.
The door is an iron-bound slab of ironwood. Set into it is a great metal plate holding handles, each with its own lock, all arranged in a square. Orianna begins muttering under her breath as she stares intently at the door.
"How many traps does this door have?" Kalle asked.
"I do not know!"
Orianna inserts the key into the bottom left lock, twists it clockwise, then turns the handle on the top left anticlockwise.
"How did you get the secret?" Kalle asks.
"It is a secret!"
She opens two of the other locks, turning the key anticlockwise and the handles alternately anticlockwise and clockwise, but ignores the final one. She turns the top left handle the other way, then the bottom right, then the top right. When she heaves on the door, it cracks open. The hinges are oiled, but the door is so massive it takes their combined strength to move it. The vault is not deep. It holds large chests, sacks, and a small wooden chest on a shelf.
Orianna seizes the chest, moving away from the vault to squat on the floor. She pulls out her lockpicks, then freezes. Horror spreads through her.
"What is it?" Kalle asks. He had been gazing longingly upon the riches in the vault, but has kept one eye on Orianna.
"This lock!" she says hoarsely. "I cannot pick this! It needs a key like the vault!"
"Pig-fucker!" Kalle spits. "Can we break it open?"
Orianna shakes her head rapidly. "No, this chest has to be undamaged. And I have to confirm the Egg is inside!"
"Gabrio will have that key upon his person," Kalle says.
Orianna glares up at him. "If you do not have it already, I am sure you are correct," she says, her voice like lime juice dripped onto cut skin.
Kalle affects a chastened bow. "Should we check his desk and safe once more, in case he locks it away while he is sleeping?"
"That may be wise, if we can avoid waking him," Orianna says grudgingly. "Either way, we need to pay our host a visit."
Kalle looks at the two guards. "Do we need to hide these bodies?" he asks as Orianna rises to her feet with the chest cradled against her belly.
Orianna shrugs. "We have seen no guards patrolling. In any case, an alarm would be raised immediately if they were found missing from their posts."
"Then we need speed," Kalle says.
*~*~*
They return to the top of the stairs, where Orianna hesitates.
Kalle moves next to her, bending his head towards hers, but says nothing when the sound Orianna heard is repeated, louder.
Orianna leans against Kalle, ostensibly to put her mouth next to his ear.
"The guard captain is doing his rounds," she murmurs.
Kalle nods sharply and begins to move away, towards the footsteps.
Orianna seizes his elbow in a painful grip. "Do not kill him!" she whispers fiercely.
Kalle jerks his head around towards her.
"The more death this night, the more angry the Duke will be, the more his guards will rattle their sabres," Orianna hisses.
Kalle shrugs. "Very well, I will not kill him," he hisses back. "Just for your sake."
She pulls him into a quick kiss, through her cloth and his silk, then pats his cheek fondly. "Thank you."
He steps back to throw a courtly bow. "My lady."
Orianna, blushing hotly behind her wrapped mantle, is barely able to see where he goes.
The guard's footsteps are almost upon where she is hiding. With only the cellar behind her, she readies a blade and settles herself to strike.
She hears a soft grunt of surprise, a stumble, and the slow collapse of a large body wearing a cuirass.
She darts forward. The guard—not the captain after all—is sprawled in the hallway.
"What are you doing to them?" she hisses at the darkness.
"Assassins know many secrets, many herbs, and many ways to prepare them," Kalle whispers in her ear, making her jump but also shiver. "Shall we move on?"
They move through the house with more haste this time. No light or sound betrays any other wakeful bodies.
They come quickly to the corridors Orianna has walked before. Her feet become much more certain. Kalle does not have trouble staying with her, although several times she has to check he is there at all.
At the top of the stairs, Orianna gestures Kalle forward.
He ghosts up the stairs, pauses while listening, or even possibly sensing in ways Orianna cannot understand, then beckons her after him. There are no guards in the antechamber, nor any visible through the lattice doors, through which moonlight streams to the balcony over the internal courtyard.
At the bedroom doors, Kalle listens intently. Orianna listens at the other door. She hears Gabrio sleeping fitfully.
Kalle gently pushes one door. Orianna eases the other. Both doors moan softly on their hinges, but neither squeaks.
Gabrio mutters, then is silent.
Orianna doses her hinges with oil. Kalle uses a similar bottle.
When Gabrio begins snoring again, Kalle jerks his door open, the hinges not silent but giving up only a faint, single chirp.
They both slip through that one entrance.
The inner doors to the balcony are open, allowing a breeze and a glimmer of moonlight. Kalle gestures sharply at each side of the doors. Orianna stares, then sees. There are guards on the balcony.
Orianna moves to the desk, silently but quickly checking every drawer.
Kalle moves to the balcony doors, where he melts into the darker shadow beside the patches of moonlight.
Orianna moves to the painting on the wall. She eases it away, then busies herself with the safe.
There is a click from the lock.
Gabrio mutters in his sleep. There is no sound from the guards. Orianna and Kalle freeze.
Gabrio turns over and is soon snoring again.
Orianna eases open the safe, then a few moments later closes it. Kalle is at her side almost immediately. She shakes her head sharply.
Kalle nods once, then holds up his hand for Orianna to wait.
He returns to the balcony doors. Orianna stands poised to flee. One of the guards on the balcony, to this point disciplined and as still as a statue, utters a sharp, annoyed exclamation, shifts position, stumbles, then falls.
The other guard rushes towards his comrade. The lattice door jerks open slightly. She hears a hard, wet thud followed by the second guard collapsing.
She rushes to the doors as Kalle opens them far enough to pull the first body inside. The guards were positioned so they were as difficult as possible to see. Their absence will be easily missed, but their bodies lying on the balcony would not.
With both bodies inside and the door once more closed, Kalle inclines his head towards Gabrio, whose snoring is undisturbed. Orianna nods.
Kalle takes one step, then leaps onto the bed.
Gabrio wakes with a scream muffled by the cushion Kalle shoves into his mouth.
"I will slice your neck open like a pig if I have to," Kalle says, pressing the quillons of a dagger against his throat. His voice has changed into a deeper, savage, unrecognisable growl.
Gabrio freezes, his eyes huge with terror.
Orianna steps forward, uncovering half of her face and gathering her robes tightly to accentuate a girlish figure against the broken moonlight shining through the lattice. "Oh, my Gabrio! He wants the key to the Egg of Valmong's chest! Please, you must give it to him! He will kill you if you do not!"
Kalle's head twitches towards Orianna.
Orianna reaches out one trembling hand, her fingers glowing ghostly in the moonlight, to caress Gabrio's cheek. "Please, my Gabrio! I could not bear it if you forced him to kill you!"
Kalle's head twists fully towards Orianna before jerking sharply back towards Gabrio.
"Please, my love!"
Gabrio's eyes are mad as he stares between the two dark figures.
"The key to the chest! He will have the Egg of Valmong or he will butcher you where you lie!"
Gabrio gurgles.
Kalle begins easing the pressure on the pillow. He leans slightly lower. "Shout or call for help and they will find your blood soaking this bed," he growls. At the same time, he shifts his dagger so more blade, and less blunt quillons, press against flesh.
"Necklace," Gabrio manages to squeak.
Orianna reaches for Gabrio's neck. Kalle hesitates. Orianna makes an impatient clucking sound. Kalle shifts position to give her easier access, then pulls the dagger back slightly when blood from Gabrio's neck trickles along its edge.
Gabrio shivers as Orianna's fine, cool, delicate fingers find the chain around his neck. She has to tug sharply to pull up a small bunch of keys upon the end.
She is less delicate when she seizes his hair to lift his head so she can free the necklace.
She hurries to the balcony doors, where there is more light for her to examine the keys. After several moments, as Gabrio whimpers even through the pillow and the sharp tang of piss begins to make itself apparent in the bedroom, she gives a soft "Ha!" of triumph.
Kalle's dagger hand moves. Gabrio twitches convulsively, then looks surprised, then passes out.
"What did you do to him?" Orianna hisses. "He is not dead, is he?"
"Contrary to what you may imagine about me, I do not like killing unless it is necessary or profitable," Kalle hisses back in his usual voice. "Geese that lay golden eggs should be left to lay! The guard was unfortunate—I couldn't afford to risk drugging him, he was forewarned and might have cried out. Do we leave the way we came?"
They are halfway down the stairs from Gabrio's bedroom when an alarm is shouted.
They both freeze only long enough to hear running feet.
Without needing to confer, they sprint silently back to the bedroom.
"Courtyard or bedroom?" Kalle asks.
"Camel dung!" Orianna says, frantically making the chest secure in a pocket inside her robes. "Courtyard means having to get through the house and roused guards, bedroom balcony takes us down to the guards on the front door or up to the guards on the roof!"
"Ha!" Kalle says. "Down is too far to drop with the Egg, to guards who may react too quickly. Courtyard balcony, up to the roof!"
Orianna stares at him, eyes wide. "Are you mad?"
"No, practised," Kalle says. Then, "Follow," and he is at the balcony doors in a bound.
There are no solid, light-blocking, siege-strong doors to pass, merely the sturdy latticework panels.
Kalle eases them open only enough to slip through.
Orianna, heart in mouth and praying furiously, slips after him.
"Close," Kalle hisses. "Up! You run, I will draw them off. Keep the prize safe, make for my lodgings!" He presses another key into her hand. "For my door!" Then he leaps for the wall next to the doors, the situation now so urgent he does not even seek a final kiss.
Compared to the rough but unadorned stonework they have already climbed this night, the elaborately carved stone of a wealthy man's house is like a ladder. Kalle is on the roof before Orianna begins to follow.
Inside the house, she hears guards bursting into Gabrio's bedroom, and breathes a thanks that Kalle thought of closing the lattice doors and buying them a little more time.
Startled shouts tell how little that time was.
Before Orianna's head clears the parapet, a death rattle signals that one guard will not be bothering them further.
Kalle is moving like a demon, too quickly and unpredictably for any archer to draw a bead, using his size as an advantage.
A guard on the opposite wing of the house draws a bead on Orianna as she reaches the roof. Seeing him, she ducks low and dodges sideways.
"Run!" Kalle hisses, swapping his sword for the bow of the guard he has already killed, and standing to offer an easier target. He calmly steps out of the way of the arrow, letting it whir a mere finger's breadth from his shoulder, before returning his own missile with much greater success.
In front of Orianna is the broad road before Gabrio's house—a gap too far to jump across. From left and right, guards run towards them with swords drawn, seeing two figures too flighty to easily target with arrows. Kalle, having no more arrows immediately to hand, drops the bow to retrieve his sword.
To the right, a hatch is thrown open by guards inside the house. The first one up loses his throat even as Kalle prepares to face a man in a sergeant's uniform.
Orianna sprints to the left.
A guard in front of her has his sword drawn, quite prepared to hurt or kill any thief, a woman included.
She throws a simple but well-balanced knife into his unarmoured thigh, making him howl in pain and stumble, but not fall.
With one arm holding the Egg's chest to stop it bouncing, and only long knives to fight with, Orianna is sorely handicapped. She dodges the guard on the side of his wounded leg, flourishing her knife to parry and threaten a riposte she never makes, but does not slow down.
She hears him turn to follow her, but she has far too big a lead, and he is injured.
The house is separated from its neighbour by another gap too big to easily jump. She turns up the next wing. The alley at the back of the house is narrow. An arrow whistles behind her, her speed confusing the guard who aimed it, then she clears the gap easily, landing with a roll that takes her back to her feet.
She risks a look behind her.
With his injured leg, the guard chasing her is not trying to follow her across the gap. Instead, he is making for his fallen comrade.
Orianna turns to run before he can pick up the bow and knock arrow to string.
There is nowhere for her to hide on this roof, which is flat and open. The house next door has a pagoda and raised garden beds, but the gap to it will require her best effort to clear.
If she wants to make the jump, she has to sprint in a straight line. If she wants to survive, she has to expect the guards to be good shots, and try to avoid their arrows.
She risks her speed against his.
She dimly hears Kalle shout as she makes a final burst of effort onto the parapet to push herself with both feet across the gap separating roof from roof.
The sharpened head of an arrow slices through her robes and the outside of her thigh a second before she hears a cry of pain from behind her.
Her jump is as close as the arrow. She manages to get her feet over the edge of the parapet but cannot avoid tumbling gracelessly over the stone and down to the level of the rooftop proper, breaking her roll against a planter but keeping the breath in her lungs.
Her thigh burns but still works, so she pushes the pain out of her mind. She still has the chest cradled against her belly.
She is up and moving instantly.
The shouts of more guards come from beneath the roof she has just left, and from underneath her feet. She makes the shelter of the pagoda, but does not slow down.
In order to hurt you, they must first catch you.
By choosing her direction with care, she can make good speed over the rooftops, but may be targeted by arrows. If she slips to the ground, she will have to avoid patrolling city guards attracted by the uproar. She can hide, but every niche will be searched.
She hops onto a parapet to check her options.
She can make the larger gap.
Behind her, voices rise in frustration as guards decide they have not the speed or strength to follow her jump. There are screams of pain that do not sound like Kalle, but few sounds of metal on metal.
Where in all the Hells is Kalle? What is he doing?