Terrarch well-used to depraved pleasures.
“At once,” said the woman, whom Sardec took to be Mama Horne. She led them swiftly up warped stairs lined with old prints. Overhead a massive chandelier illuminated the whole saloon. As the Exalted receded from view, conversation became louder, and music started to play again. Sardec realised that their appearance had quite an effect. In his state of inebriation that pleased him.
Sardec looked around the room. For a human brothel, he thought it was relatively luxuriously furnished, certainly more so than the chambers he had at the Inn. A massive mirror dominated one wall, and nicely carved, heavy furniture filled its centre. In each wall was a door. One led to the corridor, the others to bedchambers with mirrors on the ceiling, and huge double beds.
“It’s the best room in the place,” said the brothel-keeper.
Jazeray nodded to Mama Horne to indicate that it would do, and moments later the wine appeared, each dusty bottle being carried by a lively and very scantily dressed young woman.
“Tell Ari I am prepared to win back my money,” said Jazeray. Mama Horne nodded as if this were not unexpected. A shiver passed up Sardec’s spine. Surely, Jazeray was not prepared to gamble with humans. That was taking slumming a little too far.
He looked at the girls and wondered what exactly he was expected to do. Several of them noticed his glance and immediately moved towards him. He backed away slightly, doing his best to ignore the amused smirks of his companions. Why had he allowed himself to be talked into coming here, he wondered? Only one of the women did not seem interested, she seemed distracted, and she was by far the prettiest, at least to his eye. He walked over and took a seat beside her?
“What is your name?” he asked, a little harshly. His breathing was heavy.
“Rena,” she said.
Rik considered trying to hastily pull himself up onto the roof but decided that might just draw attention to him and if so he might easily be trapped up there while they summoned help.
Instead he just hung there and listened and watched. After a few heartbeats, he noticed that they had paused to swig from a wine bottle. Rik cursed again and hoped they were not going to take up residence below him. If they decided to sit there all night, drinking, he would have to do something desperate.
The watchmen put the cork back on the bottle, mumbled a curse and moved on. Rik continued his slow climb to the warehouse roof. This was the easy part, he reminded himself sourly. Perhaps he really ought to turn back. He knew he could not though. He wanted those books back, and he was prepared to do whatever it took.
Cautiously he pulled himself over the edge of the roof, and unhooked the grapnel. He paused and waited. He muttered the charm the Old Witch had taught him long ago. He sensed nothing. He glanced at the watchposts on the visible corners of the roof. Either the Elder Signs of Warding there were so old they were inert, or they had never been truly activated. At least he hoped that this was the case, and that a silent alarm was not being given even at this moment.
The roof itself was angled, and covered in slate tiles. They were slippery, and he knew he would have to be cautious. If one of them was loose, and in his experience there were almost at least some that were, it would be all too easy to send them tumbling into the alleyways below. If that happened at the wrong time, it could get the attention of the watchmen. He tried to tell himself it was unlikely, but he had known many men hung or burned when given away by equally unlikely events. And there were worse things that could happen. If the workmanship was bad, or the supports of the roof rotten, the whole thing might crumble beneath his weight and send him crashing to inevitable death on the floor of the warehouse.
He reeled up the rope and slowly and painfully began the process of crawling towards the skylight. He splayed himself almost flat to distribute his weight as evenly as he could and then moved spider-like towards the skylight and peered through it.
The outside was kept relatively clean by rain but there were a few recent smears of bird-shit that he wiped away with edge of his tunic sleeve. There was nothing he could do about the grime on the inside. It obscured a good deal of his view but still he made out what he needed to. There were lights on inside the warehouse. He cursed but decided to push on. He had come too far now to turn back.
He produced his knife and inserted it under the edge of the window frame. Carefully, cautiously and as quietly as he could, he sawed away at the edges. He was glad of the noise of the fireworks, the crowd and the music now. It would cover what he was doing. He just hoped there was no one directly below him to wonder at the dust-fall inevitably created by his actions.
Eventually he got the frame loose from its setting and slowly removed it. The hole was just big enough for him to work his way through. Someone broader of shoulder or larger of gut could not have made it.
He worked his way back down the roof and hooked the grapnel into position around one of the gargoyles, wrapping part of the rope around it to make sure it would hold, then tested it to ensure it could take the strain. He moved back to the skylight. He fed the rope down into the gap till it landed atop one of the high piles of bales he had seen on his visit. So far so good, he thought. This would, he hoped, bring him in at a height where no one would notice. He worked his way into the hole now. Hoping that he had gauged things right and he would not get stuck, praying that nobody below would notice him and shoot a bullet up his backside, he held the rope and was all too aware of the void below his feet.
He told himself that it was all right, the bales would break his fall if anything went wrong but he knew there was a drop nearly ten times the height of a man below him if he had miscalculated.
He took a deep breath and began to lower himself into the shadows.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rik clambered down the rope till he hit the bales. They were soft and gave beneath his weight, swaying slightly underfoot. If he made a wrong move he would send them all tumbling down. The dust in the air tickled his nostrils and he fought down a near uncontrollable urge to sneeze. He wound the rope around a bale and then tied it. He did not want to lose the grapnel now. Even up here he felt exposed.
Near the trade door a lantern burned. There was a glow too from the counting house and another from a distant corner. He wondered what was going on over there. Maybe it was a place for the watchmen to take their meals. There was no way of knowing.
He checked for ways to the ground. They were not easy to find. The island of bales he had landed atop was high and flat. His best way down would be to leap from it to the next island which consisted of sacks terraced to just about a man’s height above the ground.
He caught the scurry of rats, and the distant murmur of men’s voices. There was something different and strange about them but he could not put his finger on exactly what.
If he stayed here much longer there was the possibility of his freezing up entirely or losing his nerve and clambering back up the rope. He checked all his weapons were in place and then forced his limbs to move.
The jump from the island of bales to the island of sacking was not far, a mere six feet or so, but the height made it daunting as did the less than firm footing. As he stood upright the bales moved, making him sway slightly.
He tried not to think about the forty-foot drop to hard ground beneath him. He sprang out over the ledge. The force of his leap unbalanced the bale and sent it tumbling downwards. His own nervous momentum sent him sprawling atop the sacks. These too slithered around under his weight.
A cloud of dust rose, tickling his nostrils and the back of his throat, threatening to make him sneeze. He lay atop them, heart pounding, listening to see if anyone had noticed. There were no shouts, no warning cries. The sound of fireworks and music had covered his mistake, or so he hoped. He checked to make sure the line was still in place and was grateful to see that it was.
Now he scampered down the sacks, trying to be quiet, but the grain-filled bags crackled beneath his boots. The noise was just loud enough to set his nerves on edge. When he reached the bottom of the terracing, he halted again and listened, like a deer that hears the howling of wolves.
