snouts at thirty feet,' he whispered. 'So I'd expect it to be easier.'
A few moments passed as they made their way through darkened halls.
'Should it really be this easy?' Jace pressed again, after the third hallway that boasted no guards at all.
'No,' Kallist whispered with a sigh, 'probably not.'
The manor was fairly typical, as manors went. Lots of halls with many rooms to each side; nice carpeting and fancy paintings in fancier frames; a collection of chandeliers, fireplaces, sweeping stairs, and dining tables that were all far larger than necessity dictated. The strong scent of rose petals wafted along the corridors, and Jace couldn't tell if it came naturally from the many vases that decorated the various mantles and shelves, or if a touch of magic were involved. The utter lack of dust or dirt, however, was certainly magical, since even the most obsessive maid could not have done so perfect a job.
Once, and once only, Kallist and Jace had to duck into a small alcove as they heard the footsteps of heavy boots approaching. They watched a trio of guards, all armed and armored as though they were truly knights marching to war, pass their shadowed shelter and disappear down the hall. Not a one of them bothered even to glance left or right as they walked their patrol.
Jace and Kallist shared a suspicious look, shrugged in unison, and continued toward the stairs.
Still nobody interfered, and within a matter of moments, they found themselves outside what Kallist swore was the bedchamber of Ronia Hesset herself. Slowly and steadily he reached for the doorknob, only to freeze as Jace's hand latched onto his own.
'What?' Kallist hissed. 'Don't you need to see her to get into her mind?'
'Since I don't know her well, yeah,' Jace nodded. 'But… I don't know. Shouldn't we oil the hinges or something? What if the door squeaks?'
Kallist's lips quirked in a larval grin. 'Jace, as a thief, you make an excellent wizard.'
'What?'
'Tell me what you notice about this door.'
'Well, it's heavy wood. Crystal doorknob. Opens inward… Oh.'
'Yeah. 'Oh.''
'Why don't we just crack open the door, then?'
'Why don't we?'
Kallist gently turned the knob, and then shoved swiftly to minimize the duration of any noise the door might indeed have made. It opened only a few inches, enough so that he could reach the hinges on the inside-but as it happened, the door didn't squeak at all. Far more slowly, he inched it open farther, until both men could look into the opulent chamber.
Even in the faint moonlight trickling through the window, they could make out a towering wardrobe, a large canopied bed with silken sheets, and a form wrapped in the blankets.
'Ready?' Kallist breathed, barely even a whisper.
Jace nodded. Please, he thought to himself, begged the Multiverse at large, let her be innocent. Then he and Kallist could leave, and neither Ronia Hesset nor any part of Jace's soul would die tonight…
Jace stared at the sleeping form, spent several nerve-wracking moments gathering his focus, and found himself strolling the byways of someone else's mind.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
With a gasp, Jace was back in his own head.
'Well,' Kallist asked. 'Is she guilty?'
'I can't say for certain, but I'd imagine so,' Jace murmured sadly.
Kallist blinked. 'What do you mean, you can't say?'
'That's not her beneath those covers. It's one of her guards, wide awake, and there are more on the way. Kallist, they knew we were coming!'
'That would seem to suggest some amount of guilt,' Kallist said dryly. 'I-'
Afterward, Jace was never sure if he'd sensed a flash of the decoy's intentions through some lingering strand of his telepathic link, or if he'd just seen movement from the corner of his eye. In either case, he yanked Kallist aside with both hands as a crossbow twanged from within the room. The bolt flashed through the tiny crack of the open door, punching with alarming accuracy through the spot formerly occupied by Kallist's skull.
'Kind of you,' Kallist offered, reaching out with a foot to hook the door and draw it near enough to slam shut.
'You just remember this on my birthday,' Jace found himself saying, more than a little stunned at his own composure.
The other chuckled softly and then drew Jace into a small side corridor, where they'd be at least momentarily hidden from anyone coming up the stairs or from the room. They both half expected the door to come flying open, but apparently the guard within was content to wait for reinforcements. 'All right, Jace. Do we start hunting for her? It'll be a lot harder, now they know we're here.'
Jace didn't know why Kallist was deferring to him, but he shook his head. 'No. I have no idea why we haven't heard the tromp of running guards already, but they could be here any second. Better we get word of what's happened back to Paldor. He can arrange for her to fall off a bridge or something some other day.'
And he can get someone else to do it!
Though his expression remained too bland for Jace to tell if he agreed or was simply following along, Kallist nodded. 'All right. Then let's get the hell out of here.'
They stepped from the corridor, and the swordsman took a moment to draw his largest blade-a nasty broadsword, serrated along the length of one edge-and drive the pommel hard into the bedroom's doorknob. The crystal shattered, and Jace heard the crunch of the mechanism within.
In response to Jace's questioning look, Kallist shrugged. 'One guard stuck in the bedroom is a guard not standing between us and the door.'
They were off, moving along the hall, down the stairs, hugging the walls and shadows in what both recognized as a feeble attempt to remain unseen. Jace felt that every step they took, every breath, every heartbeat was a gong announcing their presence to all and sundry.
At the bottom of the stairs, Kallist instantly dropped into a crouch, broadsword in one hand, long poniard in the other. Jace froze for a split second, wondering what his companion had heard. And then the guards were on top of them.
There were three of them, appearing from doorways near the base of the stairs: a man and two women, all of whom looked enough alike to suggest they were related. Chain hauberks, short-handled axes, close-cropped black hair, and vicious scowls were identical across all three, and they moved with an expert precision intimating not merely a high degree of skill, but long practice fighting as a unit.
They fanned out, the man and one of the women moving to each side of the stairs; the third came up the middle, axe weaving a hypnotic pattern in the air.
Jace threw a writhing, razor-finned eel in her face.
It wasn't real, but against an untrained mind, its phantasmal nature made no difference; fear was fear, and pain was most assuredly pain.
She screamed and fell back, thrashing at the phantasm and just about braining herself with her own axe in the process.
Her comrades hesitated, torn between rushing to her aid and carving her attacker into stew meat. Kallist hesitated not at all. With a leap he was between them, lashing out with both blades. Jace, who had just drawn breath to cast another spell, found himself frozen in stunned amazement as he watched his companion work.
Kallist seemed constantly in two or three places at once. He lunged to his right, forcing the male guard to raise his axe in a desperate parry. Steel grated on steel and Kallist was facing the other direction, using the momentum of the axe on his sword to aid his spin. In the midst of his turn, his dagger came up to intercept an overhand slash from the woman behind him, and Kallist lashed out with a kick. The guard's leg folded beneath the impact, dropping her into a painful crouch, and Kallist was once again facing the man he'd attacked first,
