“Have you got the plan?” Nightingale hissed.
His shrill, squeaky voice was painful to hear, but the thieves didn’t seem to think there was any need to hide, and they made enough noise for the whole street to hear. “The one we got from the Royal Library? Here it is. Light it up.”
“What with?” Nightingale muttered. “That damned Rostgish had all the lights.”
Aha! So they were the ones that the old man Bolt was talking about. “Gray and untalkative.” Shnyg and Rostgish must have gone to the library. The old man would have remembered Nightingale.
They’d stuck some important gent’s ring under Bolt’s nose, hadn’t they? Ah, I never thought to ask the old man about the ring, I thought it was all a senile old fool’s imaginings. I’ll have to go back and have a proper heart- to-heart talk with him. So who was it that sent them?
“We have to get those cursed maps or whatever else before that skunk gets there ahead of us.”
“What are you so nervous about?” asked Nightingale, as calm and rational as ever. “Harold won’t try sticking his nose in here any time soon.”
“That Harold has really got up everyone’s nose. Markun boils over at the very mention of his name, and the client said we should do away with him if it came to it. And the individual our client serves—which means that we do, too—is beginning to express his dissatisfaction.”
“Do away with him?” Nightingale said with a nasal snigger. “Have you completely lost your wits, Shnyg? That lad might look feeble and skinny, but I’ve no intention of tangling with Harold. We do the job, hand over the Commission, take the money, and clear off to warmer parts. For the high life beyond the mountains. No one will ever find us there. We don’t want to be hanging about with the Darkness.”
“Do you think it’s that easy to get away from the Master?” a mocking voice asked, and I shuddered.
I would have known that voice anywhere, out of a thousand. It had changed a lot, lost that lifeless, dead tone, but I still recognized it. It was the voice of the same being that had spoken with the duke and then killed him. That winged creature of the night.
“Don’t even think about trying to run. You will only go when he lets you go, little man. You are faithful to the Master, aren’t you?”
“I am faithful.” Nightingale’s voice sounded hoarse and frightened. “We are faithful.”
“Yes, yes, Your Grace, we are faithful to the Master,” Shnyg confirmed in an ingratiating tone.
There was a quiet laugh of satisfaction in the darkness, and I thought I glimpsed a brief flash of golden eyes.
“Clever little men,” the creature drawled. “Get the maps and destroy them, and then you can clear out of here to anywhere you want.” There was a note of undisguised contempt in the emissary’s voice.
“B-b-but, Your Grace . . . ,” said Shnyg, clearly very surprised. “The client said to bring the papers to him. We can’t just—”
Shnyg broke off his tirade and started wheezing for some reason, and his partner gasped out loud in fright.
“The Master is not used to hearing ‘we can’t.’ He needs servants who can! Those who are incapable of carrying out an elementary assignment are not worthy to serve him; they are useless!”
Shnyg’s wheezing became a charming gurgling.
“May I be allowed to remark that Shnyg did not at all wish to seem to be useless!” Nightingale started keening. “We’ll go and get those papers right now!”
I heard the sound of a body hitting the ground and Shnyg wheezing in relief as he tried to force some air back into his lungs.
“You know that your client also serves the Master, and the Master says that the maps of Hrad Spein must be destroyed, otherwise they might fall into the hands of the king and his attendants. Tell that to the fool whom you call your client. He may be rich, but that does not mean he can think he is a link of Borg. Let him remember the deceased Duke Patin.”
“We understand everything now, Your Grace,” Nightingale confirmed. Shnyg was still coughing. “We’ll tell him everything you said.”
“Wonderful, and now set about it! Surely you don’t think I would need your help if I could enter the tower?”
The emissary didn’t bother to wait for an answer to his question. Something even darker moved across the dark gap of the house. There was another glint of gold. The emissary slowly ran his gaze along the dark street and as it slipped over the spot where I was standing, it hesitated for an instant, but moved on before I even had time to feel frightened. With a clap of his black wings, he melted away into the night.
Silence descended on the street, only occasionally interrupted by Shnyg’s desperate coughing.
“Damn . . .
“What did you expect?” Nightingale snarled. “Spouting nonsense like that to him? Be grateful you’re still alive!”
“The Darkness take that damned creature! And the Darkness take you, too! And the Darkness take me, fool that I am, for listening to Markun, who’s bound us hand and foot to this Master of his. The Darkness take this client, and his damned papers!”
Shnyg was overwhelmed by a new fit of coughing. But just at that moment something looking very much like a human figure made its appearance on the stage of this ongoing spectacle. It was approaching slowly from the direction of the Street of the Roofers and its direction made me feel uneasy, because it was moving straight toward us.
Even worse than that, I was almost directly in its path! I had to dash across the street, to the house where
