I heard Bolt’s sigh. “Why does everything have to be difficult?” he asked.
Gael gave an amused little laugh. “We’re sneaking around the cathedral at night so that we can examine the queen’s body. What did you expect?”
“This, pretty much,” he said, “but once, just once, I’d like for something to go unexpectedly easy.”
“We have to get past the intersection,” I said. “The queen is somewhere on the far side. The problem is, the guards are patrolling a circuit, and if they’re all in sight of each other, it’ll be impossible to get through without being seen.”
Bolt and Rory exchanged a quick glance before Rory shed his shoes, pulled the hood of his cloak to his face, and before going ten steps disappeared into the shadows of the hallway.
“What do we do if the patrols are too tightly bunched to get through?” I asked.
Bolt shook his head. “Haven’t we had this conversation before? Why do you insist on borrowing trouble?”
Instead of responding, I put my hand on Gael’s neck to watch Rory sneak down the hallway. Even knowing he was there, I had trouble spotting him. He kept to the wall, flitting from doorway to doorway, disappearing into spaces that shouldn’t have been large enough to conceal him.
Two men walked past, and Rory darted on silent feet to the intersection, his head cocked for a split second before peeking around the corner. I knew he must be counting, but I couldn’t help but mark the time with the beats of my heart.
I hadn’t gotten to three before he jerked backward without a sound and merged with the shadow of the nearest doorway once more. He waited, and then repeated the process until the same pair of guards made the circuit. When he rejoined us, I had to fight the temptation to borrow some of Jeb’s vocabulary.
“It’s going to be tight,” Rory said. He didn’t have to look at me for everyone to know what he meant. I was the only one of our group who wasn’t physically gifted. Everyone else would have no trouble darting across the hallway in silence before they could be seen. But me? If the spaces between the guards should close, or I make just a hint too much noise, they would be on us.
Bolt shook his head. “The risk is too great, Willet. We need to withdraw. My first duty is to safeguard you. Do I need to remind you that you’re one of four people on the entire continent who can fight the Darkwater?”
“We can’t,” I said. “If it wasn’t plain before, it is now. We have to see the queen.”
“They’re going to hear you, Willet,” Gael said. “You can’t move quietly or quickly enough.”
I pulled a deep breath into my shaking lungs. “Maybe I can. How wide is the hallway, Rory?”
“Maybe fifty feet.”
Twenty paces. I had perhaps three seconds to get across twenty paces without making a sound.
That physically gifted guards wouldn’t hear.
Sure.
I opened my mouth to admit defeat—to tell Bolt we were headed back to the palace—when Rory tugged on my sleeve. “I can show you how to be quick and silent, like a thief.”
“You can do that?”
I could barely see his smile in the gloom as he tapped his head. “I’ve been training thieves for years.”
Bolt and Gael were still shaking their heads. I knew why. Even with Rory’s knowledge, I would still have to be quick, very quick, across the gap.
“Alright.” I nodded and put my hand on his arm and let the memories he offered flood through me. Instead of storing them, I let them combine with my own so that his instructions to a horde of boys and girls less than half my age filled my mind. When I lifted my hand, I knew how to be silent, but I still didn’t know how to be fast enough.
Bolt looked at me, shaking his head. “You mean to do this, don’t you.”
I nodded. “There’s something here that’s more than just a little wrong.”
“Yeah, I figured. In that case, you’ll go first. If they don’t catch you, they won’t catch the rest of us.”
“And if they do?” Gael asked.
He sighed. “Then we’ll have to put as many of them down as it takes for us to get loose from the cathedral.” He gave me a steady look. “You know we’ll have to leave the city then, don’t you? There’s no way Vyne will ever believe this wasn’t our doing.”
I took a deep breath, concentrating on stilling my heart. “It’s a single toss of the bones.”
Rory laughed quietly in the dark. “I thought you said being part of the Vigil was mostly boredom.”
Bolt’s growl might have come from Wag. “It’s supposed to be.”
Copying Rory and the rest, I took off my boots and stockings, the smooth polished stones of the cathedral tacky beneath the soles of my feet. Then I reached up to undo the clasp of my cloak and handed it to Gael, who brushed my cheek with her lips. “Be quick. Be safe.”
I glued myself to the wall and crept toward the intersection and the soft wash of light, rolling my gait from the outside of my foot to the inside. I breathed slowly and deeply through my nose and focused on keeping my pulse as steady as possible. Each time I came to a doorway, I pressed myself into the shadows and listened.
I went slower than Rory had. Delving him might have given me the advice and lessons he’d given to the urchins, but it couldn’t give me his muscle memory. The movements of a thief were unfamiliar to me. Even so, I arrived at the intersection of the two hallways far sooner than I wanted.
A pair of cosp walked by me, not close enough to touch, but a normal breath would have alerted them. As soon as they were beyond the
