his protests that he d seen Grashgal and Flaradnam use the devices often enough in the war. Just keep your eyes peeled.
Yeah, we ll be watching. The King s man did something peculiar with his hand at chest height. Only later would Ringil realize it had been a horse-tribe salute. All right, then. Whenever you re ready.
Ringil backed down the roof a few feet, took the run up, and leapt. Momentary flight, the black gap yawning below him, and then the bushes took him in their rough, slapped-face embrace. He screwed up his eyes to protect them against gouging
Grab!
His hands closed, he got thin twigs and started to slip. Grabbed again, got a decent-sized branch, planted his feet, felt one foot slide out from under, grabbed again, got a second branch, feet again, got purchase
Hauled himself in.
He hung there for a moment, breathing. Maneuvered himself around the bushes and onto the slope the King s man had mentioned. Discovered that steep was something of a euphemism.
He spared one accusing glare back to where the other man crouched on the roof watching, but the distance and darkness made it impossible to make out expressions. He gave it up, found the first hold, and swung himself up into the climb.
It went easily enough at first. Wind and rain down the numberless march of centuries had sculpted baroque cups and folds and ledges into the crag. There was space to brace himself and rest his hands; once or twice there were places he could actually stand on his boot tips, leaning into the wall with his sweaty forehead cooling against the rock and his aching arms at his sides. Small, wiry bushes grew from outcrops and gave him extra purchase. A basin-sized cup presented itself and he was able to get his whole arm in up to the elbow he leaned jauntily there for a while, one boot jammed in a crack below, the other swinging free. Peered down past his toes and saw how far he d come.
Piece of piss. Nice quiet little climb.
In his youth, he d scrambled and clambered around the ornately worked architecture of Trelayne s noble houses and decaying warehouse districts, with harbor-end toughs and the City Watch in cursing pursuit as often as not. In the war, he d scaled the cliffs at Demlarashan to escape a reptile peon horde and had run climbed reconnaissance in the mountains of Gergis and the Kiriath wastes with high-caste Scaled Folk hunting him. He was pretty much nerveless when it came to heights and dubious holds. More dangerous things were usually trying to kill him.
Twenty feet below the Citadel battlements, the rock bellied out and the going got suddenly tougher. The cups and ledges shrank to grudging finger-width purchase; the folds became vertical and smooth. He d expected something like this it was the same kind of rock as in Demlarashan, so he d seen it before. But the darkness made it hard to pick a route except by touch, the angle he had to lean back at took an increasing toll on hands already numbed and aching, and his imminent arrival at the battlements meant he could not afford much noise.
He came over the curve of the belly, panting, clinging by fingertips, scrabbling with one boot for a bracing hold, and the other leg hanging heavily down. Sweat in his eyes, fingers slipping by tiny fractions each time he grabbed he spotted the jagged crack in the battlements, saw he d come too far over to the left. Between where he was and where he needed to be, the bellied rock of the crag extended smooth and whitened in the bandlight, smugly devoid of decent features. Oh, okay, there was a crack over there in its surface, relic presumably of the same eruption and earthshaking that had split the battlement stone above, but it was a long fucking way off. Fingers slipping now, he lashed about with his foot, stubbed a toe badly on a spur, lashed again and got momentary purchase, pushed and leapt for the crack Missed.
He saw his fingers brush the lip of the crack, saw them fail to grip, and his mind went blank. Rush of rock past his eyes, the kick of his guts in his throat
Something dark, something cold reaching out.
Salt in the wind, said a high, chilly voice somewhere. Out on the marsh.
And later, he d swear he felt thin, freezing fingers wrap around his wrist, jerk his hand upward to the safety of the hold.
Thecloud across his mind cleared, as if blown away by strong winds. Deep pulsing in his neck and chest. He was hanging from the crack in the rock by one hand, swung over to the right, both feet jammed awkwardly in below. He had no idea how he d done it.
Never mind how you did it, Gil. Move!
Hand over hand, up the crack, leaning right, boots stuffed in below at whatever twisted angle he could manage, fighting his body s attempts to hinge out sideways over the drop. Five feet of climb, and then he could reach up and clamp one hand onto the first of the fractured, dressed stone blocks in the battlement wall. He found a place where an entire block had pulled loose and tumbled downward, leaving a gap-toothed hole in the stonework. Above it, the wall had slumped apart along the line of the fracture. He got a grip with both hands, heaved himself into the gap as far as his chest, then hauled the rest of his body wearily after. He squeezed himself sideways into the space.
Piece of piss. He was panting it to himself, cackling quietly. Nice, quiet. Little climb.
He wedged his way upward between the fractured ends of the stonework, stopping every other move to free up the Ravensfriend s sharp end. Finally, he could poke his head over the battlements. Empty triangular courtyard below, a dry fountain in the center, and a cloistered walk on the far side. Memory of the map told him there was a corridor exit off to the left.
As promised, no sentry in sight.
He gave himself a minute or so to regather fighting strength and poise; then he swung bodily over the wall and dropped cat-footed to the courtyard floor. He slipped rapidly to the cloistered wall, and there the shadows swallowed him.
CHAPTER 41
Lamplight gleamed off the black iron loops and bulges where Angfal s bulk hung from her study wall. Tiny glass optics, thumbprint-small, burned green and yellow at her from scattered positions along the Helmsman s casings, like a forest full of mismatched eyes, watching her in the gloom. The roughly spider-shaped gathering of braced members and swollen central bulk up near the ceiling in the center of the wall never moved it never would, it was bolted in place with Kiriath riveting but it gave the constant impression of being poised to leap, or maybe just fall clumsily down on top of her. There was a haphazard, chaotic air to the way the engineers had installed Angfal, and it was a perfect match for the chaos of papers and books and chests of junk that littered the study. The Helmsman dominated the space. Its voice could have come from any given part of its misshapen body, or, for that matter, from any shadowed corner of the room.
You choose an interesting time to report these matters to me, daughter of Flaradnam. What exactly has delayed you this long?
Like Manathan, Angfal spoke in inflections that suggested a friendly maniac in conversation with a small child he might at any moment give a shiny coin to or just kill to eat. Hard to read much human into the tone. But to Archeth s long-accustomed ear, the Helmsman sounded genuinely worried.
I ve been busy, she said.
So it seems.
She struggled not to feel defensive. Things are difficult at the moment.
I m sure they are. Krinzanz is an insidious drug.
That s not what I m talking about! I ve been at court
Remarkable in itself, yes. Well done. Nonetheless, daughter of Flaradnam, you should have come to me sooner with this.
I ve got a name of my own, you know.
Even to her own ears, it sounded childishly sulky. But she was worn ragged and moody and tired, just in from parting company with Ringil at the river, filled with doubts and an anger that could find no clear focus, sprawled here behind the study desk, glowering up at Angfal s inscrutable, optic-spotted coils and cursing the
