and counter-scheme. How many windows were there? Where did the doors lead? What would be the round of the night guards? Here was a pillar to stand behind, there was a window whose casement was rotten. He made note of the shadows and what lamps and torches were likely to be lit in the long hours after the last benedictus was said.
All this was good, but the one thing it lacked was telling Pinch just where the Knife and Cup lay. The rogue tried strolling toward the main altar, keeping a veiled eye on his watchdog priest. There was no effort, no alarm to stop him, and from that Pinch guessed the regalia were not in the great nave. He was hardly surprised; stealing the Cup and Knife could hardly be that easy.
Pinch expanded his wanderings, passing through the nave's antechambers and out to the cloistered walk that ringed a damp garden, verdant with spell-ripened growth. The trees leafed fuller than the winter should have allowed, the shrubs curled thicker, and flowers blossomed in brighter hues than true nature.
At the very center of the garden square was a tower of dark stone, a somber spire that thrust above the roofs and walls of the rest of the temple grounds till it rivaled even the great dome of the main hall. No doors marked its base, and at its very top was a single window, a tall, narrow slit that was clearly big enough for a robed priest. A faint glow shifted and weaved from inside the stone chamber.
There was no need to search any farther. This, the rogue knew, was his target. There could be no other.
It was with a sudden-found burst of fitness and strength that Pinch greeted the elder patrico when he returned. The man scowled even more than he had before, suspicious of his patient's good cheer. Nonetheless, he was not going to interfere with Pinch's leaving. He was more than content to cast one he saw as a viper out of his house.
So, the temple doors closed with a certain finality behind Pinch and he was standing at the end of the Avenue of Heroes, clad only in an itchy red robe and cheap sandals. With his hair and his bruises, he looked like a wretch given charity by the friars inside. Passing tradesmen made studious effort to avoid his gaze in hopes that they could forestall the inevitable harangue for coins that was sure to come. In this Pinch surprised them, keeping his needs and his counsel to himself.
The rogue was not forlorn and abandoned though. He'd barely taken three steps through the gelatinous mud that passed for a street when someone cried out his name. Old habit spun him around quick with a hand already on his dagger, which the Red Priests had at least not thrown away, by the time he recognized the speaker. It was Lissa, sitting at a tea vendor's stall in the shade of a pale-branched willow.
'Master Janol, you are recovered?'
The rogue light-stepped through the muck and joined her.
'Well enough, for which I must thank you.' The answer was as sincere as Pinch understood the term. 'Perhaps I may even owe you my life.'
The priestess dismissed the suggestion. 'If not I, it would have been another there,' she demurred in reference to her part in getting him to the temple.
'My thanks, nonetheless.'
'What befell you?'
Pinch had already anticipated the need for a good story to explain the attack, and so answered without hesitation.
'Thieves. A cowardly lot waylaid me with clubs at an alley mouth. It was clear they planned to beat me to death and then rob me.'
'Did they?'
'Beat me to death?' Pinch asked in jovial amazement. 'Clearly not.'
'No-rob you?'
'They got something from me they'll remember,' he boasted on his lie. 'A few sharp cuts with my blade put them off their prey.'
Lissa nodded as if with great relief, but then she drew up hard as she pushed something across the table. 'It is most fortunate they did not get this…'
On the table was the amulet of the Dawnbreaker, the same he'd stolen from the temple at Elturel.
If she could have opened his heart, the priestess would have seen a churning tide of panic and rage. The sudden fear of discovery, the self-rage to have clumsily forgotten such a detail in the first place, and the panicky rush to create a plausible reply all would have played open on the face of a normal man with a normal life. Pinch, though, was no common man who carried bricks here and there. He was a regulator, and regulators survived by their wits. Inwardly he boiled, but outwardly all Lissa saw was a flooding collapse of relief.
'Praise your god!' he extemporized. 'It's safe. I would have a bet a noble those Red Priests had stolen it. Where did you find it?'
'Where you were carrying it,' was her icy reply.
'Precisely. I was worried I'd dropped it in the mud,' the rogue continued, thinking fast. 'Priestess Lissa, although it is not as I intended, let me present you with your temple's treasure.' The only hope of coming out of this, Pinch figured, was to claim credit for what he never intended.
'You-what!'
'I was bringing it to you.'
'I surely cannot believe this.'
Now was the time for Pinch to assume the air of roguish effrontery. 'I told you I had means.'
'How did you get it back?'
Pinch let knowing smile play across his lips. 'I have had some experience with thieves and their like. I understand them. It just takes the right threats.'
'A few threats and they give it up?' It was clear the woman wanted to scoff.
Pinch pressed the amulet back into her hand. 'Threats backed by sword and coin. There was a cost in getting it back-five thousand nobles. Will your temple honor my debt?' Pinch knew better than to look too pure and noble and so let his devious heart weave a profitable deceit.
Lissa was unprepared for the demand. 'I… I am certain they will. By my word they will,' she added with more confidence as she weighed the artifact in her hand.
'I will prepare a receipt for you to present to your superiors,' Pinch added as an extra fillip of persuasiveness.
'Your injuries. Did you…'
'Fight for the amulet-no, I'm no hero.' Later, when the rogue told this story around the table, this would be the place where he would pause and spread his hands with the confidence that he had caught his mark. 'This was, I think, an attempt to get it back.'
Lissa hastily slid the artifact out of sight. 'You think they'll try again?'
'Almost certainly. If I were a thief, I would. I fear it puts you in danger.'
'I can care for myself.'
'They'll be looking for you.'
'I'll take it to the temple.'
'The Morninglord's temple here in Ankhapur is small and poorly funded. These thieves already stole it once from a better-equipped temple. They'd be certain to try here.'
'Not if you turned them over to the authorities.'
'I can't.' Pinch was lying in this. If he ever had to, he'd turn Sprite and the others over without a qualm.
'Can't?'
'I'm not sure who they are and even if I knew, I wouldn't. Understand-my success is based in part on discretion. Lose that and no one will trust me.'
The priestess was shocked. 'This is a business for you!'
Pinch sipped at the brew the tea vender set in front of him. 'It is a service. Sometimes there are rewards and sometimes not. We can't all live supported by the donations of others, lady.'
She felt the venom in that sting. 'It's not a pure business-'
'And I am no priest, even if I am decked out in these red robes,' Pinch interrupted. 'You live to see the perfect world rise over the horizon like the sun of your Morninglord, and I laud you for that, Lissa. I must live to survive. Besides, isn't recovering what is stolen a virtue? Maids come to priests to find rings they have lost; I just do the
