Knowing that daylight would rob her of natural advantages, she prepared herself mentally. Hettie checked her weapons, making sure they were snug. The arrows were bunched together and tied off to prevent them from rattling inside the quiver. She re-laced her boots again, just to be sure they were tight; the soles were padded to prevent sound. From a pocket, she produced her shooting gloves and tugged them on.
The Bhikhu training had begun to occupy the foremost thoughts in her mind. Deliberately, she had to recall the lessons of the Romani. How to move with perfect stillness. How to control her breathing. The inner mechanisms that made locks function and how to release them without a key. The art of disguise and the myriad of subterfuges she was capable of. But it was different now. Before she had been serving the interests of Kiranrao in claiming the lost Paracelsus blade, the one known as Iddawc. She had been his puppet. That secret and the trust of her brother and Paedrin had cost her something. Now that she was free of the accursed earring, she felt a lightness in her chest she’d never experienced before. Yes, a Romani may try to threaten her again. Kiranrao might attempt to poison her—but she felt much more capable of avoiding the fate of other Romani women. Tyrus’s quest to banish the Plague had resulted in the banishment of her captivity. He had offered her a chance to live in Silvandom, safely beyond the Arch-Rike and the Romani’s reach. She gladly clung to that strand of hope.
With a supple spring, Hettie launched herself up the rope. She pulled with her arms and also pushed with her legs, twining herself up the vast length with easy grace. The quiet stretching of the rope mixed with little bursts of breath, which fogged out of her mouth and joined the vapors shrouding the land. But those sounds were tiny compared with the colossal crash of the waves against the rocks beneath her. The outer wall of the temple was covered with lichen, but it had been crafted of enormous stones and seemed determine to endure through the ages. Up she went, one pull at a time, gliding her way up to the tower.
The fog boiled around her, obscuring the encroaching sunlight. Her fingers burned with pain but she persevered, feeling the steady grip of the leather shooting gloves accepting the strands of rope snugly. Each pull was flawless. She ascended quickly. The light became more pronounced as the mist thinned. She emerged from its folds and found the dawn sky above her, bright and blue with traces of lavender. She reached the top of the wall but the tower continued up. Sounds reached her, reminding her of the training yard of the Bhikhu temple in Kenatos. Vivid memories of that place stung her mind—its life as well as its death. She heard grunts and the sound of fighting and bodies colliding. She wondered where Paedrin was, hidden in the mist somewhere near the main gates. As she continued up the rope, she listened for sounds from him. Her arm muscles throbbed with the effort, but she was strong and had only grown stronger with Paedrin’s training.
Scaling the tower wall, hand over hand, she paused for a moment and stared at the buttresses above. There were no stairs or ledges leading to it. There were no windows in the tower itself. She wondered, with it being a Vaettir stronghold originally, if there were even any stairs within it. An enemy would be hard-pressed to attack a place that could not be breached without tall ladders. She heard a voice coming from the training yard, but it was too distant to recognize the words or the identity of the speaker. With a smirk, Hettie was suddenly grateful for Paedrin’s bombastic side. She would have no trouble hearing him.
Hettie reached the lower edge of the buttress and grabbed the stone, admiring the quality of the knots Paedrin used to fasten it. She debated with herself on whether she should untie it, but decided that it would be best to leave it as a possible way to escape. She gripped the stone and pulled herself up to the buttress, which curved out, supporting the weight of the balcony. She paused for several moments, listening for any sound other than the crash and foam of the sea, the training yard, or anything else. The balcony faced away from the temple and so it would not give her a good view of the grounds below. Comfortable with her decision to wait, she then crept along the edge of the buttress and gripped the bottom edge of the balcony. Holding her weight with her hands, she peered up between the thin stone columns of the balcony rail. There were two stone urns, one on each side of a wooden door. The balcony was tiled with intricate stone chips of different colors. The balcony was small. The rail was wide enough to form a stone seat in a semicircle. There were no windows.