Maybe.
He had a fair idea of where Sandis was being kept. Ish. He had the drop-off location from his last client. And Sandis had said they’d been close to Kazen’s lair when she first summoned Ireth.
His skin pebbled and cooled at the thought. Ireth. He could see the horned fire horse in his vision as clearly as if the numen had branded his image there. God’s tower, there were more of those where he was going. A one-winged witch, a crab turtle, a nightmare-spun werewolf . . . thing.
And the possibility of this Kolosos.
But he had to go.
He barely felt the ball in his gut when he approached a goldsmith on the southern end of Dresberg—one of the nice ones that didn’t try to pawn off polished brass as twenty karat. The salesman blathered something or other to him as he looked over his wares. Rone didn’t listen. The rings were too small. Chains would never be convincing. But that—that bracelet. That was perfect. Three bands of gold connected by a perpendicular band studded with pearls.
“This,” he said. “But I only want the band and a pair of pliers. You don’t sell gold nails, do you? I need to make some loops that sort of circle around one another.”
The goldsmith looked at him like he was mad.
Rone smacked a stack of cash on the counter, and the goldsmith got to work.
He felt like a fly in a spider’s nest. Not the tiny city spiders that wove their webs in the corners of windowpanes, but the nasty ones out in the dust, where no one had bothered to build in millennia. Big, craggy things with knobby joints and beady eyes. He thought he could feel one crawling up his neck. Shivering, he forced his hands to remain steady on his perch as he sat precariously on the end of a dilapidated apartment building, looking down onto the streets. For a city that craved space, you’d think someone would sign an order to have these suckers demolished. Then again, he imagined the grafters that hung around here pulled many a bloody string to have them left alone.
The area filled with shadows as the sun lowered toward the horizon. The glowing behemoth sat halfway behind the hideous city wall, stretching the old buildings long and dark. Rone stayed away from its orange light and watched. He wasn’t perfect at spotting grafters, but he had developed a decent eye for them during his time with Sandis. When one was running for his life, it was a good idea to learn the look of his hunters.
Rone’s back stiffened in complaint at his stillness, having had less than twelve hours to recover from its epic journey. He hadn’t slept much, either, but wakefulness glued his eyelids back and sucked moisture from his mouth and sinuses. He wasn’t worried about falling asleep, but he was concerned he was stalking the wrong place.
He crept, like a fly, along the building’s edge until he reached a corner. Paused, listened. He wouldn’t make the jump to the building north of him. Not because it was too far, but because he didn’t think the edges of the collapsed roof would hold him. He veered east. Stood in a shadow, then leapt. He had a nearly silent landing. Not perfect, but good enough.
A few buildings later, he found another decent perch above an old outdoor stairwell. The building to the west shadowed him perfectly. The polluted sky blushed between swaths of gray as the sun sank lower and lower. Would these guys make him wait until nightfall?
Apparently not. The sound of footsteps caught his attention. Rone crept along the decking, homing in on two men coming down an alleyway. He hadn’t seen where they’d come from. Had they been walking for a while, or recently emerged? Apparently he’d have to do this the hard way.
He rechecked his amarinth, then the knives in his boots. Trained his eyes on the men. Moved with them as they rounded a corner, coming closer. They strode with confidence, despite the late hour and questionable neighborhood. Wore dark clothes. Didn’t talk. Definitely armed. Definitely grafters.
Maybe he was the spider after all.
Rone slinked down to the stairs, creeping with bent knees and elbows until he was one story above, and they were below— He leapt.
His aim was true—he landed right on the shoulders of the closer grafter, slamming him into the ground like a shoe to a beetle. The man’s head made a distinct, melon-like thump when it hit the dirt-packed road.
The other grafter pulled out a pistol. No pistols. Too loud.
Rone launched into the air and kicked the firearm out of the man’s hand. Landed a punch to his collar, but the grafter grabbed his wrist and tried to twist it. Rone bent with the movement and came around, swinging his leg behind him. His heel met the man’s temple. The grafter let go. Rone finished the rotation and smashed his elbow into the side of his opponent’s neck. The grafter fell to one knee.
Rone rushed at him, pulling a knife from his boot as he did so. Whipped his arm around his neck and pressed the blade to the soft flesh beneath his chin.
“Tell me how to get to Kazen,” he muttered.
But the grafter didn’t say a word.
Rone tightened his grip until the man’s face began to purple. “Tell me how to get to Kazen.”
The man refused.
Damn loyalty. Or perhaps it was fear. Rone certainly wasn’t as scary as the grafter ringleader.
Rone held on until the grafter went limp. The man fell to the ground, a stuttering breath filling his lungs. The first grafter—the one Rone had jumped on—began to wearily pick himself up.
Rone strode over and repeated the knife-and-choking routine.
“Tell me where Kazen is.”
The grafter wheezed, then nodded.
This wasn’t Rone’s first time infiltrating a building. Granted, he’d never snuck into one this big with so few exits. He needed all the magical minutes he could get in a place like this, but he only had one, and he had to use it well.
The key with any infiltration was not to draw attention to yourself, either with your appearance or your approach. Rone didn’t want a fight. He wanted to be invisible.
The grafter who’d held out on him had been about Rone’s size, so after landing a blow that would keep him asleep for a good long while (if not kill him, but that wasn’t Rone’s problem right now), he stripped the guy, though kept his own dark pants. The more compliant grafter he kept close, like they were whispering to each other. Never mind that Rone’s hand was under the man’s swank jacket, holding the point of a knife between two vertebrae.
The entrance wasn’t far, and it wasn’t special. Looked like nothing more than the door to a dilapidated building. Rone could feel eyes on him, watchmen, so he leaned close to his smoke-and-whiskey-smelling friend and told him to act natural or he’d never feel his legs again.
The grafter complied. Which made him Rone’s favorite grafter ever.
Unfortunately, their friendship could only go so far. They walked down a flight of stairs into a narrow corridor lit too dimly for any person who had aboveground preferences. Rone looked for a good place to dump his chap and found one in a laundry room not far from the entrance.
He didn’t want to kill the man. Killing wasn’t Rone’s way, even if the bloke was a disgusting piece of Dresberg underbelly. But he’d kill for Sandis if he had to. He would not leave this place without her.
Closing the door to the rather large laundering space, Rone decided to give this grafter the same odds as the first—a blow that would keep him out and maybe kill him. Ultimately, it depended on the man’s will to live. Maybe. But heels to temples tended not to work out so well.
At least the guy’s body fit snugly inside the drainpipe in the corner. Rone took the crook’s hat and set it on his own head, pulling it low as he’d seen Kazen do.