Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,15
movement, any conspicuous shape, in the shadows. Enormous lanterns stood at strategic intervals at both the top and the base of the wall. Contained within a mirrored shell, essentially a vertical bowl, they shed their illumination in only a single direction, a beam rather than an aura. These slowly rotated, sweeping back and forth across the open terrain. The arc of each lantern overlapped with the next, ensuring that no stretch of earth remained in darkness for more than a minute or so. In her younger thieving years, Shins had heard rumors that the Guard possessed such capability, but the equipment hadn't been used in generations.
Until now.
Of course, those defenses and that system had been designed to detect approaching enemies—plural. A single figure, clad in dark hues to match the gloom, possessed of any real speed and halfway decent luck, could pass between the shifting beams with little difficulty.
“You know,” Shins sub-vocalized as she leaned against the great stone wall, listening to the steps and the voices above, “if they'd just randomize the lights a bit, not run them through those same arcs all the time, they might just…what? No, I don't want them to catch us! I meant for, you know, other people! Dangerous ones! It's definitely a problem they should fix…later.
“Well, yeah,” she continued as fingers and toes found purchase that most people would never have seen, let alone been able to use. Her ascent was swift and silent, not much louder than a caterpillar making the same journey. “I do think the laws should only apply to other people. I mean, you know that I can be trusted, but we don't know that about anyone else, do we? Frankly, with all I've done for this city, they really should have thought of that themsel—”
Olgun's silent squawk of warning froze her in place, a bit more than halfway. She pressed herself tight to the stone, willing herself to be a lump of rock. Above her, a bit of scraping and slow breath suggested that one of the guards had chosen almost that exact spot to lean against the parapet and stare out into the darkness. He had no cause to glance straight down—but if, by ill chance, he did, there was nothing even Widdershins's skills could do to hide.
Her fingers and calves began to burn, then threatened to shake. She'd intended the various nooks and crannies and imperfections in the stone to support her just long enough to catch hold of the next. Now that she was trying to support her weight at a standstill, those niches weren't nearly as large or as secure as they had been.
“Olgun…”
The tension in her digits eased with the rush of additional strength, but she'd only bought herself moments. She was just about to ask the little god to do something a bit more dramatic—make the guy think he heard something elsewhere, perhaps, or set off a nearby firearm to draw attention—when the problem solved itself. The sentry heaved a phlegmy sigh, hawked up and spit something over the edge—missing Shins by about the distance of a housefly's sneeze—and wandered off to resume his patrol.
“You're getting too old for this,” Shins whispered. Then, at Olgun's protest, “Well, one of us clearly is! And it can't be me, because I'm younger than you are!
“What? Don't be silly; of course gods age! If you didn't, you'd be too young for this, and you're clearly not.”
At which point Olgun firmly decided that more important things than this conversation demanded his full attention.
Another tense moment, as Shins waited for Olgun's “all clear,” then slowly peeked over the parapet. This stretch of walkway, startlingly dark behind the focused lanterns, indeed looked and sounded empty. The young woman scrambled over and across, quite steady despite the rain-slicked stone and occasional puddle collected earlier that day, and rolled over the barrier on the opposite side. Only then, once more affixed to the wall as if glued, did she look around to get her bearings.
“What the hopping…?!”
At the base of the wall, more of those focused lanterns shone into Davillon, illuminating the approaching thoroughfares. Fewer than their counterparts above, a small group of guards stood watch inside the main gate, just as alert as the others, despite facing what should have been a safer direction.
“You're supposed to be able to do the impossible, yes?” Shins whispered finally. “So do it. Tell me one way this could possibly indicate anything good.”
Olgun, as she'd anticipated, had nothing.
“Figured. All right, try this one.