The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,108
silent, relieved cheer when at last I narrowed in on a row of houses just past a slender, near-vertical strip of a park. I dawdled along a stone stair winding up through the park, pretending to admire a rainbow cascade of larkflowers.
The ten houses in the row didn’t look much different from countless others I’d passed. Three stories tall and fronted with gray blocks of stone, they had narrow slots for windows, white lintels, and ornamental carving on the doors and eaves. Three of the ten had purely decorative woodwork with no sign of a family crest, meaning they likely weren’t owned by natives of Kost. One of those three, midway along the row, had silver plaques inscribed with ward lines not only bracketing doors and windows, but strategically scattered over roof and walls as well. The wards were standard Alathian make, meant to paralyze an intruder rather than kill, but the placement was expert. Not a chink existed in their protection.
That had to be a mage’s house. I weighed the risk of walking the row to confirm Kiran’s presence—or at least, that of his shirt—with the last glimmer of the charm’s power. The mage didn’t know me from any other Arkennlander, but if Pello was in there and caught sight of me, he’d mark me no matter what disguise I wore. Damn it, I couldn’t chance that.
Shaikar take Pello, anyway. Every time I turned around on this trip, there he was, making everything twice as fucking difficult. Why couldn’t he have slunk off back to Ninavel instead of throwing in with the mage?
I’d have to shadow the house careful as a handler scouting a job. With wards placed so well, I’d never manage to sneak inside. But whatever the mage had planned for Kiran, it surely involved magic, and he couldn’t do any serious magic in a house smack in the middle of Kost without running afoul of the Council. No, he’d have to take Kiran somewhere else first, and the first step in any rescue was to figure out when and where he intended to make his move.
The creviced gray limestone of the cliff that formed the foundation of the next higher terrace drew my eye. Plants grew out of the cracks, from ferns to scraggly, stubborn trees. And high up in the rock face, a round dark hole like an open mouth.
When the Alathians built Kost’s terraced streets into the steep side of the Parsian Valley, they’d bored narrow tunnels through the rock to channel the runoff from the heavy winter rains and keep it from causing mudslides or ground erosion. The lower end of this tunnel looked just wide enough for a person to squeeze inside. It’d be cramped and awkward, but I’d be hidden from view, and I’d have a good sightline down to the house I wanted to watch.
A perfect spot for a deathdealer’s ambush, if only I could shoot a crossbow bolt through Simon’s heart. I knew better than to try. Aside from my lack of experience with weaponry, I’d heard far too many stories in Ninavel about idiots who tried to ambush powerful mages. Throwing knives, crossbow bolts, even Sulanian hand cannons...none of it could penetrate the invisible armor of a mage’s defensive spells, no matter how sudden the surprise. Too bad. If anyone deserved a knife in the throat, it was a blood mage.
No, I’d need to find another way to deal with Kiran’s captor, and that meant keen observation. I sighed. When Red Dal scouted a job, he sent kids in shifts so someone watched the house every moment of the day and night. No possible way to duplicate that, working alone. My contacts in Kost were all part of Gerran’s operation, and gods knew I didn’t want a single whiff of my intentions getting back to Gerran. I knew a few others here by name, but none I could trust.
What I needed, damn it, was Jylla. Since I’d Changed, I’d never worked a city job without her. That wicked glint in her black eyes when she’d worked out a clever plan...the way she’d dissolve my nerves before a tricky job by muttering sarcastic observations about passers-by until I near burst with suppressed laughter...I kicked a loose cobblestone, viciously. Jylla would never have joined me in something crazy as this. She’d have laughed her perfect little ass off when I told her my reasons, mocked me for being soft in the head, and then talked me out of it with