Locke, and they descended steadily, one foothold or handhold at a time. The windows on the sixth floor were shuttered and dark.
Thin slivers of amber light could be seen around the shutters on the fifth floor. Both climbers slowed without the need for words and willed themselves to be as quiet as possible; to be patches of gray invisible against deeper darkness, nothing more. They continued down.
The fifth-floor shutters flew outward as Jean was abreast with them on their left.
One hinged panel rebounded off his back, almost startling him out of his hold on the trellis. He curled his fingers tightly around wood and vine, and looked to his right. Locke stepped on his head in surprise, but quickly pulled himself back up.
“I know there’s no other way out, you miserable bitch!” hissed a man’s voice.
There was a loud thump, and then a shudder ran up and down the trellis; someone else had just gone out the window, and was scrabbling in the vines beside and just below them. A black-haired woman stuck her head out of the window, intent on yelling something in return, but when she caught sight of Jean through the cracks in her swinging shutter, she gasped. This in turn drew the attention of the man clinging just beneath her; a larger man even than Jean.
“What the hell is this shit?” he gasped. “What are you doing outside this window?”
“Amusing the gods, asshole.” Jean kicked down and tried to nudge the newcomer further down the trellis, to no avail. “Kindly heave yourself down!”
“What are you doing outside this window, huh? You like to sneak a peek? You can sneak a peek of my fist, cocksucker!”
Grunting with exertion, he began to climb back upward, grabbing at Jean’s legs. Jean narrowly yanked himself out of the way, and the world reeled around him as he regained his balance. Black wall, black sky, wet black cobblestones fifty feet below. That was a bad fall, the kind that cracked men like eggs.
“All of you, get off my damned window now! Ferenz, for Morgante’s sake, leave them be and get down!” the woman hollered.
“Shit,” Locke muttered from a few feet above and to her left, his eloquence temporarily cowed into submission. “Madam, you’re complicating our night, so before we come in and complicate yours, kindly cork your bullshit bottle and close the gods-damned window!”
She looked up, aghast. “Two of you? All of you, get down, get down, get down!”
“Close your window, close your window, close your fucking window!”
“I’ll kill both you shitsuckers,” huffed Ferenz. “Drop you both off this fucking—”
There was a marrow-chillingly loud cracking noise, and the trellis shuddered beneath the hands of the three men clinging to it.
“Ah,” said Locke. “Ah, that figures. Thanks ever so much, Ferenz.”
Then there was a torrent of polysyllabic blasphemy from four mouths; exactly who said what would never be clearly recalled. Two careful men were apparently the trellis’ limit; under the weight of three careless flailers, it began to tear free of the stone wall with a series of creaks and pops.
Ferenz surrendered to gravity and common sense and began sliding downward at prodigious speed, burning his hands as he went, all but peeling the trellis off the wall above him. It finally gave way when he was about twenty feet above the ground, flipping over and dashing him down into the darkened alley, where he was promptly covered in falling vines and wood. His descent had snapped off a section of trellis at least thirty feet long, starting just beneath Jean’s dangling feet.
Wasting no time, Locke shimmied to his right and dropped down onto the window ledge, shoving the screaming woman back with the tip of one boot. Jean scrambled upward, for the shutter still blocked his direct access to the window, and as the section of trellis under his hands began to pull out of the wall, he gracelessly swung himself over the shutter and in through the window, taking Locke with him.
They wound up in a heap on the hardwood floor, tangled in cloaks.
“Get back out the fucking window, now!” the woman screamed, punctuating each word with a swift kick to Jean’s back and ribs. Fortunately, she wasn’t wearing shoes.
“That would be stupid,” Locke said, from somewhere under his larger friend.
“Hey,” Jean said. “Hey! Hey!” He caught the woman’s foot and propelled her backward. She landed on her bed; it was the sort commonly called a “dangler”—a two-person hammock of strong but lightweight demi-silk, anchored to the ceiling at four