small protrusions sprouting out of the top. There wasn’t a straight line in the whole starvin’ place. Just lots and lots of curves.
Lift’s companions climbed up to peek over the top of the wall. A scuffling, scrambling, rowdy mess they were. Six men, supposedly master thieves. They couldn’t even climb a wall properly.
“The Bronze Palace itself,” Huqin breathed.
“Bronze? Is that what everythin’ is made of?” Lift asked, sitting on the wall with one leg over the side. “Looks like a bunch of breasts.”
The men looked at her, aghast. They were all Azish, with dark skin and hair. She was Reshi, from the islands up north. Her mother had told her that, though Lift had never seen the place.
“What?” Huqin demanded.
“Breasts,” Lift said, pointing. “See, like a lady layin’ on her back. Those points on the tops are nipples. Bloke who built this place musta been single for a looong time.”
Huqin turned to one of his companions. Using their ropes, they scuttled back down the outside of the wall to hold a whispered conference.
“Grounds at this end look empty, as my informant indicated would be the case,” Huqin said. He was in charge of the lot of them. Had a nose like someone had taken hold of it when he was a kid and pulled real, real hard. Lift was surprised he didn’t smack people in the face with it when he turned.
“Everyone’s focused on choosing the new Prime Aqasix,” said Maxin. “We could really do this. Rob the Bronze Palace itself, and right under the nose of the vizierate.”
“Is it . . . um . . . safe?” asked Huqin’s nephew. He was in his teens, and puberty hadn’t been kind to him. Not with that face, that voice, and those spindly legs.
“Hush,” Huqin snapped.
“No,” Tigzikk said, “the boy is right to express caution. This will be very dangerous.”
Tigzikk was considered the learned one in the group on account of his being able to cuss in three languages. Downright scholarly, that was. He wore fancy clothing, while most of the others wore black. “There will be chaos,” Tigzikk continued, “because so many people move through the palace tonight, but there will also be danger. Many, many bodyguards and a likelihood of suspicion on all sides.”
Tigzikk was an aging fellow, and was the only one of the group Lift knew well. She couldn’t say his name. That “quq” sound on the end of his name sounded like choking when someone pronounced it correctly. She just called him Tig instead.
“Tigzikk,” Huqin said. Yup. Choking. “You were the one who suggested this. Don’t tell me you’re getting cold now.”
“I’m not backing down. I’m pleading caution.”
Lift leaned down over the wall toward them. “Less arguing,” she said. “Let’s move. I’m hungry.”
Huqin looked up. “Why did we bring her along?”
“She’ll be useful,” Tigzikk said. “You’ll see.”
“She’s just a child!”
“She’s a youth. She’s at least twelve.”
“I ain’t twelve,” Lift snapped, looming over them.
They turned up toward her.
“I ain’t,” she said. “Twelve’s an unlucky number.” She held up her hands. “I’m only this many.”
“. . . Ten?” Tigzikk asked.
“Is that how many that is? Sure, then. Ten.” She lowered her hands. “If I can’t count it on my fingers, it’s unlucky.” And she’d been that many for three years now. So there.
“Seems like there are a lot of unlucky ages,” Huqin said, sounding amused.
“Sure are,” she agreed. She scanned the grounds again, then glanced back the way they had come, into the city.
A man walked down one of the streets leading to the palace. His dark clothing blended into the gloom, but his silver buttons glinted each time he passed a streetlight.
Storms, she thought, a chill running up her spine. I didn’t lose him after all.
She looked down at the men. “Are you coming with me or not? ’Cuz I’m leaving.” She slipped over the top and dropped into the palace yards. Lift squatted there, feeling the cold ground. Yup, it was metal. Everything was bronze. Rich people, she decided, loved to stick with a theme.
As the boys finally stopped arguing and started climbing, a thin, twisting trail of vines grew out of the darkness and approached Lift. It looked like a little stream of spilled water picking its way across the floor. Here and there, bits of clear crystal peeked out of the vines, like sections of quartz in otherwise dark stone. Those weren’t sharp, but smooth like polished glass, and didn’t glow with Stormlight.
The vines grew super-fast, curling about one another in a tangle that