Steven Brust - Hawk

We ate in companionable silence. Deragar kept watching Loiosh and Rocza eat, but he didn’t say anything about it, and neither did they.

When we’d finished eating and had quite demolished the wine, I gave Deragar a little money, and asked him to buy me a wheelbarrow and some clothing appropriate for a peasant. I also gave him a message for delivery to the Demon; tomorrow would be the day.

Deragar gave me a raised eyebrow that suddenly reminded me of Kragar, and headed out.

I sat in an uncomfortable chair and crossed and re-crossed my legs and stretched and got up and sat down again until he came back. It wasn’t long, maybe half an hour.

“This is bound to be good,” he said.

“Not as exciting as you might think.”

“Can I watch?”

“No, not for this.”

He shrugged, reminding me of Kragar again. “All right.”

“Where’s the barrow?”

“Downstairs.”

“Good.”

“Boss? Why do we need a wheelbarrow?”

“To complete the peasant disguise.”

“Really? That’s all?”

“Really. That’s all.”

“Even though it’s empty?”

“When’s the last time you noticed whether a wheelbarrow was empty?”

“Um. Okay.”

I transformed myself into a lowly peasant Easterner. I’m glad I didn’t have a mirror. I threw some dirt on myself and rubbed it in a bit, just to put the final touches on.

Then I collected Rocza, Loiosh, and Loiosh’s attitude, and the four of us snuck out of the tunnel once more, complete with wheelbarrow. For once I wasn’t too worried about an attack, since no one would imagine I was, you know, me. It’s the sort of thing you can get away with for a while, if you’re willing.

Wheelbarrows are, no doubt, fine machines; but they’re still machines. And as far as I’m concerned, mechanical devices have no reason to exist except to do a bad job of something sorcery can do a good job of. There must be more to it than that, or there wouldn’t be all those mechanical devices. I mean, would there? Yeah, okay, so maybe not everyone is good enough at sorcery to pull it off, or rich enough to pay someone else to. I’ve also heard the argument that some things are just easier and more natural when done the hard way; I’m just not sure I buy it.

If I had had any idea how hard it would be to keep wheeling that thing through the streets of Adrilankha, I might have changed my mind about the whole plan. And when I reflected that Teckla usually had something heavy in one, my opinion of Teckla went up; I made a mental note to tell Cawti that when I could. If I could. The good part was that inside of ten minutes I was as filthy and stinky and sweaty as any peasant, and I felt safer than I had in some time. Though if the choice was to live like this or face soul-death, I’d go for the soul-death. No I wouldn’t. Yes I would. Maybe.

Glad the situation hasn’t come up, though.

Amazing how loud those things are, too.

After trudging along Lower Kieron for longer than I want to remember, I was in an area where it was both safe and possible to leave the wheelbarrow, so I did and continued on to Kieron.

It was much easier after that, which is just as well because I had to go a long way, which would have been impossibly long if I’d had to push that thing up and down hills. The area went from poor, to affluent, to peasant (which is like poor but with less trash and more space), and then there were a couple of castles off in the distance and one very large single-story building directly in front of us.

I should explain about that building.

I’d found it a short while back, led there by someone I trusted. The details aren’t important. But I’d been inside of it, and had the chance to get to know it pretty well. It was first built by a Vallista named Tethia as, so she told me, “an experiment,” which is what people say when they do something that makes everyone laugh at them. There’s a story there, too.

It was big, it was empty, and there was a room in it that held a long table and a lot of comfortable chairs. The building was rented out every now and then by groups of merchants or nobles who wanted to solve matters in a less violent way than is usual for the people I know. If you ignore the rest of the structure (and you should if you don’t want your head exploding), that room is pretty comfortable. On the south wall are several large windows of glass that were treated to prevent breakage. The glass looks out over the ocean-sea, just where Kieron’s Watch used to be. It is, in fact, a spectacular view.

It was night when I arrived, and there were no lights to be seen anywhere; the place was empty. It was usually empty. If it hadn’t been deserted this time around, I’m not sure what I’d have done-left town? killed everyone in it? sat down and cried? That had been one of the few things I had to trust to luck on; and so far, luck was with me.

Time to get to work.

There were enough wards and spells and devices on the doors and windows of the place that breaking in would have been a major enterprise. I could have done it, especially with Kiera’s help, but there was no need.

“Anything, Loiosh?”

“No one anywhere near, Boss. You’re good.”

“All right.”

“What if your memory is off? I mean, what if you don’t recall the inside as well as you think you do?”

“I’m going to look first, Loiosh. As in, look inside. Through the windows. Glass windows. They work both ways, you know. Glass. It’s this thing invented by people with oppos-”

“Shut up, Boss.”

We went around to the side of the building, my back to the ocean-sea far below me; I could smell it, and hear the waves crashing on Kieron’s Rocks. I looked through the window, did a quick calculation, then did it again to be sure, and made a note of the spot.

“You know this is crazy, right, Boss?”

“Not if it works.”

Glass windows are a sign of wealth. Not so much because they’re expensive-a good sorcerer with access to sand can, I’m told, create any size and shape window with a bit of time and effort-but because they break. That’s what glass does. And then you have to replace them. And after a few times, the cost starts building up, so you have to not care.

Or you spend even more on enchanting the windows so they don’t break.

I gave the window an experimental smack with my fist. It hardly even vibrated.

“All right, so-”

“Watch and learn,” I said.

I ran my fingers over the place where the window was joined to the wall-a wood frame had been set into the stone, and ingenious slots cut into it to hold the window in place.

Those of us in the business call that a “weak spot.”

The process was a lot longer and slower than I had expected. For one thing, there was this strange glue-like substance between glass and wood that I had to scrape away. Every time my knife tapped the window it made a ringing sound that was not unpleasant but made me worry about breaking it until I remembered that it was unbreakable. Which was the reason for doing this, after all.

But in the end, it was done-the window would come out with a good push, and from there I’d be just a few feet from the cliff, and there were stairs cut into the cliff.

“Sleep now,” I said.

“Yeah, after a long walk back into the City.”

“Who’s whining now?”

It was, indeed, a long and wearying walk, but we made it back, using the tunnel again. I said not a word to anyone; I just trudged into the storage room I was using, threw myself onto my pile of blankets, and went to sleep.