Roland Green: Knights of the Crown

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A light glimmered in the distance, roughly from the direction of the main house. The glow had to wriggle past too many leaf-heavy branches to tell Pirvan more. It was spring in Istar, a warm spring after a wet and mild winter, and growing things flourished exceedingly.

It was late enough in the day that Istar had fallen into slumber, and few with lawful business were abroad. The exceptions were the patrons of certain taverns and the workers at the markets and docks, unloading the night’s cargoes and making them ready for the day.

Those were all a long way from the estate. Nothing except the breeze and night birds broke the silence. Pirvan lowered himself onto a branch as cautiously as a cat stalking one of those birds, to keep it from creaking. He lay motionlessly until the light went out, without any noises coming to join it.

As far as he could tell, the Encuintras estate had joined the rest of Istar in slumber.

He studied the wall. It was three times his height and half his height broad. The top flourished no fewer than three rows of silvered iron spikes, one jutting outward, one jutting inward, and one revolving in a slot in the middle.

Those spikes were encouraging. People who built such stout physical defenses seldom went to the additional expense of magical ones-at least in Istar, where a thief who wielded potent spells was apt to have the mages, the priests, and the sharp steel of his comrades pursuing him to the death.

Pirvan had enough magical talent that he might have earned a modest living in one of the lesser traveling shows, doing minor conjury, juggling with the aid of a levitation spell, and so on. A modest illusion caster, he had firm command of only one considerable spell, and no hope of penetrating or defending himself against serious magical defenses.

However, the physical defenses he’d seen so far were formidable enough. His mail might protect him if he drove hard against any of the spikes; better not put it to such drastic proof. Besides, his agility was his greatest pride-though “a man most often ends in the arena for what he’s proudest of” was an old saying in Istar’s back streets.

Pirvan opened one purse, pulled out a long rope of tightly wound silken cord, and checked the loop at one end. He shifted position, lowered the rope until the loop had free play, then began to swing it.

Back and forth the loop danced like a pendulum, until Pirvan judged it was moving fast enough. Then he flicked both hands, and the loop soared up to drop over one of the spikes pointing inward. A brisk tug told Pirvan that it would hold.

He pulled up most of the slack, then tied it around his waist, leaving only enough for free movement. He swung around the branch until he was hanging from it like a squirrel, found good braces for his feet, and flung himself into the air.

He flipped over as he kicked off, and landed feet first on the outer row of spikes. They bent, groaning under the impact. For a moment Pirvan feared they would bounce him on to one of the other sets of spikes, back into the branches, or off the wall entirely.

With another groan the spikes straightened themselves, but so slowly that Pirvan was able to step off them and onto the top of the wall in good order. He knelt and thrust several thin bronze nails firmly into the slot holding the nearest set of revolving spikes. With a few taps of a small padded hammer, he drove the nails in, until a spear’s length of the revolving spikes was locked in place for the night.

Then he crossed the wall, stepping carefully and crouching low. Shards of glass and pottery were embedded edge-upward in the top of the wall, making him wish he had a layer of mail in his shoes. He was also glad he hadn’t put much weight on the rope so far.

Against the background of the tree and the night he should be hard to see from almost any angle. But if he was careless, as surely as Huma slew dragons, a pair of servants would find for an exchange of affection the one place that let them see him.

Perhaps they would have their attention elsewhere-and perhaps not. Pirvan remained crouching in silence until anyone who had seen him could have given the alarm five times over. He thought briefly of clever traps, decided that that was taking too much counsel from his fears, and swung himself on his hands over the inner row of spikes.

A moment later he’d slid down to the ground, tweaked the loop’s slipknot to free the rope, and gone to cover behind the nearest clump of bushes. They had the slightly sour odor of young rattlebeans, but a more pleasant scent and a few thorns told Pirvan that wood roses were twining around the rattlebean branches on their way up the inside of the wall.

Pirvan plucked a half-open rosebud and thrust it under the collar of his shirt. Then he crouched still lower and peered out from under the bush at the rest of the path to the house.

It was not a long way, perhaps fifty paces, and much of that offered cover enough for three minotaurs and a newly hatched dragonet. The nobles of House Encuintras clearly had gone right on flaunting their age-old skill at making splendid gardens, even now, when they no longer had to arrange so much as a bouquet with their own hands.

Some of the great merchant families modeled their estates on the manors, fortified or not, of the great landed lords. It was as if they wanted to suggest to the world that their ancestors had ruled broad expanses of land and armies of loyal peasants from the days of Vinas Solamnus, if not earlier.

Any self-respecting thief became something of an expert on any house that might offer worthwhile takings, and Pirvan had more curiosity than most. He knew how few of the great merchants had great-grandfathers they could present in public-and how House Encuintras was one with ancestors it could flaunt before all the world.

Indeed, the blood of Istar’s old protectors ran in Lady Eskaia’s veins. Yet everything between Pirvan and the house would hardly have made a decent kitchen garden on some estates. The house itself was large, but much of it unashamedly new, with no architectural fripperies to make it look ancient, and generally seemed no more than a merchant’s townhouse levitated to the middle of a well-wrought garden.

House Encuintras had probably been no more honest than most merchants, in the days when it had scrabbled for every coin. Now that those days were past, it could afford only-and even practiced- some honesty.

Pirvan liked this among the powerful. It made it more of a pleasure to match wits with them.

For the moment, he needed less keenness of wits than fleetness of foot. He studied the grounds, calling eyes, ears, and even nose to his aid. No guard animals appeared, neither dogs, leopards, nor griffons (not that this close to the city he expected to find even the youngest and tamest of griffons).

No human guards, either, though someone had to be watching from somewhere. It was against nature for treasure to go unguarded.

Pirvan took a moment to jerk the slipknot on the loop of his rope. It hissed down into the bushes; he untangled it and rewound it about his waist. To leave one’s rope ready might save a few seconds escaping, if one was lucky enough to escape the way one entered. More often, someone saw the rope, drew the appropriate conclusions, and raised the alarm at some inevitably inconvenient moment.

With the rope secured, Pirvan began his tortuous path toward the house. He had some surety about human and animal guards and magical defenses; less about mantraps and other mechanical devices. He darted from cover to cover, once using a fountain, another time a bench, but always crossing open ground as quickly as he could-which was faster than most men.

Each time he reached open ground, he faced a delicate decision, the kind he’d trained to make for half his life. Stay in the shadows, which might hide a mantrap, or cross open ground, where moonlight could reveal both traps and him? It helped that not only was he fleeter of foot than most men, but he could also see farther to either side.