Mercedes Lackey - Take A Thief

: Mind?: he felt her scorn. :You Just try and do it without me! You wouldn't have a chance.:

Well, she was probably right.

:But what do I do with you while I'm sneakin' around?: he asked.

She chuckled. :I’ll take care of that. Trust me, lean always insinuate myself into someone's nearby stable. But I'm not having you so far away that I can't come to your rescue if I have to.:

He was both touched and a trifle irritated. Did she think he couldn't take care of himself? He'd been taking care of himself for the past year and more! She hadn't been around then!

Now she sounded contrite. :Of course you can take care of yourself, I never doubted that. But your uncle might have guards — :

He laughed, silently. :Londer? Old cheap Londer? Not a chance. What he has got is dogs — but he's too cheap to get trained ones, so he just gets nasty ones and keeps 'em hungry to keep 'em mean. Which means — ?:

Cymry knew; bless her, she got it at once. :They'll eat anything you throw in front of them.:

He grinned. :And I know where to get plenty of poppy syrup. Put 'em right to sleep inside a candlemark, then I slip inside and give old uncle a surprise.:

:Then what will you do?: she asked soberly. :When you leave? You aren't — :

:I'm gonna make him drink poppy hisself,: Skif reassured her. :No way I'm taking a chance on hitting him hard enough to make sure he stays knocked out. Besides, with that thick head of his — I'd probably break what I hit him with before I knocked him out.:

He felt her sigh gustily. :Good. Then this will all work. And what then?:

:Then — : he closed his eyes, but couldn't yet see a direction for himself. :It's early days to make any plans. I'll figure on what to do after I hear what old Londer has to say.:

And that would have to do, for now.

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SKIF looked down on the silent, darkened oblong that was his uncle's yard from the roof of his uncle's house. The roof-tree was not the most comfortable place he'd ever had to perch, but better to rest here than inside the house. Down there somewhere in the shadows were five lumps of sleeping canine that had been completely unable to resist juicy patties of chopped meat mixed with bread crumbs soaked in poppy syrup. Poor miserable animals, Uncle Londer would probably be even harsher with them after their failure to stop him.

This was the halfway point, and Skif paused for a breather while he could take one. He'd gotten out of the Collegium through his window, out of the Complex openly on Cymry's back, as if he was going out into the city for any perfectly ordinary reason.

Well, perhaps not ordinary, since Trainees as young as he was generally didn't go out to the city after dark. But he'd made sure to look serious, as if someone had sent for him, rather than overly cheerful, as if he expected to find himself in, say, the “Virgin and Stars” tavern that night. No one questioned him, and Heraldic Trainees (unlike the common-born Blues or the Bardic Trainees) were not required to give a reason for leaving the Complex at whatever hour, probably because it was generally assumed that their Companions would not agree to anything that wasn't proper.

Once in Haven, Cymry found an unguarded stable near Uncle Londer's house — unguarded because it was completely empty and beginning to fall to pieces, symptom of a sudden change in someone's fortune. There he had changed into his black clothing, feeling distinctly odd as he did so. It seemed that the last time he'd worn this was a lifetime ago, not just a couple of moons. But where he was going, that uniform was a distinct handicap.

He hadn't swathed his face and head, or blackened exposed flesh with charcoal just then. He'd still had to get the chopped meat, the bread and the poppy syrup, and not all in the same market square, just so no one would put him and the ingredients together if they were questioned later. That was why he'd left the Collegium early. Markets stayed open late in the poorer parts of town, for the benefit of those whose own working hours were long. Skif had no trouble in acquiring what he needed, and he made his final preparations in that stable by the light of the moon overhead.

Then, and only then, did he finish dressing, and with the treated meat stuffed into cleaned sausage bladders which he tied off, and then put into a bag, he had slipped out alone into the darkness.

The key to making sure that all five dogs got their doses was to send the bladders over the wall at long intervals. The first and strongest dog wolfed down his portion, then staggered about for a bit and fell asleep. When Skif heard the staggering, he sent over the second bladder; by that time the strongest dog was in no condition to contest the food, and the second strongest got it. It took a while, but Skif was patient, and when he couldn't hear anything other than dog snores, he went over the wall and up the gutter to the roof.

Now he sat on the rooftree with his back against one of the chimneys, using its bulk to conceal his silhouette, and took deep, slow breaths to calm himself. His gut was a tight knot — a good reason for not eating much tonight. And he was thirsty, but thirsty was better than being in the middle of a job and having to — well. This would be the first time he had ever entered a house with the intention of confronting someone. Normally that was the last thing he wanted to do, and it had him strung tighter than an ill-tuned harp.

So he ran over what he needed to do in his mind until he thought he'd rehearsed it enough, and Mindcalled Cymry.

:I'm going in,: he told her.

:You know what to do if you get in trouble,: she replied, for they had already worked that out. Skif would get outside, anywhere outside, and she would come for him. She swore she could even get into the yard if it was needful. How she was to get over that fence, he had no notion, but that was her problem. Bazie had taught him that once you put your confidence in a partner, you just trusted that he knew what he was doing and went on with your part of the plan. Because once the plan was in motion, there was nothing you could do about what he was responsible for, anyway, so there was no point in taking up some of the attention you should be paying to your part of the job by worrying about him.

He slipped over the rooftree to the next chimney; the hatch into the crawl space was just on the other side of it. It wasn't locked — it hadn't been locked for the past five years that Skif knew of. Even if it had been, it was one of those that had its hinges on the outside, and all he would have had to do would have been to knock the hinge pins out and he could have lifted it up from the hinge side. He left it open, just in case he had to make a quick exit and couldn't use the route out he'd planned.

The space he slipped down into was more of a crawl space than an attic, too small to be practical to store anything. He crawled on his hands and knees, feeling his way along until he came to the hatch that led down into the hallway separating all of the dozen garret rooms where Londer's servants slept, six on one side of the corridor, and six on the other.

Well, where the servants Londer had would have slept, if he'd had more than the three he kept. Like everything else Londer had, his servants were cheap because no one else would have them, and he worked them — screaming and cursing at them all the while — until they dropped. His man-of-all-work was a drunkard, so was his cook, and the overworked housemaid was another half-wit like Maisie. None of them was going to wake up short of Skif falling on them, which obviously he didn't intend to do.