Jim Butcher - Academ's Fury

Tavi forced himself to concentrate on his task, upon the steady, sure motion of arms and legs and fingers and hands. He did not hurry, but moved with deliberate caution until he had crossed the gap. He was able to spot a window ledge, and dropped his feet carefully down to rest on it until he was sure it would hold his weight. Then he stepped more firmly onto the ledge and looked back at Kitai, one hand steadying himself on the rope.

The Marat girl did not lower herself to the rope as he had. Instead, she simply stepped out onto it as though it were as wide and steady as a crossbeam of heavy timber. Her arms akimbo, she moved with a kind of casual arrogance for the deadly drop beneath her, crossed the rope in a third the time it had taken Tavi, and hopped down, turning in midair and landed with her heels steady on the ledge beside him.

Tavi stared at her for a moment. She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Yes?"

He shook his head. "Where did you learn that?"

"Rope walking?" she asked.

"Yes. That was… impressive."

"It is a whelp's game. We all play it when we are young." She grinned. "I was better at it when I was younger. I could have run along it." She turned to the window and peered through the glass. "A hall. I see no one."

Tavi looked. "I don't either," he said. He drew his knife from his belt and tested the edges of the glass over the window. It was a single pane, crafted directly into the stone. "We'll have to break it," he told Kitai.

She nodded sharply, then drew a roll of some kind of thick cloth from another pouch. She rolled it out with a flick, then drew out a small bottle and opened it. There was a sharp stench as she poured some kind of thick, oily substance onto her palm and smeared it all over her window. She hurriedly scrubbed the substance from her skin with the cloth, then frowned, her lips moving.

"What are you doing?" Tavi asked.

"Counting," she replied. "You'll make me lose my place." She went on that way for another minute or so, then flattened the cloth against the window, where it adhered almost instantly. Kitai smoothed the cloth out as much as she could, waited a moment more, then drew her knife and brought the rounded hilt sharply down onto the glass in a short, precise blow.

The glass broke with a crunching snap. Kitai hit it again, in several different places, and drew the cloth out slowly. The window glass, Tavi saw, stuck to the cloth. Kitai then took the portion of the cloth she had wiped her hand upon and pressed it to the wall beside the window, where it clung as strongly as it had to the glass.

She glanced at Tavi as she broke off a few jagged pieces of glass the cloth had missed, dropped them, then bent nimbly and slid through the window and into the Grey Tower.

Tavi shook his head and made his way over to the next window, carefully holding the rope as he did it. He felt clumsy and slow in comparison to the Marat girl, which was vaguely annoying. But at the same time, he took a real sense of pleasure in seeing her ability and confidence. Like himself, she had no furycraft of her own, but it was clear to him that she did not think herself disadvantaged. And she had reason not to, having spent the last several months sneering at furycrafted security measures and defeating them with intelligence and skill.

Tavi filed away that trick with the adhesive and the cloth for future reference and slid inside to drop into a crouch beside Kitai.

They were in a hallway, one side lined with windows, the other with heavy wooden doors. Tavi crossed to the nearest door and tested the handle. "Locked," he reported in a whisper, and dipped a hand into his own belt pouch. He drew out a roll of leather containing several small tools.

"What are you doing?" Kitai whispered.

"Unlocking," he replied. He slipped the tools into the keyhole, closed his eyes, and felt his way through the lock's mechanism. A moment later, he locked his grip on the tools and twisted slightly, springing the lock open.

Tavi opened the door on a small and barren bedchamber. There was a bed, a chair, a chamber pot, and nothing else but smooth stone walls.

"A cell," he murmured, and closed the door again.

Kitai plucked the tools from his hand and stared at them, then at him. "How?" she asked.

"I've been learning this kind of thing," Tavi replied. "I can show you later. How did you steal all of that without learning how to open a lock?"

"I stole the keys," Kitai said. "Obviously."

"Obviously," Tavi muttered. "Come on."

They went down the hall, and Tavi checked every door. Each room was the same-drab, plain, and empty. "He must not be on this floor," Tavi murmured, as they reached the end of the hall. There was a door there, and Tavi opened it, to reveal a stairway curling down, lit by dim orange furylamps. Sound would bounce merrily around the stairs, and Tavi made a motion cautioning Kitai to silence, before slipping out the door and to the stairs. He hadn't gone down more than three or four when he heard the sound of song ringing through the tower below, another Wintersend round, though this one performed with the benefit of far more drink than practice.

Tavi grinned and moved a little more quickly. If the guards were that raucous below, it would be a far simpler matter to move around the tower.

They took the stairs to the next floor, and Tavi opened the door on the landing, only to find another row of holding rooms just as there had been on the top floor. They left that one to slip down one floor more, when Kitai suddenly seized Tavi's shoulder, the tight grip of her fingers a warning.

Then just below him was the sound of a heavy door bolt opening, and men's voices speaking to one another. Tavi froze. Their footsteps started down the stairs toward the singing.

Tavi waited until they were gone before stealing down the rest of the stairs, struggling to keep his excitement from making him sloppy. He handled the lock on the door to the stairway as easily as the others and opened it onto a very different area than on the floors above.

Though still furnished very plainly, the whole floor was given over to a single, large suite. There was an enormous bath, several bookshelves complete with simple couches and chairs upon which to sit while reading, a table for four where food might be served, and a large bed-all of which were behind a heavy grid of steel bars with a single door. The windows were likewise barred.

"Told you I'm fine," said a heavy, tired voice, from somewhere beneath a large lump under the bed's covers. "Just need to rest."

"Max," Tavi hissed.

Max, his short hair still damp and plastered to his head, sat bolt upright in bed, and his jaw dropped open. " Tavi ? How the crows did you get in here? What the crows are you doing here?"

"Breaking you out," Tavi said. He crossed to the barred door, while Kitai left the stairway door open a crack and stood watch. He started on the lock.

"Don't bother," Max said. "It's on the table on the north wall."

Tavi looked around, spotted the key, and fetched it. "Not terribly secure of them."

"Anyone who winds up in this cell is being held by politics more than anything," Max said. "The bars are just for show." He grimaced. "Plus furycrafting doesn't work in here."

"Poor baby, no furycrafting," Tavi said, taking the key to the lock. "Come on. Get dressed and let's go."

"You're kidding, right?"

"No. We need you, Max."

"Tavi," Max said. "Don't be insane. I don't know how you got in here, but-"

"Aleran," Kitai hissed. "We have little time before dawn." She turned her head to Tavi, and her hood had fallen back from her face. "We must leave, with or without him."

"Who is that?" Max asked. He blinked. "She's a Marat ."

"That's Kitai. Kitai, this is Max."