And then it was laboriously and time-consumingly drawn and dragged back, for the archer had missed his shot.

He aimed anew, face set for curses rather than prayers. Elevating his bow a bit, he drew to the cheek and, daringly endangering the springy wood, drew even further. Uttering not a prayer but a curse, he released. Away sped the arrow.

It trailed its spidery line Hke a strand of spittle in the pallid moonlight.

It proved a night for the heeding of curses, if not the answering of prayers.

That was appropriate and perhaps significant in Sanctuary called Thieves' World.

The shaft streaked past the spire and reached the end of its tether if not its velocity. It snapped back. The line forced it into a curving attempt to return.

It snapped around the spire. Twice, thrice, four times. The archer was dragging hard. Keeping taut the silken line bought at the expense of a pair of lovely ear pendants of gold and amethyst and chrysoprase stolen from -never mind. The archer pulled his line, hard. That maintained and increased tension, tightened the arrow's whipping about the spire which was, naturally, gilded.

Then all motion ceased. A mourning dove spoke to the night, but no one believed that dolorous call presaged rain. Not in Sanctuary! Not at this time of year.

The archer leaned into his line, and braced his heels to lean his full weight on it. The cord was a taut straight-edge of immobility and invisibility under the un-anposing one-ninth moon.

Teeth flashed in the dimness. The archer's, standing atop the granary behind the Governor's Palace of Sanctuary. His mop of hair was blacker than shadowed night and his eyes nearly so, under brows that just missed meeting above a bridged nose that Just missed being falcate.

He collected his other gear, collected himself, swallowed hard, choked up all he could on his line until he was straining, stretched, on tipetoe.

Then he thought something rather prayer-like, and out he swung.

Out above the street made broad enough to accommodate several big grain wagons abreast he swung, and across it. The looming wall rushed at him.

Even with the bending of his knees until they were nearly at his chest, the jar of his impact with the unyielding wall was enough to rattle teeth and turn prayers to curses. Nothing broke, neither legs nor silken line. Certainly not the wall, which was of stone, quarried and cut to form a barrier four feet thick.

He went up the rope in a reverse rappel, step after step and hand over hand.

Dragging himself up the wall, walking up the fine perfectly set stones, climbing above death, for that was the penalty for slipping. The street was far below and farther with each pulling step.

He never considered that, or death, for he never considered the possibility of slipping.

A mighty warrior he was not. As an archer he had many peers and many betters. As a youth he was perfect, lean and wiry and strong. He was a highly competent thief in a citylet named for thieves. Not a cutpurse or a street-s.n.a.t.c.her or an accoster; a thief. A burglar. As such, he was a superb climber of walls, without better and possibly without peer. He was good at slipping in by high-set windows, too.

His colouring and clothing were for the night, and shadows. They were old friends, he and shadows.

He did not slip. He ascended. He muscled himself atop the broad wall of the Governor's Palace, of Sanctuary. Unerringly, he stepped through the crenel, the embrasure between two merlons like blunt lower teeth. And he was at home, in shadow.

Now, he gazed upon the palace itself; the palace of the golden prince sent out from Ranke to (pretend to) govern Sanctuary. The thief smiled, but with his mouth closed. Here there were tigers in the form of guards, and young teeth would flash even in this most wan of moonlight. That precaution was merely part of his competence.

At that, he had lived only about a score of years. He was not sure whether he was nineteen or twenty or a bit older. No one was sure, in this anile town the conquering Rankans called Thieves' World. Perhaps his mother knew - certainly not the father he had never known and whom she had known casually, for this thief was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d by birth and often, even usually, by nature - but who knew who or where his mother was?

Below, within the wall lay ancillary buildings and a courtyard the size of a thoroughfare or a small community common, and guards. Across, just over there, rose the palace. Like him it was a shadow, but it loomed far more imposing.

He had broken into it once before. Or rather he had previously gained nocturnal entry in manner clandestine, for that other time he had help. A gate had been left unlocked for him, and a door ajar.

Entering that way was far easier and much preferable to this. But that time the opener of the gate had been bent on the public embarra.s.sment and downfall of the Governor, and the thief was not.

Prince-Governor Kadakithis was no enemy, as a matter of fact, to this youth sp.a.w.ned in the shadows of the wrong end of town. The thief had rendered the Rankan prince two considerable services. He had been rewarded, too, although not in such a manner that he could live happily ever after.

Now, on this night of the most niggling of crescent moons, he stood atop the wall and took in his line from behind and below. It stretched upward still, to the pennon spire. It remained taut. He had to believe that it would continue to do. Elsewise he was about to splatter on to the pave below like a dropped pomegranate, a fruit whose pulp is plentiful and whose juice is red.

When the line was again taut he yanked, dragged, braced, yanked, swallowed hard, and kicked himself off the wall into s.p.a.ce. His stomach fell two storeys to the pave; he did not. His soft-booted but padded feet struck another wall of cut fulvistone. Impact was no fun and he had to stifle his grunt.

Then he went up.

'D'you hear something, Frax?' A voice like a horse-drawn sledge gliding over hard earth. Not stone, or sand, but packed dry earth.

'Mmm? Hm? Huh? Wha'?' A deeper voice.

'I said: Frax, did you hear something?'

Silence. (At sound of the voice the thief had frozen. Hands-forearms-torso atop the very palace; tail in s.p.a.ce and legs adangle.) 'Uh-huh. I heard something, Purter. I heered her say "Oh Frax you han'some dawg, you're the best. Now suck on thisun awhile, darling," and then you woke me up, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'We're supposed to be on guard duty not sleeping, Frax, d.a.m.n it. - Who was she?'

'Not gonto tell you. No I din't hear nothing. What's to hear? An army of Downwinders comin' over the friggin' walls? Somebody riding in on a hootey-owl?'

'Oh,' Purler's higher voice said, with a shiver in it. 'Don't say that. It's dark and creepy enough tonight.'

'Stuporstishus r.e.c.t.u.m,' Prax accused, with more austerity than skill, and lowered his head again on to his uplifted knees.

During their exchange the thief had got his rangy self on to the wall. He made hardly any sound, but those idiots would have drowned out something even as loud as snapping fingers. He wriggled through another embrasure and on to the defence gallery that ran around the top of the palace, below the dome and spire that rose on up, higher than the outer wall. Men trusted with guard duty, he was thinking contemptuously, heard something and blabbered. He shook his head.

Idiots! He could teach these stupid soft-b.u.t.ted 'soldiers' a thing or three about security! It took a civilian to know about the best security measures, in such a town as this. For one thing, when you thought you heard something, you shut the h.e.l.l up and listened. Then you made just a little noise to pretend unconcern, and froze to catch the noise-maker in another movement.

The shadow of a shadow, he moved along the gallery, between the smooth curve of the dome and the crenellations of a wall. After thirty-one paces he heard the scuffing footsteps and tap-tapping pikestaff b.u.t.t of a careless sentry. That persuaded him to squat, get as close to the wall as he could, and lie down.

Flat, facing the wall, whose merlons rose above the gallery. He lay perfectly still, a shadow in shadow.

A spider wandered over his shoulder and up his cheek and began struggling in his black mop of hair, and was unmolested. The spider felt warmth, but no movement, not so much as a twitch. (If mental curses could have effect, the spider was a goner.) The sentry ambled by, scuffing and tapping. The thief heard him yawn. Dumb, he thought, dumb. How nice it was of sentries to pace and make noise, rather than be still and listen!

The sentry having moved on leftward along the perimeter of the wall, the thief moved on rightward; northwestward. He'd an armlet of leather and copper well up his right upper arm, and a long bracer of black leather on that wrist. Each contained a nasty leaf-bladed throwing knife of dull blue-black. There was another in his left buskin, where sheath and hilt were mere decoration. He wore no other weapons, none that showed. Certainly he bore neither sword nor axe, and the bow lay at the base of the granary wall.

He stopped. Stepped into a crenel just above two feet deep. Stared, off into the darkness. Yes. There was the spire of the Temple of Holy Allestina Ever Virgin, poor thing. It was the first of the markers he had so carefully spotted and chosen, this afternoon.

The thief did not intend to enter the palace by just any window. He knew precisely where he was going.

The task of regaining line and arrow was more difficult than he had antic.i.p.ated.

He silenced snarls and curses. Knot a rope ten times and try swinging on it and the accursed thing might well work itself loose. Shoot an arrow to wrap a cord slimmer than a little finger around a d.a.m.ned gilded bra.s.s flagpole, and he had to fight to get the d.a.m.ned thing to let go!

Within four or six minutes (with silenced snarls and curses) he had sent enough loops and twitches ripple-writhing up the line to loosen the arrow. It swung once around the spire, twice, encountered the line, and caught. More curses, a sort of prayer, and more twitches and ripples riding up the line. Reluctantly the arrow ended its loving embrace of the pennon spire. The line fluttered loose. Down came the arrow. It fell with a clatter that, to a shadowy thief in shadows, sounded like thunder on a cloudless day.

Sleepy sentries heard no thunder. Only he noticed. He reeled in line and arrow.

In a crouch, he reached behind him into hi snugly fitted backpack. From it he drew two cylinders of hard wood wrapped with black cloth. Around them he looped his line arrow detached. He held silent for a time, listening. A fly hummed restless and loud. The thief heard nothing to indicate that any o his actions had been noticed with anything approaching alarm.

Rising, he went on his way. Along the perimeter of the palace along the flagged walkway betwixt dome and toothy wall.

Moving with a cat suppleness that would have been scary to an] observer, he reached his second marker. Nicely framed betweer two merlons, he could see it, away off in the distance. The purple' black shape ofJulavain's Hill. Again he smiled, tight of lip.

A merlon became a winch, aided by the two wooden cylinders brought for the purpose. They would pay out the silken cord and prevent the stone from slicing it. Its other end he secured to his ankles. And froze, waiting while the sentry clumped by. He was not importantly thumping his pike's b.u.t.t, now. He no longei cared to keep himself awake. The thief gritted his teeth against the ghastly noise of the hardest of wood grating over harder flagstones. The porker was dragging his pike!

Then silence was thick enough to cut with a knife, of which the thief owned an abundance. He waited. And waited.

At last he stepped, still crouching, into the crenel. Turning, he carefully winched himself, backwards, down the wall. Down and down, until he came to a particular window. It was cut in the shape of a diamond. That decision had involved more than aesthetics; the d.a.m.ned thing was harder to enter.

Most carefully indeed, he turned. He paid out the cord with his hands until he was quite upside down outside that window. Blood flowed into his head while he strained muscles and vision until he was a.s.sured that the chamber was uninhabited.

Then, grinning, Hanse the thief flipped down and dropped lightly into the bedchamber of H.R.H. Kadakithis, Prince-Governor of Sanctuary.

He had done it again! And this time all on his own and without aid. He had breached the wall, eluded the guards, broken into the palace, and was in the very privatemost chamber of the Prince-Governor himself!

Well, lord Prince, you wanted to see Shadowsp.a.w.n - here he is, awaiting you!

Thus he thought while he freed his ankles of expensive silken line and removed his gloves. At least this time no bedmate waited here for her youthful lord.

It was all Hanse could do to keep from laughing aloud in sheerest prideful delight.

'A nice-looking girl left this here for you, Hanse,' Moonflower the Seer had told him. 'She got it from another - along with a coin for her trouble - who got it from still another.'

Hanse raised his dark, dark brows and hooked a thumb in the s.h.a.green belt he wore over a screamingly red sash. From one side of the belt was slung a dagger.

An Ilbarsi knife, long as his whole arm, hung down his other leg.

'This you ... Saw, Pa.s.sionflower?'

She smiled, a hugely fat and grossly misnamed woman who overflowed two cushions atop a low stool. She saw him as a boyish boy and had ever let him turn her head with his charm, which she was almost alone in seeing.

'Oh no,' Moonflower said almost archly, 'I needed to go to no such trouble. I know things, you know.'

'Oh, I know you know things, you clever darling,' he told that gross dumpling in her several skirts, each of more than one unrepeated colour. 'And this time you're going to let me know how you know, I know.'

She nodded at the wax-sealed walnut sh.e.l.l he was idly tossing in his left hand.

'You know me too well, don't you, you naughty scamp! Smell it.'

Up went his close-snuggling brows again, and he brought the sh.e.l.l to his nose.

He rolled his eyes. 'Aha! Perfume. A good one. Times are good for the only true mage of Sanctuary, then.'

'You know that is not my perfume,' she said, not without a sideward turn of her blue-tressed head to give him an arch look.

'Now I know that,' Shadowsp.a.w.n said, jocular and easygoing and almost cute in the sunlight, 'because you tell me so. The walnut was given you by a well-off girl wearing good perfume, then. Betwixt her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, I'll bet, where she bore this charming charm.'

She lifted a dimpled finger. 'Ah! But that is the point. The scent on that charm is not mine, and the girl who gave it me wore none at all.' - 'Oh Moonflower, pride of the S'danzo and of Sanctuary! By Ils if the P-G knew of your genius, he'd not have that ugly old charlatan at court, but you, only you!

So. By the perfume you know that there was a third woman, who gave this and a coin to another to give to you to give to me.' He wagged his head. 'What a game of roundabout! But what makes you think this thing was given her by still another, to begin with?'

'I saw the coin,' Moonflower said, all kittenish inside a body to block a door or bring groans to a good steed.

'It bore still another scent?'

Moonflower laughed. 'Ah Hanse, Hanse. I know that. Soon you will know too, surely, once you open the walnut sh.e.l.l. Surely it contains a message from someone who wanted no one to know he sent it to you.'

'He?'

'Do you care to make a wager?'

He who was called Shadowsp.a.w.n clutched the walnut to him in mock terror. With his other hand he clutched his purse theatrically. 'Wager with you about your wisdom? Never! No one has accused me of being stupid.' Well, almost no one, he mentally added, thinking of that burly stranger, Tempus the h.e.l.l Hound ...

Tempus the ... what?

'Be off with you and open it privily then. You're standing between me and paying clients!'

There were none present, Hanse a.s.sured himself before he said, 'In a moment,'

and thumb-nailed the brownish wax along the lip-like closure of the walnut sh.e.l.l. He knew Moonflower was frowning, believing that he should be more secretive, but he also knew what he wanted to do. A gesture, merely a gesture.

The sc.r.a.p of extra fine leaf-paper he took out and poked, still folded, into his sash. Pressing the sh.e.l.l closed and thumbing the wax into a semblance of seal, he proffered it to the S'danzo seer who consistently proved that she was no charlatan.

'For Mignureal,' he said, pretending shyness. 'To scent her... her clothing, or something?'

For a moment the flicker of a frown appeared on Moonflower's doughy face, for her big-eyed daughter was quite taken with this dangerous youth from Downwind, whose means of income was no secret. Then she smiled and accepted the scented sh.e.l.l. It swiftly vanished into the vast cleavage of what she called her treasure chest, under her shawl.

'You're such a nice boy, Hanse. I'll give it to her. Now you git, and inspect your message. Maybe some highborn lady wants a bit of dalliance with your handsome self!'

The rangy young man called Shadowsp.a.w.n had left her then. Smile and even pleasant expression left his face and he swaggered like a Mrsevadan gamec.o.c.k.

Face and walk were part of his image, which none would dare say might stem from insecurity. Still, Moonflower's words would not have made him smile anyhow. He was not handsome and knew it, as he knew that his height was no more than average. The biggest thing about him was his ego - although his lips, which some thought were sensuous, were to him too full. His nickname others had given him.

He did not dislike it; his mentor Cudget Swearoath had told him a nickname was good to have - even such a one as 'Swearoath'. Hanse was just a name; Shadowsp.a.w.n was dramatic, with a romantic and rather sinister sound that appealed to the youth.

He left Moonflower remembering how he had indeed dallied with a beauty of means.

Highborn she was not, though she had been from the palace, and richly garbed.

Hanse had been touched both in his ego and in his greed, by her attentions. Only later had he discovered that it was not truly he she was interested in. She and a fellow plotter were in the employ of someone back in Ranke -the Emperor himself, perhaps envious or wary of Kadakithis's good looks? - who wanted to discredit and destroy the new Prince-Governor, him they called Kitty-K-at. They had elected to use Hanse in their plot; Hanse had been their dupe! - for a while.

But that was done with, and on this later day he left Moon-flower and swaggered along the streets. His eyes were hooded and the weapons all too obvious on him.

Some stepped off the narrow planking of the sidewalk for him, and (quietly) cursed themselves for it. Still, they would do it again. In appearance, all tucked in behind his eyes and abristle with sharp blades, he was 'about as pleasant as gout or dropsy', as a certain merchant had once described him.

Well, he was alive. Both the lovely plotter and her traitorous h.e.l.l Hound co conspirator were not. Further, Kadakithis was grateful. And now, as Hanse discovered to his astonishment back in his quarters, the Prince-Governor had actually sent him a note!

Hanse recognized the seal and the scrawl at the bottom from other doc.u.ments.