“Sure, but who's going to convince the sergeant to walk out of the Empire?”
“We show him he hasn't got any choice.”
Kalam climbed on to the sill. “Good thing I'm not a Claw any more. Just soldiers, right?”
Behind him Quick Ben touched his own chest and vanished. His disembodied voice held a note of wry amusement. “Right. No more cloak-and-dagger games for old Kalam.”
The assassin pulled himself up, turning to face the wall then beginning his climb to the roof. “Yeah, I've always hated it.”
Quick Ben's voice was beside him now. “No more assassinations.”
“No more spying,” Kalam added, reaching for the roof's edge.
“No more disguising spells.”
Clambering on to the roof, Kalam lay still. “No more daggers in the back,” he whispered, then sat up and scanned the nearby rooftops. He saw nothing; no unusual huddled shapes, no bright magical auras.
“Thank the gods,” came Quick Ben's whisper from above.
“Thank the gods,” Kalam echoed, then looked down over the roof's edge. Below a pool of light marked the inn entrance. “You take the back door. I've got this one.”
“Right.”
Even as the wizard answered Kalam stiffened. “There he is,” he hissed.
“You still with me?”
Quick Ben assented.
They watched the figure of Rallick Nom, now cloaked, crossing to the far side of the street and entering an alley.
“I'm on him,” Quick Ben said.
A blue-green glow rose around the wizard. He rose into the air and flew out swiftly across the street, slowing as he reached the alley. Kalam climbed to his feet and padded silently along the roof's edge. Reaching the corner, he glanced down to the rooftop of an adjacent building, then jumped.
He descended slowly, as if sinking through water, and landed without a sound. Off to his right, moving on a parallel path, was Quick Ben's magical aura. Kalam crossed the rooftop to the next building. Their man was heading for the harbour-front.
Kalam continued tracking Quick Ben's beacon, moving from one rooftop to the next, sometimes jumping down, at other times climbing.
There was little subtlety about Kalam: where others used finesse he used the strength of his thick arms and legs. It made him an unlikely assassin, but he'd learned to use that to his advantage.
They now approached the harbour area, the buildings single-storeyed and large, the streets rarely lit except around the double-door entrances to warehouses, where the occasional private guard lingered. In the night air hung the taint of sewage and fish.
Finally, Quick Ben stopped, hovered over a warehouse courtyard, then hurried back to Kalam, who waited at the edge of a nearby two-storeyed clearing house. “Looks like the place,” Quick Ben said, floating a few feet above Kalam. “What now?”
“I want a good line of sight to that courtyard.”
“Follow me.”
Quick Ben led him to another building. Their man was now visible, crouching on the warehouse roof, attention down on the courtyard below.
“Kai, do you smell something bad about this?”
Kalam snorted. “Hell, no, it's bloody roses out here. Take position, friend.”
“Right.”
Rallick Nom lay down on the rooftop, his head out over its edge. Below was the warehouse's courtyard, flat, grey and empty. Directly beneath him the shadows were impenetrable. Sweat trickled down Rallick's face.
From the shadow below came Ocelot's voice, “He's got you in sight?”
“Yes.”
“And he's not moving?”
“No. Listen, I'm sure there's more than one of them. I would've known if he'd been trailing me, and no one was. It stinks of magery, Ocelot, and you know what I think about magery.”
“Dammit, Nom. If you'd just start using the stuff we give you, you'd rank among the best of us. But to Hood's Gate with that. We've got spotters, and unless there's a very good wizard around we'd pick up on any magic. Face it,” a note of malice entered Ocelot's voice, “he's better than you. He tracked you all right. Solo.”
“What now?” Rallick asked.
Ocelot chuckled. “We're closing the circle even as we speak. Your work's done, Nom. Tonight the assassins” war ends. In five minutes you can head home.”
High above the city a demon flapped on leathery wings, its green reptilian eyes surveying the rooftops below with a vision that detected magic as easily as it did heat. Though the demon was no larger than a dog, its power was immense, near par to the man who had summoned and chained it this very night. On the rooftops it saw two auras close together, one a man on whom spells had been cast, and the other a wizard, a very good wizard. In a ragged circle on other rooftops around these two, men and women moved inward, some betrayed by the heat of their bodies, others by items imbued with sorcery.