The gate eased open a crack. From beneath the metal brim of a sentry’s helm,
Leyn peered out. He cast a suspicious gaze over Zip’s band, playing his part well, and held open his palm. “The other half of my payment, lady,” he whispered slyly. “It’s due now, and the gate is yours.”
Chenaya took a heavy purse from the place where it rested between her leather armor and her tunic. It jingled as she passed it over. Leyn weighed it, considering, frowning, chewing the end of his mustache.
Zip pressed forward impatiently. “Move it, man, while you’ve still got a hand to count with!” The others, too, pressed forward, demonstrating that the gate would be breached whether the guard was satisfied or no.
“You sure it’s all here?” Leyn grunted. “Then inside, and damn you all, and damn the filthy Beysibs.” He tugged the gate wide and stood out of the way, waving them in with a bow full of mockery. “Blood to you this night, gentlemen, much blood.”
Chenaya led them, hurrying, crouched low, across the courtyard toward the governor’s roses, toward a small entrance in the western palace wall. She had come here once before, her first week in Sanctuary, to save Kadakithis from an assassin. By this very way she had come. She found that a bitter irony.
Because she listened for the sound, she heard the gate close behind them, heard the sturdy iron lock click into place.
Zip heard it, too. His sword slid serpent-quick from the sheath as all around them shadows rose up from the ground where they had rested flat in the gloom.