13 #2
He put an arm through and moved it cautiously.
No eldritch tingling sensations, no unexpected transformations, no difficulty crossing the threshold… Excellent.
“I’ll just keep watch out here, shall I?” Rooftop Henry said, and he tucked himself into a neat gray-and-white loaf shape while Astarion went to rob someone blind.
* * *
—
The window let into a room that had probably been an office at some point but that now looked like the scene of a small, localized blizzard of paper.
Astarion climbed in atop the desk and spent several minutes planning out where to put his feet.
There were only a few bare spots. Everything else was practically designed to rustle, crunch, or fall over.
Eventually, he slid down and made his way to the door, walking on his toes.
The only bad moment was when his cloak brushed against a small mountain of scrolls and they began to slide.
He caught the top one before it could hit the ground and spent several minutes carefully resettling them so that he was not trapped under an avalanche of paper.
Ugh, this was probably the wrong cloak to wear.
It was just a hair too long, but if he’d worn the good one, it would currently be covered in pigeon shit.
And to launder it would require going all the way across town to the Guild washerwoman, who could be trusted not to raise a fuss about little things like fresh blood or garottes accidentally left in pockets, and it would have been more annoyance,
and not the fun kind of annoyance where you got to pick locks and stab people.
He was willing to do a favor for Dalyria, but there were limits.
He crouched down and slid a highly polished knife blade under the door.
To the left, he saw only a dim hallway that ended in a staircase down to the third floor.
To the right, more hallway, and a narrow door that might have been a broom closet but probably wasn’t.
For one thing, most broom closets didn’t have a spell-lock that glowed blue.
“Gurgan kept his most valuable items in a safe room on the fourth floor,” Dalyria had told him. “Unicorn blood among them, since he kept trying to sell it to me. Rumor has it that the current owner can’t even get into the safe room, so it should still be there.”
Astarion was just about to pull the knife back when he saw movement.
Something very large came padding down the hallway. It was pitch black, a dark silhouette against the gray shadows of the hall. Astarion caught a glimpse of a squared-off head and stifled a groan.
Where the hell did Gurgan get a shadow mastiff?
The old bastard was far too cheap to pay for a whelp, surely.
Astarion had known a widow long ago who attended salons with a shadow mastiff on a leash, but she’d been the sort who could drop two hundred gold on a canine monstrosity from the Shadowfell without even noticing.
Astarion tried to remember what he knew about shadow mastiffs, and all he could think of was that the widow’s pet had been named Ruffles.
No, no, focus. Their vision’s not good, is it?
At least, that’s what she said when Ruffles attacked that bard’s lute.
Of course, their hearing is excellent, which is presumably why it was attacking the bard in the first place…
He slowly pulled the knife back, breathing silently through his mouth. What about smell? He hadn’t worn his signature scent—he never did on a job; you never knew who would take offense to rosemary, bergamot, and brandy. If anything, he probably smelled strongly of pigeon blood and pigeon shit.
Pigeon shit. Yes.
Moving as soundlessly as he could, he pulled the edge of his cloak forward. The streaks of white stood out brightly against the dark fabric. He pressed it against the gap under the doorway and waited.
Click…click…click…click…
The mastiff’s claws clicked strangely on the wooden floor, as if the sound were echoing in some distant room. Astarion listened to it approach, seized by the memory of hiding in the alcove, listening to Violet and the demon coming closer.
Why is this my life? More people ought to be hiding and listening to me walk by.
Click…click…
The mastiff stopped. Astarion was afraid to even blink for fear the beast could hear the scrape of his eyelids. Go on, go on, keep moving…
On the other side of the door, the shadow beast lowered its head and snuffled at the threshold. The sound of air being sucked into its nostrils seemed as loud as a dragon’s wingbeats.
Then it made an explosive huffing noise and lifted its head.
Click…click…click…click…
Astarion reflected on the indignity of owing one’s safety to pigeon shit. He waited until the sound of the mastiff’s nails had faded before he slipped the blade out again. It showed a black smear of shadow retreating down the hall, then vanishing as it descended the staircase there.
If it’s patrolling the whole building, I should have…let’s see, about four minutes before it comes back this way. Plenty of time. Probably.
He oiled the hinges and the doorknob because he was pretty sure the owner didn’t care if they squeaked. The knob turned easily beneath his hand, probably more easily than it had since the day it was installed. Astarion slipped out, closing the door behind him, and went to the spell-locked door.
A glance was sufficient to tell him that he couldn’t pick it.
That was fine. Wizards tended to trust far too much to magic, in his experience.
Someone could fit the most incredible lock in the world and have it blessed by everyone from Mask to Mystra, but it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good if you could just pry the hinges off.
In this case, you could not pry the hinges off.
But there were doors on either side of this one with locks that were frankly insulting.
Astarion laid a hand on the nearest one and felt the definite repulsion of a private space.
Hmm, the new owner might have an office here. Or a room where he takes naps.
The far door, fortunately, had no such prohibition. Astarion popped the lock in the space of two breaths and scanned the room beyond.
Ah, I see I’ve found the dust and cobweb storage area.
There was magic there, making the hair on the back of his neck prickle, but it clearly hadn’t been disturbed in ages.
The last set of tracks in the dust were made by a style of sole that hadn’t been popular for twenty years.
Astarion shut the door behind him and made his way between old crates, chairs groaning under the weight of boxes, and what appeared to be a harp made out of dragonbone, carved into the shape of a wyrm.
It was definitely magical, but he had his doubts that it would fit in his pocket.
The wall that the room shared with the one behind the locked door was beam and plaster, and on the fourth floor, the interior would almost certainly be filled with plaster, not stone.
If noise hadn’t been a problem, Astarion could have gone through it in thirty seconds.
As it was, it took him more like twenty minutes, and he dulled a knife hacking at it.
Every few minutes, he had to stop and wait as the shadow mastiff passed by, clicking.
Eventually, however, he had chopped a hole large enough to wriggle through. The plaster was old and brittle and should have been redone decades earlier.
And there it was, a small windowless room that probably had been a broom closet at one point. The blue glow of the spell-lock reflected off half a dozen objects arranged on shelves—vials, jewelry, and a folded cloth so covered in dust that it was impossible to make out its original color.
Once he’d wiped away the grime, he saw that the vials were labeled in spidery handwriting. The second one he took down read Unicorn Blood.
Astarion smiled down at the vial. “What a worthless thing you are…and what does that make me, taking so much trouble to obtain you?”
Still, since he was here, he might as well help himself. He pocketed two rings and a necklace and gave a wide berth to what looked like a tiara made of spider legs that had an attached label reading Cursed.
No, really? And it looks so friendly, too. The folded cloth felt like spidersilk and did not leap out and attempt to smother him. He pocketed it as well, decided he’d pushed his luck as far as it could go, and crawled back out through the hole in the plaster.
“And that is a good night’s work,” he murmured to himself. A good night’s work for a skilled thief, if not a master. And with an endless life ahead of him, was mastery not within his grasp? Astarion grinned, did a triumphant pirouette, and turned to stroll toward the door.
The edge of his too-long cloak flared out as he spun, and it brushed a string of the dragonbone harp.
A ripple of music filled the air, softly at first, then gaining volume. Green light crackled up the strings.
“Oh no,” Astarion whispered.
The carved wyrm’s head flexed, turned, and opened ivory jaws. An explosive glissando of notes erupted from the strings as the wyrm inhaled.
“Ohhhhh, gather round, lads, and I’ll tell you the tale—”
“Stop!” Astarion hissed. “Stop, stop! Cancel! End! Neshanas! Stop!”
“—of a dragonborn lass with a come-hither tail—”
“Shit, shit, shit!” He snatched a dustcloth off a chair and tried to cram it into the wyrm’s mouth. It spat out the fabric and snapped at his hand, still singing.
“—mm-mmf of diamond and a throat made of pearl—”
Astarion bolted for the door. The music swelled triumphantly behind him.
“—and did things with her tongue that would make your toes curl—”
Downstairs, the shadow mastiff began to bark.
* * *