Sir Tallow had rehearsed the entrance all the way from the inn. Sword on the left, shield on the right, chin up, cape clear of his heels. Three companions behind him. No hurrying. No apologizing.
The guild doors were taller than the inn. This pleased him. He planted both hands against one and pushed.
Nothing happened.
Laureth reached over his head and lifted the latch.
"As we discussed," she said.
"I was testing it."
"It passed."
He pushed again. The doors opened upon firelight, long tables, and a hundred adventures nailed to the walls. A woman was telling a story with a dagger driven into the table between her fingers. Three men were arguing over a map. Someone at the far end had just begun a song.
Tallow stepped forward. His polished shield bore a lamp with a tiny silver flame. His cape caught the draft magnificently.
Then the singer forgot the next word.
A goblin in plate armor was worth looking at. An orc in blue scholar's robes, clutching a book bound in pale calfskin, was worth looking at twice. And Laureth, with her fine elven cheekbones and an axe slung over one shoulder, was now explaining to the orc that the thing brushing his book was a tassel, not the blade.
"The tassel has blood on it," Vorrick said.
"Blackberry juice."
"From what battle?"
"Breakfast."
Tallow marched to the registrar's counter. Behind it sat a gray-haired woman with a pen poised over a ledger. Her eyes traveled from him to Vorrick, up the axe, and down again.
"We wish," Tallow said, "to establish an adventuring party."
She lowered her pen.
"All three of you?"
"Four," said Harn.
The registrar looked to her left. The Goliath stood at the end of the counter, quietly examining its lock. His head nearly touched a roof beam.
"When did you come in?"
"Just after them."
"I watched the door."
Harn nodded politely.
The registrar put down her pen altogether.
Tallow had hoped their entrance would have an effect. He had not planned what to do while the effect wore off. He settled for keeping his chin up.
"Names and professions," she said at last.
"Sir Tallow. Paladin."
"Vorrick. Wizard."
"Laureth. Barbarian."
"Harn. Rogue."
The registrar looked at the counter lock, then at Harn. He put his hands behind his back.
From the nearest table came a soft, incredulous laugh. Tallow's ears grew warm inside his helmet. He had polished that helmet with the last clean corner of their shared towel, while Laureth held the lamp and Vorrick read him the oath for the forty-sixth time. Harn had said nothing, but in the morning the broken clasp on his cape had been repaired.
He would not look back at the table.
The registrar asked for their fee. Tallow counted out the coins, one for each of them. Three weeks of road, four separate purses, and it had come to this little row of silver. They watched her sweep it into a drawer.
"You'll want to see the commissions," she said.
"We do," said Laureth.
The registrar brought out a folder. Tallow had expected to stride over to the wall and tear down a notice. Apparently beginners got a folder.
The first sheet concerned a lost mule. The second offered payment for escorting a spice merchant. On the third, someone had drawn a fortress, three swords, and a crown.
Tallow touched it.
"That one."
"Recovery of a silver coronet. Stolen from the Hall of Seven Dukes. The thieves were seen going into Briarhook Keep."
"A keep," Vorrick said. He leaned so close that one tusk cast a shadow over the paper. "How old?"
"Old enough to be empty until last week."
"Briarhook. Wasn't that the family with the book of weather bindings?"
"Perhaps," said the registrar. "This is the account of a carter they robbed. They kept him there two nights. He drew us the ground floor when he got out."
"How many thieves?" Laureth asked.
"He counted four."
Laureth smiled. It was a lovely smile, if one did not know her.
"Four of us, four of them."
"We are recovering property," Tallow said.
"Yes. From them."
The payment was enough for beds, supper, repairs, and another expedition. Enough for a party to become something that kept going.
On the carter's sketch, a fat black line crossed the great gate. Above it he had drawn an iron grille; beside it was a much smaller opening.
"Porter's hatch," the registrar said. "The gate's barred inside. He got out through that when they were drunk."
The hatch was marked with measurements. Tallow read them twice.
He could fit.
He had never seen his size written down as the useful answer to anything.
"We'll take it."
The registrar held out the contract. Tallow signed with his best upright letters and laid their remaining two coins beside his name.
"Bond returned with the coronet," she said, marking the receipt.
Laureth swung her axe down from her shoulder. Vorrick had already opened his book.
"There may be a catalogue," he murmured. "In a place like that, if the roof has held, there may be a whole room."
Harn was still looking at the sketch.
"We can reach it by midday," Tallow said. "Through the hatch, secure the gate, recover the coronet. Back before supper."
"That hatch is fourteen inches wide," Harn said.
"Yes."
Harn waited.
Tallow saw his own shield reflected in the great dark pupil. For three weeks Harn had taken the last place in every room. He ate sitting on the floor at inns with low ceilings, endured people asking him to move their furniture, and let them decide how he would arrive wherever they were going. He had taught Tallow to mend a boot. He had not let any of them touch the narrow leather wallet he kept inside his sleeve.
"I'll open the gate," Tallow said.
"How?"
"From inside."
"With what?"
Laureth rested the axe head on the floor. "We can discuss this on the road."
Vorrick turned a page. "I could lift him over."
Harn looked at him.
"For eleven heartbeats," Vorrick added.
"Over the wall?" Tallow asked.
"Possibly onto it. Then you could climb down."
On top of the wall. Shield high. The others following when he threw open the gate. Tallow could almost hear the song.
Harn's finger came down on the sketch.
"Two towers looking straight along it."
Vorrick studied the towers. He shut his book over his finger, unwilling to lose the page.
"The hatch is better," Tallow said. "I can go quietly."
"Your shield can't."
Tallow looked down. The lamp on it had been engraved by the armorer who knighted him. He had picked the smallest shield in the man's shop, and still the flame reached from his shoulder to his knee.
"I could leave it outside. If opening the gate is difficult, I could find the coronet first. Small rooms, small passages."
There would be no song about the crawl, perhaps. But there could be one about what came after. Four thieves might never notice one goblin. All his life people had looked past him to see what else was coming.
He could use that.
"It's in a chest," Harn said.
"What?"
"The carter saw them putting it in their pay chest. Bottom of the page."
Tallow read the cramped note.
Harn drew a short breath through his nose.
"You go in. Then you need a lock opened, and I'm standing in a field. Again."
"Again?"
"At the inn, you asked me to watch the packs while you three went to the cellar."
"You wouldn't fit down the stairs."
"You never asked if I knew another way."
Tallow remembered the cellar: a wine merchant paying them to search for a thief, Harn sitting outside with four bedrolls and no share in the discovery. They had come back excited, interrupting one another. Harn had asked whether they found anything. Tallow had given him the entire account, thinking that generous.
"Did you?" he asked now.
"The delivery doors were round the back."
Laureth looked away from the axe.
"You could have said."
"So could you."
For a moment the guild was loud around their little patch of quiet.
Vorrick took his finger out of the book. "I would quite like us all to see this keep."
"So would I," said Harn.
The registrar tapped the hatch on the sketch. "It still goes through. The carter managed it. You could take a look, then decide about the gate."
It was an available plan. Tallow could enter with his sword, look for the chest, and make the decision where no one could stop him. He was good in the dark. He was brave. He knew those things about himself, even now.
He turned the paper toward Harn.
"I want to open it for you. What do I need?"
Harn looked at the sketch again. This time he brought it between all four of them.
"First, don't count on being back for supper."
"Fair."
"That circle. What is it?"
Vorrick leaned over. "A seal?"
The registrar checked the carter's notes. "Iron ring. Above the gate. There was a rope hanging from it once."
"For lifting the bar." Harn drew a line with his finger. "You hitch it to the bar, pass it through the ring and out through the grille. We haul. You stay clear."
"I can float the rope's end through the ring," Vorrick said. "I'd need a clear view through that grille. Eleven heartbeats would be plenty."
Harn considered him. "If it's there."
"If it's there," Vorrick agreed.
"And if it isn't?" Laureth asked.
"He comes back out. We look again."
She shifted her grip on the axe. Tallow had seen her do that before the first blow of a fight.
"I can wait," she said. "I dislike it, but I can."
Harn asked the registrar for a piece of cord. She found one in the drawer with the coins. He held it out to Tallow.
"Show me the hitch you'd use."
Tallow made the knot he used to tether a pony.
Harn pulled the short end. It came apart.
"Oh," said Tallow.
"Do you want the axe for the bar?" Laureth asked.
Harn nodded. She laid its long haft across two chairs. Vorrick set his book well out of its reach, then held the chairs steady while Harn guided Tallow's hands around the wood.
Laureth crouched beside him. "They're going to hear you rattling in that."
"Who?"
She tapped his breastplate.
He looked at the hatch's measurements again. The armor added inches at both shoulders. He had been counting the body inside it.
Harn waited while Tallow undid the buckles. He would have to reach the bar before any of the four thieves reached him. His fingers slowed on the last buckle. The breastplate came away with a small, painful squeak. He put it beside the shield and lifted off his helmet. Underneath, his quilted tunic had a patch at one elbow which Laureth had sewn with black thread because she said the white made her stitches look anxious.
She examined the patch, apparently satisfied it had survived.
"Again," Harn said.
This time Tallow tied the hitch correctly. Vorrick lifted the cord over the loop Harn made with his thumb and forefinger, and Laureth pulled. The axe haft rose from the chairs.
"Like that," Harn said. "With enough good rope to run the whole way."
Tallow felt for his purse. Flat.
Laureth felt for hers. It yielded a button. She put it back.
"The equipment desk lends," the registrar said. "Against something they'll want back."
Vorrick folded his arms over his book. Laureth took the axe off the cord. Harn's fingers went to the wallet inside his sleeve.
Then Vorrick uncrossed his arms and laid the book on the counter, keeping one hand against its cover.
Tallow gathered his breastplate, helmet, and shield. They made an awkward pile. He nudged the book back toward Vorrick with his elbow. The silver flame caught the light one last time before he turned toward the equipment desk.
Laureth reached out for the helmet.
"I can carry it," he said.
"So can I."
He gave it to her.
The quartermaster valued the three pieces, supplied a sound rope and a covered lantern, and locked the armor in a cupboard. Tallow watched the key turn. The receipt felt very thin against his palm.
He tucked it into the lining of his tunic. His sword still hung at his left hip. At the counter, the registrar entered their names under the commission and gave them the carter's map.
Without the shield, he did not know what to do with his right hand.
Harn opened the leather wallet.
Inside lay slender tools in fitted pockets. He selected one with a curved tip and held it across his enormous palm. Tallow had once watched him clean that particular tool for the whole length of Vorrick's explanation of something called a sympathetic interval.
"For the hatch latch, if they've fastened it since the carter left. Work from the edge. I'll show you at the keep."
Tallow reached for it. Harn did not release it immediately.
Then he did.
Tallow slid it into the small belt pouch where he normally carried a polishing rag. Harn crouched and drew the fastening tight so the tool could not fall out when Tallow crawled.
"You keep looking back," he said, without raising his head.
Tallow had been looking at the cupboard.
"I've never done this without it."
Harn finished the fastening. "Get us in, and I'll find you something to hide behind."
Laureth put the coil of rope over her shoulder. Vorrick took the lantern, frowned at the carter's map, and turned it the right way up. Tallow had to lengthen his stride to keep beside them.
At the great doors he stopped. This time he lifted the latch before pushing.
Sunlight fell across the guild floor. Tallow held the door while the wizard edged his book past Laureth's axe and the rogue bent beneath the lintel.
"Come on," Laureth said from the steps. "I've begun waiting."
Tallow tucked the cape up through his belt, clear of his knees, and went after them.