Den of Thieves by David Chandler Page A

moonlight as it fell past Malden at incredible speed.
    He came very close to falling off the wall then and there. He was so desperately afraid of being hit by the jetsam from above that he pulled one hand free of the wall and swung away from his perch. A moment later he realized what was happening and cursed himself silently for his lack of forbearance.
    A stream of foul-smelling liquid was coming down from on high, a stream that spread out and turned to mist a few dozen feet below his position. The guard was pissing over the side.
    Malden’s lip curled in disgust. Was the man too lazy to find a privy? But there was nothing he could do but hold tight, and wait, and hope the wind didn’t change. He spared a quick glance down to make sure Cythera was well clear. He couldn’t see her little boat down there, though he was mightily impressed by how far down it was. He had no fear of heights, but it would take a man of far greater courage than himself to look down into that abyss and feel no vertigo.
    When the guard had finished and moved on, Malden looked back up, toward the top of the wall. It was close now. One quick sprint and he would be on top. But his hands were so painfully cramped he knew he would arrive unable to use them for anything but climbing. He needed to rest a moment, to rub the blood back into his whitened fingers. He also needed to make sure he would not be seen when he reached the top. Looking around, he saw a window off to his left, no more than a dozen feet away. Moving carefully, as silently as a cat on a carpet, he shifted himself over in that direction. The window was broader than the others he’d seen, though it was also lined with iron bars. Still, it would make a great place to stand for a while. Just a few minutes, he promised himself. Just until he could feel something in the balls of his thumbs.
    Yet as he approached the window he heard someone moving around inside. He had to freeze in place again and wait for the people there to go away. And that could have been when his luck ran out.
    For exactly at that moment Bikker provided the promised distraction.

Chapter Sixteen
    C roy hated subterfuge, but sometimes the direct approach was just not appropriate. For instance, when one needs to recover one’s property from a locked room inside the palace, and one is under an order of execution, it behooves one to act in a clandestine fashion.
    So instead of marching up to the Burgrave’s door and asking politely, he had come to this. Masquerading as the lover of a lady-in-waiting, and then sneaking into the most secure room in the city.
    â€œI have the key here, somewhere on my person,” Lady Hilde said, and placed a hand on the bodice of her gown. She seemed to be breathing very hard and her eyes were wide as she stared into Croy’s face. “It wasn’t easy to get, you know. I had to wait until the castellan fell asleep at his desk. Luckily for you he’s so old and decrepit, he didn’t wake up even when I took it from his belt. But now—where did I put it?”
    He supposed she might be frightened. It was an understandable emotion. They were inside the Burgrave’s counting house, a place no one of any rank was permitted to enter after it was locked up for the night. Even by day only the castellan and the bailiff had keys to the place. It was so secure that the castellan hadn’t bothered posting guards out front—after all, anyone approaching it from the courtyard would have had to pass dozens of guards already.
    Of course, if you had access to one of the Burgravine’s ladies-in-waiting, and she was willing to do you a favor, there weren’t a lot of places in Ness that were off-limits. Croy felt distinctly uneasy about what he was doing. This was very much counter to his moral code, and he was a man for whom ethics meant everything. Still, he was able to assuage his conscience a bit. He wasn’t hear to steal—he was no thief. He