Gauntlgrym by R.A. Salvatore Page A

at the corner of the house. He ducked back behind the corner when the sentry came around the opposite corner. Barrabus was tucked tightly underneath the balcony as the man paced past, then he was over the rail and up the wall, over the next balcony, and continuing until he sat on a narrow window sill on the highest floor.
    He reached into his “empty” pouch, which was actually an extra-dimensional space, and brought forth a pair of suction cups set on narrow poles and joined end to end by a small cord. Once he had them in place on the window glass, he tapped open a catch on one of his rings that released a line of wire, attached on one end to the ring and capped on the other end with a diamond tip.
    Barrabus began to draw a circle on the window with the diamond tip, etching the glass a tiny bit more with each rotation. He worked furiously, hid himself as the guards crossed below, then went right back. It took him many, many heartbeats to weaken the glass enough so that he could hold the suction cups and tap lightly, three times, to break the circle of glass free. He pushed the cut circle into the room and gently lowered it to the floor so that it leaned against the wall. With a glance around to make sure the room was clear, Barrabus hooked his fingers on the top of the window frame, gracefully and powerfully lifted his legs, and slid them through.
    He rocked back, his feet almost exiting the hole, then went forward with such speed and grace that his momentum carried him fully through without so much as a brush of the remaining glass, and not so much as a whisper of sound.
    He knew that the fun had only begun, of course—Hugo Babris kept many guards inside as well—but he was committed. His focus grew narrow and pure,and it was as though he were a ghost; ethereal, silent, and invisible. He had to be perfect, and that was why Herzgo Alegni had summoned only him.
    It was said of Barrabus the Gray that he could stand in the middle of a room unnoticed, but of course the man’s trick was that he didn’t stand in the middle of the room. He knew where alert sentries would look, and so he knew where not to be. Whether the optimum hiding place was behind the open door or above it, behind a canopy or in front of one, in the right place to appear as no more than another figure in a mural, Barrabus knew it and found it. How many times over the decades had a sentry simply looked right past him?
    Hugo Babris had guards—so many guards that Barrabus changed his mind about how he might influence the man’s thinking—but not enough guards to do more than slow the inexorable progress of Barrabus the Gray.
    Soon enough, he sat atop the back of an unconscious sentry who was sprawled across Lord Hugo Babris’s desk. Barrabus stared at the nervous, trapped, helpless lord.
    “Take the gold and go, I-I beg of you,” Hugo Babris pleaded. The lord was a bald, round, thoroughly unimpressive little man, and that only reinforced Barrabus’s belief that he was no more than a front for far more dangerous men.
    “I don’t want your gold.”
    “Please … I have a child.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “She needs her father.”
    “I don’t care.”
    The lord brought a trembling hand to his lips, as though he was going to be sick.
    “What I want of you is simple, simply done, and at no cost—nay, but at great gain—to you,” Barrabus explained. “It’s a simple matter of changing the name of a bridge.”
    “Herzgo Alegni sent you!” Hugo Babris exclaimed and started out of his chair. He reversed direction immediately, falling back and throwing his hands up in front of him when a knife appeared in Barrabus’s hands, seemingly out of nowhere.
    “I cannot!” Hugo Babris whined. “I told him I couldn’t. The Lords of Waterdeep would never—”
    “You have no choice,” Barrabus said.
    “But the lords, and the pirate captains to the n—”
    “Are not here, while Herzgo Alegni and his shades are—while
I
am,” said Barrabus.