The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) by Patrick Weekes Page B

keeps enough speed after punching through the window, and if it doesn’t burn hot at the back end and light the rope on fire, and if the window I’m shooting through is actually dwarven crystal and not glass, so that the bolt burns though it instead of just shattering it and sending shards of glass clattering down onto the pressure plates.”
    “As long as we’re all confident in the plan,” Kail said.
    Loch nodded. “Whenever you’re ready. Kail, eyes on the ground.”
    Tern slid down to one knee, still looking through the lenses. She made a single infinitesimal adjustment to her crossbow, a finger’s gentle pressure on one side. Then she took two slow, deep breaths. On the third, she fired.
    The bolt hissed an angry red as it sizzled across the street, over the rooftop, and cleanly through the window, a thin line of white silk rope trailing behind it. A moment later, the sound of the hissing pop reached her ears. “Nice shot. Kail?”
    “All clear on the street.”
    “Ululenia?”
    “I sense no fear or anger from the guards inside.”
    “Tern?”
    “Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen . . .”
    “Got it.”
    Loch watched the rooftop across the street, and the little line of white silk swaying gently in the night breeze. After a bit, Tern quietly said, “One hundred,” and carefully unlatched her crossbow from the rope. It dangled slightly, and then the hook securing it to the rooftop caught, and it held. “Hang on. Let me tighten it a bit. Icy, if it leaves you dangling too close to the rooftop, freeze and give me a sign, and I’ll tighten it some more.”
    “I believe I will be fine,” Icy said as Tern worked a tiny crank on the hook, grunting with the effort until finally it couldn’t be tightened any further. “One moment,” he said, and stepped calmly onto the rope.
    “Oh, of course, can’t just hang from it, you big show-off,” Tern muttered as Icy walked across the rope. From where Loch watched, the thin silk rope seemed to dig into his soft slippers, but Icy showed no sign of discomfort, walking with his arms extended at a brisk pace. “Fall of a hundred feet or so, but gods forbid he go hand-over-hand like some amateur second-story man.”
    Icy was over the other rooftop now, the silk line just a foot or so off the ground as he made his way toward the window.
    “He gonna make it?” Kail asked.
    “He hasn’t signaled.”
    “Not what I asked, Tern.”
    Icy was halfway across the roof, and the rope bowed down, just inches from the rooftop. He paused for a moment as a gust of wind whistled through the night air, and looked back at them.
    Then he turned, crouched, and leaped lightly the last ten feet, catching himself on the lip of the window with his feet tucked up just above the ground.
    Loch let out a breath.
    “I forgot just how good he was,” Kail said, shaking his head.
    “He requests my assistance,” Ululenia said, and without waiting for a response, shifted into the form of a small white bird. She flapped through the night sky as Icy braced himself, gently traced the edges of the window, and then laid his fingers on the window as though holding an invisible ball in his hands.
    At such a distance, Loch couldn’t see exactly what he did. What she did see was that his hand moved, and with a faint pop, the window snapped cleanly from its frame, all in one piece and hanging from the white rope by the hole that Tern had shot through it, like a bead on a string.
    “Look at that. Look at that. Imagine what he could do if he was allowed to hit stuff,” Kail said under his breath.
    “He swore an oath,” Tern said.
    “Why would anyone do that? That would be like me swearing an oath not to pick locks or talk about people’s mothers.”
    Icy lifted himself up without evident effort and slid forward through the window. Ululenia flapped in after him and perched on the windowsill.
    “Okay, Ululenia,” said Tern, “what does he see?”
    After a moment, she added, “Okay, good. The third one