.Lark, got to her feet with a, sigh, “You were right, Master Snaptrap, I need to let the mage council know as soon, as possible.”

She returned to Winding Circle, but the rest of them stayed, and Baron Erdogun joined, them. Sandry heard then that those Rokats still in Summersea were being placed under increased guard, one that even killers spelled to be nothing would have to be wary of.

They were getting clever, Alzena thought as she watched the house on Tapestry Lane. It was the home of Fariji Rokat, one of the Rokat House clerks. In their inspec tion the previous night, she and Nurhar had sensed watchers. Two large beggars dozed near the corner of Yanjing Street, in a neighborhood where servants quickly sent riffraff on their way. The maids who opened the doors and shutters on the houses facing Rokats were very muscular. They didn’t look like civilians at all, but like guards out of uniform. Archers patroled the rooftops along the street. A trip through Cod Alley behind the house showed gardeners and menservants who played dominoes with hands that were blue-knuckled and callused from fighting.

It was to be expected after the first two murders. Alzena and Nurhar had provided for it. This Rokat’s protectors were no more imaginative than the Rokat guards in Bihan and Janaal had been.

They had not thought to put more than one disguised guard in front of the stable on Cod Alley that served the Tapestry Lane houses. They had not thought that Nurhar could pass the guard unseen, to leave a small keg of the very flammable jelly called batdefire in the hayloft.

They had not thought that the bunch of rough types—draymen,’ coal carriers, and the like—that came roister ing down Tapestry Lane now, after a night of spending Nurhur’s coin in a nearby wineshop, might have an argu ment not far from Rokat’s house. Hiring the rough folk had been the trickiest part: unless watched, they would drink up their fee before they were needed. Nurhar had stayed with them until half an hour ago, doling out coins one at a time, buying food to make sure a few heads would be clear enough to remember their orders, Alzena stepped onto a window ledge on Rokat’s neighbors house. Her target’s roof was less than a story below. Scouting the areas around some of the less wealthy Rokats’ homes had been a task she and Nurhar had done before they went near Jamar. This location had been the: best; they had saved it 1 for when Duke Vedris decided to give protection to the Rokat scum. Before dawn Alzena had.

walked across roofs; to get here, unseen and unsuspected, by the ‘archers,’ and had entered her cur rent place: through the rooftop door. The house’s occu pants were up and around, but Alzena ignored them. Her sanctuary ‘was their 1 unused nur&ry. No one had en tered it yet that morning, which saved her the trouble of killing them. From here: it was a, four-foot leap to her tar get’s flat roof.

The roughs were a hundred yards away, lurching closer’ as they argued.

Peering through the slit in the spells that hid her, Alzena saw a cloud of smoke rise behind the houses. Nurhar’s fire arrows had set the Cod Alley stable roof ablaze.

The roughs were fifty yards off. A hamlike fist swung; Alzena heard furious snarls. Two of them waded into each other. Their friends tried to pull them apart, then joined in. Alzena watched. A few house doors opened: those suspicious-looking servants peered out. If they were Provost’s Guards in disguise, they would be uneasy. This was a prosperous street. Peacekeepers here moved troublemakers on in a hurry. It would go against their training to stand by during a brawl.

Here came the supposed beggars to watch, maybe to interfere. Now all of the roughs were punching, kicking, wrestling. One of the beggars moved in and went flying. A manservant ran out of a house and dove into the fight, as did the second beggar.

Alzena grinned. Now the other false servants would watch their comrades in the fray—not Rokat’s house, or anything that took place three stories overhead.

Hot air patted her; a flat boom sounded from the alley. The keg of battlefire in the burning stable had caught and exploded. Bells pealed and horns called, sum moning everyone to fight the blaze. The archers on top of Rokat’s house ran to the back of the fiat roof.

Alzena checked her rope to make sure it was properly anchored, then jumped out and across from her window to her target. She landed with a thud that went unheard in the fire alarms’ racket. Off with the rope. Walking cat-footed, Alzena reached the door to the house, and eased herself inside. The archers, watching the fire as it tried to jump from the stable to the neighboring buildings, never looked behind, them.

Two guards in the garret below had gone to stare out of the tiny dormer window at the fire. Alzena was past them and down the stairs, into the house proper, with no one the wiser.

The family’s protectors had moved them to the nursery, the biggest room on the floor below the garret. A nursemaid was playing with the baby in its crib while the young mother spun and told a story to the little girl. Fariji Rokat paced,’

his dark, face tight.

.Alzena drew her knife and killed the baby first, one cut, while the maid stared. When she screamed, the mother leaped up so quickly that she knocked over the little girl and the spinning wheel. The mother raced over to see what had become of the infant. Alzena killed the girl-child as she began to cry..

Fariji looked right at them. What’ did he see? Her knife was spelled with unmagic, like the, sword she now drew from, the sheath on, her back, Rokat wouldn’t see the blade, only his little girl as she fell over, bleeding.

He gasped and lunged for the child, just as his wife had gone for the baby.

Alzena stepped into his rush and cut at his neck, smiling. He had seen his children die. That was good.