Shops and stalls that didn’t sell alcohol closed up just before midnight. Hy Sa’lacvi returned just after. He was short, round, and wearing a long, bright orange sarong patterned with palm leaves. Half a dozen shell bracelets gleamed against one dark wrist. As a sorcerer, he made a believable carpet seller.

Staggering a little, like everyone else on the streets, Vree and Bannon started back toward their inn, lost the pair of guards watching them-Keln and the remaining unnamed of the four-and ended up a few moments later at the top of the stairs that led to Hy Sa’lacvi’s second-floor rooms.

Moving silently to the open window, Vree tossed the Nighthawk moth she’d snagged by one of the sputtering torches in over the sill. No lights. No whistles. No moth suddenly aflame. It seemed this access, at least, had not been protected by sorcery.

As they crouched inside the room, waiting for their eyes to adjust, the moth fluttered toward them. It was almost back to the window when an enormous pair of white paws came out of the darkness and brought it to the floor. The paws were more impressive than the cat they were attached to as the long-haired calico whacking the struggling insect across the painted wood was distinctly short in the leg.

Vree caught Bannon’s eye and made a face. No one had mentioned Hy Sa’lacvi had a pet. In their business, pets were more trouble than guards and servants combined.

As the moth managed to get into the air and out of range, the cat bounded up onto the narrow table that ran down the center of the room. Vree heard glass containers chime. The cat whirled, leaped a stack of brass weights, raced past a row of bottles, and charged through a cluster of squat clay jugs.

Vree caught the weights.

Bannon caught the bottles.

Neither of them could get to the jugs in time.

The first one to topple hit the floor with a crack, spilling out a pile of yellow granules. The second hit the floor with more of a thud, the viscous fluid in it adding a soft splat. When the fluid hit the granules, there was a high-pitched whine, a loud bang, and a cloud of purple smoke.

As the two assassins slipped back out the window, they heard the cat sneeze and Hy Sa’lacvi yelling in his own language. From the roof across the courtyard, they watched the smoke billowing up into the sky.

“That’s a lot of smoke without fire,” Bannon murmured.

Vree nodded. “We can assume the sorcerer part is correct anyway.” She grinned as the cat raced down the stairs to the courtyard and disappeared in the shadows. Glittering with purple highlights, Hy Sa’lacvi stumbled out onto the landing.

“Mirrin!” He had a thin blanket wrapped around his waist. “Mirrin! Get here! I not angry, I just need see if you all right!”

Below, in the darkness, the cat sneezed.

“Fine! You be hurt, cat, I no care. I sleep now!” Pivoting on one bare heel, he stomped back into his rooms.

“Definitely a sorcerer,” Bannon snickered. “Any one else would’ve been told to shut his slaughtering hole.” Pale faces had shown in a few of the other windows overlooking the courtyard, but no one had protested being so rudely awakened. “I wonder why he called for Mirrin in Imperial?”

“He probably got her here and figures that’s what she understands. We’re not going to find out anything else tonight,” she added, leading the way down to the alley. “We might as well go back to the inn and get some sleep.”

“You can go back to the inn, sister-mine. I’ve got other things to check out.”

“You smell like…” Vree leaned closer and lifted her brother’s arm to her nose. “Limes. And you’re greasy.”

“Oily.” He pushed his wrist through her grip and back again, the motion blatantly suggestive. “Harder for an enemy to get a grip.”

“I doubt it was enemies gripping you,” she snorted, releasing him and stepping away from the bed. “I’ve done a bit of recon. Orin and his friends are lurking in front of the inn.”

“So? If they do anything more than lurk, we’ll take them out.”

“Just like that?”

“We’re on target and they got in the way.”

“So now we’re on target?”

Bannon grinned, rolled out of bed, and reached for his kilt. “Now, it’s convenient. I’m starved, let’s go eat.”

“It’s almost noon.”

“Which is when things start happening in this town.”

“You think they’re going to arrest us?” Bannon wondered, as he worked his way along the inn’s buffet table, piling food on his plate.

Vree glanced out at the four guards in time to see Orin throwing a cup of liquid back in the face of a water seller. “No. I think they want that letter of credit.”

“You think they’ll take the first chance they get to jump us?”

“Yeah.”

“Idiots.”

“Do they think we haven’t noticed them?” Vree wondered as Orin and crew nearly knocked over a sausage cart trying to keep them in sight.

“I don’t think they think.” Bannon gestured at the nearest alley. “You want to lure them to their doom?”

“No, let’s see how long their attention span is.”

They lost the guards in a crowded ale house, slipping unseen out the back and up onto the roof. It was a simple matter to make their way to Hy Sa’lacvi’s carpet shop without ever returning to the ground.

“I can’t believe how close together everything is.” Bannon stepped from roof to roof past a line of disinterested pigeons dozing in the sun.

“And how much of it seems to be held together by paint,” Vree added, adjusting her stride as a board began to give underfoot. They had no fear of being heard, for those who slept on the upper floors were out serving or servicing the visitors to the South Reaches, and anyone still asleep wouldn’t be staying so close to the harbor.

Hy Sa’lacvi was sitting in the courtyard behind his shop; an abacus, stick of charcoal, and a pile of parchment seemed to indicate he was doing accounts. While they watched, Mirrin leaped up onto his lap desk and knocked a mug of steaming liquid over the pile.

“I wish I understood Ilagian,” Bannon murmured as the sorcerer screamed at the departing cat. “That sounds like some impressive swearing.”

As soon as it became obvious he was going to start again with dry parchment, they dropped silently off the roof onto the landing and slipped into his rooms.

“A considerate person would have a note or something lying around,” Bannon grunted a short time later. “Yes, I am the vanguard of an Astoblite invasion. Kill me.” He stared at the purple stain on the floor. “And it’s no slaughtering fun going through a sorcerer’s things; you never know when something might bite you on the ass.”

“I didn’t find anything either,” Vree sighed. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

“You mean the boring way,” Bannon protested as they climbed back onto the roof. The soft click, click of the abacus drew his gaze down to the courtyard. “He’s not going anywhere for a while. Do we both have to stay?”

“For the love of Jiir, Bannon, you’re still greasy from your last body rub!”

“Oily. And I was just thinking that now would be the perfect time for me to pick us out some clothing that would help us blend in a little better. It’s what soldiers on leave do.”

Vree glanced down at the pile of blank parchment and compared it to the pile Hy Sa’lacvi had already covered with neat lines of tiny numbers. He was clearly going to be a while. “Fine.” She couldn’t understand why being on vacation suddenly made people wear clothing they wouldn’t be caught dead in otherwise, but it was what soldiers on leave did and that was what they were supposed to be. Shonna had returned to barracks wearing a bright yellow tunic printed with purple flowers. “Do not,” she warned her brother as he turned to leave, “bring me back anything printed with parrots, kittens, or palm trees. And don’t take on Orin and his crew without me.”