Crossbow Bolts across Wet Slate

A chunk of pulverized mortar skipped off the copper flashing two inches from my left heel, spitting white dust across my trousers.

If Captain Botond Várkonyi's privateers had aimed their naval ballistas three degrees lower, Master Nyírbátori’s workshop would have collapsed straight into the cellar. As it stood, the shattered bell-cote three rooftops back was showering the coppersmiths' arcade in jagged red tiles and ancient cedar splinters. I crouched behind a zinc chimney cowl, pressed both hands against my leather satchel, and checked my cargo.

The Master Alignment Cipher disc was cold and heavy against my ribs. Beside it, tucked into the quilted lining of my coat, Nyírbátori’s tin flask remained intact, radiating the glorious heat of roasted chicory and cinnamon.

I needed to cross the Grand Canal into the Upper Millinery Quarter before the gunners reloaded, but the open slate between here and the ridge had become an archery range.

A wet hiss cut through the drizzle. An iron-tipped crossbow quarrel punched through the tin cowl above my forehead, leaving a ragged puncture that whistled in the wind.

Twenty paces ahead, two privateer roof-stalkers hauled themselves over the stone balustrade of the guildhall terrace. They wore salt-cured brigandines smeared with coal dust, soft-soled sealskin boots, and steel boarding hooks strapped to their forearms. Behind them, moored in the canal below, the maintop of an armored privateer hulk loomed above the eaves. A swivel-mounted arbalest on its mast platform was tracking the ridge, cranked back on an iron ratchet.

Gyöngyvár’s canal watch was nowhere in sight. Down in the basin, mortar smoke hung thick as curds over the water, drowning the warning horns.

A familiar flutter rattled the cedar eaves above me. Hetyke dropped onto the zinc ridge with all the grace of a sodden sack of barley, his amber eyes glaring murder at the grey sky. A smudge of soot stained his white breast feathers, and his talons drummed an irritable rhythm against the metal.

"Don't look at me like that," I whispered, edging lower into the gutter. "I didn't invite the armada."

He let out a low, raspy croak that sounded like a municipal magistrate denying a permit.

"You want out of the smoke? Then earn your keep."

Another quarrel skipped off the wet slate, ricocheting into the clouds with a nasty hum. The two corsairs on the terrace spread out along the rain gutters to pinch me against the shear drop of the canal wall. The lead boarder carried a heavy repeating crank-bow, his squinted eyes locked onto my courier satchel.

I had no intention of wrestling two armed mercenaries on wet limestone. What I had was thirty pounds of tallow-greased copper flashing and twelve years of running the city's highest pitches.

The coppersmiths below kept their kilns banked with damp pine, funneling thick white smoke through a cluster of squat flues ten feet to my left. I smeared a fresh coat of beeswax resin across the soles of my turn-cuff boots and waited for the mast arbalest to pivot.

The wind shifted off the harbor, driving a dense cloud of pine smoke across the lower gully.

I broke cover.

Instead of running the slippery spine of the ridge where the marksman expected me, I dropped directly into the concave copper drainage valley. Leaning back on my heels, I locked my knees and slid.

Water and melted grease sprayed from under my boots as I shot down the forty-degree trough like a dropped candle. A crossbow bolt cracked into the stone where my head had been half a heartbeat earlier. Another glanced off the copper gutter behind my calves, leaving a bright silver gouge.

The lead corsair shouted an oath and lunged forward to block the outlet, raising his iron-sheathed forearm.

I didn't try to stop. Two yards before collision, I kicked hard against the curved lip of the zinc gully, threw my weight sideways, and launched over him.

My heels clipped his shoulder, sending him skidding face-first into loose roofing tiles. I hit the wet slate terrace in a tumbling roll, absorbed the shock across my shoulder blades, and popped back onto my feet behind the second privateer.

The second man wheeled around, fumbling for his dirk, but his footing was clumsy on the slime-coated tiles. I drove both palms into the iron-plated canister on his belt, shoved him backward into a row of drying wash-tubs, and grabbed the gear pinned to his harness.

With a sharp jerk, I tore free a coil of high-tensile privateer grapple cord, fitted with a brass ratchet winch and an oiled steel claw. Tucked behind the ratchet housing was a folded slip of tallow-cured parchment.

I shoved both into my coat, sprang over the parapet, and landed on the maintenance ledge overlooking the Grand Canal.

The gap before me was forty paces of empty air. Fifty feet below, the grey current churned against stone pilings around the paddle-wheels of privateer mortar barges. The pedestrian swing bridge that usually connected the coppersmiths to the millinery quarter had been severed; its broken timber ramp dangled into the water like a shattered tooth.

The only thing spanning the chasm was an old braided iron laundry cable, strung high between the guild terrace and an iron rooster weathercock perched atop Auntie Sarolta's neighboring tenement roof. But the guide ring had slipped loose, dangling uselessly ten feet out over the drop.

I unslung my canvas seed pouch.

"Hetyke," I called softly.

The falcon glided down to the stone parapet, shook his wings with theatrical suffering, and turned his beak away from the canal.

"Special assignment," I said, opening my palm to reveal four fat, salt-roasted sunflower seeds.

He didn't move. He merely cast one hooded amber eye downward, sizing up the offering with open disdain.

"Double tariff," I conceded, digging four more seeds from my wool pocket. "Eight seeds. Roasted in walnut oil this morning, still dry."

Hetyke tilted his head, leaned forward, and snatched two seeds from my hand with surgical precision. He cracked the hulls in two rapid clicks, swallowed the kernels, and gave my knuckles a sharp, affectionate rap with his beak.

The deal was struck.

I unclipped the brass ring from my new grapple cord, looped the high-tensile braided line through the eyelet, and offered the ring to his talons.

"Take the loop to the weathercock," I told him. "Drop it over the rooster's tail. Don't drop it in the canal, or I'm buying fish heads for dinner."

Hetyke let out an indignant chirp, gripped the brass ring in his razor claws, and kicked off the limestone rail into the teeth of the crosswind.

The gale hit him instantly, dragging him sideways toward the bay, but Hetyke had spent six seasons riding the thermal drafts of Gyöngyvár's glass spires. He folded one wing, dropped into the canal's leeward draft, and shot skyward in a tight spiral. Ten seconds later, the faint metallic clink of brass against iron drifted back across the chasm.

The ring was hooked cleanly over the rooster's tail-fin.

I yanked the grapple line taut, locked the brass ratchet hook onto the heavy iron cable, and secured my satchel strap around my chest. With Nyírbátori’s cipher disc snug against my ribs, I grabbed the wooden slide-handle and stepped off the ledge.

The drop took my stomach into my throat.

The cable sang a high-pitched whine as I accelerated through the rainy mist. Cold air roared in my ears, whipping canal spray into my face, while the iron hulls and burning coal furnaces of the armada blurred into streaks of dark bronze below.

Before the slack could swing me backward, I flared my boots, hit the sloping slate eaves of the Upper Millinery Quarter, and slid to a halt beneath the overhang of a five-story garret.

I ducked behind a stack of dye barrels, breathing hard through my nose. My fingers shook slightly as I touched my chest. The brass cipher disc was unbroken. Nyírbátori's tin flask was warm against my ribs.

I reached into my coat, pulled out the stolen tallow parchment, and flicked it open.

It wasn't a supply bill. It was Captain Botond Várkonyi's handwritten sector deployment plan. The ink was fresh, outlining the privateer fleet's priority targets across Gyöngyvár's skyline: the watch steeples, the optical towers, and the canal sluice levers.

A sudden rumble rolled up from the water level.

I peered through the gaps in the timber balustrade, looking down into the narrow canal below.

Thick yellow smoke was pouring from the low stone arch of the Szent-Katalin footbridge. Two iron privateer skiffs had moored directly beneath the central timbers, their crews hurling pots of burning pitch against the support struts. The wooden spans were already engulfed in roaring orange sheets of flame, collapsing into the canal in showers of sparks.

On the south embankment, trapped between the burning bridges and the locked iron water gates, hundreds of neighborhood families were pounding against the barred warehouse doors, cut off from the higher ground. The streets below were entirely sealed.

The only way into the sky spires was above them, through the attics.

I folded Várkonyi's orders into my satchel, touched the warm flask at my ribs, and turned toward Auntie Sarolta's garret dormer.