Leif
The door is right there. I’m not going up.
I’ve crossed a realm and a city and one moving death box that I’m choosing not to revisit, and the last twenty feet might as well not exist. I’m on the sidewalk. This is where I am.
Assessing the perimeter.
I don’t pace. Pacing’s a tell, and I’ve spent four hundred years making sure mine don’t show, so I’m not pacing — I’m walking a deliberate line from the front steps to the fire-escape sightline and back, which is work, and work has never once failed me.
I keep counts. The number is information. Tonight’s numbers: eleven circuits of a perimeter that was clear on the first one. Two cabs. One raccoon.
Entry points. Front door, a formality, opens on a key card nobody checks. Fire escape on the north side, minimal lighting. The roof across the street holds a clean line into her window, and her light’s still on, so she’s awake up there. On top of it all is Gunnar, the loudestthing in thirteen realms, and if he’s got her cornered by that bookshelf—
The front door opens.
Brock steps out and says nothing. He’s about to and whatever it is, I probably won’t like it. He’s never once stopped at bad when worse was sitting right next to it, and the maddening thing about him is that he’s usually right.
He stops beside me. Looks at the same stretch of street I’ve been looking at all night.
“Perimeter’s clear,” he says.
“I know.”
A cab goes by. Somewhere down the block a car alarm goes off.
“So there’s no tactical reason you’re standing on the sidewalk.”
“I’m assessing.”
“You’ve assessed. For a while.” His mouth tilts. “It’s clear, Leif.”
“The fire escape needs eyes. The lighting on the north side—”
“You’ve checked it twice. I watched you from her window.”
He’s had her window all night. I’ve had the raccoon.
“The roof, then. Clean line straight into her—” I realize how bad it’s about to sound. “Into the third floor. Somebody should hold it.”
“Somebody should.” He doesn’t move. “You want to spend the night guarding the view of her window?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Mm.”
Her light’s still on. I confirmed it last circuit, and the circuit before that.
“She’s still awake,” Brock says.
I keep walking.
“You checked.”
I keep walking.
“Twice.”
“The door—”
