Page 16 of The Only Way Out Is Up

Yeah. They look nice.

[Conclusion: it is a great deal of effort to go to, simply to look nice.]

I suppose they can afford it.

Which of course is why I’m here.

The smallest houses on Yesod, only twice the size of the bakery, belong to the lowest tiers of supervisory workers. The largest would dwarf the entire market square down below and have permanent guards bearing the colors of Hod Council families. What I’m looking for is something in between, a largish place without visible private security, which usually means an empty building.

A few minutes of skulking through alleys finds me a likely target. It’s a big place, with a grass lawn in front and big windows all around. The architect has provided all the trappings, like stone columns of no obvious purpose and extra little pointed bits like the roof needed its own, smaller roof. Most importantly I see no guards out front and no lights inside. I circle it a few times, assessing.

I think this is it, I send to Star.

[Assessment: positive.] He’s up on the roof, a tiny black shape scuttling across the gray tile. [No inhabitants detected.]

Not a guarantee, of course. But nobody lives in a place like this alone; if there was an occupant, they’d have a flock of servants looking after them. No sign of anything like that. Let’s do it. Meet me in the back alley.

A few seconds later Star comes skittering down the wall. The back door is locked, but the windows beside it are easily big enough to crawl through. Star climbs across the glass with tiny click-clicks. His blades are small but gruesomely sharp, and they cut through the glass with the faintest of high-pitched shrieks. He expertly slices out a section big enough for me to step through, then grabs it with one sticky limb before it can fall and lowers it gently to the ground.

[Assessment: perfection. No possible room for improvement.]

Pity there’s no such thing as a HUMILITY sigil.

[Defense: there is no shame in stating a fact.]

Yeah, yeah. Get in there.

Star slips around to the other side of the window and drops gently to the floor. All I can see are thick blue drapes, which rustle slightly as he peeks out from underneath them.

[Observation: a parlor. Empty, door closed.]

Perfect. I step carefully through the sharp-edged hole, pushing the drapes aside.

The challenge in looting a Yesod house, assuming you’ve picked a good one, is less finding something valuable as it is finding something you can carry. In the parlor alone I can see a half dozen objects that would sell—liquor bottles in the fancy sideboard, books on the recessed shelves, the oval carpet beneath the high-backed armchairs, and the clock on the wall all look tempting. But I can carry only so much in my pack, so the point is to maximize value for weight. I take a silver ashtray and pad to the door to keep looking.

It opens onto a darkened hall, lit only by the faint glow of streetlights from outside. It’s hard to see much; I don’t dare show a light that someone outside might notice. But Star’s thief body has sigils wired into his sensors that make him as comfortable in the dark as a rat, and he scuttles out ahead of me.

You take the first floor, I tell him. I’ll check the bedrooms upstairs. The main rooms are more likely to have useful sigwork constructs, but bedrooms usually have the best decoration. Star is better at finding sigils than he is at assessing artistic merit.

[Instruction: stairs are on your left.] He skitters off, tiny feet tick-ticking on polished stone.

I turn left and take a curving staircase up, snatching a few pretty knickknacks from the pointless little shelves. The upper hall has a half dozen doors, with the largest at the far end. I head for that and find it locked, which is a surprise. But it’s a flimsy thing, intended for privacy rather than security. I slam my hip against it, and it gives way with a crunch. My leg twinges.

Big room beyond. Big bed, sheets rumpled. There’s a painting on one wall, a nice one in a gilt frame. Some kind of ornamental vase, probably too heavy. A bathroom, with a cut-crystal soap dish—that might work—

I’m halfway across the room before the rest of my brain catches up. Rumpled sheets, like someone was sleeping there—

Someone kicks me very hard from behind.

SEVEN

I let the momentum of the blow carry me forward, stumbling a few steps before I try to turn. Unfortunately my attacker follows close; when I spin, their forearm connects with my eye and I see sparks. I take another step back, nearly up against the bed now, and swing a wild punch that doesn’t make contact. My opponent is a ghostly shape, white clothes and white hair, about my size. They duck away from the blow and deliver another short kick to my ribs.

Star, get the fuck up here! But that’s going to take time and this fucker is right on top of me. I reach behind my back for my long knife. It’s always a last resort—the last thing I want to do in Yesod is fight anyone—but I’m running out of options. I whip the blade wildly back and forth, trying to make my attacker back off.

That works, sort of. The white shape steps away. Then something unfolds between us, an arc of gleaming steel whose curved pieces click-click-click into place to form a long, unbroken ribbon of metal. It looks too thin to be a real sword, blade barely wider than my pinky, but I’m willing to bet it has sigwork to make it as deadly as any full-sized blade.

If I could take that home, I wonder how much Ekkeban would give me for it.