The Phoenix Thief

TWENTY

CROSSING THE WIDE rooftops of Istravol was more exhausting than ever before for Kilter. The warehouses were crawling with Watchmen, the grey-suited men even popping in and out of the windows and – worst of all ­– skylights. But his grey coat and the rifle and cap Nátala had provided for him made him all but invisible among them, and the old sensation of being nothing in everyone else's eyes was a comfort, for once. Everyone was too busy to notice him.

Aside from when the Phoenix fire first appeared, Kilter had never seen so many people in the streets. They covered almost every cobblestone. Workmen trundled tools and supplies back and forth, Watchmen on horses, scenthounds at heel, kept order among the masses, and women and children clustered at street corners. Nobody in the Labor triad were working in their storehouses or buildings, and the air was thick with talking. Kilter overheard the words 'Phoenix', 'Reaver' and 'freedom' over and over. But he blocked out the voices early in his trek across the rooftops. It was unbearable to see the masses so smiling and energized by what soon would destroy so much.

Even down in the Lower triad it was crowded. The streets were full of big, hairy animals that moved slowly towards the enclosures built in the square situated along the wall not far from Dmal's tower. Some of the animals were goats, some larger, stockier creatures that looked almost the same, and still others were white, fat things that travelled all huddled together like a bedraggled cloud over the dirty cobbles. Men and women wearing thick boots and rough clothing prodded the animals along with long staffs while Watchmen with wrinkled noses watched from the backs of their horses. The sight and sound of so many animals in an area that he had always found desolate shook Kilter. But all the movement and noise gave him cover as he crossed the rooftop where he'd dropped the Phoenix feather, and he crept, unnoticed, into Dmal's tower.

Most of the strung-up glass was now scattered on the floor, ground into glittering piles of many-colored dust, and many of Dmal's carefully sorted piles were gone. In its corner by the window, the old defense mechanism was still half-hidden under the tarp. Soaking wet from the snowdrifts piled on the rooftops, Kilter's boots left dark footprints in the dust behind him as he crossed over to the curtain of canvas hanging nearby the stairs. His heart jumped as if to shove its way out of his throat as he took hold of the canvas.

He pulled it away.

With a rush the air he'd held, without knowing, in his lungs slipped out of him and he sank to his knees. The door was still just as he and Dmal had left it after the Watchmen had discovered the tower. With a little work it would be fully functional again. ­­

Kilter threw aside the Watchman's cap and rifle, fixed the canvas back from the door with a nail Dmal had stuck in the wall for just that purpose, and got started at once. The stone counterweight was still in one piece, so the only real work he had to do was replace the rope that had attached it to the door, and string it through the pulleys. Finding rope among the remnants of Dmal's collections was not difficult. The old man had always stockpiled various lengths of it in a specific pile near the defense mechanism, each smooth coil stacked on top of each other in a pattern – wide rope, thin rope, wide rope, thin rope. Dmal had always been particular about Kilter not touching any of his piles of found things without saying he could, and after Kilter had once taken one of the ropes to make one of his model Gearfalcons with, Dmal had noticed the interruption of their arrangement almost right away. For someone who talked to fleas, the man was remarkably sharp about some things. Even with the urgency pressing on him, Kilter hesitated before lifting the pile of ropes to begin looking for one that would suit his purpose.

When he did, though, he noticed that the slab of stone the ropes had been covering looked different than the ones around it. The hard, paler-grey substance that surrounded the rest of the floor stones didn't surround this one, and when he tapped it with a hand, it rattled.