"I can feel you there," she breathes. "No use hiding now. The Guard will be swarming this place in seconds."
Clamping a hand over his mouth, the boy watches the woman from behind the bookshelf, clutching the stolen item to his chest and cursing the witch's choice of payment. It's only a map, and not even a very rare one-there had been multiple copies on the shelf-but if he gets caught, he'll have a lot of explaining to do.
The library is dark, cast in shades of blue and black by the dim moonlight streaming through the open window. If he could only reach it, he would be out of here in a heartbeat, safe in the labyrinthine spread of streets he'd come to know over the past few weeks.
The woman's slightly stooped, nightgown-clad form has disappeared between the two bookshelves on the far side of the room, leaving him with a clear path to the window.
He hesitates a second too long. There are footsteps on the stairs, loud and fast. The boy swears softly, and without stopping to think, launches himself through the window and into the cold night air on the slanted roof. Almost instantly his feet start to slide. There's a shout from inside of "The window!" and he makes the mistake of glancing back. Two figures stand framed on the library floor-much too big to fit through the window, he notes with relief-both wearing the navy cloaks of the King's Guard. Their faces are anonymous behind their hoods and he's extraordinarily thankful that he remembered his own. Getting caught would be bad enough, but if he's recognized-he pushes the thought aside. He won't let that happen.
He starts to pick his way across the roof, as quickly as he can while maintaining his footing, meaning to climb down the way he'd come up, but waiting for him on the street is another hooded member of the Guard. He takes a step back as something whistles past his head, cutting a thin line into his cheek. Heart hammering, the boy whips around to see that one of the figures in the window is aiming a crossbow at him. He ducks, and another bolt flies over his head.
"Wait! Don't shoot!"
A smaller, slighter figure pushes their way to the front of the window. Panic surges through him. Had he been recognized? He had been so careful with his hood-but then the figure vaults nimbly over the windowsill with twice the grace he'd had and lands on the rooftop not ten lengths from him. He does the only thing he can think of, turning and dashing across the shingles as fast as he is capable.
When the rooftop ends, he jumps, and for a terrifying, exhilarating moment he's falling through the freezing air towards the cobblestones below. Then his feet hit the roof of the neighboring house and he's running again before his mind has time to catch up. Behind him the guard in the navy cloak does the same, keeping pace with him as they race across rooftop after rooftop. All thoughts of falling are banished from his mind, replaced by his pounding heart and the adrenaline rushing through his veins. It is only him and his navy-cloaked pursuer, silhouetted against the gleaming backdrop of the starry sky.
Minutes or hours later, the house with the second floor library is long gone. He sees they are nearly at the castle gates on the outskirts of town. Beyond it the cemetery stretches on, impossibly long and macabre at this time of night. Somewhere in his mind a voice tells him this is where he needs to stop, that if he goes much further there won't be any rooftop left. Another voice says that he was lucky he happened to be in a section of town where the rooftops were all roughly the same height and not in the center of town, where there are nothing but domes, arches, and the skeletal spire atop the cathedral.
All at once exhaustion hits him like a fist in the stomach. He's suddenly painfully aware how short of breath he is, and how his legs are starting to seize up. On a particularly flat stretch of rooftop he chances a glance back, hardly daring to hope that his pursuer had tired, given up, but the navy cloak is still there, effortlessly matching his every step.
