After finding a stable foothold, she turned her bubble’s focus to the interior of the building across from her. She listened as the party-goers entered with Dane Eyrris, engaged in small talk for a brief time, and then heard ooh's and ahh's as something, or rather someone, was led into the room. She immediately heard the whimpering of a human being in utter fear for their life, and her heart went cold.
While she listened, she could hear the sound of the victim being bound, tightening of leather as straps were bound to them, muffled screams through a gag. Metal chains and other instruments being unsheathed. As she processed the various pieces of information that she gained from the environment within her bubble, the mental image of the place she examined began to spring into clarity instantly.
She immediately wished that it hadn’t.
Although Catelyn had experienced her share of horror in her short life, nothing could ever have prepared her for what she experienced. She was shaken by what her senses were telling her, and her knees grew weak. She climbed down from the downspout to squat on the ledge below the eaves of the roof instead. She needed to feel something more solid beneath her feet. She unconsciously reached her hand down and began to twirl the lucky ring she wore on her left middle toe, circling it with her finger, around and around.
She sat and tried to process what she had just witnessed. Inside the building she had identified a large number of people, though she didn’t count how many, and they seemed to have been clustered around a tableau of some kind, with some people raised up on a dais, where the scene which had so disturbed her was being played out. What she heard, smelled and even to some degree tasted on her tongue, was the most vile thing that she had ever experienced, and it nearly made her retch.
Catelyn didn’t often think of her lack of sight as a blessing, but because of what her senses were telling her, she silently thanked the Divines for sparing her the sight of whatever scene was being played out there.
This was the first time in her life that she was actually grateful for her blindness. Whatever the people were doing, she wished to be well away from it.
No score is worth having to endure this, she thought to herself, the pain and revulsion threatening to tighten her chest until she couldn’t breathe.
And yet, she remained for some reason she couldn’t fathom. She squatted, twirling her toe ring frantically, chewing her lower lip, listening to the sounds of moaning and other, more painful things and unable to shy away from the horror.
This is not the way the world should be, she thought, feeling an emptiness form inside her, an emptiness that she hadn’t felt since that terrible morning, many sojourns past.
There has to be a better way.
She prayed to the Divines to end the person’s misery, to take from them their suffering. To give them the peace of the Divines. Something. Anything. But then that small voice, the one that always appeared whenever she beseeched the Divines, came to her as it always did.
Why are the Divines responsible? What about you? What are you going to do about it?
She shoved that voice away, something that she was both familiar with, and growing increasingly tired of. The voice grew more insistent every day, it seemed. She let her bubble fade and leapt up to the top of the roof of the building she was on. She hugged her knees to her chest and the sobs took her, the same way that they had that first night six sojourns ago.
Prayers or more later, Catelyn let her bubble return her to the world, and tentatively expanded it to the building across the street, preparing herself mentally for the horrors she expected to perceive. She sighed, with some relief, to discover that the worst seemed to have passed. She could hear only a few heartbeats and the sound of snoring remaining in the room, while the disturbing sounds from before were absent.
Dane Eyrris’ unique scent stood out clearly still even at this distance, and she heard his relaxed breathing and the creaking of leather and the clinking of glass as he shifted his weight now and again. She remained listening for one more prayer as Dane Eyrris slowly drank himself to sleep; a ritual he had observed and which she had witnessed, the past two nights. And when she heard the heavy, regular breathing begin, she knew that Dane Eyrris had finally passed out. She stood and shook her legs, which were cramped and tight from sitting so long, to get the blood flowing and prime them for her work.
Outside in the street below, the chaos of the nights reveling was more muted, most people’s carnal desires having been fulfilled, at least for now. As she stepped up to the roof’s edge and propelled herself out into space, she had a shiver of apprehension run through her at the thought of where she was about to tread.
She caught the top edge of Eyrris’ estate roof and angled her body to hug the outside wall, her feet finding purchase against the rough plaster and chipped paint. She knew as soon as her toes touched the surface of the wall that she needed to be careful not to move too quickly, lest she displace too much faded paint, cracked and loose from sojourns of neglect.
She reached out with nimble fingers and found the window latch, exactly where her bubble had revealed it to be, deftly flipping it open and quietly moving it aside. She sniffed the air around the latch softly, but smelled nothing out of the ordinary. She smelled and felt no rust on the hinges, but no oil either. She was being more cautious that usual, but she had only observed the mark for two nights, and had not had the chance to get close enough to know if the window would squeal when she opened it, giving her away. But she was prepared for the possibility nonetheless, and reached into the pocket of her pants.
She pulled out a small jar, removed the stopper with her teeth and wedged the jar in the space between the latch handle and the glass. She took a small dollop of grease from inside and smeared it on her fingers, applying it first to the latch and then for good measure around the edges of the hinges. She wiped her fingers, replaced the stopper in the jar and slid it back into her pants. She splayed her right palm against the pockmarked glass, and pushed lightly.
The resistance to her force was slight, and then gave in with a puff of air. She winced at the noise, but then relaxed when no alarm was raised inside. The hardest thing for Catelyn when it came to being stealthy was not knowing how loud her actions were to normal ears. Because of her finely honed sense of hearing, things that would alert her were things most people could only barely hear.
With her right arm, she eased the window open all the way, her left arm and legs beginning to quiver with the strain of keeping herself hanging in place on the sheer wall. Her feet were sliding down ever so slightly as well, her toes straining with the effort of keeping her in one spot as she worked on the window. Her body was giving in to fatigue, and she would fall to a painful and embarrassing death if she didn’t get inside fast.
She applied all the pressure she could to the window, and it cantilevered open soundlessly. She resisted the urge to sigh audibly in relief, and she held tightly to the window frame with both arms as she slipped her legs slowly, first one and then the other, from the wall to the lip of the open window frame.
It took all of her strength and flexibility, but finally she dropped quietly into the house and tightened her bubble to just a few paces around her. Nothing stood out but the continuous deep breathing and light snoring of the master of the house, Dane Eyrris.
Like all of her break-ins, she had tried to plan this incursion with plenty of time to explore if she wished, something that she usually took full advantage of, but tonight after the delay caused by what she had perceived of the party earlier, and the thought of what was still left here from that scene, she wished to simply get her prize and be gone. Given all she had experienced so far, it seemed like the only course open to her. She steeled herself for what was about to happen, expanded her bubble to take in the entire room and sniffed again, preparing for the worst.
To her surprise, the smells from before were now very faint, almost like a distant memory. Perhaps the final two persons that had left Dane Eyrris to sleep it off had cleaned u
p the mess before departing.
With one ear tuned to the back rooms, and the other to the rhythmic breathing of Dane Eyrris as he slumbered, Catelyn went to work mapping the room. Although she had already scouted the place several times over the past two nights, it had all been from the same rooftop across from the building where she had observed earlier that night, and if there was one lesson that she had learned over the sojourns, it was that it was always a good idea to map a room from inside.
So she focused her bubble exactly to a six-pace sphere around her, and gradually expanded it pace by pace in a grid like pattern until she had a clear image of the room in her mind’s eye, along with everyone and everything in it. The exception to her thorough cataloging of the room was the dais where the previous actions of the party goers had been focused earlier. That, she deliberately bypassed, for the memory of the sounds she had heard, and the jumble of smells she could detect there, was enough to convince her that some things she was better off not knowing the details of.
She had to admit that she had never experienced anything quite like it before, and part of her itched to approach the area and investigate fully. Her curiosity was piqued, but not enough to distract her from what had drawn her here to begin with. Her goal lay before her, and she moved breathlessly toward it.
Catelyn, whisper soft, approached the wall where she had perceived Dane Eyrris to be storing the object she sought. The relic, she knew, was hidden behind a sliding panel or false section of that wall. In the past two nights since he’d placed it there after showing it to the prior, she had heard Eyrris stand before that wall several times, sometimes for almost half of a prayer, but he never again opened it.
And so the only stumbling block remaining between her and her prize was understanding how to access the hidden safe behind the false section of the wall. Dane Eyrris had seemingly done nothing, and yet he had been able to slide the section away with ease and then lock it shut, without any obvious motion of throwing a switch. Under different circumstances, and in a place that hadn’t earlier been the scene of some horrific crime and preventing her from fleeing this horrible place, she might stop to admire such a simple but elegant safe.
She stopped when she reached the spot where she had heard Dane Eyrris stand each time he had checked on the safe, and raised both arms, feeling the wall with her hands, testing for edges.
She ran her fingers up and down the wall in a systematic fashion, mapping the textures, focusing all of her awareness into the tips of her fingers. She read the temperature, the swelling bumps and valleys of the plaster, counted the layers of finely applied paint. Now that she was inside the man’s apartment, she realized by feeling the quality of the materials and the construction just how wealthy and powerful the Dane must be. Catelyn had never felt such a clean and elegant wall before. Three passes over the wall’s lightly textured surface revealed nothing.
Finally, in the middle of a fourth pass across, she felt the almost imperceptible edges of the panel embedded in the wall. The edges were flush to the wall in a way that she wouldn’t have thought possible, and again she felt a sense of amazement at the difference between this world and the one she had grown up in. Once her fingertips found the single edge, she traced it along until she came to a corner, then followed the other edge, and wrapping it together, discovering a panel about a half pace across.
This wall safe was truly was a masterpiece of design, and must have cost Dane Eyrris a small fortune to have built and installed. She would be willing to wager that the gap was invisible to the eye, which for the second time tonight made her grateful that she didn’t need to rely on her vision.
She ran her fingers around the boundary of the panel more than once, but found no obvious latch or notch, or any other indication of how it opened. Which, while expected, was still no less disappointing. She thought back to the one time she had perceived Eyrris opening the wall.
She was positive that his hands had been at his sides until after it was opened, and only after the panel slid open did he raise his arms to take out the case containing the relic. To her senses, it appeared that he had simply gazed at the wall until it opened, then stood in silence while holding the relic, only to place it back in the alcove and step away. As he did, the false wall slid back into place and clicked as it locked shut.
She squatted onto her haunches, running her fingers down towards the floor as she did so. She detected no other seams, and no crevices even after repeated sweeps with her fingers. She was impressed by how smooth the wall was, but that too came as no surprise. She knew Dane Eyrris was one of the wealthiest people in the Seat, and he could afford niceties like windows with latches, doors with locks and smooth, painted walls.
She took the focus away from her fingertips and tilted her head at varying angles, listening and smelling, but detected nothing with her nose or ears of how the mechanism might work. While still squatting she shifted her focus back to her fingertips and ran them along the ground by her feet. The floor was cool to the touch, made of polished wood.
They were yet another example of Dane Eyrris’ position. Catelyn had grown up with wood floors in her home, and she thought that she knew what wood floors felt like. But this was in a different category altogether. Catelyn stifled the pleasure she felt at the subtle warp and weft of the exquisite wood under her fingers and toes. This was not the time to be distracted, but she had to admit that the texture of the floor was what she could only refer to as delicious.
She redistributed her weight to stand up and as she did so, the sensations she had been experiencing as she lingered over the quality of the floor allowed her to stumble onto the secret. As she shifted her weight to go from crouching to standing, she felt one area beneath her soles depress by the barest amount, as though it were just a hair thinner than the surrounding areas. She smiled when she realized the answer.
A pressure plate.
She first tested the floor with one foot, then with the other. Nothing seemed dangerous about it, and it was truly unremarkable other than the fact that now that she was aware of it, the depression was now very evident to her sense of touch. She prepared herself to bolt if it was somehow attached to an alarm bell or some other security precaution, and then stepped down onto the square with both feet, resting her full weight on it, but it did not open the wall compartment.
She started to wonder what the plate would be keyed to. And then she remembered the odd ritual that the Dane had undergone when he had returned the object to the safe. He had seemingly removed at least part of his clothing, and muttered:
“I’ve been enjoying myself too much.”
Could it be as simple as the panel being keyed to Dane Eyrris’ weight? Catelyn smiled at the solution right under her feet, and she hearkened back to another of the lessons that she had learned as a young girl.
One of the books that Catelyn had read continually as a child, as it was one of the earliest books her father had acquired at the black market, was a book about science, a field of study from ancient times which no one truly understood any longer. It was elementary level science, according to the book, but it began with a description of a process from the Before which they called the “scientific method”. Catelyn ran over the steps in her mind like a mental checklist.
You begin with an observation.
She had just observed that the wall panel appeared to have no obvious operating mechanism, but there was clearly some kind of pressure plate embedded in the floor.
Then you formulate a hypothesis.
Right now, her working hypothesis was that the pressure plate was keyed to Dane Eyrris’ weight.
Next, you make a prediction.
Her prediction was that if she could somehow get enough weight on the pressure plate to simulate Dane Eyrris standing on it, it would open the panel on the wall, and the prize would be hers.
Then, you run an experiment to test that hypothesis.
As part of her observations of Dane Eyrris, in preparation for this job, Catelyn h
ad followed him for the better part of the past two days. It was important to learn his routine, listen to his voice, get a sense of his manner, and memorize his habits. By the end of her scouting, she knew many of the details of his life and in a way that only she could, such as the distinct sound of his heart’s rhythm, the unique smell of his particular body odor, and the precise thump of his footfalls. It was this last piece of information which she could use to calculate his weight to within a stone or two.
Unfortunately, based on Dane Eyrris’ frustration the other day, it appeared as though the mechanism required a precise weight. This was the first time that Catelyn could see a flaw in the design of this security mechanism, because she knew from listening to the footfalls of the targets she had shadowed over the sojourns that a person’s weight fluctuated up and down from day to day, especially during times when food was scarce in the Seat, as was an all-too-common occurrence. Even for a man like Dane Eyrris, whose wealth allowed him to eat on a regular basis, she knew that it was very likely that there would be times where he would overindulge, which is why he had had to remove some of his clothing in order to open the panel the other night. And therein lay Catelyn’s immediate problem.
In order for Catelyn to come close to the precise weight of Dane Eyrris, who was of average height but well-muscled, Catelyn would need to add another twenty stone or so to her own weight. She was slender even when she had been moderately well fed as a child, thanks to her parents, but life on the streets, with food coming to her in scarce supply much of the time, had done little to add to her health, and she was nowhere near the weight of an average girl her age and height, much less that of a grown man.
Where am I going to get twenty stone in here? she thought.
She paused to consider the craziest idea first, that of simply dragging an unconscious Dane Eyrris over to the pressure plate.
She turned her bubble towards where Dane Eyrris slept, his blubbering breathing sounding like a saw ripping through a wooden post. As soon as she considered this notion however, she discarded it.
Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) Page 8
