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“That serves as an additional exit if the Crown’s Watch needs to move out quickly,” he murmurs. “They can pop it open and make the short jump into the alley while others are heading out the front and back doors. Since it’s up there, they don’t bother guarding it.”
So no one should notice if it briefly opens and closes for our invisible figures to enter.
I give myself a shake in preparation. “All right. I should be able to handle the lock.”
Stavros bends down and boosts me onto his shoulders. Once he’s straightened up, I can easily reach the base of the window.
I pull out the slim metal tool I brought along for this purpose and wiggle it into the narrow gap between the frame and the ledge.
With a little maneuvering, I manage to slide over the deadbolt. I ease the window up an inch, listen, and then push it farther so I can wriggle inside.
My magic jitters with the urge to wrap even more protection around myself, but no figures stir at either end of the hall I lower myself into. Once I’ve set my feet on the ground, I tug the pane even higher.
Rheave scrambles after me with another boost from Stavros. Then the former general hefts himself after us with the two of us grasping his arms.
We huddle together so we can see each other clearly despite the charms. Stavros points in both directions down the hall, his voice the barest whisper. “The sleeping quarters are all up here—almost every room. They won’t be locked. I’ll be heading down to the dungeons in the basement.”
I give his hand a quick squeeze. “Get through this mission as quickly as we can manage it, and then we’ll meet by the grate as planned.”
An ache forms around my heart letting him go, but if anyone can look after himself in a potential combat situation, it’s Stavros.
As he turns toward the stairs, I nudge open the first of the doors to the police force dormitories.
Some members of the Crown’s Watch go back to family homes when they’re off for the day, but many choose to live in the guardhouse, especially the younger men and women who aren’t married and want to be out of their parents’ homes or those who’ve traveled from outside the city to serve. I guess it must come with a sense of family somewhat like what I’ve found with my men.
Now, the narrow beds set up along the walls of this room are filled with Order members. Lothar took over all of the Crown’s Watch’s properties when his people stormed the city, and he’s using them as bases of operation.
Which means a significant number of the figures sleeping in these beds aren’t people at all but daimon in animated clay bodies.
With one hand on my shoulder so I can see him, Rheave points to three of the beds. Those three are daimon like him.
I set my fingers over his in a quick reassuring touch and move to the first form he indicated.
Casimir picked out the pot of black makeup I retrieve from my pocket. It’s a type that stains the skin semi-permanently rather than simply covering it temporarily.
Ever so gingerly, I use a soft brush to dab a few dark streaks on the side of the man’s neck, just below the edge of his blanket.
By morning, the dye will have set. A mark will remain through at least a week of washes. But it simply looks like a slightly unusual smudge of dirt or soot, not anything purposefully put there.
Only the Black Talons people prowling the streets will know what those marks signify. They’ll kill the captured daimons’ bodies in public places so more and more witnesses will see the proof of the Order’s unnatural magic—and so those daimon can go free rather than serving their slave masters.
When I reach the third sleeping figure, I have to tug her blanket down a little and brush her hair back from her neck. She lets out a sleepy sigh.
I freeze with a lurch of my heart. Only when she remains still for another several seconds do I lower my brush.
In theory, Rheave could have burned these marks. But the jolt of pain would probably have woken the targets. This way, we can mark them all without alerting anyone.
We move from one room to the next, marking neck after neck. Looking down on all the faces relaxed with sleep, my gut starts to twist with the thought of their future deaths.
They aren’t really people, of course. The daimon are trapped inside those bodies, not there through their own will.
But if any of them would have liked to take the bodies as their own like Rheave has, to experience everything mortal life has to offer, they’ll never get the chance.
That’s the scourge sorcerers’ fault, not ours. They set the daimon on this destructive path.
I can’t help feeling a little guilty about it all the same.
Neither of us speaks as we work our way through the rooms. By the time we get to the end of the hall, I’ve marked nearly two dozen sleeping daimon.
