The trip to the fourth floor was without incident. The wooden floorboards of the hallway stayed silent at her passing. There were only two suites on this floor, and one of them was uninhabited; it was that empty set of rooms that had first given Skate the idea of sneaking in and “expecting” a room made up for her.
She stood in front of Gherun’s closed door, carefully scanning the frame of the doorway for hidden traps, particularly those of a magical nature. She had not noticed any particular sign given by other servants as they entered the room, or by Gherun upon their entrance, but after the shrieking nightmare of an alarm that had greeted her at Ossertine’s home, she did not want to take any chances.
Her search revealed nothing, even as she slowly opened the door and looked for similar signs on the other side. So she slipped in, setting the mop and bucket down silently afterward. The door did not creak at all when she just as deliberately closed it behind her.
The dim light from the hall lamps winked out when the door shut, leaving her in a dark ameliorated only by lamplight reflected off of snow four stories below. I hope Rattle can see well in the dark. She stifled a mad urge to laugh when she realized it probably could, since seeing was all a giant eyeball could be expected to do well.
The creeping walk across the central room to the designated window was interminable. The only small consolation was that Gherun slept with his door closed.
Darkness shrouded the room, but with Gherun’s finicky refusal to have anything out of order and her own monitoring of the room from various nearby rooftops, her trip across was uneventful, albeit painfully slow.
The window swung open easily and noiselessly, and the ambient light of the room increased ever so slightly as the illumination from the lamps slunk its way in with the cold air.
Skate gazed into the snowy landscape. The slanted rooftops of the city were doing their job of deflecting snow to the ground, though not perfectly. The rooftops were edged in white, and the ground below was covered in the same. The orange lamp lights gave the illusion of warmth to the empty canvas the packed snow was providing. It was pretty. For a moment, Skate could see the appeal that some people found in looking at snow. The consideration lasted as long as it took an errant snowflake to poke her in the eye.
As she rubbed the offended spot, movement caught Skate’s good eye. Rattle was flapping its way toward her through the drifting flakes. The occasional breeze sent Rattle moving erratically every few moments, but it seemed comfortable enough despite the cold and difficulty. It was taking care not to let its legs touch one another as it moved. Slipping through the open window proved simple, though its wings were making a dangerous amount of noise in the otherwise dead silence.
Skate motioned for Rattle to land, which it did immediately with an almost imperceptible click. She cut her eyes to Gherun’s closed door, ears straining to hear any motion. The only sound that met her was Gherun’s soft snoring. She let a breath out that she had not realized she had been holding, then motioned toward the bookcases and slowly crept that way. Rattle followed her, its spidery legs spread out and taut. She had to look away from it; the movement was more than a little unsettling, especially considering Rattle’s size. It was like a spider’s movement, and the languorous motion of its legs made her feel like it was hunting her, or that she was caught in a web waiting to be devoured. She worked through an involuntary shudder as she reached the first bookcase.
Skate could recognize many of the letters but read none of the words yet. Many of the books were not even in the right script, or else were so stylized that they were indecipherable in the dim light. She needed Rattle.
The eyeball bat reached the bottom of the bookcase and began to move its body slowly across the row of books there. Finding nothing, it raised itself several inches and began the process anew, going the other direction for the next shelf. While it was busy searching, Skate withdrew her blanket from inside the blouse and laid it gently on the floor, making sure to spread it out as much as possible.
A single tap sounded behind her. Rattle had found a suitable book. Skate turned and reached for the indicated tome, careful not to allow for any scraping as it left its position, or any thudding as the other books fell to fill in the gap. It took half a minute to get the heavy book off the low shelf in this manner. Skate did not trust Rattle with this part of the plan; its legs were capable of intricate movements when needed, but practicing in Belamy’s library had shown it incapable of moving books quietly. The failure had taken much of the energy out of the bat-winged eyeball. “Don’t worry,” she had said; “I’ll teach you to do it before the next time.” The promise had seemed to cheer the eyeball up considerably. At the moment, Rattle was focused on finding the next book while Skate worked.
When the book was free, Skate laid it down softly on the old blanket in complete silence. She turned and waited for Rattle’s next choice. She wanted to get at least four books to cover the next two weeks of lodging and lessons. When Rattle tapped another book on the very next shelf up, her hopes grew. If it had been able to find another suitable book that quickly, they might be able to get out with more than planned for. She went through the same process of painstaking pilfering, taking another half-minute to remove the book from its place without a sound, and then placing it on top of the other book, beginning a stack. A third tap, and a third book. They had not even moved on to the next bookshelf yet, and had already found three of the four books they had come for.
It struck Skate as strange that Gherun had not set up any defenses for his precious library, seeing as it was the only thing besides tobacco that he seemed to enjoy. He must think being high up will keep him safe. It was true that random break-ins were easier at ground level, but heights did little to discourage targeted jobs like this one. A bit of planning was all it took for someone like Skate to figure out how to get in, take what they wanted, and get out.
She placed the third book in the stack. The weight of more than four might be too much. She tested the three they had already; she could lift them, but it was a more strained effort than she had expected. The books met the floor silently, thanks both to the soft blanket and to Skate’s care.
Can we do more than four? Four had been the plan, but Gherun had far more of a variety than they had expected. There would almost certainly not be another chance to take from the rich bachelor; when he woke to find his supposedly safe home short of several books, it was safe to assume he would pour a considerable amount of time, energy, and money into making sure such larceny never happened again. Having only one shot at such a wealth of books made taking more than planned a tempting proposition.
It was a temptation Skate could not resist. After Rattle picked out the fourth and would-be final book, she put it in its place and put a hand out to stop her partner in crime from flying down to the street.
Barely breathing, Skate placed a hand on either side of Rattle’s bulbous body and brought it very close. It felt, to her surprise, as if it were made of glass; the wet shine of its body was not on its surface, but underneath. “How many can you carry in your claws?” Even in the absolute silence of the room, the words were all but inaudible.
Rattle spun its eye in her hands to look back at the bookshelf, then met her gaze and brought a leg up to tap on her shoulder. One. Two. A pause, another look back. Three.
The third tap had felt far less firm than the other two. She took that to mean two, maybe three. In that perfectly quiet way, she said, “Get two more.”