Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 29

"No, there's a door there. The stairs are beyond it. At the bottom there's a clerk who wrote down everything we brought in. It's also who has the key that opens the door where everything is kept. I can't tell you where beyond that your stuff will be, but that's where everything confiscated ends up."

Tibs narrowed his sense to her, but she had nothing enchanted. He sensed the dogs, since she might not think he'd considered she'd hide it there. Nothing.

"Did they give any of you something before you headed there?"

"No, why?"

"Have you noticed how the dimensions inside the guild building always seem to change?"

"I don't have reasons to go there often." She considered something. "But something did feel odd when I did."

"Irdian said it's part of the building's security."

"How did you get him to tell you that?"

Tibs stared at her. "I asked."

"And he just told you?" she replied suspiciously.

"He wanted me to understand how hopeless any thought I might have to break in was. Probably so I didn't try to get my stuff back. Maybe those enchantments do more than make the dimensions different. Maybe they hide part of the building. There was no door on the left anytime they took me to the cells."

"But there was one for me." She was thoughtful. "Can they really do that?"

Tibs chuckled. "The dungeon lets us bypass entire floors by walking through a doorway. Someone with light as their element can make shapes and colors out of it, so the guild hiding a door isn't something I even question." Although he was curious about how they'd hidden the difference in the weave.

She nodded. "Then it must have been Adjutant Roche who had whatever let us through. He met us at the guild's entrance and was with us the entire time."

"Who is he?"

"He's one of the commander's subordinate if he's in charge of something like that."

"Can you get me more information on him? I'll need it to get whatever it is that lets him make that door visible."

She considered it, then stood. "I'll see what I can find out."

* * * * *

Again.

He sighed. He was tired of these attempts to kill him. Each one meant he had to waste time dealing with leading the would be assassin somewhere discrete, deal with the attempt and then dispose of the body. None of that took long anymore, but it was still time better spent working toward making his plans happen.

He walked among the crowd, using the large amount of corruption on them to keep track of the assassin tailing him, until an alley he knew was rarely used, between the tannery and dieing shop, came into view.

He picked up speed as soon as he was in it, making it two building in before the assassin stepped into the alley. He turned and pulled darkness from his bracer to wrap around himself before stepping into the nook of a doorway.

The woman who hurried by him could be a merchant's wife. She wore a dress that seemed utilitarian, in spite of the frill to the fabric. He sensed knives and poisons among its folds, and it could contain other things he didn't know could be used to kill.

That string of metal that he'd ignored would have killed him when that assassin wrapped it around his neck, if metal could hurt him anymore. A garrote, Darran had told him it was when Tibs had showed him the string with the wooden handles at each end.