It was too dangerous to show himself in Emerald Street again. Keeping his distance from the guards at the marquis’s gate, he found the lane that ran behind the house. The walls surrounding the back courtyard weren’t impossibly high, but they were too smooth to scale without help. There was a gate wide enough for a wagon, but it was securely locked. Of course no one had conveniently left anything as useful as a ladder or rope lying around. Walking up and down the street, he finally found an empty barrel and lugged it back. Upending it, he climbed on top and stretched his arms toward the top of the wall. He was still a foot too low, so he sprang as high as he could and managed to grasp the edge. The barrel fell over and rumbled away down the street, leaving him hanging there.

At this point, a less stubborn person might have given up, but Alec was tired of coming home empty-handed every night. With the edge of the stonework digging into his palms, he managed to pull himself up until he could see the house and the large garden below. The waxing moon cast just enough light for him to see the holes spaced evenly along the top of the wall, and the uneven remains of broken mortar. There had been iron spikes here originally, pulled out and sacrificed to the war effort. It was a common sight and made a nightrunner’s job a bit easier, too.

The garden was laid out in a pattern of formal paths composed of crushed oyster shell. There was no sign of a dog. A balcony spanned the back of the house, and lamp- or candlelight showed at two of the five upstairs windows. Through one he could see a small group of fashionable ladies playing cards in an elegantly furnished parlor. Through the other window he could see what appeared to be a library. While he watched, a man walked past the window and the room brightened as he lit another candle.

Just then two servants, one of them with a lantern, came out a back door of the house and headed toward the gate.

“I know I heard something,” the man with the lantern, presumably the watchman, was saying to his companion. Alec heard the rattle of a heavy chain being undone.

There was no time to drop and run. Instead, he pulled his legs up as far as he could and hung there, praying silently Don’t look up! The corded muscles in his arms felt like they were on fire and the edge of the wall was cutting into his palms but he managed to hang on.

The watchman and his companion found the barrel lying in the gutter across the street.

“Probably a dog, or a drunkard,” the companion said.