Starting at eighty feet up the wall had been carved by ancient hands. A row of human figures was sculpted into the brick, each of them twelve feet tall so they could be seen easily from the Royal Ditch. Malden had seen them often from that not-so-distant vantage, but they looked smaller at the time. They represented the direct male descendants of Juring Tarness, the first Burgrave of the Free City of Ness. Each of them had been Burgrave in his turn. They were crude images at best, and the artists who carved them had made one foolish choice in their designs. The Burgraves were depicted each in full armor, their heads hooded with chain mail and square helmets mounted with the crown of the Burgravate. As a result it was almost impossible to tell them apart. One had a mustache, another a full beard—perhaps such facial hair had been fashionable in their day. Malden had never cared to learn their names or the dates of their respective reigns. He did not care to learn them now, though he was grateful to them for one simple reason: the carvings were even easier to climb than had been the bare bricks. He made a silent apology to the ancient Burgrave whose shoulder he trod upon, and made for the top without pausing.

One hundred feet up and his hands were frozen in the shape of hooks. He jammed them again and again into the cracks between bricks and continued hauling himself upward. One hundred twenty feet and he felt like all his toes were broken from repeatedly pushing them into gaps too small to admit them.

One hundred thirty feet—and he heard a voice from above. Instantly he froze in place, pressing himself as close as possible to the bricks. Not twenty feet over his upstretched arms a guard was walking patrol along the wall of the palace grounds. If they should look over the crenellations, if they looked down—

“Tell me if anyone’s coming,” the voice said. Clearly the owner of the voice must be speaking to someone.

“No, no, it’s clear,” a second voice said, proving Malden’s suspicion.

Then came a grunt, and a noise like chain mail rattling. And then something caught the moonlight as it fell past Malden at incredible speed.

He came very close to falling off the wall then and there. He was so desperately afraid of being hit by the jetsam from above that he pulled one hand free of the wall and swung away from his perch. A moment later he realized what was happening and cursed himself silently for his lack of forbearance.

A stream of foul-smelling liquid was coming down from on high, a stream that spread out and turned to mist a few dozen feet below his position. The guard was pissing over the side.