“Excellent. Come on, then.” She emerged from the shadows with something heavy draped over her arm and took his hand. “You can see better than I do in the dark anyway. We need to get up on a roof. Preferably one where someone isn’t already sleeping, and one not near where anyone is going to be burning oil lamps or torches.”

Fortunately he knew a roof that fit that very description. “I know just the place,” he replied, and led her through the maze of pens, feeling his way as he went. It wasn’t that he could actually see better in the dark than the rest of them; it was more that he was able to sense where walls were without actually running into them. No one ever gave a serf or a slave a lantern to see by; he’d just learned to do without them as a boy, and the sense had stuck with him.

Beyond the pens, in the labyrinth behind the temple that the Jousters had been intending to take over, and now no longer needed to since the Thet priests of Tia had solved the problem of keeping the dragons warm in winter, there were several half-ruined and empty buildings in the process of being renovated. None of them were done yet, since the construction of dragon pens had taken precedence. Like all the buildings in Sanctuary, they had flat roofs that had external stairs leading up to them—and probably, like the buildings in Tia, those had been meant for the people who lived in those buildings to use as sleeping places in good weather. Right now, though, they weren’t being used at all—perhaps because they were at the very edge of the city, and people were understandably nervous about sleeping in a part of the city where jackals were known to prowl at night. Where jackals went, sometimes, so did lions, and the prospect of waking up to a lion’s hot breath in your face was one that did not appeal. Kiron didn’t really think that lions would dare an area where dragons were, but you never knew. Pe-atep, who knew better than any of them what cats thought, said the same, but added that old, hungry, desperate lions might dare to go anywhere that they thought there was easy prey, and nothing was easier than a sleeping human. So until there were so many people here that a really effective wall could be built and a full night guard could be posted, it was probably better to err on the side of caution.

That was more than enough to keep people inside at night to sleep, with the doors closed and the shutters barred.

So as he led Aket-ten up the narrow stair, it was with the certainty that the rooftop would be just as unoccupied as she had wanted.

“Oh, this is perfect!” she said with enthusiasm when they reached the top. “Here—”