Gentle summer winds caressed my already sun-warmed cheeks. Along the road, people chatted merrily as they meandered up and down while the faint scent of flowery perfume flowed in their wake. I stopped scanning the buildings and instead glanced down at the muscular arm that was linked with mine while we walked. As if Callan could feel my gaze, he tightened his hold on me a little.
Pretending to be a couple like this, strolling along a sunlit street with our arms linked, made me feel oddly normal. If it weren’t for the fact that we were actually looking for a way to sneak into a dark mage’s stronghold and assassinate the leader of a rival house in order to win the approval of the King of Metal so that we could have him destroy a mythical blade and wage a war against our own city state. And I supposed that we weren’t really pretending to be a couple either.
I still didn’t really know how to navigate this change in our relationship. Having sex while also trying to kill each other had been so much easier than trying to figure out how to be… an us. I didn’t exactly play well with others. And neither did Callan. So this was going to take some getting used to.
“Not a single shop or storefront,” I said as we at last reached the building that marked the starting point of our strategic stroll.
Callan steered us away from the guards we had marked earlier. “I’ll bet my fortune that this whole outer square is just empty buildings.”
“With guards patrolling them.”
“Exactly.”
We had seen movements in the windows when we had pretended to take a casual walk around the whole perimeter, and the flow of those movements was so unnatural that it couldn’t be anything other than guards.
I studied the red-painted building on our left while we continued walking. “We could try to force our way in. Or poison our way in. But with this amount of security, I doubt it would work.”
“Yeah, a frontal assault is out of the question.”
“So we sneak in.”
“But where?”
Not a single one of the doors around the four rows of buildings had housed any kind of public place. Or been opened at all, for that matter. We had discreetly checked every door we could, and they had all been locked. And since neither of us knew how to scale the side of a building unassisted, we needed to find some other way that would let us walk inside instead.
“Do you know how to pick locks?” I asked.
He glanced down at me. “I know how to break locks.”
“We’re supposed to be sneaky.”
Amusement pulled at his lips as he arched an eyebrow at me. “I thought you liked to make an entrance.”
“I do, but…” I trailed off as I spotted a loose stone on the street up ahead. “Wait, I have an idea.”
“How to get in?”
“No. How to check if there are guards in there. And how to test their response time.”
“I’m listening.”
I nodded towards the loose stone we were quickly coming up on. “Grab that stone. And throw it at the window.”
Disbelief washed over his features as he raised his eyebrows at me. “You can’t be serious.”
“Not while we’re still here, obviously.”
While pretending to bend down and adjust his pant leg, Callan scooped up the small stone. I scanned the closest windows while he straightened again. Once he was back on his feet, I slid my arm through his and started us towards a flower stall on the other side.
“Can you do it discreetly?” I asked.
Callan assessed the distance in silence for a while. “If you can give me some cover.”
“I’ll handle it.”
A round-cheeked woman with curly gray hair was selling flowers of all shapes and sizes from the large wooden buckets in her stall. Poppies and sunflowers and wild summer flowers were mixed together, creating an explosion of color. I pointed towards a smaller glass container full of lilacs.
“Look how pretty those are,” I said in a cheerful voice that made Callan start a little. After shooting him a pointed look, I continued. “Wouldn’t they look lovely on the kitchen table?”
He recovered quickly and then pulled his eyebrows down in a very convincing scowl. “Lilacs? Are you sure? I thought you said that your mother was a stickler for proper fancy flowers.”
“If it’s fancy flowers you’re after,” the owner began with a smile on her face, “then I have just the ones for you.”
“Oh?” I said as I maneuvered myself into a position that would give Callan an excuse to stand half-turned towards the building. “Which did you have in mind?”
While the round-cheeked woman began pointing out several different flowers, mostly in white colors, Callan brushed his palms together and shifted the hand that was holding the stone. Then he flicked me a glance that meant that it was time to look busy.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said to the woman. “I’m not really a fan of too much white. Do you have anything that—”
A crash echoed across the street.
Since I hadn’t seen the exact moment that Callan used his force magic to propel the stone through the air, I didn’t know when it would hit the glass, so my surprise was sincere. I whirled around and pressed a hand to my mouth in a show of shock. Most of the people on the street did the same.
The small stone had slammed into one of the windows on the ground floor, leaving a jagged hole behind. It was a window located at an impossible angle from where we stood so there was nothing to indicate that it had come from us. Unless a wind mage had been involved, but then it could have come from any direction. Or a force mage, of course. But they didn’t know that.
Barely a few seconds after the stone had smashed through the glass, the closest door was yanked open and a sharp-eyed man appeared. His dark eyes scanned the whole street. Callan had turned back as if he was comforting me, which meant that his face was hidden from view. I kept the shocked expression on my features as the man’s assessing gaze slid across my face. It didn’t stop, so he must not have found anything out of the ordinary.
After another minute of studying the street, he disappeared back into the building and pulled the door shut. The whole street heaved a deep sigh.
Slowly, the merry chatter resumed as everyone continued walking again.
I turned back to the flower lady and said that I needed some time to think, and then we excused ourselves and drifted away from the row of buildings.
“Pretty good response time,” I said once we had put a few streets between us and them.
“Yeah. How much you wanna bet that every door is guarded like that?”
I just muttered in agreement before saying, “So how the hell do we get through then?”
The scent of someone frying garlic and some kind of meat drifted out from one of the open windows we passed. My stomach rumbled in response. Glancing up, I waited for Callan to answer.
For a moment, he just tipped his head back and stared up at the pale blue sky visible above the buildings. Raking a hand through his hair, he blew out a sigh before meeting my gaze again. He shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
