She unclipped the line from her weaponbelt, snapped on the small folding grapnel, began swinging the weighted rope in widening circles. She let it go. The rope went streaming upward, butted playfully at an overhanging beam, then fell back to clatter on the cobbles. Serroi’s breath whined in her throat as she pulled in the grapnel and swung it again, around and around until it hissed through the heavy air. When she letit go this time, she heard the grapnel clunk solidly home and saw the rope jerking like a thing alive in front of her. She drew her hand across her sweaty forehead, straightened her shoulders and turned.

Tayyan was standing in the middle of the street now, her hand on the hilt of her sword, her body balanced and alert in spite of her injured leg. Serroi breathed a prayer of thanks, then shouted, “Tayyan! Get your skinny self up this rope.” She reached for the bow clipped to the wide leather strap that passed diagonally across her back. “I can hold them off better with this.”

Tayyan snorted as she limped a few steps closer. “You first, love; you’ll have a better angle of fire from the roof.”

“Tayyan!”

“Don’t you argue or I’ll spank you black and blue when we get home, little windrunner.” She grinned. “Get!”

“Bully.”

“Scrap.” Still chuckling, Tayyan turned to face the corner again. Lightning burned the images of four men out of the darkness. Her voice cutting through their shouts of triumph, she cried, “Go!”

Serroi ran at the rope and began hitching her way up it. A quarrel from a guard’s crossbow thudded against the stone and skittered off. Curses and the clank of sword on sword sounding behind her drove her faster and faster, up the rope; her arms burning with the intensity of her effort. Finally she swung herself over the parapet and collapsed onto the flat roof. A quarrel hummed past. She shifted position hastily and risked a glance over the edge.