A dark gray jerkin with a hood, gray gloves, black trousers and boots. A large double-edged knife, firmly secured to my thigh by two leather straps so that it would not hinder my movements. That knife had cost me a whole stack of gold coins. It was a little less than a cubit in length, almost a short sword, and the mounting of the blade was covered with a strip of silver, so if you wished you could even risk a fight with someone who had risen from the dead. I could quite easily be lucky enough to walk away from such a skirmish, even if my arm had been torn off. And with the same knife, or rather, its heavy handle, I could easily knock out any idiot who couldn’t sleep at night and happened to get under my feet. The master thief is not the one who slits the throat of the watchman roused by the alarm, but the one who enters silently, takes what he wants, and makes a quiet exit, leaving behind the smallest possible number of clues, including dead bodies.

Hanging behind my shoulder I had a miniature crossbow that fitted comfortably into one hand without hindering my movements. It fired short, thick bolts with heads that had four barbs, and with the necessary skill this little toy could hit a man’s eye at seventy paces.

The small calfskin bag hanging on my belt contained several phials for use in extreme circumstances. For them a certain dwarf merchant of my acquaintance had stripped me of all my earnings from a robbery at a reception in the home of one of the city’s notorious rakes. But the effectiveness of those magic baubles more than justified the price I had paid for them.

That was all. No more time for delay. I went dashing toward the duke’s house, all the time keeping as close as possible to wall of the library. If anyone had taken it into his head to look down, he would have seen nothing but the gray stones and the wind-shredded mist playing tag with the shadows in the square. I ran fast, close to the right side of the house, with the gray crenellated wall flashing past my eyes in a blur. There it was, almost invisible to people passing by on the street: the small wicket gate for servants that led into His Lordship’s inner sanctum.