Keyla hesitated at the alley’s exit, flattening herself against the wall and keeping herself hidden from the street lamp’s light. The market district opened to the forecourt in front of the church in this direction. Once there, the columns of the peristyle would give her ample opportunities for cover, but reaching them unseen was cause for concern.

The shops were all long closed at this hour, but the lamps were lit and guards were patrolling the area at regular intervals.

She knew she couldn’t take too long studying patrol patterns or the early rising priests would begin to wake and prepare for their day inside the church. More bodies meant more chances to be discovered while she was inside.

Keyla frowned, and turned back to the alley to think. On the opposite wall a copper drainage pipe led up to the roof of a two story clockmaker’s shop. Perhaps she could climb, and move over the rooftops to get closer to the church?

She pressed herself flat against the wall again as she heard a patrol approaching along the avenue. She clenched her eyes shut and imagined herself as nothing, invisible, not worthy of notice.

“You won’t believe what happened next, I tell you what,” she heard a gruff voice say as it passed by the alley.

“You’re probably right, I won’t,” another voice responded. This one was higher, and sounded very bored with the conversation.

“Well, let’s just say they won’t be comin’ back for her apple pie any time soon!” The first man guffawed as the other one sighed.

Their footsteps faded and Keyla opened her eyes. It was now or never!

She darted across the alley, risking a few moments in the lamp’s light as she leapt and grabbed hold of the pipe. She didn’t weigh much and constantly climbing the ladder in and out of Auldavulin’s, as well as up the stone walls of the river when she came out the sewer, had left her strong enough to shimmy up the pipe without fuss.

Curved terracotta shingles lay interspersed with one another, sloping up so steeply that Keyla began to doubt her decision. She looked down over her shoulder and immediately regretted it. This was much higher than the window had been the other night!

She stayed there, half on the roof and half hanging over the side, for a moment to let her heart settle. Rather than be gripped by the fear of falling, she focused on her breathing. She was already up here. She could go back down, and she knew what lay below, or she could go up.

Margaan’s Diary, and her answers, were waiting for her. Her heart ached at the thought of never reading the book again.

Keyla brought her knee up for leverage and hoisted the rest of her body up and onto the roof. She stayed in a crawling position, keeping her belly low to the shingles, and began to move up the steep incline.

Fortunately, the clay tiles held firm and were much sturdier than she’d expected when she first reached up to feel them. Her confidence increased as she arrived at the top saw that there was a flat section about two feet wide stretching the entire length of the building. Multiple shops were housed within, and she’d be able to bypass most of the market district this way. She stayed crouched and moved as quietly as she could to the far end of the structure.

The moon was half full and provided enough light to see the silhouette of the city sprawling out in all directions. Ryk wasn’t just large, it was enormous. Even though the government was based out of Lyr, Ryk dwarfed it in sheer size and population. Built onto the side of a very steep hill, half of the city’s buildings seemed to stretch up toward the sky, though in truth they were not more than four or five stories tall.

As Keyla reached the end of the building, a new problem presented itself: getting safely down. The rooftop sloped down just as steeply as it had on the other side, and then dropped into the darkness of the alley below.

She sat down on the edge of the flat portion of the roof, letting her legs lay down along the shingles. If she inched herself slowly down, she should be able control her descent without sliding off. But what would she do when she reached the ledge?

That was a question for when she arrived. Adjust to the moment and make quick decisions, right? Wasn’t that the plan? What a stupid plan. She shook her head and sighed.

Keyla scooted her butt along the slope, alternating with her hands and feet to slowly but steadily descend. When she neared the edge, she looked to the street as the flame of the lamp closest to the alley went out.

What would cause that? Had she been seen? There were no guards around that she could see. Perhaps the gas had been turned off? The other lamps across the street were still lit, though. She looked around it but didn’t see anybody. She did notice, however, that the lamp was almost as high as the base of the roof.

A crazy idea began to form and despite her nerves, she couldn’t see any other way down. Without letting herself think it through, Keyla reversed her direction and moved halfway back up the roof. There, she crouched, angling herself toward the street lamp, and began to run.

She was moving far faster than she ever had before due to the angle, but when she neared the ledge she remembered to plant her foot and launch herself hard toward the street lamp.

For a moment Keyla’s mind was empty. She was weightless, flying through the night. The next she was slamming hard into the metal iron of the street lamp. All of the air in her lungs whooshed out of her as her chest smashed against the metal.

With the wind knocked out of her she almost missed as she wrapped an arm around the pole and slid the rest of the way down.

She tried to breath as she stumbled a couple of steps away from the lamp, but the shock of the impact hadn’t worked its way free of her chest yet. Just as she managed to inhale again, the street lamp’s flame reignited.

Nine hells! Keyla darted into the alley and ducked behind a crate to catch her breath. She waited there, another guard patrol having come and gone, before she felt ready to proceed. She would likely have a bruise across her entire torso tomorrow. For now, however, she was still energized from the excitement and ready to move again.

She jogged to the first of the pillars that made up the peristyle in front of the church. It was easy to dash between them as all of the gas lamps were on the periphery. Only moonlight lit the forecourt.

As she arrived the last pillar, she noticed that two guards had stopped for a chat near the front entrance to the church. Frowning, Keyla waited, but it seemed as though they were going to converse for some time. She looked around for other avenues of approach, then sighed and glanced down at her feet.

A few loose rocks lay atop the cobblestone, and she bent to pick them up. Turning back toward the guards, Keyla reviewed her options.

She wouldn’t be able to knock out the guards with rocks, and she’d never been much of a fighter. Besides, they were well trained and carried truncheons.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

She would need to create a distraction instead, and draw the two officers away from the steps leading up to the main doors.

Keyla threw her first rock as hard as she could at the alley to the left of the church.

One of the guards glanced that way, but neither made a move to investigate. Hells. On any other night she’d love to have lazy watchmen, but right now their nonchalance was preventing her from getting the book!

She drew her arm back, whispered a quiet apology to Selah, and hurled the other rock at a crinoline shop. She winced as it shattered one of the windows, but smiled when the guards noticed.

“What in Narn’s name is going on over there!” One shouted, and the two of them ran toward the shop.

Keyla didn’t waste a second as she bolted over to the large oaken doors of the church. Without risking the time to look behind her at the guards, she slipped inside.

As the door slid silently closed behind her, Keyla’s eyes darted around the massive marble interior of the church. She could spot two nuns sweeping between the pews down toward the pulpit. She hunched her shoulders and turned toward Father Chantol’s office.

The front entrance wasn’t particularly well lit. Unlike most of the other structures in Ryk, the church still used candles and torches. Keyla realized she didn’t even know if it was piped for gas. This worked to her advantage, creating deep shadows along the walls that she was able to step into and move through without notice.

The lock on the priest’s office door was simple, and Keyla smiled to herself as she bumped the final tumbler into place and lifted the latch.

She pushed the door shut behind her as she stepped onto the rug that took up the majority of floor space in the office.

Nothing had changed since she’d been here earlier. A scant bit of moonlight through the tall stained glass window illuminated just enough of the shapes of the desk and chairs for her to creep over to where the priest had been sitting, and locate the locked cabinet. He’d placed the diary in there.

Kneeling, she began to work on the lock. It was more complicated than the door had been, and she lost track of time as she dexterously wiggled the thin metal rods to maneuver the tumblers where they needed to go.

Finally the familiar and welcome click sounded, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She opened the cabinet door, but it was too dark to see inside. Reaching in with a hand she felt the leather cover of a book, and smiled again as she felt it’s familiar hum in her mind. This book belonged with her, or at the very least, not with the church.

Keyla’s breath caught in her throat as she heard a sound outside the office door.

“I swear to you I locked it,” a woman, one of the nun’s said.

“Well it’s open now," another whispered. "I’ll call the guards in. Stay here and watch the door."

She looked back toward the door. It hadn’t closed all the way, and torchlight could be seen flickering through the gap.

It was all going to be over, soon. It wasn’t far from the office door to the main entrance, only a handful of strides, but with the nun’s between her and freedom and guards on the way, she would be caught for sure.

Think!

Her eyes moved frantically throughout the room. She could only make out dark shapes as the staining on the glass of the window prevented much of the moon’s light from piercing the darkness.

The window!

She glanced up at it. It was a tall, artistic portrayal of Selah. Keyla had never cared for these images of her beloved Selah. True, she had no idea what the woman had looked like in life, but she felt uncomfortable about Selah’s beauty in these depictions.

Keyla put Margaan’s Diary in her pocket and moved to the other side of the desk to grip one of the wooden chairs. She reached into her other pocket and pulled out Teknar’s gold pocket watch. It would have fed her for a month. Frowning but holding in her sigh, she dropped it onto the rug below.

"Selah, please forgive me." She voiced a quiet prayer.

The front door to the church had opened and she heard whispered voices informing the guards that the office had been broken into. Time was up.

Shoving all doubt out of her mind, Keyla picked up the chair and ran toward the window, then pushed forward and heaved the chair up and through the window.

Glass shattered and as she heard the door opening she jumped, launching herself through opening between the remaining shards.

“He’s out the window! Let’s go!”

The chase was on. Keyla landed solidly on the cobblestone outside and began to run.

|||||||||||||||

Streets and alleys swiftly became a blur of light and dark as she ran, but she was unable to lose her pursuers. Keyla had taken so many twists and turns that she was no longer confident of exactly where she was.

“Narn damn them!” She swore under her breath as she turned down another alley and slammed into the metal pipes of scaffolding that had been set up there.

The air left her lungs with a whoosh and the blow to her already tender chest sent jolts of pain through her body. She bounced backwards, landing hard on the cobblestone. With a grimace she pushed herself up, trying to ignore the pain. The guards footsteps were fast approaching. Back to the rooftops it is, then! Let’s see them follow me up there.

Keyla reached up to lift herself onto the first pipe, then began to climb.

“Stop right there, boy!”

She felt fingers almost close around her foot as she climbed another step, but they failed to grab hold. She held back a scream and tried to climb faster, but the scaffolding began to shake as the guards grabbed hold and hefted themselves up after her. She bit her lip and focused on her grip. One hand after the other, one foot on the pipe above the last.

The guards were focusing just as much as Keyla, as they didn’t close the short gap between them. The metal rods groaned under the weight of all three of them, but held as Keyla pulled herself up and over onto the wooden plank on top of the frame. From there she was able to hop up onto a roof topped with familiar shingles, the same as she’d seen in the market.

She looked left and right briefly and smiled. She was indeed back in the market! She didn’t want to lead them back to the industrial district where Auldavulin’s awaited her, so she sprinted across the length of the rooftop in the direction of the Upper Ward.

Keyla heard a scream behind her but didn’t turn back.

“Gods be damned, you clumsy bastard! He’s running toward the Upper Ward. Head that way!”

Perhaps the second guard had fallen during her climb? That would mean only one had managed to clear the rooftop to chase her. Keyla sucked in a deep breath and pushed herself harder, far more confident in her footing on the terracotta tiles than she had been earlier that night.

Her chest burned as she ran. Her breaths were becoming ragged, and the blows she’d taken upon hitting the lamp post and then the scaffolding were beginning to demand attention. Every struggled exhalation left her chest sore and fatigue began to set in.

“You’ve got nowhere to run, boy!” a ragged but gruff voice yelled from behind her. “There’s no more construction ahead, and these buildings don’t stay connected much longer. Stop now and we’ll go easy on ya!”

Easy my arse, Keyla thought as she leapt over an alleyway onto the next rooftop. The guard was right, however. This would be her last building before a large, two lane avenue crossed her path and signaled the end of the market district.

She looked to her right. A one lane street ran parallel to the building. Perhaps, if she slid down the shingles swiftly enough, she could make the jump?

There was no time to plan. She turned sharply and hopped down from the top, flat portion of the roof and back onto the tiles. Her speed did indeed let her skid down them, though as she neared the ledge she again took a few large steps to launch herself across the street below.

Forcing her eyes to stay open despite her desperate desire to clench them shut, she leapt.

For a moment everything went still. She flew through the air, and everything was right with the world.

Then she began plummeting down toward the street. The gap had been too far to jump. Terror gripped her as the cobblestones swiftly approached. Was this how it would all end? All of the hunger, the fear, the loneliness? Keyla closed her eyes.

Then the book in her pocket began to heat up, the way it had the first time she’d stolen it, and her descent slowed - not as much as it had the first time, but enough.

She landed on her feet but the impact was too fast and she rolled onto her side, slamming her shoulder onto the uneven stone and letting out a grunt as her vision swam, then went black.

You’re welcome, acushla. Now run!

Keyla blinked a few times, her sight returning. She rose, lightheaded, and ran into an alley across the way. She heard the guard curse from the rooftop behind her.

She held her arm as she stumbled from shadow to shadow, never pausing to fully catch her breath as she took a circuitous route back to Auldavulin’s. A distance that could be traversed in fifteen minutes took her almost an hour as she moved randomly, constantly looking over her shoulder.

By the time she reached the sewer’s entrance, Keyla knew she was alone. She’d managed to steal back Margaan’s Diary, and then lose her pursuers. She may even start to rival some of the known and named thieves of the city, one day. She smiled as she grabbed hold of the ladder, then winced as her shoulder protested the motion. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she climbed back up to her home. The book was hers, once more. The knowledge comforted her, as if she’d found something she’d lost long ago. Now, she could rest.