It didn’t take me long to lose whoever was tailing me. I made a good clean break in the beginning and made plenty of distance before they could pick me back up again.

The first step in keeping track of someone who doesn’t want to be kept track of is ensuring they don’t know you’re doing it. Without that a split-second break in attention could become a complete loss of contact.

That was as simple as turning a corner and darting up the nearest wall. The first instinct of any normal follower would be to check the ground level in case I was hiding in plain sight, something my tail proved when the sound of their footsteps accelerated along the ground.

From there on it was pure numbers. I could make a break for it in whatever direction I pleased (which is exactly what I did) while they had to check all of them. This is why competent people work in teams, though an appropriate Skill could also make up the difference.

That was the most concerning part. I was used to thinking of humans as a mediocre baseline with dangerous exceptions, but in truth anyone could have a dangerous Skill, most just wasted it on farming or craftsmanship or some such nonsense.

Unfortunately that same logic meant that human rogues would also invest their Stats and Skills into their careers with equal dedication.

Still, I had one advantage to count on as I rapidly lost track of my pursuer’s footsteps in the clamor of the city. Stats worked based off what was already there, and what was there for humans was a half blind, deaf, idiot monkey.

But even that gulf could be crossed with enough levels, so I didn’t slow until I’d crossed two rooftops, dropped down a level, made a couple of turns, passed a farrier’s, and finally slipped out one of Garrett’s more intact cloaks while passing through an empty alley.

At that point any rush would do more harm than good, so I proceeded at as moderate a pace as I could make myself. Even my racing heart was calmed within a couple of blocks.

Though if they had ears keen enough to pick up my heart rate they wouldn’t have lost me in the first place.

Fuck.

I went through another moment of panic as I tried to convince my dumb brain that meant I shouldn’t worry and not that they definitely had heard my beating heart and were right behind me.

Even I couldn’t do that.

I was fine.

My rags were hidden beneath a far finer cloak than Sal had any reason to believe I’d own, ensuring I’d be filed into a different mental box and go unmentioned even if he asked his informants about me.

And that was if his informants were as good as he claimed.

So I was fine. Fine.

Unless he had more exotic means of tracking me…

Fuck.

I gritted my teeth and forced myself to pass through several crowded areas, some even close enough to brush up against the humans shoulder to shoulder.

There. That would muddy any scent trail beyond any hope of following, and even help out a bit against magic if my limited knowledge on such bullshit was anything to go by. I might not have much ability to work magic, but anything was harder to detect in the chaos of a crowd, magic very much included. The average human wasn’t exactly flush with magic, but their Levels gave them some and, much like their reek, a small element could grow out of all proportion with enough of the bastards.

At least I wasn’t far from where I needed to be, nowhere in Seagri was too far from the docks, but they were the most crowded by default so I was all up in them.

Finding the Scrivener’s Guild was a touch difficult from there, but even that was more time consuming than anything. There were only so many buildings Dockside that were gonna have a quill on their sign.

Not exactly known for their appreciation of literature, dockworkers. Longer observation confirmed it. Not only were the sort entering and exiting that building decidedly less brawny than their counterparts at the warehouse I was crouched atop, half of them were carrying some sort of paperwork. The same could be said for every entrance I could see as I circled the building.

Scouting done, I retreated back to my hideout to rest and plan.

The first thing I did once I was ensconced in the dubious safety of the burnt building I was squatting in was draw a map. It wasn’t a good one, just a simple series of rectangles sketched out on the least charred floorboards using the most charred floorboards, but it was enough to fix the details in my mind.

Memories were squirrelly things, shifting over time, that was an old bit of wisdom that Mom and Ol’ Gobber had agreed on. Only Mom didn’t beat you when you asked if that applied to her.

A handful of blocks from the docks, the Scrivener’s Guild was crammed into the space that squat warehouses occupied on either side. The building rose for three stories at its highest point, creating the impression that the Guild had expanded outward and been forced upward by the constraints on every side.

I shivered, imagining the buildings holding it back quaking and shattering under the pressure like my soul was in the process of doing.

That wouldn’t happen. Not as long as I found the answers I sought. I refocused down on the picture, abstracting the issue into a series of exits and entrances. The front doors were right out, my warped body let me play the crippled beggar, not a respectable scribe.

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Also my mastery of Seagri was… questionable. Trusting myself to read it was bad enough. Passing myself off as someone who did so for a living? Not a single chance in a thousand hells.

Instead I’d have to steal inside without anyone noticing, then either make off with the information I needed or read it on the spot before I vanished as silently as I came.

I wasn’t fast enough to memorize everything I needed on the first try, but neither could I guarantee that I’d pick up everything I needed on the first haul. Sure, I could stuff my dimensional pouches silly, but clearing entire shelves would all but ensure they’d notice the theft and revamp security.

Or worse hire an adventurer.

This was looking dangerously like a long term operation. Sneak in whenever it was least busy, laboriously work my way through a few books, retreat when the back stacks were busy, repeat. That depended on their being rarely used sections of course. If there weren’t I’d be darting in to make off with a handful of books, check them, return them, make off with a second set, repeat. It meant less time in enemy territory,(insofar as the entire city wasn’t enemy territory) but it maximized the most hazardous part of the operation, getting in and out.

As tempting as it was to take my time the longer you did something the longer you had to fuck up. I still wasn’t sure what slip up had led Garrett to be up and hunting the night he caught me, but just cause that had worked out for me didn’t mean I’d survive it again.

I dredged up every half-forgotten lesson the Ol’ Gobber had taught me. It wasn’t much. As aimless as his rambling lessons could seem they featured things that were actually relevant to the tribe more often than not.

That still left one multi-hour rant about ‘sewer-goblins’ and their dubious plans for theft from from the humans they hid beneath. Most of that was questioning of their racial character and cleaning habits, but I was still able to sort out a few bits of salient advice.

The importance of an exit strategy was one of the paramount examples. No one cared if you’d laid eyes on the greatest treasure haul of your life if you couldn’t make off with it. Between targeting knowledge and having dimensional storage besides I had that half down easy.

Unfortunately, between that and the other half of escaping with your own skin, it was the far less valuable half. Fortunately, escaping with my hide intact was something of a specialty of mine.

I diagrammed the building from every angle then drew up a big outline of the building for every level with every exit marked. The neighboring buildings were relegated to vague shadows, just enough to mark their relative positions. A number on top to record their height and I had all I needed to know about them.

The windows were tempting as an opening, allowing me to skip the ground floor entirely, but nothing tempted quite so well as a trap. None of the adjacent buildings were taller than the Scrivener’s Guild and whether by planning or coincidence they’d built their Guild along some of the city’s only true thoroughfares.

The wider than normal streets were wide enough for four horses to walk abreast, making crossing over the roofs far from a safe proposition.

I crouched down over the map, staring down at the little gap between my scrawlings and trying to fix the reality it represented in my mind. Could I make the jump?

I remembered everything I’d accomplished since drinking that elixir, delving the deeps, slaying Stel, even the ease with which I crossed the rooftops now. A part of me wanted to say I couldn’t, but false humility was as dangerous a mind-poison as pride.

The question was not whether I could make it, but should I? While I was certain I could make the jump it would be far from silent. The harder the jump the harder the landing, no matter how light you were.

It wouldn’t exactly be a tolling bell, I wouldn’t even be considering that, but it would certainly be audible to anyone on the other side of a wall, even with human hearing. No, the better option would be to start from ground level.

That would add another element of risk, as I’d be exposed to any passer’s by, however briefly, but I could keep an eye out for pedestrians myself. With the jump I’d be reduced to guessing where any potential witnesses might be and at this stage it was critical to remove as much randomness as possible. Murphy would have her way with any plans in due time anyway, there was no reason to help her along.

I paused, the flow of my thoughts derailed by an unanswerable question. Was it dangerous to invoke the name of Murphy, even in my thoughts?

In my youth I’d taken Murphy as a human spirit and not thought further of it, but with the knowledge the dungeon tribe had shared with me I was far more sensitive to the dangers of gods. Whether fickle spirit of chaos or true god of misfortune Murphy was indisputably human, as I’d only ever heard her name invoked in curses by my mother.

Still, if slaying our gods required erasing them from history didn’t that mean that simply thinking about a god gave them power over me?

I shook my head. If the thoughts of mortals lent them strength then the gods could surely see from whence that strength flowed, but to track that river to its myriad sources would be too much, even for a god. If they were willing to go through that effort for any random goblin there’d be none of us left.

I shook off my foolish fears and focused on the all too reasonable ones. I looked again at my map and added in a few arrows (after checking the sky) to track the passage of the sun and moon over it.

The moon was rising in the northeast, casting light across that side of the building in the early night. That was fortunate, as that was the side facing the harbor. Most of the foot traffic would come from that direction even though the streets were broader on the south side. That was far less fortunate as both a narrower street and lighter traffic would be essential to starting my climb unseen.

I looked at the sketch from a new angle. If I approached from the northwest I could avoid most of the light and the traffic. Its visibility from the Heights was something of a problem though. The guardsmen on those walls were likely the most alert in the city, and certainly the most likely to have perception enhancing Skills. The odds of them spotting anything at such a distance were slim even so, but I preferred certain odds over good ones.

I’d start my climb on the Northwest side long enough to get off the ground, then go circle sideways to the south side. If I was lucky I’d be able to stay beneath the eaves of the neighboring buildings as I went sideways, and I’d greatly reduce my visibility from that angle even if I didn’t.

I checked out the window. It was time. Leaving now would give me just enough extra time to scope out the area for suspicious activity before I went in and delaying any longer might make the difference of an entire day.

It was only when I got there that I realized how little of an idea I had of what would be considered suspicious activity. I’d only cased the joint once before, leaving me no way of telling if it was truly this day or that one which was the weird one. Still, taking time to study the area from the rooftops made me feel better, even more so when there was no major variation from my previous visit. Different faces going about the same mundane tasks.

I sat on the south side of the house’s peak, invisible from either the wall or the ground. It was a good position to study the architecture, clearly outlined to my goblin eyes by the faint light of the setting sun. It was the same sort of timber framing as the rest of the human buildings, just better built and maintained than anything in the Sprawl. Its beams stood proud and strong without scavengers whittling off strips for their own purposes and whatever filled in between them was freshly plastered, within the last few years if my knowledge of human construction techniques was to be trusted. Which it very much wasn’t. Still, it was absolutely less weathered than the Sprawl, some of it was even still white!

Nestled within the framing was both the greatest risk and most critical asset of my plan, the windows. They varied from floor to floor, but they were not without their patterns. Far from the familiarly haphazard construction of the Sprawl, this building actually spoke to its purpose with its design. The ground floor had a handful of large windows clustered around the business entrance, the better to serve their customers, with only a few high slits for the rest.

They clearly didn’t want my type breaking in through an alley window. The building wasn’t so far from the nearest tavern as to be immune to wandering drunks either. That pattern continued for the second floor before suddenly shifting on the third and fourth. The bastards couldn’t get enough windows then, it was as much window as it was wall!

It had made approaching the building a right pain. I’d had to stick to the opposite side of the roof peaks to shelter from the gaze of those inside. It was only as they’d began to close up that I’d dared to assume my current position. They’d started to draw great shutters across their massive windows as soon as the light faded, reminding me once more of the humans’ near night-blindness. Why they didn’t have [Skills] to correct for that rather than expose themselves for the benefit of the fickle light of the sun I had no idea.

Those nice big windows were a definite vulnerability, and no amount of shutters was going to change that.

Above the windows was another floor of nearly none, as if they’d run out their window allowance on the floors before. More likely they served different purposes that I’d discover once inside. I’d speculate on which was safer, the windowed floors, which were closing at dusk, or the others, which didn’t see the same drop, but which hadn’t had such clear activity to start, except my entry point was a forgone conclusion.

Those big windows were just too convenient to resist. I’d almost suspect them of being a trap if there wasn’t such an obvious reason for their existence. There were more floors above, the building rising in four separate sections as if some mad architect had lost track of the ground and just built on a roof instead, but I’d be avoiding those if at all possible.

Powerful people were like birds: they craved high places. Drakul had his Roost, the Heights had their Heights, and the Scrivener’s Guild had their pale imitation of those shining towers. Like all the rest the most important would rise to the top and I had no desire to get anywhere near importance.

But the knowledge I was seeking was anything but unimportant. As the sun cast its last rays I had the sinking feeling that I’d end up skulking in those towers one way or the other.