They didn't announce themselves. They didn't speak. They simply dropped to one knee in perfect unison, bowed deeply toward Samuel, and then straightened — and were gone.
Heena watched in absolute silence as all three scaled the Marquis's fifteen-foot perimeter wall with the effortless, deeply unsettling grace of water flowing upward. No scrambling. No displaced mortar. Not a single disturbed leaf on the vines running along the upper course. One moment they were in the alley. The next, they were over and inside, and the night had closed behind them like they had never existed at all.
The guards on the far side continued their rotation without a flicker of disruption.
Heena uncrossed and recrossed her arms. Then she turned her head slowly to look at her husband.
