She ran like the city was an extension of her body.
I'd thought I was fast. In the palace, I'd outrun servants and tutors and even Aldric once, sprinting through marble corridors with Azurene laughing through our bond. That was running. What Cassandra did was something else entirely; her feet found purchase on cobblestones slick with who-knew-what, her body slipping through gaps that seemed too narrow for a person. Raikiri bounded alongside her, electricity crackling between the beast's paws and the ground, leaving faint scorch marks that faded as quickly as they appeared.
I stumbled twice in the first minute.
"Keep up, Soft Hands!"
Her voice floated back to me, amused and challenging. She wasn't even looking back. Somehow she knew exactly where I was. Raikiri bounded ahead of her, lightning crackling against the cobblestones in brief blue flashes that left afterimages swimming in my vision.
She's fast, Azurene observed from beneath my cloak.
I noticed.
You're going to fall.
Thanks for the confidence.
I didn't fall. But it was close. I pushed harder, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The borrowed shoes, cloth wrappings, really, gave me no protection against the uneven stones. My feet were going to be bruised for days.
Worth it.
The palace had tutors who taught me sword forms and riding. None of them had taught me how to sprint through a labyrinth of twisting streets in the dark.
Completely worth it.
Cassandra glanced back, saw me struggling, and slowed just enough to let me catch up.
"Not used to running?" She wasn't even breathing hard.
"Not like this."
"How do merchant kids get around? Carriages?"
I thought of the palace. The wide corridors. The gardens designed for leisurely walks. The stable full of horses for when distances required covering.
"Something like that."
She laughed, and the sound bounced off the close-pressed walls. "Soft. I knew it."
We emerged from the alley onto a broader street. Fewer people here; the late hour had cleared most of the foot traffic. A tavern spilled light and noise from an open doorway. Two men argued in low voices under a hanging sign I couldn't read in the darkness.
Cassandra grabbed my wrist and pulled me sideways, into the shadow of a doorway, just as a patrol of city guards rounded the corner ahead.
"Quiet," she breathed.
We pressed against the door, me trying to control my ragged breathing, her perfectly still and silent. Raikiri dimmed his crackling aura to almost nothing, just faint threads of light between his fur. Azurene held completely motionless under my cloak.
The guards passed. Four men in the blue-and-white livery of the city watch, spears on their shoulders, lanterns casting pools of yellow light. They didn't look into the shadows. Didn't check the doorways. Just marched past, talking about something I couldn't quite hear.
"Lazy bastards," Cassandra muttered once they'd gone. "Same patrol every night, same route, same time. You could set a clock by them."
"Is that good or bad?"
"Good for me. Bad for whatever they're supposed to be protecting." She released my wrist, I hadn't realized she was still holding it, and stepped back into the street. "Come on. We're almost there."
"Where?"
"My place."
"You have a place?"
She shot me a look that made me feel very young and very stupid. "Everyone's got a place. Even rats have nests."
Cassandra ducked down a side street, bounced off a wall to change direction, and vanished around a corner. I followed, less gracefully, scraping my shoulder on the same wall she'd used as a springboard. The alley narrowed. Narrowed more. I had to turn sideways to squeeze through a gap between two buildings that pressed together like old friends sharing secrets.
And then we were climbing.
"Up here." Cassandra was already three body-lengths above me, scaling the side of a building like it was a ladder. Raikiri sat on a window ledge, watching me with what I could only describe as amusement. Lightning flickered between his teeth.
"You're joking."
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
She didn't. She looked like someone who'd done this a thousand times and couldn't understand why I was hesitating.
I looked at the wall. Rough brick, crumbling mortar, rusted brackets where shutters had once hung. Not so different from the palace wall I'd climbed earlier. Just... higher. Much higher.
I can fly up, Azurene offered.
That defeats the purpose.
The purpose of not falling to your death?
The purpose of not looking like an idiot in front of her.
Azurene's amusement rippled through our bond. Ah. Pride. That makes sense.
I grabbed the first handhold and pulled myself up.
The climb was harder than the palace wall. The brick crumbled under my fingers. A bracket I trusted gave way and I swung out over the alley for a heart-stopping moment before catching another grip. Above me, Cassandra had stopped to watch, her expression unreadable in the moonlight.
"You're terrible at this."
"Thank you." My arms were shaking. "Very encouraging."
"I'm not trying to encourage you. I'm telling you the truth." She reached down a hand. "Grab on."
I grabbed.
She pulled me up the last few feet with strength that shouldn't have belonged to an eight-year-old. When I collapsed onto the rooftop, gasping for air, she was already walking toward the other side like the climb had been nothing.
"Come on. We're not there yet."
"There's more?"
"Best view in the city. You want to see it or not?"
I wanted to see it.
Three more rooftops. Two precarious jumps across gaps that made my stomach lurch. One terrifying moment when a loose tile slid under my foot and I pinwheeled my arms for balance while Cassandra watched with casual interest.
"You'd have caught yourself," she said when I glared at her.
"You don't know that."
"Sure I do. You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The look of someone too stubborn to fall."