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Poor maintenance of tools. Oh, and over-confidence, sir.”
    Mericet held his gaze for some time, but Teppic had practiced on the palace cats.
    Finally the teacher gave a brief smile that had absolutely nothing to do with humor, tossed the chalk in the air, caught it again, and said: “Mr. Teppic is exactly right. Especially about the over-confidence.”
     
    There was a ledge leading to an invitingly open window. There was oil on the ledge, and Teppic invested several minutes in screwing small crampons into cracks in the stonework before advancing.
    He hung easily by the window and proceeded to take a number of small metal rods from his belt. They were threaded at the ends, and after a few seconds’ brisk work he had a rod about three feet long on the end of which he affixed a small mirror.
    That revealed nothing in the gloom beyond the opening. He pulled it back and tried again, this time attaching his hood into which he’d stuffed his gloves, to give the impression of a head cautiously revealing itself against the light. He was confident that it would pick up a bolt or a dart, but it remained resolutely unattacked.
    He was chilly now, despite the heat of the night. Black velvet looked good, but that was about all you could say for it. The excitement and the exertion meant he was now wearing several pints of clammy water.
    He advanced.
    There was a thin black wire on the window sill, and a serrated blade screwed to the sash window above it. It wasthe work of a moment to wedge the sash with more rods and then cut the wire; the window dropped a fraction of an inch. He grinned in the darkness.
    A sweep with a long rod inside the room revealed that there was a floor, apparently free of obstructions. There was also a wire at about chest height. He drew the rod back, affixed a small hook on the end, sent it back, caught the wire, and tugged.
    There came the dull smack of a crossbow bolt hitting old plaster.
    A lump of clay on the end of the same rod, pushed gently across the floor, revealed several caltraps. Teppic hauled them back and inspected them with interest. They were copper. If he’d tried the magnet technique, which was the usual method, he wouldn’t have found them.
    He thought for a while. He had slip-on priests in his pouch. They were devilish things to prowl around a room in, but he shuffled into them anyway. (Priests were metal-reinforced overshoes. They saved your soles. This is an Assassin joke.) Mericet was a poisons man, after all. Bloat * If he tipped them with that Teppic would plate himself all over the walls. They wouldn’t need to bury him, they’d just redecorate over the top.
    The rules. Mericet would have to obey the rules. He couldn’t simply kill him, with no warning. He’d have to let him, by carelessness or over-confidence, kill himself.
    He dropped lightly onto the floor inside the room and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. A few exploratory swingswith the rods detected no more wires; there was a faint crunch underfoot as a priest crushed a caltrap.
    “In your own time, Mr. Teppic.”
    Mericet was standing in a corner. Teppic heard the faint scratching of his pencil as he made a note. He tried to put the man out of his mind. He tried to think.
    There was a figure lying on a bed. It was entirely covered by a blanket.
    This was the last bit. This was the room where everything was decided. This was the bit the successful students never told you about. The unsuccessful ones weren’t around to ask.
    Teppic’s mind filled up with options. At a time like this, he thought, some divine guidance would be necessary. “Where are you, dad?”
    He envied his fellow students who believed in gods that were intangible and lived a long way away on top of some mountain. A fellow could really believe in gods like that. But it was extremely hard to believe in a god when you saw him at breakfast every day.
    He unslung his crossbow and screwed its greased sections together. It wasn’t a proper weapon, but