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the churchyard, standing together, lipping at the straw spread around, filling the place with horse droppings and attracting a swarm of flies.
    The French did that when they kicked the priests out and closed down the churches. They used them as stables and hay barns. They’d built a wood ramp up the front to the big double doors with the carved statues around it so the horses could get in and out.
    The door at the side was locked up snug and suspicious-like. Owl produced a set of lockpicks she had about her person and set about dealing with that. He stood in the doorway, scratching his privates, which was going to make most people look away, shielding her from the curious.
    There were various touchstones that said you had fallen among disreputable folk. Carrying lockpicks was one bad sign. On the other hand, Owl was taking long enough getting the lock open she almost counted as honest.
    “I’m not going to offer to do that,” he said. “It’d just annoy you.”
    “If you do not wish to annoy me, be silent. I am trying to be quiet about this.”
    Which was what he would have said if he was housebreaking and one of his confederates kept flapping his lips. Or churchbreaking. He hadn’t spent much time in churches, once he got past his first youth and graduated from the trade of snatching poor boxes.
    She had pretty hair—shiny and light brown like good ale. When he wasn’t keeping an eye on the street he watched it make an escape out of the side of her cap. Every time she pushed a dozen strands up over her ear, a few more snuck out and started hanging down in the breeze. All this passed the time till she got the lock sprung and picked up her basket and went in.
    It was cooler inside and dim and it smelled of horse. Two windows—one in the front, one at the other end—were still full of glass, colored like it was made of sapphire and ruby. The rest were boarded up, that being what you had to do if you go smashing all the glass out. A lesson to mobs everywhere.
    This was all comfy enough, if you were a horse. They’d covered the stone floor with straw and put up wood slats to make some stalls across the front, under the windows. There were twenty good-sized horse bastards in here. A couple of them swung their heads around, looking right at him.
    He didn’t know a damn thing about horses, except they bit you when they had a chance or kicked you if that end happened to be closer. If you avoided them in the stable, they ran you down in the streets.
    Two grooms were working up at the far end, one of them carting a bucket, the other with his back to them, stroking his way down the side of the horse with a brush.
    Owl hissed. It sounded like a little wind coming in at a keyhole. “Do not stand there like a turnip. Come.”
    He followed her, sneaking past a horse left on his own in a big stall. Owl had decided that one wasn’t going to bite. She was probably wrong. Horses spend their time just waiting to break your bones and stomp on you. It’s all they think about.
    The door she headed for opened up easy. Just as well, considering how long it took her to pick locks. They slipped into a room with cabinets on all the walls and a stairwell off in the back. He had only a second to take this in because Owl closed the door and it got black as under a hat.
    He didn’t mind dark—it was what you might call his area of expertise—but if he’d known they were going to bump around in it for any length of time, he’d have brought a candle.
    “This way.” Her voice came from a ways ahead, where he hadn’t expected her to be. You’d think she did that on purpose.
    Fine. He put one hand out to skim along cabinets. Put a knife in the other. One of the prime characteristics of dark is that it’s full of people who want to do you harm. At least, that had been his experience.
    They said the churches were rich before the Revolution. No telling what kind of stuff the priests left behind. Gold cups. Jewels. Bags of coin. If he’d