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He didn’t knohere to go He didn’t have any safe place to put so toward Janus Borig’s house She had things that orth a fortune, hidden in plain sight Maybe she could give hiot to the entry hall, he realized that everyone co back up to his roo a cloak, but his roo a bad job of protecting the dagger Getting lucky once was great, but expecting it to happen again was too h insulation to keep war

When he reached Janus Borig’s house, sopping wet and freezing cold, he found the door bashed in, torn off its hinges, the iron twisted and ripped He s in the air Blood Blood and s to paralyze him, but fear was slow Fear could only perch on his shoulders and spread its black wings over his face if he gave it a place to roost It flew around his head, stabbing its bloody beak for his eyes, but Kip was faster He burst inside

He ran into so yielding and invisible Not so useful for once, and he fell forward, staggering into Janus Borig’s house and knocking over the invisible figure He saw the flash of a trouser leg through an open cloak, as the man tumbled over a shattered bookshelf

There was a small explosion of cards The round, they went everywhere

Then, in a rustle of cloth, he disappeared

Kip jumped to his feet, slipped on the trash on the floor, and saw dead bodies Armed men, perhaps half a dozen, all uniformed in black with a silver shield euards All the dead were her guards They hadn’t killed anyone in return

The sound of steel being drawn cut through the muted hiss of the rain and wind outside

Kip widened his eyes to the sub-red spectrum--and the invisibleht toward Kip, not bothering to lower his own center of gravity Kiparound frantically like he had no idea as going on, Kip waited until the cloaked man stepped closer Apparently the cloak only concealed as beneath it, so the man had only a short sword, and he couldn’t lift it until the last second or it would be revealed, hanging in midair So the man walked forward, sword point down

When the man ithin two paces, Kip screamed He leapt toward thein a block that batted thehis own dagger in theout detail, or Kip was just clumsy, because his feet landed on books and apple cores and flew out froer

He popped back up to his feet, the battle rushhim shake The invisible man was now very , Kip’s dagger staked straight through his chest

Kip looked around frantically Janus had had a thousandseeh the smell of smoke was heavy in the air He also sreen luxin They’d s had said she’d booby-trapped the cards upstairs Maybe she’d laid traps down here, too

"Vox?!" a woman’s voice shouted froer froed up the steps, as stealthy as a rhinoceros falling onto a crate of porcelain The wo the them into a wooden case with dividers, but she was already looking alarmed when Kip came into her view She dropped the case onto a table and pulled her cloak around herself

Without noticing, Kip had let his eyes go back to norli lay in a bloody heap by her desk, dead One s a hiding place that must have held cards or other treasures, and half the as bare

The shimmer came toward him, and he relaxed his eyes The invisible wo her short sword at the last second These assassins ed, she was so surprised she didn’t even try to adjust He spun as he ju and then pulled through Kip thought--hoped--that it was the side of her neck He crouched low, out in the middle of the room

"You’re a sub-red," she said "Always hated sub-reds" She shimmered back into visibility She was a petite woreen by drafting Eyes narrow, face like a ferret Her hair was pulled back into two braids One of theer She drew a pistol

Kip snatched up Janus’s little chair and threw it at the assassin She juun roared, its sound amplified in the small roo out as the lead ball ricocheted off the walls