The Last TrapSwan halted half-way up the wall of the North Tower of Emperor Xanthe's palace. The wind had picked up for a moment, gusts threatening to pluck her off and hurl her to the distant ground. She dug the spikes of her climbing gauntlets as far as she could into the cracks between the granite blocks and hung on. She'd allowed for this. A slightly windy night was best. In still air the clinks and scrapes from her ascent might be heard from inside the tower. The noise covered her just as the darkness of the moonless night did.
A few feet farther up there was a single window, the only break in the entire wall on that side. In her two years of planning she'd toyed with using it as a way inside. Cut through the slab of translucent quartz with a diamond-tipped blade. The arched window w
