Len Vey didn’t reach for the rope.
He stood alone on the stone coping of the terrace stone railing, twenty feet above the black railway cutting, forty yards from the pulsing copper dome of the Great Quartz. His right hand held his skinning knife—a four-inch blade of plain carbon steel, sharpened on river stones until the edge could shave wet pine shavings. His left arm hung bound in Doma’s linen swathe, throbbing with a violent, rhythmic pulse that made his vision swim with red static.
Ten paces away across the frost-crusted flat stone slabs, Captain Vance was sprinting toward him, his heavy broadsword raised for a two-handed cleaving blow. Behind Vance, the four household guards were breaking their shield wall, their spears leveling to pin the courier against the stonework.
“Take him alive!” Vance roared, his scarred face twisted into a mask of furious triumph. “He has the route book! Don’t damage the coat!”
Len looked Vance dead in the eyes. In that final split second, as the captain’s iron-shod boot crossed the white quarantine line painted on the flags, Len brought his skinning knife down across the hemp line three inches below the dark rock pier.
Snick.
The tarred fibers parted under the razor edge with a sharp, singing snap. The thirty feet of heavy courier cordage fell away, coiling through the air like a dead snake, plunging into the black mist of the cutting below. Vance’s troops would have no rope to follow them.
