Excerpt of Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud
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Alexandria: 125 BC
The assassins dropped into the palace grounds at midnight, four fleet shadows
dark against the wall. The fall was high, the ground was hard; they made no more
sound on impact than the pattering of rain. Three seconds they crouched there,
low and motionless, sniffing at the air. Then away they stole, through the dark
gardens, among the tamarisks and date palms, toward the quarters where the boy
lay at rest. A cheetah on a chain stirred in its sleep; far away in the desert,
jackals cried.
They went on pointed toe-tips, leaving no trace in the long wet grass. Their
robes flittered at their backs, fragmenting their shadows into wisps and traces.
What could be seen? Nothing but leaves shifting in the breeze. What could be
heard? Noth-ing but the wind sighing among the palm fronds. No sight, no noise.
A crocodile djinni, standing sentry at the sacred pool, was undisturbed though
they passed within a scale's breadth of his tail. For humans, it wasn't badly
done.
The heat of the day was a memory; the air was chill. Above the palace a cold
round moon shone down, slathering silver across the roofs and courtyards.
Away beyond the wall, the great city murmured in the night: wheels on dirt
roads, distant laughter from the pleasure district along the quay, the tide
lapping at its stones. Lamplight shone in windows, embers glowed on roof
hearths, and from the top of the tower beside the harbor gate the great watch
fire burned its message out to sea. Its image danced like imp-light on the
waves.
At their posts, the guards played games of chance. In the pillared halls, the
servants slept on beds of rushes. The palace gates were locked by triple bolts,
each thicker than a man. No eyes were turned to the western gardens, where death
came calling, secret as a scorpion, on four pairs of silent feet.
The boy's window was on the first floor of the palace. Four black shadows
hunched beneath the wall. The leader made a signal. One by one they pressed
against the stonework; one by one they began to climb, suspended by their
fingertips and the nails of their big toes.
In this manner they had scaled marble columns and waterfalls of ice from
Massilia to Hadhramaut; the rough stone blocks were easy for them now. Up they
went, like bats upon a cave wall. Moonlight glinted on bright things suspended
in their mouths.
The first of the assassins reached the window ledge: he sprang tigerlike upon it
and peered into the chamber.
Moonlight spilled across the room; the pallet was lit as if by day. The boy lay
sleeping, motionless as one already dead. His dark hair fell loose upon the
cushions, his pale lamb"s throat shone against the silks.
The assassin took his dagger from between his teeth. With quiet deliberation, he
surveyed the room, gauging its extent and the possibility of traps. It was
large, shadowy, empty of ostentation. Three pillars supported the ceiling. In
the distance stood a door of teak, barred on the inside. A chest, half filled
with clothes, sat open against the wall. He saw a royal chair draped with a
discarded cloak, sandals lying on the floor, an onyx basin filled with water. A
faint trace of perfume hung on the air. The assassin, for whom such scents were
decadent and corrupt, wrinkled his nose.
His eyes narrowed; he reversed the dagger, holding it between finger and thumb
by its shining, gleaming tip. It quivered once, twice. He was gauging the range
here-he'd never missed a target yet, from Carthage to old Colchis. Every knife
he'd thrown had found its throat.
His wrist flickered; the silver arc of the knife's flight slice the air in two.
It landed with a soft noise, hilt-deep in the cushion, an inch from the child's
neck.
The assassin paused in doubt, still crouched upon the sill. The back of his
hands bore the crisscross scars that marked him as an adept of the dark academy.
An adept never missed his target. The throw had been exact, precisely calibrated
. . . Yet it had missed. Had the victim moved a crucial fraction? Impossible --
the boy was fast asleep. From his person he pulled a second dagger.
Excerpted from Ptolemy's Gate, copyright (c) 2005/6, Jonathan Stroud. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Hyperion Books.
