Harris leaned against the cold stone of a shadowed doorway, and for the fifteenth time checked that his crossbow was hidden. Not that he’d get in too much trouble for such a thing if he were stopped, but the Reasoners tended to wonder why a man wasn’t happy with a bow, and whether that man might someday be unhappy with a crossbow. He thought with longing of his blunderbuss, the wood worn smooth from his hand, the barrel shining in the flare of battle. But the Church had won the Wars of Reason, and no one save Tinker-Priests and their cohorts could carry the weapons now.

A pair of watchmen drifted by, and Harris started to light a pipe casually as they paused to look him over. He feigned intense concentration on the quavering flame he stole from a brazier, and they shrugged and moved along towards Dreamer-Goddess Square. He dropped the lit twig, shoved the empty pipe back in his waistcoat, and drifted into the cobbled street. The echoes of his footsteps and the echoes of the raindrops and gutterdribble played back and forth between the high housefronts. When he came to the garden wall, he was alone and the street was still.

Up and over he went, and crouched in the rain-wet grass, savoring for a scant moment the unfamiliar smells of rich, uncovered soil and growing things. Then he was off to his hiding place behind the fountain statue of the Tinker-God. Again he checked his crossbow, this time to make sure it was dry, unbroken, and ready. A clock high in the bishop’s house called out the hour - just the kind of thing a Tinker-Bishop would have - and true to his time, a cloaked guard trudged along the garden path a minute’s count after.

Harris hurried softly across to the house and easily lifted the bar on the kitchen door with a thick iron shank. The kitchen was close and warm, with a lingering smell of fresh bread and musty stew. Harris stepped forward into the darkness, and just barely stopped himself from stepping on a sleeping girl, curled on a rush mat on the floor. Suppressing a shudder at his near-discovery, he stepped over her and made for the servants’ stair.

“Mr. Harris,” a sonorous alto murmured behind him, and he turned in shock and terror. The rush mat was empty save for a rude blanket, and standing beside it was the shapely form of the woman who had hired him to kill the Bishop. In her hand shone an exquisite blunderbuss.

“A musket…you’re a Tinker-” the shot was deafening in the close space, and Harris was still staring at her burgundy vestments in surprise as he felt the angry heat of the blood seething out of his chest.

She bent over him as he bubbled his way to the beyond, and checked his pockets. There was the money, but he’d been too canny to bring any letter. No matter. She tucked one into his breast pocket, writ in an excellent facsimile of the local Merchant-Bishop’s hand, asking for a meeting. “Don’t worry, Mr. Harris,” she crooned, “you did the job I hired you for.”