“Did your girl tell you exactly where the photographs are being held, by chance?”
“She did not,” said the rabbit, “but they’ll be easy to spot. They’re the ones that have an anteater with a tiny dick ’n’ danglies.”
Venny burst out laughing at that, and Zank joined her. The two rabbits truly wound each other up. Marl shared a conspiratorial glance with Coal, but he began to giggle as well. The wolverine grunted, cracking the faintest smile.
When the hares had calmed themselves down, Zank carefully positioned the plank of wood between the two buildings. Only a few inches extended past the edge on either end, which worried Coal. The slightest wrong movement might shift the board and cause it to fall.
Zank hopped onto the plank and turned to address the three others. “Well,” he said, “let’s get to it!”
2
IT WAS TRUE THAT Coal was fairly inexperienced when it came to the sort of jobs that required one to walk across an unstable piece of wood several stories above a darkened alleyway. He was more accustomed to office work. Something light and simple and far from thought-provoking.
He had only been at work as a mercenary for a little under a year. And “mercenary” made it sound more official or more intense than it actually was; he was more inclined to say he did odd jobs around the kingdom. He was gravely ill-equipped for jobs such as these.
Ever since his father’s death, Coal had been keeping a low profile as he worked his way south, collecting tups in exchange for menial tasks. Usually he only made enough to feed himself, shelter for a night or two, and continue onward. He had been hoping these jobs Zank lined up would provide him with a bigger safety net as far as money was concerned.
Right now, looking over the edge of the wooden plank at the Vinnag alley below, he wished for a literal safety net instead.
Several people had stopped to look up at the strange sight taking place above their heads. A few bobcats exchanged hushed whispers and pointed up at the crew creeping slowly in the night.
Marl walked ahead of Coal, who was yet again bringing up the rear. Every shift of the wolverine’s hulking dark body sent a shiver of unease down Coal’s back. He was sure he’d soon be plummeting into those bobcats on the street.
It felt like an hour, but the four crossed the wood without incident in a matter of seconds. It could not have been more than half a minute. But still, Coal breathed out a sigh of relief when his feet touched the roof of Garna Dend’s office building.
“Step one off without a hitch,” Zank declared with misplaced pride. Marl grunted his approval.
“How many steps are there?” Coal asked.
“To be determined.”
The rooftop was littered with dead leaves blown in from the city’s surrounding forest. At one point in time, long ago, the entire kingdom of Ruska was one enormous forest, covering nearly the entire valley tucked within the Yuluj Mountains. Less-developed areas still had plenty of greenery nowadays, but the larger technologically-advanced cities such as Vinnag were all stone and bright lights with the only trees being at their outskirts.
Stray leaves crunched underfoot as they swiftly stepped toward the rooftop door. There was a keypad attached to the handle, which Zank fruitlessly tried to turn before confirming that it was, of course, locked.
He pulled from his pocket a scrap of paper with a series of numbers written messily on it. Glancing back at the paper after every single number, he typed in the code, his long fingernails clacking against the pads. There was a light click as he pressed the final number, and he was able to turn the handle with ease.
“Step two,” he whispered.
“Was meeting at the club not step one?” Coal asked.
“And then going in the back? And getting on the roof?” Venny smirked, wanting to annoy Zank.
“The steps are murky,” said Zank, waving the two of them off. “Doesn’t matter how many steps. Quit focusin’ on the steps. It’s about the destination, not the journey.”
Coal would have chuckled if he weren’t already so nervous. The payday at the end of this job seemed worthwhile when Zank had first brought it to him, but now he was growing more unsure by the minute. He was still unconvinced that things would go as smoothly as the rabbit promised.
What choice do I have, though? he asked himself. It was certainly a great deal more dangerous than harvesting vegetables for weary farmers or painting signs for shopkeepers, but he couldn’t make a living off that. And there was no way to lock down a real job, not with his record.
Zank was a childhood friend, the both of them growing up in Muta Par, near the capital and not too far from the Houndstooth. Zank’s family moved away to a village in central Ruska when the boys were ten years old, but they got together over summers when Zank and his parents would return to visit relatives who still lived in the city. They kept in touch over the years, and so when Coal needed a place to go, he figured Zank’s new residence of Vinnag was as good a choice as any.
The rabbit looked at each of them in turn, ending with Coal. “Ready?” he asked.
They all nodded.
The others slunk through the doorway. Coal took a second to close his eyes, take a deep breath, and steel himself. It mildly worked.
His footsteps echoed lightly in the stairwell but sounded to him like gunshots in the silence.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the fox and macaw that were apparently somewhere in the office. Coal hoped Marl would deftly handle them without him having to get involved.
They went one by one through the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, entering a typical office space. There were a few partitions set up, with roughly five desks and chairs. Not too big. This was likely not Garna Dend’s primary base of operations, but rather something small for when he wanted to avoid the public eye.
There were two other doors in the room. One led out, presumably to a hallway or another set of stairs going down to street level, while the other was for a private office.
Zank pointed to the door leading out. “One of the guards should be on the other side,” he whispered. “The other’s outside, standing at the entrance to the building.”
“Which is which?” Marl asked in a low growl.
“Who cares?”
“I do.”
Zank groaned, uninterested in the minutiae. “Bird’s the one inside, I think,” he answered.
Marl crept toward the doorway that supposedly had a macaw on the other side, positioning himself in case the guard decided to pop into the office for whatever reason.
Meanwhile, Zank headed over to the private office, which seemed like the safest bet for finding the incriminating photos. Coal decided to tag along to help look and cut down on the time they’d need to spend in Dend’s domain.
Venny kept to herself and initiated a search throughout the rest of the office’s desks and cabinets. For a brief moment, Coal thought it might be more logical to help her scour the larger area, but then reconsidered. The photos simply had to be in Dend’s office, and his efforts were best put toward that.
There was another keypad on Dend’s private door. Zank extracted a second piece of paper from his other pants pocket and input the code. With another satisfying click, they were in.
Zank edged the door open slowly. There was not even the slightest creak from its hinges. Somehow that fact alone spelled out “wealth” to Coal.