A cloud of dust kicked up around the horse’s hooves as she trotted down the track. In the distance, the same colour as the sand that extended around it for miles, the city of Secoros sat squatly.
On the horse sat a figure. Her name is lost to history, but she was known as Whisper. She rode easily, rein held loosely in one hand, and scanned the trail ahead of them. The sun was behind her, low and setting, her shadow stretching out in front. She had hoped to see the Armoury in daylight, but she supposed she would have to settle.
Whisper was, to put it nicely, a thief. Not a common thief, a cutpurse or a smash-and-grab artist. She was a true craftsman, honing her skills to a razor edge in all the port cities of the Northern kingdoms. Her expertise was renowned, reported by the few who had ever witnessed her in action. Privately, she thought the reports were highly exaggerated, but still felt very flattered.

Secoros was a large city built on the banks of a wide river, which was criss-crossed by all manner of bridges from ramshackle wooden arrangements to the great central bridge, the Arco Rosa. On maps, the city looked for all the world like stitches crossing a wound, which earned it the nickname of Surgeros. In the middle of all this sat the enormous Arraxas Armoury, famed across the known world for its incredible technology, just as much as for the reluctance of its occupants to share it.

Whisper rode into the city through the West Gate. It was quiet, and the only guard was already asleep, so she slowed her horse, Silk, to a slow, slow walk and went past without alerting him. She was wearing the garb of a peasant woman, along with a shadow-cloth bandana that hung around her neck. Hardly the dress of someone who should be riding into the city as brazenly as she, at least without a cart of scrabbly vegetables like the ones farmers scraped up from the dust around here. She had passed through what was supposed to be a flood plain on her way here, although by the looks of it it hadn’t seen a drop of water for years.
She turned Silk down an unpaved side street and dismounted, tying her to a hitching post that had a bronze horse’s head on the top. Now she would have to find her way to the Armoury.

The Arraxas Armoury was a huge building, by any standard. Perfectly circular from base to the top of the thick stone keep-wall, when you were close to it it hardly seemed to curve at all. It would be hell to break into. Whisper spent some time walking all the way around it. Then she turned around and did it the opposite way, to check they were the same. All seemed normal. There were doors roughly every hundred paces, she noted, all of which were protected by either a pair of guards or a formidable lock which bore the imprint of the Armoury itself. If you tried to pick them, knowing the Armoury and the sick sense of humour that its Engineers often seemed to possess, they would probably melt your arm with acid. That is, if they were feeling merciful.
That leaves either guards or secondary access point, Whisper thought to herself.
She found a staircase leading up to a second-floor apartment a couple of streets over and ascended it, looking for a vantage point where she could observe the upper sections of the armoury without being seen by guards. She pulled herself up onto the roof of the building and perched behind the angle of the roof, retrieving her spyglass from a hidden pocket inside her loose shirt. She trained the glass on the top of the mighty wall, and saw what she was looking for: just barely visible, the glinting crown of a guard’s helmeted head. If there are patrols up there, there must be a way to get up there. If there’s a way up, there’s a way down.
She pulled a sheet of paper and a stick of charcoal from her secret pocket and got to work sketching a rough layout of the exterior of the building. She would fill it out inside later.
She spent the next few hours dipping in and out of the city streets as night well and truly descended and the temperature dropped yet further. Nobody else could get to know these streets for her though, and she would need to be able to navigate by instinct if things went bad during her escape. A guard stopped her once, but he was drunk and wouldn’t remember her face, and he was only looking for a sleeping partner anyway. She shook him off by turning a couple of corners and doubling back, just in case. A few windows were still lighted even this late, and she heard every conceivable human emotion trailing down from those windows as she made her rounds.
She must have walked every street within a mile of the Armoury by the time she was satisfied, and she now returned to Silk and unhitched her from the post. Her next destination was a stable situated against the inner wall of Secoros, barely more than a lean-to. The proprietor was standing out front, saying goodbye to another customer. He bowed when he saw her, called her signorina, and led Silk inside. He had been told that she was coming. A couple of streets away from the stable was Anton’s workshop. She walked there on her soft-soled sandals and rapped on the heavy wooden door.
“Anton?” she said when there was no answer. A moment later she heard the rattling of a lock, then another, and then finally a bespectacled face appeared around the side of the door, his pince-nez glasses magnifying one eye to insectoid proportions. Anton removed the glasses from his nose and blinked sharply.
“Whisper?” he said in surprise. Then, leaning forward conspiratorially, he said in a low voice: “Have you shrunk?”
Is he ever going to stop being like this? No, probably not, Whisper thought.
“I’ve begun my plans,” she said, breezing past him as soon as he opened the door. Anton went everywhere Whisper went, only he did significantly less work in the field. This suited him perfectly, and Whisper even better, since Anton might be able to spell inconspicuous but he wouldn’t know it if it slapped him in the face. Anton followed her into the workshop with his customary combination of puppy-dog and hangdog expression brought on by his working hours.
“Where’s the table?” Whisper asked, and Anton grinned. He proudly pulled on a rope hanging from the ceiling, and a heavy wooden tabletop came rattling down from the rafters. It stopped with a jerk a couple of feet off the ground.
“Very impressive,” said Whisper when she had gotten back to her feet. “Swings around a little, doesn’t it?”
Anton looked indignant. “It’s a prototype,” he said. “This way, in emergencies I can just-” he pulled on the rope again and the table bounced lopsidedly upwards, one corner rising towards the sky. “Yes, well. Anyway.” He released the rope and the table stayed there.
Whisper pulled a knife from a sheath on her belt and pinned her charcoal sketch to the board with a swift stab.
“How high are those walls?” she said, speculatively.

The impressive iron-banded, gold-inlaid doors to the Arraxas Armoury’s Reception Hall swung open just a fraction of their full range. Entering, flanked by two armoured Knights of the Gauntlet, was a slight woman in trailing ceremonial robes of a ghostly white who seemed to command attention from all eyes in the hall. She walked with a tall staff that bore the icon of the Cup at the top, and similar charms and talismans jingled and clattered as she made her way across the floor. Despite her small frame and the amount of metal on her person, she quite outpaced the two knights, who were nearly jogging to keep up with her.
Proctor Inigo realised that she wasn’t as old as she appeared to be from a distance, and straightened up his posture from the one he habitually used when talking to the Armoury’s Elders, the better to speak directly into their ears.
He bowed his head as the priestess approached. “Inquestor,” he said.
“Walk with me,” said the young woman, whose hood covered her eyes. Proctor Inigo did so. He thought of asking if she needed guiding, but thought better of it. If she did, he sensed, there was still no way she would allow it. He led the way towards one of the many exits into the labyrinthian passageways of the Armoury.
“If I may ask, Inquestor-”
“You may,” said the priestess. “If your question relates to my presence here, know that the Armoury is not under any suspicion. As yet.”
“I see,” said Inigo, breathing an inward sigh of relief.
“One of the Church’s Confessor-Informants has relayed information that that sinful creature, The Whisper, is bid to strike at the heart of your fair establishment. Something called the War-Machine, I believe?”
A pit opened up in Inigo’s stomach and he wished he could fall bodily into it to escape this strange woman who seemed to be looking inside his head even when he couldn’t see her eyes at all. “The- the… War-Machine? The Whisper?”
He composed himself. “It’s impossible. Our security is without parallel,” he said, with just a hint of the regulation Arraxas smugness.
“So I hear. Well, it’s that that I am here to be the judge of, Proctor. The Whisper must be stamped out! I hear the stories, the tales told around tavern fireplaces – sinful tales! Tales of transgressions against the natural law of the Church! There are few sins greater than thievery, Proctor, and none I despise more. If the Whisper does pay a visit to the Arraxas Armoury, make no mistake. I want him exterminated!”