“A barber,” said Anjeanette. “That makes sense. David keeps the key to the halo case around his neck.”
“So the barber will be in a position to steal it,” said Vit. “Smart.”
The king laughed. “Oh, most certainly not!”
The rest of them stared at him as he continued chuckling to himself. It made Root consider what sort of structure he might look best built into. Whatever it was, she’d add him to it face-down.
“There’s no way the Grand Priest would be unaware of the key’s absence for long. Certainly, certainly not. And I would know. Trust me.”
“All right, well, we need the key to get into the case,” said Root, “so we’ll have to take it at some point.”
“No point anyway,” said the king. “That key, the lock—it’s no ordinary construction. The key will be magically imprinted on the Grand Priest. It will know his blood, his bones, every twitch of his muscles and every ridge of his fingertips. That lock and key will only obey him.”
“Is there another way in?” asked Azriah. “Some kind of failsafe? Surely they’d need something in case the Grand Priest died unexpectedly.”
“Always trying to do everything the hard way,” tutted the king. “No, we’ll take the easy route. We’ll simply have the Grand Priest unlock the case himself.”
“Oh, sure,” said Root. “I bet he’d gladly let us take a look; maybe put the halo on, parade around a little.”
“The skip snare is similar,” said the king, ignoring her. “It’s dialed to the Grand Priest’s touch, his composition. It will trigger if anyone but him touches the halo. We won’t be able to get him to remove it himself—would be easier if we could!—so we have to make the snare think it’s the Grand Priest touching the halo. We need a bit of him.”
“Some hair?” guessed Vit, less assuredly now. Root just admired the guts to keep taking guesses at the king’s meaning. It seemed they all had a near-perfect record of being stupid and wrong.
“Eh, blood would be better. Just a nick.”
“That still requires that the case is open, by the sound of it,” said Saly. “I think—Root, was it?—had a good question here that you don’t seem to have addressed. Now, I know she was a little sarcastic about it; I’m always telling my boys a sarcastic mouth will never get you taken seriously! But still, I can’t imagine the Grand Priest will just throw open the halo’s case even if we get someone without an attitude to make the request.”
“The Grand Priest will open the case,” said the king. “Believe me. I know how he thinks, I know how he fears. We’ll take advantage of that. But we’ll need another specialist on the team—someone who can plant the seed, lay the trap.”
“A gardener?” joked Root.
“A gardener? Oh, please.” The king chuckled. “Don’t be ridiculous. What we need for this heist is a window washer.”
Squeej crushed up a bag of onion-flavored potato chips. She liked them better as dust.
In one purple tentacle, she held the bag of chips, mashing it with another. A third tentacle held her sandwich, and a fourth cupped a cluster of grapes. A sixth propped a book in front of her face. A seventh flipped the pages. The eighth and ninth massaged her sore shoulders. She had a lot of shoulders.
The nice thing about having a lot of tentacles was that you could alternate between all of the foods you’d packed in your lunch without having to set any of them aside—and you could hold your book the whole time, and massage your shoulders, too. The less nice thing was that you had a lot more limbs to ache after a hard day’s work.
The water around her sloshed as she readjusted her position. She lounged in one of her water tubs, ignoring the suds and dirt from the first half of the shift. It was better than sitting out in the hot, dry air, slowly shriveling up and getting all clammy.
Even here in the shade and shelter of the alleyway, the heat didn’t let up. It was a relentless hunter, that damn heat…
How nice it would be to take a vacation, she thought. Somewhere wet, somewhere out of this desert for a bit.
How many years had it been since she’d had a proper vacation? Two-hundred and… fifty-nine? She’d need to wash a lot more windows if she wanted to afford a luxury like that. And Urk just didn’t have enough windows to make that kind of money.
Squeej took another bite of her sandwich, mashing it with her wide, puckered beak. A grape, a bit of chip dust, another grape. If she didn’t have a vacation, at least she had her lunch breaks, uninterrupted…
Someone stuck their head down the alley. Probably looking for a lost pet or a shameless place to chuck a piece of trash. People felt better about littering in places that they decided were already dirty and ugly.
“‘Scuse me?” said the person, a human boy—er, no, a girl—without any tentacles. At least, probably. Great—leave it to a human to interrupt her lunch break, her book.
“Mm?” said Squeej around a mouthful of sandwich and grape.
“Squeej, is it?”
“Mhm.” She swallowed. “And you are?”
“My name’s Root.”
“Can I help you?”
“Oh, just wondering… uh… how’s business?”
“Should be great,” said Squeej with all the bluster of someone who’d been holding in a rant for weeks. She propped herself up higher. “Should be. Tell me, you know where we are?”
“Uh, Urk?”
“A desert. We’re in a desert, ain’t that right?”
“Sure.”
“And you know what a desert’s got a lot of?”
The Root girl paused.
“Sand. Dust. Wind blowing it all around, getting it all around, getting it everywhere. You got sand everywhere?”
“I just took a bath, actually, but—”
“As did I,” said Squeej, gesturing with half her tentacles at the tub she sat in. “And still I can feel it all up in my folds. You know that feeling—sand all up in your folds?”
“Uh—”
“All this sand and dust, so you’d think the window washer business would be booming. A desert is a great place to be a window washer. And it used to be, here in Urk. It sure used to be.”
“I see…”
Squeej put her book aside, dipped some of her tentacles into the tub to re-wet them. She crammed the last of her sandwich into her beak and leaned further out of the tub. This girl was a good listener.
“Buh…” started Squeej, the word muffled by the half-chewed wad of food. “Tha wa, oh, hundred or two-hundred years ago?” She swallowed. “There were so many more windows to wash back then. You know, I’ve got an old friend—also a window washer—works in Dal Hund. In a city like that, they’ve got more and more work every year. New buildings get built, more windows, keeps the window washer business afloat. But not here in Urk—oh, no! Fewer and fewer windows every time I look. I’m losing clients left and right, not ‘cause there’s someone new on the scene, someone undercutting my prices, no! It’s because someone came along and covered up the window, replaced it with a wall. Who wants to look out of a wall? The views are terrible, even worse than a dirty window!”
“Hm, I guess you’re right.”
“And not only that,” said Squeej, barreling on; she hadn’t had a chat this good in ages. “But the windows we still got—well, the owners have ‘em shuttered, boarded up. They don’t care if they’ve got that nice spotless polish, that nice streak-free shine—which I always guarantee, by the way, that’s my standard!—because they’re just keeping their windows all cooped up. Let ‘em breathe, let ‘em be free, that’s what I say!”
“What if you started offering wall cleanings?”
“Wall cleanings?” sputtered Squeej. “Pah! Doesn’t matter how much you clean a wall, you can never see through it.”
“Well, sure, I wasn’t really saying—”
“You know what I think the problem is?” asked Squeej and didn’t leave a pause long enough to house an answer. “Everyone’s all scared. I see it more and more. The humans—you don’t notice it, not around long enough. But it didn’t used to be this way. People used to like having windows, used to leave them open for a nice breeze. Helped out the maid business, too, I hear, what with all the sand and dust blowing inside. Imagine that. Not these days, no way. Now, why everyone’s so scared, that I don’t know. Maybe they saw one of them boggy-men out on the loose or something like that.”
“Might be the church, I’ve heard.”
“The church? You think?” Squeej scratched her head from two different angles with a pair of tentacles. “Hmm. You know, that could make a lot of sense. This new upstart religion comes in, everyone starts acting all scaredy-cat… hmm…”
“Upstart, huh?”
“Oh, yeah. I blinked and suddenly here they were, just yesterday it feels like. Hmm… yeah, I like your theory there. Here they are, peddling their culture, their worldview, suddenly the whole city starts changing. Do you know how hard it is to keep those stamps on? A few good soaks and they’re as good as gone. It takes me ages to get from client to client some days.” She shook her head. “A vacation—I could really use a vacation. You ever been on a nice vacation? Somewhere good and wet?”
“Never,” said Root. “I was on a boat once, though. Wasn’t much of a vacation, and this one guy kept getting seasick, so I spent the whole time smelling his—”
“A boat sounds nice,” interrupted Squeej. “I hear they’ve got nice big boats—huge ships—that you can go on and it’s all about relaxing, lounging around, lots of food and performers. Some of ‘em even have swimming pools on the ship, I hear. Ha! Can you imagine that? You’re out in the middle of the sea—huge expanse of water all around—and you’re there on a boat, out of the water, but then, then you get in the water in the out-of-the-water watercraft!”
“I don’t think I followed that, actually,” said Root with a confused look. Her face brightened. “But, if it’s a vacation you’re looking for, I might be able to help you out.”
“You don’t say? Aw, shoot, I’ve gotta get back to work. Well, it was great talking with you!”
“At me,” said Root.
“Hm?”
“Oh, nothing. Hold on, though. I’m looking for a window washer, actually.”
“Is that so? And here I thought I knew everyone in the city who’s still got a window.”
“I’ve got one window in particular that needs washing. And there’s a hefty payment for the job—plenty for a vacation. You’d be able to swim in a pool on a boat that’s in a pool on a bigger boat sailing around the seas. Plus, actually, it might even take care of the window problem in the long run.”
“A pool on a boat in a pool on a bigger boat in the sea?” said Squeej. “I’m sold! So, where’s the window?”