Reya Connery braced herself flat against the underside of the bridge, nothing beneath her but air.

Any minute now, she thought, fingers and soles digging into the floor beams. Sweat shone like a crown across her brow. Her eyes tracked a glistening bead as it plummeted to the cobblestones three stories below.

It was hardly the first time she’d risked her neck for a purse full of coin, but if she did her job correctly—and she always did— it would be the last. A strand of copper hair she could never quite bring to heel escaped from the elaborate braid tucked inside her hood, and she muttered a quiet curse when it fluttered into her line of vision.

“Careful, Red, or you’ll give yourself away,” Gavin goaded her, arms quivering as he strained to keep straight- backed between the stringers.

She would have given him a vulgar gesture were their limbs not all that held them perched above the streets of Edris.

“Where the rotting hell are they?” Zaim groaned on her other side. “I’m raining sweat.”

Reya pinched her eyes shut, breathing through her nose. It had been a long day, and she’d just cleaned her armor. However, if the two imbeciles beside her didn’t stop whining, she was prepared to clean it again, despite how difficult it would be to scrub their bloodstains from the leather.

She just had to get through tonight. Then she would be free.

Before she could tell them both to hold their tongues lest she remove them, a cacophony of bouncing chainmail and clattering hooves triggered a hyperawareness she felt everywhere. A caravan surrounded by armored and mounted Silver Guardsmen rounded the corner south of where they were hiding.

Finally.

The impressive convoy was exactly as her employer had described. Three carriages conjoined at the base, one in front of the other. Six sentries on horseback. Two more stationed on a platform at the rear. One armed driver.

Not enough to stop them.

Her words were little more than a puff of air: “On my mark.”

They had no ropes or grappling hooks. To land directly atop the caravan, they had to time their fall perfectly.

This would work. After all, it was her plan.

“Now.”

Against the starlit backdrop of the Rhiterran Empire’s famed capital city, three thieves dropped from the sky.