Perfect Shadow
Page 4

Before she could run into him, or look to him for protection that she really didn’t want, Gaelan ducked into a noisy side room. Musicians were sitting behind an opaque curtain, muscling out a bastardized version of Haranese tribal beat. Two older lords smoking ornate bowls of riotweed were watching a third lord as he danced with a woman. Gwinvere.
The big ape had his fist wrapped around Gwinvere’s slender neck. She ground into him sinuously, her back to him, running her hands down his hips.
She saw Gaelan, missed one beat, and then continued dancing. As she took fistfuls of the young lord’s trousers and pulled him them against her ass, she didn’t look away.
Gaelan did. He ducked out into the party, and then out into the night.
He was followed.
Whoever was following Gaelan, he was good. Very good. But Gaelan had options. The hunted always has options, and Gaelan’s futures spun out as simply as the different men he’d been over the last 680 years. Different men, different choices, different futures, splitting:
As a young man, the man he’d been born, as Prince Acaelus Thorne, he identified a choke point that even a careful pursuer would have to pass through lest he lose his quarry. Acaelus hid behind the first good corner and waited. He gathered his Talent, ready to overwhelm his pursuer, capture him, hit him a few times to find out who had sent him. He waited—
No, no, that wasn’t true. Prince Acaelus hadn’t had even that much subtlety.
Hiding? Acaelus? Ha!
No, Acaelus turned as soon as he became aware of his pursuer. Stopped in the open street.
“I know you’re there! Come out! If you want a fight, I’ll give it to you. If you want to know where I’m bound, come ask. I am crown prince of the dead kingdom of Trayethell, and I’ll not have this mummery. Face me!”
The spy fled. Acaelus heard the skittering of scattering gravel, zeroed in on the sound, and ran in pursuit. His Talent lent strength to his muscles. He ran faster. He drew his sword, rounded a corner that was too sharp for the speed he was running.
He leapt, pushed off a wall, blasted the spy off his feet. The man tumbled head over heels, lay still.
Acaelus approached the spy. The little man lay on his back, hooded and cloaked.
At the last second, the spy convulsed. Two daggers flew through the air, straight for Acaelus.
With preternatural speed, Acaelus’s blade swatted left, right, riposte. The daggers were batted aside and his sword was in the spy’s heart before he had a second thought.
...And he learned nothing.
Not that Acaelus had ever had second thoughts. Not that he would doubt his own actions.
No, Acaelus had been a noble fool. His way would be a disaster. Rejected.
Dehvirahaman Bruhmaeziwakazari would have—no, the Ymmuri stalker was a canny hunter, but he would have never come into a city. His leather pouches and camouflage cloaks had been perfect for his natural environs, but here clothes mattered in a different way. Rejected.
Rebus Nimble. There was a life that might have had some success here. Rebus was a sneak thief turned folk hero for making several hundred pounds of a corrupt king’s gold rain in the streets in every market in town simultaneously. Rebus would have headed to the rough side of town. Here, the west side, the Warrens.
Rebus took a circuitous route, as if careful of being followed but not aware that he actually was. Spies always like to think they’re good.
If the spy were simply some lord’s or lady’s, he’d get nervous and break off his pursuit as Rebus crossed the Vanden Bridge into the Warrens. He didn’t. That meant the spy had been sent by someone formidable. Rebus abandoned his apparent caution once he reached the slums, walking quickly, which always made his limp more pronounced.
He limped down an alley. Took a left, a right, two lefts, followed a street so narrow his outstretched hands could touch both slumping walls to either side. And after three hundred paces with no outlet, reached a dead end. Dammit. These weren’t the slums of Borami, where he knew every bolthole. In fact, he might have just played right into his hunter’s hands.
He turned. The spy stood there, dual longknives drawn. So, not a spy, an assassin. And two archers who looked like they knew what they were doing stood on either side of him.
“Rebus Nimble,” the assassin said, lifting his chin toward Rebus’s twisted right foot. “Irony?”
“Older I get, the more I hate irony. But I was young once. I made it up when I started serious body magic. Making your arms and legs longer makes you clumsy as all hell for a while. I was hoping to make the name ironic eventually.”
“I’ll guess we’ll see how that turned out.”
Arrows streaked forward, burning holes in the night.
More blood, more death, and no more answers.
No, Rebus’s instincts were all wrong. Besides, in his fine clothes, Gaelan might get jumped by robbers in the Warrens before he even had a chance to get cornered by an assassin. Rejected.
So Gaelan, those men you’ve been are no help to you. What will the dirt-farmer-turned-war-hero do? Who will you be now? Who will you be next?
Gaelan wouldn’t let the spy dictate to him. He was done with that. He simply didn’t care. Truth was, Gaelan—the Gaelan he had envisioned when he discarded his previous life as Tal Drakkan, the Gaelan he had been for the last twenty-five years—was plain and direct. More like Acaelus. Until the end. Now, that Gaelan was dripping away, like a wax mask exposed to fire. And he wasn’t sure who was emerging. Or what.
He walked to his inn by the most direct route. There was only one good place for an assassin to attack him—if assassin he was. Gaelan walked through it. No attack. He went straight to his room, bearing a lantern that the sleepy-eyed porter handed him. He opened the door into the darkness of his room, stepped inside, and blew out the lantern.
The garish light of the lantern should have spoiled the night vision of any assassin, if one waited in his room. And the sudden darkness should leave him blind.
But Gaelan wasn’t blind. The shadows had welcomed his eyes since he bonded the ka’kari. No one was in his room. His magical seals on the windows remained.
He went to bed, not having confronted anyone, not having killed anyone. It was the right move. Patience was a lesson immortality should have taught him long ago.
Wisdom is boring.
“You’re the best I’ve ever had,” Gaelan said, after their fourth round of lovemaking.
“I get that a lot,” Gwinvere said. Teasing, but keeping her distance, her professionalism. They lay together in her bedchamber, naked, her head on his chest.
Not from men who are 680 years old.
He tweaked her nipple in punishment. She laughed, and he joined her.
“Someone followed me here,” Gaelan said. “One of your people?”
A half second of hesitation, a bit of tension in her body against him. A yes. But she didn’t try to lie. “He followed you last night, too. I wanted to see if you’d report to anyone that I was trying to hire you.”
“Mm-hmm. So what you want me to do is treasonous. And all you know is that I don’t have to report daily. Maybe I’m just on a long leash.” So he had done the right thing. Killing a servant of the Nine mightn’t have been the best way to start in a new city.
She traced designs idly on his chest, weighing her words. Finally, she said, “You’re a risk I’ll take. You’ve heard of wetboys?”