Perfect Shadow
Page 5

“Magic-using assassins?”
“There’s only a limited number of them at any one time. No one ever knows how many. But they all swear a magically binding oath of fealty to the Shinga. They can’t harm him or take contracts without his approval. Right now, there are only five wetboys. I want you to kill four of them.”
“And the fifth?”
“Will train you. He was the man who followed you last night and today. Ben Wrable.”
“Scarred Wrable?” Gaelan had heard the name, but not much else.
“He’s got a few…quirks.”
There was only one reason you’d get rid of all the Shinga’s assassins if you were already on the Nine. “And after I kill these wetboys? You want me to kill the Nine as well? The Shinga?”
She sat up, and despite his satiety, he couldn’t help but look at her body first, then her eyes. “No,” she said. “I’m taking care of them in other ways.”
“So you become Shinga, and I become a wetboy who hasn’t sworn the oath of obedience to you. After using me, won’t you find me too dangerous to keep around?”
A pause. “You’re a clear thinker, Gaelan Starfire. I like that. Most men would have expressed some shock at being asked to kill. Or some doubt about a woman running the Sa’kagé.”
I’ve known Irenaea Blochwei and Ihel Nooran. No doubts. “So?” he said instead.
“You’ll look into my history, of course. See how I’ve treated prostitutes who retire. Find out how I treated rivals who ended up working for me. See what place malice and vengeance hold in how I rule.”
“Tell me.” He would check, too, of course, but he liked to hear it from the woman herself.
“Vengeance only when my power is in question. Not for personal satisfaction. I don’t throw away tools lightly. Especially sharp ones. If I send you after four wetboys and you kill them all, and you learn the secrets of the fifth, how could I possibly threaten you? I would rather keep you.”
“A pet?”
“An ally. A lover—insofar as you don’t interfere with my work or who I bed.”
“You won’t ever ask me to take the magical oath?”
“I don’t think I’ll need to.” She smiled. Beautiful.
“That’s not what I asked,” Gaelan said.
She smiled more broadly, pleased to be matched. “I won’t ever ask or compel you to take any sort of oath of obedience.”
“So if I do this, what are you going to give me? Aside from piles of coin and the best lovemaking of my life? Which I take as a given.”
She smiled again, then said, “A network of spies who will find the man you’re looking for.”
A fist of stone wrapped around Gaelan’s chest. A long moment. He couldn’t breathe. “Very well,” he said finally. “Assuming everything is as you’ve said. I’ll check, and you have this Scarred Wrable meet me at my inn tomorrow night.”
She smiled. Trailed her fingers down the lines of his abs. Lower. “One more time?” she asked.
Scarred Wrable was a lanky man of Friaki ancestry. Round-cheeked and sallow-skinned, with hair like a sheaf of black wheat and the long, lean muscles of a martial artist. He was seated in Gaelan’s bed, in his locked room. The seals on the door were intact, the lock not obviously picked. Professional pride.
“Ben Wrable?” Gaelan asked. Gwinvere’s story had checked out, as he had expected it would. She was ferocious when crossed, but magnanimous when she could be. Generous to the best or those she suspected could be the best. Never one to destroy what could instead serve. Liked kids.
Ben rose and two daggers popped out of nowhere, flying, hilts first.
Gaelan snatched them out of the air, unthinking.
Ben grinned recklessly. “The Night Angels favor you,” he said.
“Night Angels?” Gaelan asked. His heart dropped into his guts. The wetboy opened the window, cracking the magical seals Gaelan had put on them.
Scarred Wrable said, “Come, the Devil’s Highway awaits. Follow as well as you can. First test.”
“I still don’t understand what this has to do with the ka’kari,” the little redhead Yvor Vas says. He is a member of a secret organization called the Society of the Second Sun. They are ostensibly dedicated to studying the ka’kari. In truth, they study immortality, which they believe the ka’kari gives. They’re a loose-knit organization, though, because for all that they hope otherwise, the ka’kari-given immortality can’t be shared, and most of them suspect as much.
“The ka’kari is what brought me to Cenaria in the first place,” I say.
“Looking for one? Or because the one you already have told you to come?”
I drain another flagon. Every since I bonded the ka’kari, it takes me a lot to get drunk.
It wasn’t the first time that Gaelan had traversed the rooftops of a city—both Rebus Nimble and Dav Slinker had had rocky relationships with the law. But both of those men had lived in cities with more stable construction materials. It was one thing to jump from wattle roof to wattle roof or from stone to stone, quite another to jump from slate and bamboo to thatch to crumbling terra cotta. Cenaria grew or mined very little of its own resources, so builders used whatever they could get.
In cities where you could trust your footing, you could move faster, take great leaps. Here, Gaelan and Ben Wrable moved at little more than a sprint, jumping lightly and landing lightly.
Gaelan landed on a section of terra cotta that crumbled under his feet, rolled, and sprinted on.
“Good!” Ben shouted from a far rooftop. “You pass. Second test!”
Ben crossed his arms over his chest and stepped off the peaked roof he was standing on.
Gaelan leapt across the gap to the roof and ran to the spot where the wetboy had disappeared. There was nothing there. Wind. Misting rain. He searched the darkness, muscles tensed. But even his preternatural sight didn’t help.
“Here,” a voice whispered.
Gaelan whipped around, daggers coming out, dropping low. There was nothing where the voice had come from.
Something slammed into the back of his knee and swept him off his feet. He fell, tumbling down the steep roof. The daggers went flying as his fingertips fought for purchase on the slate tiles.
He fell off the roof. He swung his hands, expecting a gutter—some kind of edge. Nothing. There were only a few decorative dog gargoyles. He reached. Missed.
Phantom hands made of pure magic whipped out beyond his own fingers and snagged the gargoyle. He pulled so hard he ripped it right off—and threw himself back up and onto the roof.
He landed in a fighting stance, a Plangan style, almost ludicrously low, but helpful with the steep pitch of the roof here in case he had to use his hands.
But Ben Wrable was standing, arms folded, chuckling.
“Looks like you don’t know everything yet, sword swinger.”
“You can throw your voice,” Gaelan said.
Ben smiled.
“You won’t catch me like that again,” Gaelan vowed.
Ben walked over to the edge, looked down at where the dog gargoyle lay shattered far below. A crowd had gathered, alarmed, looking up. “Enough entertainment for the locals.”
“Where’d you pick up this style?” Gaelan asked as they sparred the next night. Ben Wrable’s style with the staff reminded him of Peerson Jules, one of the last non-crazy Lae’knaught underlords. That had been two hundred years ago.