Bared Blade (9 page)

“At the least. Now, that’s three of your murder incidents. You said you had five at least. Who are the others?”

“Another foreign Durkoth,” said Fei. “Dagger from behind. Between the ribs and into the heart, as neat as could be. Professional, but not in the same way as that girl. The last one that I feel sure about is a half dozen street toughs who thought that damned Dyad looked like easy meat. It’s how we found out she was here. I’m inclined to think of that one as mass suicide. If the ring weren’t involved I wouldn’t even care.”

“And the ones you aren’t sure about?” I asked.

“I haven’t really got anything there but a feeling. An unusual number of minor fish from the night markets have turned up dead or simply gone missing in the last week and a half, cindersweeps, banksmen, scuttles. You know the type.”

“And you’re thinking that dead night marketeers might have something to do with a priceless stolen Durkoth artifact. I can’t imagine why.”

Fei chuckled. “I guess I’m just suspicious that way.” Then her face went suddenly serious. “I’m under a lot of pressure
here, Aral. Someone way up the chain ordered that raid on the Gryphon, and they did it without me hearing a thing beforehand. Things are going to get really ugly. Fix it. I don’t care about how. All I care about is that you do it fast and that no one finds any embarrassing bodies. Now I need to get back to the center of things before I’m too much missed.”

Fei turned away then, heading back toward the gap through which she’d arrived. As she was about to step into the deeper dark, she paused.

“Oh, and Aral, while we’re on the subject of embarrassing corpses…”

“Yes?”

“I know you’re not the type to think this way, but if it ever crossed your mind to get me out of your life by making one more body vanish, well …just don’t. I’ve left instructions for what should happen if I suddenly disappear. One of those things involves a wanted poster for Aral Kingslayer. It’s the only one of its kind with an actual likeness of the elusive Blade on it.”

“Captain,” I said rather stiffly, “you know I’d never do something like that.”

“I do. Your goddess trained you too well. Your mind just doesn’t work that way.”

“Then why set me up like that?”

“Because mine does.”

Fei sniffed audibly at the entrance to the little gap, almost as though she were taking a scent. Then she was gone, too, and I was free to go about my business.

“So, now what?” I asked my shadow.

“How about we get off the street, for starters.”

He had a point, but I noticed just then that the Durkoth had left behind his marble-white cloak. It lay crumpled carelessly on the planks like the carven lid of some fanciful sarcophagus. On impulse I reached to pick it up, thinking it might come in handy later. I nearly broke two fingers when it turned out that the illusion of marble was no illusion at all.

Heavy stone met my outthrust hand. Cold and motionless now, though the garment had moved and flowed like the
finest wool when Qethar wore it. I poked it again, more gently. It must have weighed close to what I did, and there was no good way to move it.

Triss murmured something impatient then, so I left the stone cloak behind, though not without a couple of backward glances as I climbed the wall of the tenement. When I hit the roof, I turned in the general direction of the place I’d told the Dyad to meet me and looked around for a spot to lay up for a little while. I needed time to think about what Fei had told me and everything that had happened with Qethar.

I chose the top of a small private water tower—popular in a neighborhood where the city was slow to fix things like the aqueducts when something went wrong. The tower—cobbled together from whatever lumber the builders could beg, borrow, or steal—looked more than a little ramshackle. But it was plenty sturdy. It had to be to support the several hundred gallons of water it held when full. I settled down into the low well of the collector and eyed my shadow, barely visible now in the light of the half-full moon.

“I ask again, now what?”

The shadow shifted into the shape of a small, winged dragon. “Go after the Dyad, of course.”

“Of course.”

“You don’t sound convinced, my friend.” Triss canted his head to one side. “Given the circumstances, what else could we do?”

“Given the circumstances, I don’t know, and that bothers me. We’ve been doing nothing but reacting since I first went over to talk to them …it …her?” I shook my head. “I’m not even sure what to call our new friend, much less how to deal with her. I don’t like the way this whole thing is going. We’ve got no plan, and no fallback. That’s a recipe for disaster.”

Triss slid closer and placed his head in my lap. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would all go so bad so fast.”

“It’s all right.” I reached down and scratched his spinal ridge. “You were trying to do what you thought was best for me …for both of us. You were even right. They did need help, just not the kind it
looked
like they needed.”

Triss made a happy little growling sound and wriggled to let me know I should keep scratching. Pushing my worries aside for a little while, I smiled and obliged, working my way down from the back of his head to the always itchy spot between his wings. His flesh felt warm and comforting in the cool night wind blowing in off the ocean. The eye might only see a flat lizard-shaped shadow, but my fingers brushed along soft scales and the ridge of lumps where his vertebrae pressed up against his invisible skin.

It made for a strange contrast. One that seemed stranger still knowing that when he shifted back to aping my form, he lost all texture. Master Alinthide had explained it to me once, going on for some time about elementals and how they manifested themselves in different ways under different circumstances. But even though I more or less understood the difference intellectually, it always
felt
like a mystery to my scratching fingers.

Finally, Triss sighed and went limp under my hand. “You can stop now. I feel better. Much, much better. I also know what we should do.” He turned his head and looked up at me—at least, I think he did. It’s hard to tell with a shadow.

“Good, tell me about it.”

“We should go and find the Dyad.” His voice was firm and matter-of-fact.

“I thought that was what we
had
to do, given the circumstances.”

“It is, which makes it doubly nice that it’s also what we
should
do.”

“I’ll bite. Why
should
we do it?”

Triss held up a front paw and poked out one claw. “First, because it’s the only real option.”

I raised an eyebrow at him, but he continued, extending another claw. “Second, Captain Fei wants us to solve the problem of the Kothmerk, and there is no doubt that the Dyad is involved. If we want to learn more about that we’ll have to talk to them. And the good captain even gave us free rein to solve things however we want, which means we just might be able to make
everyone
happy.”

“Conceded. The part about needing to talk to them at least. The making everyone happy bit seems much iffier to me. What else.”

Another claw. “Third, they need the help. They’re foreigners here, alone and hunted by the Elite, the Durkoth, and who knows who all else. They have a major problem.”

“I’m not sure why that means
we
have to help them, but go on.”

“Fourth, I liked them. Even if we did only spend a little time with them, they struck me as good people. I want to help them.”

“That’s the best reason I’ve heard so far.”

He held up the last claw on that paw. “Fifth, I’m curious and this is fascinating. I want to know how this ends. Don’t you?”

“Truth be told, yes, though not enough to risk my life over it.”

“Finally”—Triss closed his paw into a fist and held it up in front of my face—“and this is the real reason we should—no,
must
go meet the Dyad. It is the
right
thing to do. The Kothmerk is dangerous. Tonight, without even making an appearance, it killed people at the Gryphon, which has been our home since we arrived here over six years ago.”

He growled low and harsh, then continued, “It hurt people we know, forced us to kill an Elite, lost us our home. That’s wrong and it has to stop. Namara may be dead along with most of her followers, but
you
are ever and always a Blade. A rusty one at the moment perhaps, but a Blade still, the living tool of Justice, and I am your partner. It is our duty.”

A year ago I’d have laughed at a call to duty, and it would have been a bitter, broken laugh. The laugh of a man pretending he wasn’t drinking himself to death, while every day he sank a little further into the bottle. Things had changed since then. My goddess was dead, yes. But Justice lived on. The ideal Namara had once personified survived beyond the death of its champion. I had felt its touch, like the benediction of a ghost. Triss was right. As long as there was still a hope of doing some good, I couldn’t turn away from my duty.

“
Y
ou
win.” I hopped up into a crouch and looked out over the edge of the water tower. “We’ll go after the Dyad.”

“Only because I’m always right,” said Triss, fanning himself with one wing.

“But Triss…”

“Yes.”

“You do realize there’s a possibility that this Dyad you like so much is the villain here, don’t you? What then?”

He sighed. “The same as before, the same as always. We do our duty.” Then he slid upward, enveloping me in a thin skin of shadow before expanding outward into a cloud of obscuring darkness and releasing his consciousness into my care.

This time, I had more leisure to settle myself properly into my familiar’s skin. With my vision subsumed within the Shade’s radically different way of perceiving the world, paying attention to my other senses becomes more important. I took a moment now to focus on each one individually. Hearing, smell, touch, taste, each has its uses.

It’s a discipline the masters started teaching us on the
first day—even before we knew which of us would be chosen by the Shades—running us through lightless tests in the deeps below the temple. They would send us into mazes where all the clues and warnings were designed to force us to think with our ears or noses, or the tips of our fingers.

Once you know how to do it you can find a pit by the changing echoes of your own footsteps, or follow a scent trail marked out with dots of perfume. Your fingers can show you things hidden from the eye, subtle differences in wall surfaces that betray the presence of hidden doors or traps. Even taste can serve, if less directly, telling you things about what your targets eat or wear, things that can be used to craft the perfect poison or deliver a drug.

When I was ready, I climbed to the edge of the water tower. Then I spread wings of shadow, leaped into space, and soared. For perhaps a dozen heartbeats I glided above my city, heading west and north toward the place I’d told the Dyad to meet me. It should have been a much shorter flight, but I prolonged the sail-jump by pulling nima from the well of my soul and using it to push myself that extra bit higher on launch.

It was a dangerous choice, because it involved a brief flare of magic that would mark me out if anyone with magesight happened to be looking in the right direction at the right time. Doubly so, since there isn’t enough of Triss to both cover me and provide me with wings.

But sometimes I just can’t help myself. I love it too much, this time, where I get to break the bonds that tie me to the earth and play the bird. No matter that I must risk exposing myself to hostile eyes to do it. No matter that it uses the least of magics—the brute manipulation of forces. No matter even that it paints me for what I am, or once was—the “flight” of the Blades plays a prominent part in the stories they tell about us.

Sometimes I just need the release that only comes from dancing with the sky.

All too soon, my feet touched down on a ridgeline, divorcing me from the heavens. A story-and-a-half building,
it was the sort that usually housed a little business of some kind—workshop and storefront below, tiny apartment above. Pulling shadow around me once again, I ran lightly from one end of the roof peak to the other. I hopped from there to a narrow balcony that peered out from the back of a dilapidated tenement much like the one where I’d met the Durkoth earlier. Using window frames and cornices I quickly climbed the six stories to its flat roof.

I had to slow up a little then and ghost my way across, stepping lightly to keep from waking sleepers who’d sought escape from the summer heat by laying their ragged blankets on the roof. Drop two stories to another aging tenement. Roll out of the fall and step up onto the low wall that circled a rooftop whose lack of sleepers warned of a rotten roof. On and up to the next. Avoid stepping on the human carpet once again.

Over, under, sidewise, down.

I made my way across the roofs of this twistiest of Tien’s slums, heading for a rendezvous with two women who together made up something not quite human.

“I
don’t think he’s coming,” I heard Vala say from just above where I lay hidden within my concealing shadow, her voice barely more than a whisper.