Perfect Shadow

  She dug her fingernails into his shoulder painfully, playfully. “You know Ali could be home any minute.” But her eyes were shining, and she didn’t uncross her ankles from behind his butt, didn’t push him away.

  “There’s worse things than a girl finding out her father still finds her mother irresistible.”

  She grinned, and squeezed him with her thighs.

  “Your smile is a century of solace,” he told her, trying to lock her face in his memory. She was beautiful, hair atumble, face flushed with sex and joy. Content and content with him. It was a treasure. She would grow old, die, and he would remain, young, immortal, following the directives of a long-dead king. A long-dead friend.

  “Flattery already got you everything you’re going to get,” she said.

  He laughed and pinched her ass.

  She swatted his hand, eyes aglow.

  “Why is all our happiness doomed?” he asked her.

  She looked into his eyes, loving, gentle. “You are a cipher, my lord.”

  “No, I was Samon Cipher six lives ago,” he said, winking, trying to salvage the moment.

  “Mother!” a girl’s voice called out, right outside the door to their little cottage.

  Gaelan pulled back, hiked his trousers up, yanked his belt tight, and slapped at his hair, trying to flatten it. Seraene hopped off the table, smoothing her skirts, grabbing a rag so she could pretend to be cleaning.

  The door opened and Alinaea stepped in, carrying a basket of fresh-picked herbs in one hand and the day’s eggs in the other. If she’d been much older, he and Seraene would have been totally caught. The smell in the cottage wasn’t exactly subtle, and neither was the sex flush visible on Seraene’s chest, or the stubble-burn from his whiskers in the bit of cleavage her dress showed. But Alinaea was eight years old. Innocent. She was the light of Gaelan’s eyes.

  “Da,” she said, serious, cocking her head to one side. “I’ve decided. I’m old enough now for a little brother.”

  Gaelan looked over at Seraene. She was beaming. She put her hand on her belly.

  “This? This is how you tell me?!” he demanded.

  She laughed.

  By all the gods that were and all the gods that had never been, how he missed Seraene’s laugh.

  * * *

  The pleasures rolled over Gaelan—and passed, leaving him cold. Gwinvere was astride him, clad only in those delicate golden chains. She stopped once he finished, not having climaxed herself. This was business for her, after all, not pleasure. But she didn’t get off him.

  She stared at him, her hair tussled, figure magnificent, letting him bask in her radiance, letting him store up the image of a woman of her supernal beauty, making love with him. She leaned over him, and something like pity flashed through her eyes.

  “You are a god clad in flesh, Gaelan Starfire, and you’re more fragile than you know. Be ware.”

  She lay on his chest and tucked her head into his shoulder, but just for a moment. The room was cool, and he was warm; maybe she was just appreciating that physical warmth and nothing more. She got up almost immediately. She began dressing, and he knew with a cynical twinge that she must have practiced dressing like this in a looking glass, because every move was graceful. She wasn’t just a whore; she was an artist, and this last impression he would carry of her was as important to her as the first.

  “I want to fuck again,” he said. “Now.” This time he wouldn’t think of Seraene. Gwinvere was a wonder. He should appreciate her. He should please her.

  “So do I, but I’ve three other men to bed before dawn, a fourth if he’s kind.”

  “Was I your first—” He cut off. Ridiculous question. He couldn’t believe he’d asked it. He didn’t know where it had come from.

  “Yes, Gaelan, I was a virgin until just now,” she said flatly.

  “I meant of the night,” he said in a rush, flustered. “Never you mind. Stupid question.”

  She looked at him, hesitated. “You’re magnificent. Distracted, but magnificent. Let’s fuck tomorrow, after I finish dinner with the ambassador. Then you can tell me if you accept my business proposal.”

  Proposal? She hadn’t even asked for anything yet.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Gaelan pushed through a fog of riotweed, through which he saw the vague outlines of the debauched. Silent servants, costumed uniformly as black horses with blinkered eyes, tended to those who’d overindulged, carrying off those who were ill, tucking pillows under the heads of the unconscious, and covering nude bodies with blankets. The earl’s wife, now wearing nothing but her swan mask and one silk stocking, ran toward Gaelan squealing, pursued by two lascivious lords whose masks had fallen off.

  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 tem" 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 s
ide, 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 l1em">Acy, 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?”

  “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 A
ngels?” 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.