Night Angel: Perfect Shadow Part 4

He dropped to his knees. Screamed.

"Seraene. Alinaea." The names came out as sobs.

"Shh. Shh."

Gwinvere held him in her bed, her arms around him, protective. She stroked his hair over his temples.

When he woke in the morning, Gwinvere was already up. She looked at him with what he swore was real desire in her eyes. "Take me," she said. "You'll feel like yourself again afterward."

Truth was, he already felt better. He'd slept the memories off like a bad batch of mushrooms. But only a fool would turn down a woman as beautiful as Gwinvere Kirena. He pulled her into his arms.

"There's only one kill left," Gwinvere said. She was in her dressing gown, her cheeks still flushed from their lovemaking, but she was abruptly all business.

Gaelan sat up in bed. "Who?"

"Scarred Wrable, Gaelan. He's the only one who knows who you are. He's the only one who can guess what I'm doing. And he's been ordered to report to the Shinga. Tonight. I'm sorry to ask you to do this, but it's the only way."

"Arutayro?" a voice asked next to Gaelan's table. It was an old wetboy tradition-an oath of nonaggression for one hour. The inn was dark, smoky with tobacco and riotweed. The kind of place where no one asked questions of strangers.

," Gaelan affirmed. On the table, wrapped in a sash, were all of his weapons.

Ben Wrable set his sash full of weapons on the table next to Gaelan's. He sat. "I didn't expect you to know arutayro, Gaelan. That's old. Real old."

"So am I."

"I doubt that. I bet I'm older than you are," Ben said.

"Hmm. How long we got?"

"I'm to report in three hours. So if you're going to try to kill me, you'll need to-"

"I'm not."

"Go on, Gaelan. Give me the dignity of honesty. I know Gwinvere. I don't take it personal. Her back's to the wall. If you let me go, the other wetboys will..." He trailed off. His eyebrows climbed. "You already got the others?"

Gaelan nodded.

Ben cursed. "Even Jade and Saron?"

"They were tough."

Ben whistled. Thinking he was being summoned, a serving man came over. "Uh, two ales," Ben said. The man left. "If you don't kill me, Gaelan, the Shinga will order me to kill you. You'll only push your problems back a day or two. And he'll send the bashers and all the apprentice wetboys after you."

"I lied to you about that symbol you cut into your chest," Gaelan said. "I have seen it before. It's a pictogram. Literally, it means split-head. Moron. Idiot."

Ben's face darkened, fingers twitched toward his sash. Then he laughed ruefully. "I could tell you were lying the other day when you said you'd never seen it before. By the Night Angels' b.a.l.l.s. Moron. And I prove it by cutting the f.u.c.king thing into my chest over and over for fifteen years. No wonder the Friaki villagers wouldn't say what it meant. And you, you're an a.s.shole for telling me."

Gaelan nodded, acknowledging the truth of it. Took a drink. "Then I found this," Gaelan said.

He put a pendant on the table. It was two horseshoe nails, one bent into a circle, the other piercing it most of the way. Ben's lost pendant, the very one that had been taken from him when he was put into the Death Games.

A quick sneer, like You expect me to believe this? I told you what it looked like! was replaced by puzzlement. Ben flipped the pendant over, looking at the scores and scratches in the iron, matching them with memories over a decade old. He looked up sharply. His voice was stricken, awed. "How did you possibly find-"

Gaelan lifted the pendant from Ben's limp hand. Suspended from the chain, the weight of nail flipped the symbol upside down: instead of being split from the top down, the circle was split from the bottom up. Gaelan said, "You were a kid. You copied the symbol wrong, Ben. This symbol means split-heart: The one who's claimed half of my heart. It means beloved, favorite. It's the kind of thing a gorathi war chief would give only to his firstborn son."

He gave the pendant to the wide-eyed wetboy.

Ben put the pendant on. He threw back his ale, cursed quietly. Then he held the pendant in his palm-holding it like that, picking it up fom how it naturally hung, it was inverted. That was how he would have seen it last when he was a boy, when it had been taken from him. That was how he'd gotten it wrong. He chuckled, delighted. "You are something else, Gaelan."

~I'm still surprised you didn't put contact poison on the pendant. Every time I want to give up on you, Acaelus, you do something like this.~ "I memorized that book you gave me," Gaelan said.

"What book? The poisons book? How'd you memorize the whole-how'd you even read the- Oh s.h.i.t." Ben looked at his empty flagon. "You motherf.u.c.ker. You took an oath! Arutayro-"

"Doesn't apply. The poison I used isn't lethal. It'll just knock you out for a while. In a way, I'm upholding arutayro, because now I don't have to kill you."

Ben weaved in his seat. "How? How'd you do it?"

"Paid someone in the kitchen to dose both. The way I mixed it, the poison's heavier than the ale, so it mixes only in the bottom of the flagon."

"But if I hadn't finished my ale..."

"You always finish your ale, Ben."

Ben blinked, slowly, holding himself up with his elbows. "But if you don't kill me..."

Gaelan left a pile of coins on the table and nodded to the serving man. "I'll have to kill the Shinga. I know."

Ben's head slumped to the table.

Shirtless, Gaelan Starfire was arming.

On the opposite side of the room, Gwinvere Kirena was dressing.

He held up a light gray tunic mottled with black to his chest. Looked at it in the mirror. Rejected it for a black tunic mottled with gray.

She held up a fiery red dress to her chest. Looked at it in the mirror. Rejected it for a sapphire blue that was lower cut.

He strapped a pair of throwing knives to one muscular thigh.

She pulled a silk stocking up one shapely thigh.

He pulled a weapons harness around his shoulders, knotted it tight.

She took a deep breath as a servant cinched her corset.

He clipped his mask around his neck.

She clipped a jeweled necklace around hers.

He slid a knife into a wrist sheath.

She spritzed perfume on her wrist.

He looked at her in his mirror and found her looking at him in hers. He was an Angel of Death. She was a G.o.ddess.

He bowed to the mirror. "Good luck tonight, my lady."

She curtsied, face grave. "Good luck, Master Starfire." She didn't say my lord. But then, she wouldn't.

He jumped out the window.

Gaelan jumped across a narrow alley, landed on the peak of a crumbling inn's roof, ran across the narrow beam like an acrobat, jumped and fell six paces onto a lower, flat roof.

"I am Sa'kage, a lord of the shadows. I claim the shadows that the Shadow may not."

The clouds broke over the city. A giant crack of thunder. Downpour.

"I am the strong arm of deliverance. I am Shadowstrider. I am the Scales of Justice. I am He-Who-Guards-Unseen. I am Shadowslayer. I am Nameless."

He jumped into one of the few standing sections of an ancient aqueduct. Quick footsteps in the rain puddling in that venerable stone waterway. Leapt.

Below, a rich carriage pulled by four horses was rattling through the streets.

"The befouled shall not go unpunished."

Landed on a mouldering thatch roof, had to scramble on all fours to keep from slipping off as the stuff tore apart.

"My way is hard, but I serve unbroken. In ign.o.bility, n.o.bility. In shame, honor. In darkness, light. I will do justice and love mercy."

The man in the carriage was one of the Nine, the Cenarian Sa'kage's master of coin, Count Rimbold Drake. Brilliant young man, perceptive but not ambitious. He'd stumbled into his position on the Nine by his sheer competence. Gwinvere didn't believe he cared who was the Shinga. So this was mercy.

Gaelan jumped across the street directly above the carriage. He flipped and whipped a knife downward at incredible speed.

The blade punched through the carriage's roof. It quivered in the carriage seat between Count Drake's legs.

Count Drake gaped at the hole in the carriage roof, dribbling rain. The dagger was an inch from his groin. There was a note tied around the dagger's handle.

The count took the note. The words were written in a tight, angular hand: "Not A Miss."

Gaelan watched the men guarding one entrance to the Chamber of Nine. There were at least six entrances he knew, but this one was the most direct. Three of the men were simple bashers-just muscle to stop pa.s.sersby from entering the wrong alley. Men good in a brawl.

Will you serve me in this?

Gaelan pulled the shadows around himself and crawled, clinging to a thatch roof, keeping a low profile.

~She's not a good woman. You must know that.~ Three archers squinted against the downpour, doing their best to protect their bowstrings under their cloaks.

No, but she's the least bad.

Two spotters stood on balconies, one studying the street, the other looking over the roofs.

~Giving power to the bad to fight the evil. A devil's argument.~ Gaelan reached the edge of the building. Two more bashers were rit underneath him. I am a devil.

~It was to you Jorsin Alkestes administered the Oath of Sa'kage, Acaelus. You could lead the Sa'kage yourself.~ Leadership is best left to the idealistic and the arrogant.

It would be best if he could get in without killing anyone, but he couldn't do that alone. Not without the ka'kari's help.

~Very well, Acaelus. I shall serve.~ Gaelan felt the ka'kari form in his hand. He squeezed it and it sheathed his entire body. He dropped into the alley.

He wasn't quite invisible. Not in the rain that hit his body and gave a weird distortion to the air. But the alley was narrow. The rain came in gusts and fits as the wind blasted it periodically into the cold, damp s.p.a.ce between the rickety buildings.

One blast threw a torrent as he walked between a torch-carrying basher and the wall.

"Herrick, you see something over there?" the basher said to another.

"No. Want to check it out?"

The basher swallowed-but went toward what he'd seen.

Gaelan was already past them. He came to the door. Rubbish was piled high in front of it to disguise what it was, but the door opened in, so the rubbish was no problem. Gaelan wrapped sound-dampening magic on the hinges and looked once more at all the men guarding it.

When no one was looking, he opened the door and slipped inside.

Inside, there was nothing but a short hall, a false wall that lay open, and a stone ladder beyond it. Gaelan got on the ladder and began sliding down.

He was almost all the way down when someone carrying a torch stepped into the stone tube and began climbing. Whoever he was, he was nimble as a monkey, climbing fast for a man with only one hand on the ladder.

Gaelan stuck one foot against the wall, then hopped, stuck the other foot to the other wall. Pushed his hands against opposite walls and flattened himself against the back of the tube. Being invisible wasn't much help if someone actually b.u.mped into you.

The climber paused just below Gaelan, switched which hand was carrying the torch. It brought the flaming brand within inches of Gaelan's face.

But the ka'kari, true to its word, true to its nature, devoured the light, devoured the heat, turning it into its own magic, making Gaelan feel even stronger.

The climber continued on, and Gaelan slid to the bottom of the narrow tube and stepped out, invisible, into the Chamber of Nine.

The Nine's subterranean chamber was a horror and a wonder. A relic of a bygone age. It was circular, but with a ceiling so high it disappeared in darkness, giving the impression that a person inside was at the bottom of an inescapably deep pit. The floors, the walls, even the stone desks and chairs were carved with every kind of loathsome animal: rats and snakes and hydras and spiders and twisted dogs and skeletons. All glittering obsidian, sharp, cutting angles. The numerous entrances were well-hidden. A crescent-shaped dais held the benches for the Nine, and over them, the Shinga's thne. The only illumination came from an oil-filled ridge set in the wall behind the Nine, casting all of them in shadow.