“There will be a time you can’t rely on such luxuries,” came the echo of his teachings. “It is safer to know how to survive with no failsafe, and not only survive, but still execute an effortless escape. Practice while you can.”
There won’t always be a back alley to disappear into, she reminded herself from another of Clev’s lectures. And being caught is not an error – but a sin.
A soft gust of wind moved across the wide, open street before her, and she joined it in fluid imitation, moving as if she were one with the breeze. Only a ghost’s shadow, blown across the cobbles. In her mind, it was what she became.
“Become what you have to, know that’s what you are deep inside, and you will be surprised who you can fool,” Clevwrith had coached, every tidbit like some beautiful, poetic conspiracy. “I want you to be able to look at your reflection and lie to yourself so well that you can see her name, her background, see a story so far from the truth that you are convinced you are looking at a stranger.”
These were the kinds of fairytales Despiris had fallen asleep listening to since meeting Clevwrith. Her life before joining the Master of the Shadows was something she held at bay in her memory. She had almost left it behind by now, not only in her past, but in a heap of shriveling ashes down some dark alley in her mind as well.
She wished only to remember Clevwrith. With him, she knew she would never go hungry; there wasn’t a delicacy in the city they couldn’t swipe without notice. She would never be cold again, thanks to the near-constant fire of adrenaline and a warm body always there to lie down with her when the night’s excitement was over. Her woes had evaporated, blown away by the whirlwind of fantasy that the Master of the Shadows had flourished around her.
Isolated as they were, almost nothing mattered. The only threats were the ones they brought upon themselves willingly, purposefully.
They lived to taste danger. Relished it like candy. The black licorice of midnight, the sugar-cube stars. The sweet, syrupy racing of blood that others might call a thrill-junkie’s fix.
Snippets of Clevwrith’s manifesto whispered ever in the back of her mind, resurfacing like her own thoughts: “You will find one day that you seek danger. And that will not scare you. You will rejoice, and go hunting.” She remembered his dark grin when he said it. The reckless gleam in his eye that sent a shiver down her spine.
She knew what he meant now – the hunger for a chase, the longing to be discovered but not caught. Never caught.
“Discovery is not so bad. In fact, it’s half the fun.” But you had to know what cards each player held. Otherwise, she knew, ‘fun’ could turn to madness – if the Shadhi were not considered mad to begin with. In other words, risks were what they lived for, but mistakes were just like death.
Despiris was breathless by the time she reached the grounds of the west quarter, and hung back to regain her wind. It would be uncharacteristic to plow into enemy territory like some obnoxious, fire-breathing dragon. Besides, there was always a certain pleasure in lurking for a moment, surveying the unsuspecting area before devouring – er, sweeping it.
Tonight was a night to avoid detection, rather than welcome it. Sometimes, of course, there was no choice, in which case she was to barrel without pause through a routine of every trick she knew to evade pursuers, breathless or not. But Clevwrith had sent her in stealth for this mission, and she did not want to disappoint him.
It was not a good part of the west quarter she had opted to start her sweep in. A mere glance down the lane showed obvious disrepair and neglect. Potholes rendered the street unnavigable by carriage; balconies sagged and were missing bars like gap-toothed grins; dilapidated shutters clung to windows in crooked, pitiful vigils of security. Yet there were signs of determined life: the stick horse on a porch where a child had left it, a pot of flowers only half-wilted on a balcony, jars left out for the milk-man.
All things belonging to the safety of daytime, however. Home-sweet-home moved inside after dark, the residents huddling behind doors thrice-locked against the predators of night. Not a rat, or mouse, or even a spider crawled the cobblestones. The stillness just seemed to be waiting, making way for something…
Something like her.
Setting her mind to her mission, she took stock of what Clevwrith liked to call the layout of her arena. Obstacles and possible escape routes, nooks, crannies, angles – every minute feature, scanned and catalogued.
There was light, which was never ideal; torches flickered in holsters along the stone wall opposite the street’s domiciles. Squinting against the glaring dance of flame, Despiris pegged the notices posted between torches. Cautiously, she abandoned cover and approached the one on the end, keeping to the edge of the shadows to read the poster. One corner curling over, the parchment delivered its condemning message:
Wanted: Spylord.
Alive.
Generous reward.
Report to the king’s guard.
It was as brief as that. Dutifully, Despiris stripped the poster from the wall and rolled it into a tight scroll. Bending at the waist to undercut the torchlight, she hurried along the wall, snatching posters while she passed.
Making a thorough sweep of the west quarter, she’d amassed a thick stack of parchment by the time she was finished, her nicely-rolled tube of posters becoming a hefty manuscript tucked under her arm. Returning to the street where she began, she touched the stack to the torch fire. Dancing flame licked at the offering, spreading black where it ate. Tossing the stack down onto the cobbles, Despiris left it to burn and backed away from the light, turning to make her way back to the Cob.
She paused at the edge of the torchlight, however, unable to leave the sector she’d hit in such a state of peace.
Whether or not she was to make an official ‘appearance’, if possible she was always supposed to leave her mark, some sign that the Shadhi had been there.
Chewing her lip in thought, she shrugged her bag of tricks from her back and knelt to rummage through it. What mischief can we pull tonight…
She passed on an extra knife, a mask, a pouch of sparkdrops, and chalk for climbing, and then she landed on the glossy black length with a springy cluster of ruffles pinched between its twin slats, an idea coming to her. Producing the item, a flick of her wrist sprang it open, the accordion-like folds spreading with a snap into a lace-edged, black silk fan.
Yes. Yes, this would do.
She would have to be fast, she reasoned with herself – and grinned.
Replacing her pack, she gave the fan a little twirl of admiration. It’s your time to shine, darling.
Whirling around, she tore back down the street at a dead run, as close to the torches as she dared. The fan was erected like a wing at torch-height, her fingers splayed to press the folds into a stiff, wind-funneling curve.
Wham! Wham! Wham!
All along the road, torches snuffed out, one after another until the street went dark. At the end she slid to a stop and turned to admire her handiwork, snicking the fan closed and raising it to her lips to blow out the lace edging that had caught fire. A sly curl of smoke rose from the utensil, eclipsing her smirk.
Where comforting beacons had blazed, her friend Darkness now ruled, exhaling ghostly tendrils of smoke toward the sky. The premature blackout whispered ghost-like down the street, a delicious chill.
What a delight, when the people emerged in the morning to find the wanted posters gone, and the torches snuffed out. Wind could account for both, but no one would remember the howl of a gale or the battering of shutters as they slept at peace in their beds. The streets remained quiet all night long.
Triumphant, Des flashed a satisfied grin and turned to hurry homeward before dawn caught her out. Finding a main avenue, she skittered along the cobbles seeking the camouflaged disc of a manhole. She would take the sewer to the river catacombs, and slink undetected back to the Cob.
A single poster was tucked away in her bag for Clevwrith’s inspection. She knew he’d want to see the
manifestation of the rumors himself, before she terminated every last scrap. He might even want to keep it as a memento.
A dark halo stamped into the street announced the access she sought. Crouching quickly beside it, she wedged her fingers into the groove and pried open the pretty symbol-etched lid. A snowflake-like grid was carved into the stone, representing the intricate network of sewer tunnels engineered by Cobble and Burrow. It had been a revolutionary project that changed the urban way of life, putting in a sewer, and the brave new company had proudly stamped their emblem on every surface they could.
Sliding the slab over so it eclipsed the hole leaving a crescent-moon opening just large enough to permit her, Despiris slithered feet-first into the orifice. Dangling from the barest rim where the lid seated, she trusted her weight to one hand and used the other to shift the round slab back into place. Cringing, she lowered it slowly onto her fingers. Ouch.
Pinching the circulation from her digits was uncomfortable enough, but then came the drop to the sewer floor – grazing the skin clean off her knuckles. With a hiss, she landed in the shallow liquid – of which she had no desire to identify – of the sewer. Gloves would have helped, but then she’d lack the dexterity to cling one-handed to barely-existent rims. Sometimes, a little wear-and-tear was the price for her game.
The reek of the sewer overcame her. A snug, stretchy cowl kept around her neck came up over her nose and mouth to filter the worst of it. Out of habit, she glanced both ways down the shaft, but it was black as pitch. No matter. It was highly unlikely any fiends lurked in the dark waiting to surprise her. As for direction? Many a tedious night had been spent poring over the sewer blueprints Clevwrith had swiped from Cobble and Burrow. She’d been finding her way home blind for a year now.
Fingers trailing along the slimy wall for guidance, she slunk through the dark until she came to the rupture – a large crack in the side of the passage just large enough to allow a slender, slippery form. She’d used this route before, recalled in identical detail the way the waterflow changed to slip into the fissure, flowing sideways over the toes of her boots.
How she’d hated those painstaking lessons memorizing blueprints and then, later, mapping the underground city by foot, over and over until she thought she might scream from repetition, but now, it was as if every crawlway, shaft, passage, and crack was tattooed on the inside of her eyelids. All she had to do was close her eyes, and the map in all its intricacy came to her.
Facing south, she rose on her tip-toes, sucked in her breath, and squeezed tight through the fissure. As the rough stone grazed her chest, a recent session with Clev sparked unwelcome through her memory. She couldn’t help but blush, recalling the awkward subject. When she’d showed up for her lessons, he’d handed her a garment. A stretchy band with straps and buckles.
“What’s that for?” she’d asked, bemused.
“What we do requires we often slip through cracks and gaps not meant for human passage, hardly big enough to escape unscathed. You may start chafing your…more womanly curves.”
Oh, she’d thought, blushing, mortified that he had noticed.
“Bind yourself as flat as possible with this,” Clevwrith had instructed, expressionless and direct.
Des wished she could go back to a time when such things hadn’t come up as a factor. At least Clevwrith hadn’t made it awkward, seeming mostly unfazed by the subject. Same as he was unfazed by anything.
It was slow going in the dark, but her hand along the wall guided her to the end of the passage, where she turned left into an adjoining tunnel. This continued for a span, turning down a series of additional passages – some river, some sewer – and descending half a dozen levels, then gradually resurfacing into the homey layers of the underworld beneath the Cob.
Dim light filtering down through a hole in the ground-that-was-ceiling ahead announced her deliverance to the upper world. With a little hop, Despiris climbed up through the jagged gap, returning unscathed to the ground floor of the hovel she shared with Clevwrith.
A widespread grid of many-tiered, interconnecting old domiciles and shops stacked high on top of one another, the Cob might have been an ideal spot for any number of homeless to take up residence, but for the most part the Shadhi had played enough mischief to get the place labeled haunted, terrorizing any who loitered. In all the time Despiris had been with Clev, she’d encountered only a handful of homeless seeking shelter, and they’d been…less than sane.
So Des and Clev were mostly free to make the network their dilapidated palace. Past generations of Shadhi had gone to great lengths to bar windows and doors from the inside and establish access points from the underground as the sole entryways.
The ground floor of the stack she and Clev had made ‘home’ was nothing elaborate. A decoy, in case inquiring eyes ever found their way through the underground and popped up looking for evidence of life. However, a ladder stashed behind trash and decay along the edge of the room, when propped against the far wall, led to a hatch that opened onto the next floor. Similar vertical bridges and junctions continued into the upper floors, where signs of use became more frequent. Supply rooms, trophy rooms, the cubicle Des had recently made her own, Clevwrith’s lavish lair, and at the very top – a greenhouse.
Expecting Clevwrith might have retired at this dawn hour, Des ascended the levels until she reached his room. His lavish four-poster bed stood empty, the button-tufted inky black bedclothes undisturbed. Various masks and weapons – practical and exotic alike – hung on the walls lent menace to the room’s ambiance, but then there were the ornate chests and decorative rugs, the garish candlesticks and jars of potpourri on elegant stands. By night, it all looked black and grayscale, but by day you might notice the gold embellishments on weapons and chests, the red of the crimson-and-black patterned rugs. Clevwrith’s aesthetic was undeniably an obsession with black and silver, but pops of warmth found their way into the mystique.
Despiris tried the greenhouse, but didn’t find him there either – only lonely moonlight and the cloying scent of roses. So back down the vertical labyrinth she descended, dispersing into the ground-floor network to see what he was up to elsewhere.
She found him in one of the atrium courtyards, crouched by a cold, ashy fire pit. He was using charcoal to stain roses black.
Producing the wanted poster, she unfolded and tossed it at the Shadowmaster’s feet. Focus shifting from the roses, he lifted the parchment to inspect it.
“So now you’re known as Spylord,” Despiris remarked. “What mischief did you sow to inspire that?”
“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Clevwrith quipped coyly – which was silly, because he’d dedicated the last half a decade to doing just that. Teaching her all of his secrets. But she supposed every now and then he had to retain his intrigue even around his apprentice. “It’s fitting, don’t you think?”
“Of course, Spylord,” she tried the taste of it on her tongue, loving the esteemed flavor.
“You took care of the rest?” Clevwrith asked, indicating the poster.
“There’s nothing left but ashes for the wind.”
“Playing with fire, were we?”
A telling smile tugged at her lips.
Clevwrith’s clear blue eyes gleamed with pride. A flutter of relief stirred through Des; Clevwrith had never been harsh or cruel, but she often worried about meeting his expectations. He was so flawless, so complicated and gifted, his legacy a daunting standard to live up to.
But she wouldn’t trade the challenge for the world. She hated to wonder what her life – or death – would have been like if their paths hadn’t crossed. She couldn’t imagine not knowing him, now that she did. Had there really been a life unsaturated by this magic?
What an honor it was to live this dark fantasy with him, to be the one thing he loved aside from the night.
Clevwrith re-folded the poster and tucked it into a pocket. “Well done, my little shadeling,” he praised, using his favorite pet name for h
er as his apprentice. Despiris swelled with warmth at the flattery. “Get some sleep.”
Released for the morning, Despiris returned to her pigeonhole in the stacks, dropping her bag of tricks onto the rosevine-patterned rug and climbing exhausted into her own four-poster bed. Not even bothering to slip beneath the button-tufted, mauve silk topper, she kicked off her boots and sank into the shamelessly-stolen comforts of home-sweet-home. Sullied but luxe, the layers of bedding welcomed her into their cloud-like repose, and she was asleep before she finished sinking into the down-filled topper.
3
Chessboard Halls
“As you wish, my lord,” they said, but awoke bewildered to foiled efforts, and every possible witness swore the night had been nothing more than chillingly silent.
*
Lord Mosscrow, head advisor to the king, puzzled mordantly over the report as he strode down the gloomy, opulent halls of the palace. His spindly and somewhat useless aide, Osprey, kept pace like a loyal dog trotting at his master’s heels, hastening quickly and skipping every few steps to keep up. Between Mosscrow’s constantly bloodshot eyes, gout-ridden old feet, and overall maggoty complexion that couldn’t be a sign of optimal health, there were unfortunate ongoing bets among the servants regarding when the old toad would be out of commission, but the king’s advisor was surprisingly swift and spry for his many afflictions.
Also alarmingly spry of wit and temper.
Reports from the west quarter had detailed the wanted posters torn down. Not just the occasional poster torn away by the wind or even a mere street stripped by angry hands, but all of them. Gone as if they had never been there.
Of course, Mosscrow had never expected such a small stunt would yield anything substantial, but to have his efforts so swiftly cancelled made him feel foolish for even bothering, and he didn’t like feeling foolish. If only he were allowed more elaborate schemes and allotted more resources… But ‘more’ was just his guilty conscience’s way of saying ‘any at all’. The truth was, small stunts were necessary when half the objective was to avoid discovery by his master and king, who had not given approval for any such designs. His majesty was not interested in the Master of the Shadows, or the ‘Spylord’ as he was now called by some. According to the king, the Spylord was a ‘harmless trickster’. There were ‘more important’ things to get to the bottom of.
Girl of Rooftops and Shadows (The Shadow's Apprentice Book 1) Page 2
