5
Seeing Double
“She’s afraid of the dark,” they’d whispered, thinking she couldn’t hear – and it had been true, until Clevwrith cured that, and singlehandedly tamed every other demon that plagued her.
*
The dark was her friend. Clevwrith had made her believe that. It was one of her first lessons, and she remembered it now, sprinting across the roof one minute past midnight. She knew Clevwrith was on the opposite roof only because he had told her that’s where he would be. But glancing there now, she saw no movement, heard no sound.
Despiris jerked her eyes back to the path she was running, nearly losing her delicate footing on the slick shingles when she let her concentration wander. A blush warmed her cheeks. Clevwrith would mention her near-slip once they were back in the Cob reviewing the mission. Just because she couldn’t see him didn’t mean he wasn’t tuned in to her every move, every twitch, every breath. Sometimes she thought he could read her thoughts.
All the more reason to stop worrying about one little near-miss and focus, honing those thoughts into a tunnel-vision supremacy he would compliment, just as soon as criticize.
Then again, she was Shadhi now. Maybe he no longer took notes on her performance.
It was a startling, almost frightening thought, making her feel suddenly alone. Her confidence faltered, another near-slip rocking her balance.
Get it together, Des. She was Shadhi because she was ready. She didn’t need Clevwrith to coddle and correct her. And you’re not alone, for the gods’ sake. The Shadowmaster was right there alongside her, merely covert as ever.
Still, the pressure of getting this mission right hummed in her blood. It was critical. Unprecedented and momentous.
And thrilling off the charts.
It made her pulse pound, her soul sing. Every time she re-centered the objective in her mind, gooseflesh rose in stirring flurries down her arms.
“I work alone,” Clevwrith had begun his prep speech. “That’s how they know me. You slipped onto the scene without a whisper. No one came back for your body that night, long ago. They thought you inconsequential, your death something no one would notice. They were right about only one of those things.
“As far as those guards are concerned, as far as anyone knows, you are dead. You do not exist. But the shadows tell a different story. They keep a chilling secret. You not only live – you thrive. You no longer wander the streets, but stalk them.
“The fact that you are an unknown accomplice is most convenient for my cause and use. But I do not find myself inclined to smother your potential for my own glory. In spite of that secret-weapon allure, it would be a sin to hold you back. You don’t keep a rose in a cupboard where no one can admire its beauty. You don’t keep a lioness in a cage. And so, it is time you became real. It is time they knew.”
It was a profound compliment. He thought her too magnificent to hide.
And so, tonight, the Shadowmaster’s right-hand woman was to be revealed. It was her unveiling. Her public coronation.
Certainly, she had made appearances before, but only as a lone shadowy figure who would be mistaken for the Shadowmaster himself.
Tonight, both of them would be seen, simultaneously so there would be no mistake that there were, indeed, two of them.
The Shadhi reborn.
The SFH, back together again.
And so the mischief-makers flowed like ghosts, like mist, like wind across the rooftops toward the Gilded District, where they would disturb the king’s royal council as it gathered in the old cathedral to discuss things of secret importance.
Panting, Despiris slid into a crouch behind a crumbling chimney. From here, if she peered around the bricks, she could see the open gate that led into the cathedral’s stone yard. The grounds were a circular affair, a menacing wrought iron fence penning in the spiral of old stones that matted the central hulk of ancient architecture.
Spying from her secret vantage point, Despiris watched carriages pass through the gates from Vanderdoth Street, depositing council members at the steps that led up into the cathedral. After deliverance, coachmen stationed their getups in a line along the fence, greeting one another and congregating in their own impromptu side-meeting as if all fast friends.
One council member in particular caught Despiris’s interest. He arrived via gothic black carriage and flowed out of the contraption and up the steps, wrapped in a billowing black cloak, a draping hood pulled over his head. A long staff carried in one hand seemed to serve as a walking aid, though his stride showed no flaw. A thin man followed humbly on his heels, his creamy robes comically short for his height, showing less-than-dignified snatches of his ankles.
They were the last ones through the gate, the figure with the staff barking something over his shoulder, to which his reedy cohort responded by hastening to catch up.
The guards locked the gates behind them.
That’s right. Play with your cute little locks. I brought toys, too.
Despiris’s playthings of choice were just much more to the effect of ghosts and shadows and things that went bump in the night.
Chalking up her hands while she watched, she was ready when the aide turned his back once more. Slipping past the chimney, she crouched at the edge of the roof. She slid first one leg, then the other, over the edge and twisted herself to face the wall. The scantest lip of boot seams and calloused fingertips found the cracks between stones, little more than recklessness and faith allowing her to maneuver down the two-story wall. It was painstaking, at times, sweat trickling down her temples and making her question whether her grip was about to turn slick, but she reached the bottom without mishap.
A palpable wave of relief tingled through her limbs. That stunt always got to her more than others. One tiny margin of misjudgment, one drop of sweat too many, an instant of second-guessing yourself when you were halfway between the roof and the ground, and – well, that was the reason for the scar that ran up the length of her back.
A scar from three years past, when a mission required a similar scaling of walls. When she’d felt herself slipping, she’d bailed, trying to launch herself away from the building and catch herself on a streetlamp. And while she’d half-succeeded, it had not been a gentle catch, her body contorting mid-air and jolting on impact, the glass of the lantern chamber shattering, a shard catching her back as she slid hard to the ground.
Fortunately Clevwrith had been with her at the time. The memory was a heady imprint of hysteria for Des, of agonizing gasps as she tried to regain her wind, thinking her back was broken, the alarming amount of blood inflating the trauma and inducing uncontrollable sobs of shock and terror. But Clevwrith had calmly collected her, carried her back to the Cob, and sewn her back up.
Not even that had fazed him.
She’d miraculously escaped with no broken bones or other injury, but the gnarly scar would stay with her forever, a reminder of her imperfection. Of her mere mortal status compared to the flawless deity that was the Master of the Shadows.
Shoving the taunting memory to the back of her mind, Despiris crept toward the cathedral gate. Halfway there, she reached her real destination, prying open the pretty emblem-stamped lid at her feet. Fences were all good and well for keeping things out aboveground, but their biggest oversight lay in failing to descend below the surface, where she and her master loved most to skulk. Clevwrith had likely already vanished through the same portal, or found another.
Squinting through the useless fence, Despiris pegged the matching disc inlaid in the stone yard. Her mind automatically estimated the distance between her orifice and that, mapping a proposal of steps through the dark sewer below.
Like a snake into a hole, she slithered into the void. The lid scraped back into place above her.
Despiris was about to hurry down the shaft when curiosity got the best of her. Pausing to reach into her bag of tricks, she lit a match to illuminate the passage.
The cloudy water sloshed into th
e shadows with obviously more than her own disturbance. Clevwrith had been here. He was ahead of her. She expected no less, but it irked her all the same. Shadhi she may have been crowned, but she was not his equal. Not yet.
The reek of the sewer reminded her she was lingering. Gagging, she pulled up her cowl. Clevwrith always said to breathe through her mouth, but then she just felt like she was eating the stuff.
Since her match was already lit, she used its light to find her way down the shaft to the corresponding portal. Clevwrith would have disapproved of her not finding her way in the dark, but he wasn’t here, and besides – he’d said it himself: ‘We make the rules, Des’. And it seemed like a good rule to not waste a perfectly good match.
Hoping she’d gained ground on Clev thanks to the use of light, she shook the match out beneath her exit point and embraced the darkness once again, pushing blindly up on the lid.
It seemed to have molded shut.
Apparently, Clevwrith had taken a different route from here.
With some force, the disc popped loose, and she carefully shifted it aside. Springing out of the sullied water, she grasped the curved edge with her fingers angled backward, abdominal muscles straining as she thrust her feet up through the portal. Shimmying out, she pulled herself aloft and resealed the sewer, quick to take inventory of the yard for potential witnesses.
Clevwrith had probably found a much more discreet route, not wanting to risk detection until the Big Reveal. But not a soul was paying any attention to the sewer lid in the yard, or what unlikely ghosts it produced.
Smugly, she lifted her gaze to the cathedral. Hello, you beautiful beast of a playground, you. The hulking dome towered over her, surrounded by a vast vestibule of columns that stretched dizzily skyward to where the roof overlapped. Fanciful statues protruded from the roof’s edge above each pillar, gorgeous portrayals of mythical creatures watching over the yard with exotic, judging eyes.
It was the kind of place Despiris felt instantly welcome.
Still, eager to get out of the open, she slunk for the cathedral shadows. Up close, she zeroed in on intricate webs of cracks snaking around each pillar. Most were mere threads, but every so often the fractures widened, or had chipped and crumbled away to create finger-sized crevices.
Crevices that could continue to crumble at the application of added weight, but a quick test of the first fissure within reach was good enough for Despiris to deem it a calculated risk.
It was the kind of calculation that might get her killed one day, but in the meantime it was the kind of attitude that made her an unprecedented force to be reckoned with.
Climb me, I dare you, said the old pillar to Despiris. And it was a dare she couldn’t resist.
While she was close enough to risk the fall to the ground, she scurried as fast as she could up the mosaic face of the column. The higher she got, the more she slowed, careful to place her fingers just-so, ensuring a secure grip before moving on.
Her arms were burning by the time she was halfway up the column. Craning her head back to find the top, she tried not to think about how far she still had to climb. It was a long way up.
Hand over hand, one crack to the next. She had to break it into small pieces, not thinking about the whole. You are a spider, and the world is your web.
Up, up she climbed, the realm of the mortals falling away below. The night breeze shifted around her, tugging at her clothing, pulling at her hair – caressing the nape of her neck like a lover. Gooseflesh spread down her arms, that intoxicating chill.
But she could not be seduced, not now. Not with the world a mile away and her fingertips clinging to brittle ledges in the sky.
Soon the vicious jaws of a gargoyle were looming open above her, the stillness of stone a taunt that Despiris imagined as an illusion, the predator merely holding statue-still to lure in its prey. Steeling herself against the dark fantasy, she ascended toward that waiting monster, relishing the prickle down her spine as she drew within reach of its wicked stone fangs. Haughtily, she pulled herself past the ominous sentry, willing herself not to look twice at the realism of its face. She was projecting.
Either way, the intricately-crafted statues had once been the crown jewels of the cathedral, meticulously cleaned and cared for, which meant…
Ah, there it was. That hatch that served as a servant’s entrance, inlaid in the side of the dome behind the statue of a pegasus.
Despiris vanished through the hatch, fighting her way through sheets of cobwebs just inside. Another indication that Clevwrith had used a different route, and that the cathedral had long since left its glory days in the past, serving only as a gathering place for ‘private’ meetings.
The upper region of the dome resembled an attic, but in its prime it might have been servants’ quarters. Finding her way through the stuffy old shadows, Despiris tried half a dozen doors before the maze gifted her an exit. Wincing at the creak of old hinges protesting their resurrection, she paused to rummage in her bag of tricks for her vial of oil. A few drops on the hinges smothered the impromptu alarm, allowing her to pass through quiet as a whisper. Ghosting over the threshold, she found herself on a balcony overlooking the rafters.
A bat whistled past, a dusty flapping of wings slicing across her cheek. She bit back a gasp, cutting her flinch short lest she give herself away.
Muffled voices drifted up from far below, flickering candlelight failing to reach the rafter shadows. Despiris stepped cautiously to the rail and peered over, down into the musty depth of the dome.
The royal council sat around an oval table, sipping from silver chalices as they spoke. Wine to help them make sound decisions, no doubt.
Rule Number Thirty-Seven, Despiris thought in disapproval, recalling Shadhi Fundamentals – ‘The consumption of liquor is expressly forbidden’. They had to be at their sharpest at every moment. Ready to run, ready to outsmart, ready to perform near-impossible physical feats with unwavering precision. Addled minds lead to bruises and binds.
Something shifted among the rafters. Des’s gaze snapped to it, every muscle suddenly hyper-alert. Thinking it might be more bats, she instead found Clevwrith, perched above the center of the cathedral, listening intently.
Despiris crept down the gothic black railing to a spot that had broken off, slipping through the jagged gap. Out onto the rafters, moving cat-like to avoid the groan of old wood, she joined her master.
Clevwrith hardly acknowledged her presence as she settled beside him, close enough to accidentally brush her shoulder against his.
“You’re late,” he murmured quietly. “I was beginning to wonder if you got sidetracked, or even if you got cold feet.”
“I just forgot to come,” she lied, and grinned slightly as he glanced at her. He knew better, of course – knew how much she wanted this.
Discontinuing conversation, they turned their attention to what took place below.
At first, it was boring and mundane. Taxes; the condition of a few cobblestone roads that needed repairs; numbers reported following the harvest of Cerf Daine’s potato and sugar beet crops; which nobles had confirmed attendance to the seasonal summertime ball; how often the king’s throne should be dusted between sittings, considering contact with his silken royal hiney had to count as at least a partial ‘dusting’…
Funny, Des, but if Clev quizzes you later on what was discussed, he might not be so amused by the substitutions.
It was just so hard to focus on the drab blither-blather when what she was there for was mischief. Stimulating action and sensational theatrics.
Can we spice up this monumentally mind-numbing mumbling, please…
Clevwrith, of course, would be filing away every word. Information was power, he would say, however monotonous it seemed at face value.
His interest visibly piqued, however, when the conversation turned to matters of crime.
“Thievery has increased in the marketplace,” a council member reported. “Vendors are demanding an increase in patr
ol.”
Despiris couldn’t say why, but she seemed to detect a glower beneath the cowl of the black-cloaked figure whom the council addressed. He drummed a row of pasty fingers on the tabletop, ignoring his wine, looking almost as bored as Despiris felt.
Grudgingly, Despiris thought, he mumbled a response, “The king is prepared to grant this request.”
Intrigued, Despiris frowned. Did this man not wish to crack down on thievery? It would be the first time she’d encountered a thief-sympathizer among the authorities. Her own experience certainly hadn’t been one of sympathy.
For indeed, she had been a thief once, stealing from marketplace booths when her mother and younger siblings floundered on the brink of starvation. Desperate, she’d gone thieving one day despite being ailed by a nasty winter illness, and in her wretched, sluggish state, she’d been caught by the king’s men.
They’d been halfway to the palace in the north quarter when her violent coughing inspired a callous reassessment from her handlers. Deciding she was on her way out and not worth the trouble, they’d sentenced her prematurely, leaving her for dead in Clevwrith’s alley.
What a terrible misjudgment on their part – and what a terrible mistake.
Beside her, Clevwrith shook his head. “They’re wrong,” he whispered, but Despiris had missed what was said below, lost in her wintry memories. The last thing she remembered was wondering if the cloaked figurehead was sympathetic to the starving children no one else seemed to care about.
But, to be honest, he didn’t seem like the sympathetic sort.
“How fare our efforts with the Assassin’s Guild?” asked the hooded man as if reciting memorized lines. Despiris wasn’t even sure he was listening for the response.
The response came, nevertheless. “We have managed to locate their camp. A raid is scheduled for next Wednesday.”
A mere grunt of approval issued from that dark hood.
When no on seemed to have any further points to discuss, a hesitant voice piped up along the side of the table. “And what of...the Shadowmaster?” Despiris wasn’t sure if the hesitation was because it was a touchy subject to broach, or because of the stigma attached that brought out superstitions and made everyone suddenly hyper-cautious that the walls might be listening.
Girl of Rooftops and Shadows (The Shadow's Apprentice Book 1) Page 4
