And he was married to effect, after all. Comfort could wait.
He fumbled at his belt, once again consulting his bag of tricks. First, a vial of kerosene found its way into his hand, which he poured down onto the cold wood. Then a second pouch, this one handled with a bit more care. Loosening the string, he tipped it and flung its contents to the bottom of the shaft.
Sparkdrops ignited on contact, creating a tiny explosion that humbled quickly into ordinary tongues of flame. A peaceful fire crackled once again where it had so recently been snuffed.
Holding his breath against the rise of new smoke, the Spylord waited for the opportune moment to make his escape. No doubt the Lord Advisor and his twitchy assistant would still be staring intently at the roof, possibly circling the house in an attempt to spot him.
So he merely waited until the smoke was thick enough, and then he climbed out of the chimney and kept to the path of the gray plume as he left.
He escaped from the scene of the crime as undetectably as a phantom, the only signs attesting to his presence a table devoid of its important documents, an intricately inked insignia rendered in five seconds flat, and the thought-provoking spectacle of a single set of sooty footprints isolated squarely in the center of the room.
23
His Alley
“Don’t tempt fate, for those who do so are fools,” went a common word of warning. And while one man seemed exempt from the rule, never thinking twice and never called a fool, all others only proved it to be true.
*
“May I join you for a midnight glower?” Lady Verrikose asked, making it sound somehow like a delicacy – a rare vintage of wine, perhaps, Mosscrow thought, nearly letting out a guffaw before he realized he was more drunk than he was clever.
Making a ‘why not’ sort of expression, he slid over an empty glass and poured in a splash of brandy from his bottle. Lady Verrikose seated herself across the table from him, arranging that ridiculous pet sloth across her lap and angling herself on the chair so she could glower at the wall while he glowered at the tabletop.
Fingering the rim of her snifter with a crimson-gloved digit, Lady Verrikose drew a breath of displeasure before delicately raising the glass to her lips to sip the fiery liquid.
The two sat in silence for a long moment, Slasher making an inch of progress in some pitiable scheme to vacate his perch to explore the room, before Lady Verrikose uttered in a blasé fashion, “So it didn’t go as planned, then.”
When she had arrived at the shack in the slums, Lord Mosscrow and Osprey had been sulking around an empty table stamped with the Spylord’s trademark. She had said nothing, halting just past the threshold with knowing resignation, and Lord Mosscrow had snapped, “I don’t want to talk about it”, and stormed out. Flashing an apologetic, weak smile, Osprey had found himself unable to engage her beyond that, quickly following his master. With a small sigh, Lady Verrikose had stayed a moment to inspect the emblem, rubbing a sampling of ink between her gloved fingers and finding it still wet.
While assuredly an unfulfilling end to their carefully-planned rendezvous, Lady Verrikose couldn’t say it was surprising, nor was she disappointed to shed the rags she’d assumed for the occasion and return to her natural state of bedazzled-from-head-to-toe.
Then she’d sought out Lord Mosscrow again, and found him here – drowning his sorrows in one of the more masculine lounges down the hall from the throne room. Everything in the room was done in leather or fur or burgundy-colored velvet, the walls bedecked in hunting scenes, forest landscapes, antlers, and animal busts.
Eyeing the décor, Lady Verrikose tapped her snifter thoughtfully. “Do you come in here to imagine the Spylord’s head alongside the other trophies on the walls? To fancy yourself the renowned hunter?”
Crow’s gaze flicked from the shadows of his hood to take in the theme of the room. Grunting, he returned to his brandy. “Perhaps I do.”
“All this hunting,” Lady Verrikose mused, “and yet it turns out every movement calls him down on us as if we are insects buzzing in his web. Every twist and turn we contrive ends up tripping another strand rigged to alert him. It is as if he has spun a web throughout the entire city, and we are helpless to keep from triggering it. We think we are hunting him, but we are foxes in the lion’s den. He is the predator. The puppet-master. Every thought and move against him merely tangles with the strings he wields; the more intricate our dance becomes, the more we interweave the strings around us. The more we fuss, the more we call him down upon us.”
Lord Mosscrow grunted again. “Perhaps you can put your talents to use, then, my lady, since you are so good with the creatures, and get into his spider mind.”
“Perhaps we have been going about the matter all wrong,” Lady Verrikose countered.
Mosscrow perked up curiously – skeptically, but curiously. “How do you mean?”
“Perhaps it is time that we accepted he is the spider. That he is the predator. Tell me, then, in that scenario – how best do you catch a predator?” she posed tauntingly, waiting for him to catch on.
It took a moment as he muddled through the implications with his sluggish, liquor-slurred mind. But it came to him, in the end. “Bait.”
A subtle, self-satisfied smile curved Lady Verrikose’s red-painted lips. “Precisely.”
Mosscrow downed the rest of his brandy, suddenly ready to get down to business. “What do you suggest?”
“Actually,” Lady Verrikose proposed, “I was thinking, since I’m ‘so good with the creatures’, as you say – I might try my hand at wandering astray and…plucking his strings myself.”
“You wish to use yourself as bait.”
“I am the soul responsible for directing the creatures that convinced his apprentice to leave his side. He knows that. No doubt if I go out alone somewhere, he will track me. He will track me, and he will punish me – or at the very least seek to reprimand me.”
“And possibly slit your throat and dump your corpse at our doorstep as another statement expressing that anger you have provoked,” Crow pointed out.
“Perhaps,” Lady Verrikose admitted with frightful calm. “But I don’t think so.”
“Well, I do,” Crow huffed. “But you are welcome to risk your pretty little neck any way that you please, my lady. If it catches me the Spylord, I frankly have no objections.”
“I am touched by your concern,” Lady Verrikose said dryly, but sipped her brandy completely unperturbed.
“How then do you intend to snare him once you bait him?”
“With an entire entourage of beastly reinforcements, of course.” Slasher had just begun to brim over the edge of her lap, reaaaaching toward the floor which might as well have been a far-distant, uncharted land ripe for discovery. Lady Verrikose promptly lifted him from his ambitious position and set him back a few inches to start over.
“Hm. Well, I would be remiss not to point out that the last beast sent into his jurisdiction failed to return.”
Lady Verrikose blinked apathetically behind her veil. “That was a lone creature. I hardly think the Spylord can manage to combat a whole fleet.”
Mosscrow made a wry expression. “Well, you are the one who said he was the spider, and the rest of us as good as gnats in his web. Who’s to say the beasts aren’t merely larger gnats? Flies, perhaps? But as I said – I’ve no objections. If you wish to tangle with the spider, then I bid you godspeed. As far as I’m concerned, we’ll feed the rascal bait until he’s good and fattened up, and falls over from gluttony.” Refilling his snifter, he raised it in salute. “To bait,” he toasted, and they drank in unison.
*
Since it was suspected that the SFH resided somewhere in the Cob, that was where Lady Verrikose had the carriage drop her, directing the coachman to wait for her there. Eyeing the area with unease, he nevertheless thought better than to question her business in such a place, pulling his collar up against the chill and settling in to wait.
Lady Verrikose steppe
d down from the carriage into the fresh night air, her entourage of mind-shackled beasts keeping obediently out of sight somewhere behind her. It wouldn’t do to terrorize the whole city by broadcasting their presence, and so she had bid them follow her in stealth.
The sliver of the crescent moon was the only light in these parts, and she couldn’t help but feel it sneered down at her like a wicked grin. Refusing to be intimidated, however, she drew herself up and set off across the crumbling cobblestones, into the labyrinth of old alleys.
She could not specifically say if she was afraid or not, but if she was, it was overridden by the same dangerous fascination that had doomed so many before her.
Come out to play, Shadowmaster. Or don’t you wish to get your hands on the one who lured away your precious Despiris?
It was a strange feeling, imagining the stalker she sought appearing behind her, and both hoping and not hoping it was him. She quickly began to question every flicker of shadow, every blur of movement, her pulse prickling with what she couldn’t distinguish as thrill or chill.
Fighting the irrational urge to run – how would she even know if she was running from or toward the monster? – she suppressed a shiver and quickened her pace.
Come out, come out, wherever you are…
Deeper and deeper into the quiet, dark maze she delved, until she began to question if she could find her way back out. Irrational – again. She could piggy-back on a bird’s eye view of the place any time she pleased, order a Pegasus to swoop down from the sky to carry her back to the palace over the rooftops.
But it was the effect he had – the enchantment of the Shadowmaster, cast over the territory. It crept up your legs and slithered around your heart and tickled the nape of your neck and whispered in your ear, taunting even the bravest of souls, warning that you had come to the wrong place, asking ‘Are you lost, sweet lamb?’
So strong was the ominous tone, the irrational dread, that Lady Verrikose had to stop. Take a breath. Shake it off. Remind herself it wasn’t real.
She knew a supernatural ward when she felt it. A spell of foreboding.
Consciously deflecting the projections of unease, she pressed on. But it was impossible to shake it entirely, and she was more on edge than she cared to admit.
Perhaps this had been foolish. Perhaps it had been pointless. Who was she kidding, thinking the solitary Master of the Shadows would show his face? And for her?
Had she merely been flattering herself?
She was just beginning to think she was utterly alone, chasing empty notions through the alleys – a thought both comforting and disturbing at once – when she thought she saw a shadow flit around the corner up ahead.
Heart jumping into her throat, she pursued with caution. Intrigue pulled her forward, but around the bend there was nothing – nothing except a flicker of movement disappearing around the next corner.
On and on she went, always turning into another alley to find it empty, but always drawn onward by a taunt around the next bend. She pressed on, becoming breathless, becoming frantic, becoming something she would later remember as a state closer to madness than any she had ever brushed before.
When finally she teetered into an adjoining alley and found nothing but emptiness and stillness waiting for her in the distance, she slid to a stop thinking perhaps her eyes had merely been playing tricks all along.
Disheartened, she took a moment to catch her breath, trying to decide if it was time to abandon this absurd quest and return to civilization.
But it was there that the darkness seemed to congeal, gathering itself like a sentient force to close in on her, settle around her, seep inside her…
A sudden, strangling fear rushed in, clogging her airway. Heart fluttering rapidly, like the wings of a frantic, caged bird, Lady Verrikose turned on her heel to try to go back the way she had come.
And came face to face with none other than the Master of the Shadows.
At least, if it was any other, she would never know it.
She sprang an alarm in her mind, casting out a mental net to summon the creatures instantly to her side. But only a clawing, thrumming cacophony responded overhead, and she didn’t dare take her eyes off the frightful shadow before her to see what the hold-up was.
Come to me at once! her cerebral voice shrieked, but all that landed in the alley around her was a soft rain of feathers.
A quick layering of minds revealed the problem. The Shadowmaster had lured her down the narrowest alley, too slight for the bodies of her beasts to fit. Scramble as they might to do her bidding, they were helpless to succeed lest they rip their glorious bodies to shreds.
She gulped, feeling suddenly very small.
“Get out of my alley,” the Shadowmaster ordered in a dangerous tone that brooked no argument.
Not caring where it took her, Lady Verrikose spun in a dizzying rustle of skirts and fled.
24
The Night
“Beware the night, for it has found an agent to fulfill its agenda.
Beware the night, for it possesses a man to become its offender.”
– From a ballad depicting the Master of the Shadows. But was the Shadowmaster really a symbol of the night? Or was it the other way around?
*
Lord Mosscrow couldn’t be sure when to expect Lady Verrikose back at the palace, but it had been long enough that he was beginning to worry. He had taken to pacing the wall of windows in the great hall, watching the gates for her return.
He shouldn’t have let her go. What kind of fool let a lady waltz unaccompanied into the Spylord’s territory? She had gone looking for trouble, and she had almost assuredly found it.
He had been drunk. Drunk off brandy, drunk off desire, drunk off that trickster’s confounded spell of instigation and enticement. Once again, he had been unable to help himself. And Lady Verrikose might very well pay the price.
He knew, realistically, that there probably wouldn’t have been any stopping her. Lady Verrikose was a woman who did as she pleased, and probably wouldn’t have given any protests from him even a trace of consideration. Despite his position as the king’s right-hand man, he would be fooling himself if he supposed he had any sway over her whatsoever.
And so all he could do was wait. Wait and worry and wish he had gone instead.
She had her beasts, of course, which made her better equipped to act as bait, but still.
What if she didn’t come back?
What if–
A shadow of movement caught his eye out the window, and he rushed to the towering pane to peer out. Relief flooded his being, for her carriage had returned.
Crow dodged away from the window and hurried down the hall to meet her carriage outside. When he emerged to the torchlit courtyard, he found her carriage parked at the center, the coachman waiting to assist her out.
But Lady Verrikose made no appearance.
Glancing over his shoulder at the sound of Crow’s approach, the coachman gave a helpless little shrug. “Perhaps the lady fell asleep?” he murmured as Crow reached the carriage.
It was quite late, but Crow didn’t think that was the issue, in this particular case. “Thank you, Mattler. I’ll take it from here,” he dismissed the coachman for the night, and then without waiting climbed up into the carriage and shut the little canvas door behind him.
Lady Verrikose sat in her seat, still and silent and withdrawn.
“What happened?” Crow asked. It came out sounding decidedly more demanding than he intended.
With some effort, Lady Verrikose raised her absent gaze to his, but he was not convinced she saw him. She looked a world away, lost in some recurring nightmare, some lingering shroud of trauma. Her lashes cast longer shadows across her face than usual.
He had never seen her spooked before. Never quite so stiff.
But it had only been a matter of time, he supposed. The Shadowmaster had that effect.
“Typical,” he concluded. Her demeanor told her story well en
ough. “Come on, then. Let’s get you inside.” Offering his hand, Lord Mosscrow helped the noblewoman out of the carriage. Once her feet touched palace ground again, she seemed to come back into herself a little, taking a shuddering breath and recomposing herself. Removing her hand from his, she reclaimed a margin of her independence, gathering her skirts to march herself inside.
Lord Mosscrow escorted her through the halls until it was clear she was headed for her chambers, and then he trailed off and let her go. No doubt she would be back to her normal self in the morning, shaking the trauma for a merely irritated stance, but in the meantime she needed the night to get over it.
He couldn’t blame her.
But it left him rather unsatisfied for the night.
Ha. When’s the last time you were satisfied? He had been existing in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction since embarking on this maddening endeavor.
With a sigh, he debated whether to return to his pacing or attempt to retire to his own chambers. He did not think he would be able to sleep, wondering what had happened between Lady Verrikose and the Shadowmaster. But pacing all night would just drag out the wait. Better to seek oblivion, and awake as if no time had passed to debrief a hopefully-refreshed Lady Verrikose.
He sought out his chamber, realizing suddenly how tired he was. Worrying was exhausting. And his feet were aching and sore from all his pacing.
Really, he was getting too old for pacing.
For any of this.
Yes, he decided, his bed sounded divine. But he couldn’t resist one more peek out the window, one more sweep of pointless surveillance across the sleeping city. Casting aside his curtains, he feasted on the view.
Somewhere out there was his accursed quarry, milking his reign of nightmares unchecked. Nearly the entire city was visible from this vantage point, and it maddened Crow to no end that he probably looked directly at the trickster now and again and never knew it.
Girl of Rooftops and Shadows (The Shadow's Apprentice Book 1) Page 22
