Frost Fever

by Jonathan Moeller

  Rusk’s lips pressed tight with anger, but he paled a little. I shouldn’t have threatened him like that, but he knew enough about what I did for Morvilind that he didn’t want to push me too far. He jerked his head, and I followed him to the library, and then he departed in silence.

  Morvilind stood at his desk, stark and gaunt in his black robe and crimson cloak. All three monitors showed news reports of the recent events in Madison. I suppose it had been too big for Homeland Security and the Inquisition to cover it up entirely, so instead a highly edited version had made its way onto the Internet and the news stations. According to their account, a small band of Rebel terrorists had attacked Rimethur as he came to offer alliance to the High Queen, but Homeland Security and the Duke’s troops had beaten them back with a minimal loss of life.

  The story was so wrong that it would have been comical if so many people hadn’t been killed. Maybe it wasn’t surprising. I had been involved in several incidents that had made the news, and every single time most of the key facts had been reported wrong. I wondered if that was the work of the Inquisition, or if the reporters were simply that incompetent.

  I knelt and waited for Morvilind to acknowledge me.

  “Nadia Moran,” said Morvilind in his deep rasp. “You have returned.”

  “Yes, my lord,” I said, rising as he beckoned me closer.

  “You were successful?” said Morvilind, turning from his monitors. His cold, dead eyes regarded me. Morvilind the Magebreaker, Rimethur had called him, and the Jarl had claimed that Morvilind had been the one to lead the Elves to Earth. I wondered how many people like me he had killed over the centuries. If he killed me today, he might not even recall it in ten years. It would be like killing an insect to him.

  Morvilind the Magebreaker…and now Morvilind sent me all over the United States to steal things.

  Why?

  A question for another day.

  “Yes, my lord,” I said, and I drew out the Ringbyrne Amulet and handed it to him. Morvilind took the amulet, turned it over a few times, and then nodded.

  “You have performed satisfactorily, child,” said Morvilind. It was the closest he would ever come to giving me a compliment. “I trust you were undiscovered?”

  “Neither Homeland Security nor the Inquisition found me,” I said, which was entirely true.

  A frown went over the gaunt face. “How did you manage it?”

  Alarm stirred in my mind. He didn’t usually care how I did it, so long as I was both successful and undiscovered. If he started asking too many questions…

  “I was lucky, my lord,” I said, which was also entirely true. “I was in the square, hoping to follow Rimethur to the Meridian-Kohler Hotel, disguise myself as a maid or a janitor, and steal the amulet when the opportunity presented itself. Then the Rebels started setting off bombs in the crowd. In the chaos, I was able to grab the amulet and run before Rimethur got a good look at me.” The Jarl had never seen my face. “I had to hide for a while, but once the Duke’s troops and Homeland Security started moving in, I was able to get out of the city without anyone chasing me.”

  “Very well,” said Morvilind. He tapped the amulet once more and set it upon the table. “You may go. I shall summon you when I require your skills once more.”

  “Did you know?” I said, before my brain could stop me.

  His frown returned, sharp with annoyance. “Know what?”

  “That the Rebels were going to try and assassinate Rimethur,” I said, “to try and drive a wedge between the frost giants and the High Queen.”

  “Do you take me for a fool, child?” said Morvilind. “Of course I did not know. You are a thief, not a warrior. Sending you into such a situation would be like trying to use a screwdriver as a sledgehammer. You would be killed, and it would be inconvenient to train your replacement at the moment.”

  “Thank you,” I said, hiding my discomfort.

  Morvilind seemed not to hear. “I suspected that the Rebels might try something, this is true. So did the Inquisition, for that matter. But I did not expect the Rebel vermin to act so boldly.” His frown deepened, though he wasn’t looking at me. “The High Queen has been too lenient with the humans, and time grows short. Time grows far too short, and I must…”

  He fell silent, and shook his head.

  “My lord?” I said.

  “That is not your concern,” said Morvilind. “Depart, and I shall summon you once I require you again.”

  He turned, and with that, the conversation was over.

  I bowed deeply and strode from the library, hiding my relief. He hadn’t asked too many questions, and he had no idea that I had met the Knight of Grayhold. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. Morvilind was powerful and clever and knowledgeable, but he was not omniscient. He didn’t know I had met the Knight. He didn’t know about my connection to Nicholas Connor.

  I could deceive him…and perhaps I could find a way to use that to save myself and Russell from him.

  Though I had no idea how.

  Still, it was a heartening thought.

  ###

  A week later, I used one of my burner phones to arrange a meeting with Alexandra.

  I met her at a coffee house in Oconomowoc, a little lakeside town about halfway between Madison and Milwaukee. The lake meant that a lot of boaters and tourists came here, and so the town was full of coffee houses and wine bars and little boutique shops that catered to tourists. It was exactly the sort of place someone like Alexandra would come to take a few days off with her husband while he was on leave.

  If Homeland Security or the Inquisition was monitoring her, that was what they would think.

  Or so I hoped.

  “You’re alive,” said Alexandra as we sat down. She was wearing a yellow sundress and sandals, the sort of thing suitable for a stroll along the beach on a nice day. I was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and my motorcycle jacket. And running shoes, thank God.

  “Yep,” I said. The coffee was good, if overpriced. “I did my mission and I got out. How about you?”

  “I talked to some people in Homeland Security,” said Alexandra. “Even one Knight of the Inquisition. They only had a few questions for me, and it felt like a formality. They seemed to know everything they wanted to know already. I think one of the Rebels must have flipped and told them everything.”

  “That seems pretty likely,” I said, thinking of Rogomil’s phone. I hated Punishment Day videos, but I had watched this week’s crop nonetheless. Eighty-six Rebels had been convicted of the attack on Madison and executed, the beheadings recorded and made available on the Internet. I recognized most of the men from Rogomil’s band of fake Homeland Security officers.

  In way, since I had stolen Rogomil’s phone, I was directly responsible for their deaths.

  I did not regret that in the slightest.

  But both Sergei Rogomil and Anton had not appeared in the videos. Maybe the Inquisition had taken them prisoner for further interrogation.

  Maybe they had gotten away.

  I would have to keep looking over my shoulder. Thought that wasn’t anything new. I already lived in a state of paranoid vigilance.

  “Did your husband make it through okay?” I said.

  “He did,” said Alexandra, smiling a little. “He was really worried once he heard what had happened, so once Homeland Security said I could go, I decided to take some time off and spend it with Robert.”

  I grinned. “Did he like that ridiculous underwear?”

  Alexandra turned a bright shade of red as she stammered out something, which answered the question all on its own.

  I handed her a small card with a phone number. “If you get in trouble, call me.”

  Alexandra frowned. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Trouble,” I said. “Something you couldn’t tell the Duke or Homeland Security. I owe you one, and I repay my debts.”

  Alexandra looked puzzled, but she took the card. “What did I do?”

  “You saved my lif
e,” I said. “Not the sort of thing I forget.”

  And I felt guilty. I had almost murdered her in cold blood, and I had almost abandoned her in Grayhold. Maybe this would make up for it someday, or at least salve my conscience a little.

  “All right,” said Alexandra, tucking the card in her purse. “Thank you, Irina. For my life.” She smiled. “I should probably go. I left Robert at the hunting store, and he’s liable to buy enough ammunition to shoot every deer in Wisconsin.”

  “Goodbye, Alexandra,” I said. “Take care of yourself.”

  I stood on the sidewalk and watched her go, and felt a pang of jealousy. She would go have a pleasant day her husband, and maybe during his leave she would get pregnant. Alexandra would have a home and a family and children, and I would not.

  Still. I was alive, and I wasn’t beaten yet. That had to count for something.

  I made up my mind and walked to my motorcycle. I would head for Milwaukee and visit my brother and the Marneys. I would spend the night. Hell, maybe I would even let them take me to church.

  Certainly there were worse fates that could have befallen me.

  Epilogue

  At one in the morning in the town of Williston, North Dakota, the man who called himself Corvus moved through the crowd filling the bar.

  It was a rough bar. The oil fields of North Dakota had been destroyed during the Conquest and abandoned for years after, but they had reopened a century ago and had been worked ever since. The men filling the bar were mostly young, mostly drunk, and accustomed to rigorous physical labor and defending themselves. The only women were the bartenders, with tight shirts, fixed smiles, and hard eyes, and a few women scattered about the crowd who were quite obviously prostitutes.

  Corvus could have killed them all without working up a sweat.

  He wouldn’t, though. He was a Shadow Hunter, not a common murderer, and a man could not become a Shadow Hunter without learning self-control in the most brutal fashion possible. His Shadowmorph stirred within him, sensing the life energy that filled the bar, but Corvus ignored it.

  Tonight, he hunted for a different sort of prey.

  He said a quiet prayer, asking God to guide him, and stepped into the street. It was a hot, muggy night, and streetlamps threw pools of light across the concrete of the sidewalk. Dusty jeeps and mud-caked pickup trucks lined the street, and music filtered into the night from the surrounding bars.

  A dark figure vanished into an alley.

  Corvus quickened his pace, moving in absolute silence.

  The alley was dim, but to his enhanced eyes, it was as clear as day. A tall man stood there, gaunt and severe, clad in a black suit. His deep black eyes turned to Corvus, and he smiled, his mouth filling with jagged black fangs.

  That was all the time Corvus needed to call his Shadowmorph into the form of a blade and strike.

  The disguised anthrophage’s body slumped to the ground, the yellow-eyed head rolling away.

  Corvus knelt and sorted through the pockets of the anthrophage’s suit, and found what he sought. It was a small golden medallion, adorned with the stylized squid symbol of the Dark Ones.

  Of course, it wasn’t really made of gold, and his Shadowmorph writhed with fury at the touch of the thing.

  Corvus nodded to himself, tucked the medallion into the back pocket of his jeans, and departed before anyone could discover the carcass in the alley. Let the local Homeland Security branch puzzle over it.

  He was getting closer to finding the mysterious magic-using thief who had called herself Katerina Annovich. She might be the link the Shadow Hunters had sought for a century, a way to find the dangerous man who called himself the Forerunner.

  The man who had founded a dozen different cults to the Dark Ones in as many nations.

  Now it was a race. Either Corvus would find Katerina Annovich before the cultists of the Dark Ones did…or the cultists would find her first and kill her.

  Corvus hurried into the night, intent on his mission.

  THE END

  Thank you for reading CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER. Look for Nadia's next adventure, CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST, to appear in late 2015 or early 2016. If you liked the book, please consider leaving a review at your ebook site of choice. To receive immediate notification of new releases, sign up for my newsletter, or watch for news on my Facebook page.

  Other books by the author

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  MAZAEL CRAVENLOCK is a wandering knight, fearless in battle and masterful with a sword.

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  Read Demonsouled for free. Mazael's adventures continue in Soul of Tyrants, Soul of Serpents, Soul of Dragons, Soul of Sorcery, Soul of Skulls, and Soul of Swords, along with the short stories The Wandering Knight, The Tournament Knight, and The Dragon's Shadow. Get the first three books bundled together in Demonsouled Omnibus One.

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  Read Child of the Ghosts for free. Caina's adventures continue in Ghost in the Flames, Ghost in the Blood, Ghost in the Storm, Ghost in the Stone, Ghost in the Forge, Ghost in the Ashes, Ghost in the Mask, and Ghost in the Surge, along with the short stories Ghost Aria, Ghost Claws, Ghost Omens
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  Read The Testing for free. Rachelis's trials continue in The Assassins, The Blood Shaman, The High Demon, The Burning Child, The Outlaw Adept, The Black Paladin, and The Tomb of Baligant. Read the entire series in The Third Soul Omnibus One and The Third Soul Omnibus Two.