Forgive me, she stopped herself from snapping, for being concerned for your well-being. He was right. She should have known better.
Glossing over any signs of concern, Despiris got to her feet. “If you do have wings, I suggest you try them out sooner, rather than later. Seeing as I am liable to fly in on my choice of mythical beast any time I please.”
“Has Lady Verrikose taken to sharing her menagerie? That doesn’t sound like her.”
“Lady Verrikose answers to me. I am the authority among Shadowhunters, after all.”
“Is that what they’re calling themselves?” Clevwrith asked with a touch of amusement. “Cute.”
“They have to call themselves something. I think it has a ring to it.”
“I suppose ‘The Buffoon Brigade’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. ‘Pointless Posse’? ‘Clueless Cavalry’?” he suggested, mock-serious.
“If that’s what you think of me,” Despiris replied tonelessly. There was no sense taking his words personally; it was banter, nothing more. She knew his real opinion of her. While it might have become tinged by the cold shallows of bitterness, she knew that was a tide that would go back out, dragging its saltiness with it. It was a swell. A temporary frigidness lapping at the shore between them.
In the end, Despiris knew Clevwrith would swim across the entire ocean for her, if she asked him to.
And she knew he didn’t really think there was anything ‘cute’ about the vicious gargoyle that had all but torn them both to shreds at Lady Verrikose’s behest, back when the Shadowmaster and his ‘Shadeling’ had both been victims of the hunt.
The silhouette that was Clevwrith crossed its arms, leaning back against the archway frame to get comfortable. Despiris wished she could catch a glimpse of his face, just one, to better read him. “I think if you wanted to get lumped in with that joke of an operation, you would have brought back-up tonight. But you didn’t ride in on a great, winged stallion, did you? You didn’t let that rabid swan of a noblewoman piggyback into this exchange through the eyes of any beastly sidekicks. You came…all by your lonesome. Because this isn’t about the ‘cause’ to you. It’s about the two of us. About who is the better shadow.”
He was right, of course. What would be the point of beating him, if it wasn’t with her own mind, her own two hands? She did want to know who deserved the title of Shadowmaster.
“Do you really think you can beat me?” Clevwrith wanted to know. “Do you really think you can best the Master of the Shadows at his own game?”
Despiris shrugged. “You told me you taught me everything you know. That I’m just like you. I am merely testing that claim.” There is nothing you can’t do, his words echoed in her mind. Easily. “So, yes; you were a very good teacher, Clevwrith. And I do believe I will beat you at your own game.”
Shifting ever so slightly, Clevwrith let a sliver of moonlight illuminate his eyes for the first time. His pale blue gaze seared out of the darkness, giving her an intense once-over to measure her resolve. Then he shifted back, darkness sliding again over the top half of his face and leaving his smirk in the spotlight instead. “Just not tonight,” he teased playfully.
And then he flowed backward into the darkness of the archway as if sucked by a vortex, and was gone.
Despiris tensed, ready to bolt after him. But the void yawned before her, the ledge around the chamber too precarious for a quick crossing. Just like that, she knew he had gained too much of a head start.
He was gone.
And in his wake, a velvet hush fell, and with it – snow. The first snowfall of winter drifted down over Fairoway and through the gaping roof overhead, dancing like ethereal magic into the void. Despiris held out a gloved hand, catching a few snowflakes on her dark palm. The contrast of white against black triggered her imagination, blurring into the metaphoric likeness of a chess board. A recurring motif in her one-track mind.
It was all she could see, everywhere she looked.
The arena.
The stepping-stones for her next move.
In her absent-minded hiatus, she didn’t notice the snowflakes floating back into the air until they hovered a few inches over her palm.
The chess board in her mind evaporated. Transcended.
Yes, Clevwrith had taught her everything he knew, taught her to think like him, and that was one reason she knew she could catch him.
But this – this was another. For she had discovered somewhere along the way that she was her own kind of creature, with her own tricks up her sleeve.
Tricks even the Master of the Shadows would not see coming.
5
The Games
“I hope you have enjoyed the first segment of this season’s Wild Goose Chase, charitably hosted by yours truly. Sleep well and enjoy the view.” – A letter taunting the king’s advisor, during a city-wide sweep for the Shadowmaster.
*
Lord Mosscrow, chief advisor to the king, stormed through the palace halls like an avalanche in a black cloak. When he’d gone to debrief his battalion that morning, he’d ended up debriefing naught but a gaggle of pigeons clucking and ogling about the courtyard, his previously teeming operation decidedly absent. They were just…gone.
Poof.
Vanished into thin air.
And he should like to know the meaning of their exodus. Troops didn’t just disappear into the woodwork.
He encountered the Shadhi girl before he reached the throne room. She was tucked into one of the deep-set windowsills in the grand hallway, reading some jewel-encrusted, crumbling ancient tome in a pall of wintry sunlight.
He approached her before he lost his nerve, shooing Hanzel out of the coveted patch of sunshine that stretched only so far onto the cold marble floor beside her. The guard stepped wordlessly aside, taking up station next to the nearest pillar instead. Mosscrow took his place at the end of the sallow ray, clearing his throat to command the Shadhi girl’s attention.
Unhurriedly, she pried her gaze from the parchment trenches and peered over the top edge of her tome. “Lord Mosscrow,” she greeted without enthusiasm. “I didn’t see you there.”
Don’t patronize me, you little– Quick his snide opinions of the shadow girl might be, but they were just as quick to balk at the unsettling intensity of her gaze, squirming back into the recesses from whence they frothed. Those nocturnal eyes seemed to penetrate straight to the deepest, darkest corners of his soul.
He finished clearing his throat, not quite sure it had worked the first time. Then he blazed on with his objective, before his courage waned. “What is the meaning of this nonsense afoot – this magic trick of making all my Shadowhunters disappear?!”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
He doubted very much there was anything that transpired on palace grounds that she didn’t know about. But he didn’t mind the chance to fume just a little bit more, his curdling fury escaping in a terrier-like snarl, “The barracks are empty!”
Unperturbed, the Spywoman let her tome rest in her lap. “My lord, is that accusation I hear in your tone? You speak as if I am the one in charge.”
“You are the one in charge!” he snapped before he could stop himself.
Despiris simpered, mock-flattered. “Well. Then perhaps we should take this to the throne room, so you might address me on my throne. But I have a feeling you’d rather the king not hear of such treasonous claims.”
His fury deepened and cooled at once, as he saw he was treading in dangerous territory. The Queen of Shadows might be siding with the law at the moment, but in switching sides she had shown a frightening affinity for betrayal. He should know better than to cross her, especially when she had become so cozy with his superior and king.
Tread carefully, Crow. A secret weapon she might be, but such necessary evils were employed for the very reason that they were dangerous.
He managed, just barely, to master his composure. To meet her on the battleground of wily dialogue. “Don’t speak
as if you don’t consider everything you sit on a throne, my lady. That windowsill is your throne. Every precarious ledge in the city is your throne. That high-horse, that black stallion of night that parades around under your elevated bum, is your throne.”
“You are vulgar, my lord. Shall we also bring before his Majesty your verbal indiscretions regarding my hindquarters?”
“Please. Test the waters and see whose word the king trusts more, when it comes down to ‘he-said, she-said’ – the word of the kingdom’s second-best trickster or a trusted advisor who has served the royal family for generations.”
For the first time, Despiris blinked, needing a nano-second to coin an eloquent response. “I would not be quite so cocky, my lord Crow. Seeing as I believe you mean: the word of the kingdom’s second-best trickster against the word of an advisor whose reputation has of late been questioned as senile and prone to ridiculousness.”
It was Mosscrow’s turn to blink. “I beg your pardon.”
Despiris snapped her tome shut with a dusty boom, startling Crow. He fought the urge to sneeze like an idiot as the Spywoman rose from the windowsill. Suddenly she was far too close, crowding him out of his patch of sunshine. He stumbled back a step, hating himself for it, and gritted his teeth with resolve to hold his ground there. He would not be intimidated by a scrawny waif who only came up to his chin.
Very well, his browbone.
Middle of the forehead.
Whatever.
And ‘scrawny’ was not really the proper term to describe her lithe, muscle-hardened form.
But the part about being intimidated remained the same. He would not be affected by her!
“Your infantry is gone,” Despiris informed him, “because they have been reassigned back to a border you stripped of all protection in a misguided effort to overwhelm a single man with an army. The border was left exposed, vulnerable, and would have been imminently invaded by war-mongering Tricovan opportunists determined to unseat your beloved, distracted king from his throne. Your troops are missing because they have gone back to where they belong, lest Queen Alabastra be allowed to continue harboring the frighteningly accurate notion that she would meet with no resistance if she were to attack.”
Mosscrow sputtered. What…? That couldn’t be right. Queen Alabastra was far too busy in the wake of her husband’s untimely death trying to prove herself as queen, trying to gain the favor of her people, to get her hands dirty with the ugly business of war…
Unless…
Unless she was failing to win the hearts of her people and had resorted to colder, more forceful ways to gain power.
And perhaps Mosscrow would have caught wind of such designs, if he was focused on court intrigue like a good advisor should be, rather than chasing shadows through the streets like a fool vigilante.
That he hadn’t known about such schemes was a blow to his pride. But even more detrimental – the fact that everyone else did.
“Where do you think I have been these past weeks?” Despiris posed, apparently just getting started.
“I…I’m sure I don’t…” Mosscrow shrugged, honestly flabbergasted that he hadn’t seen it. “In some shadow, I suppose?”
For an instant, something almost like pity flashed through Despiris’s dark eyes. Then they hardened again. “I was sent to Tricova to determine the validity of the rumors. Rumors that somehow slipped your notice. You are off your game, Lord Mosscrow. And everybody knows it. If you are not careful, the king whom you are so certain will side with you because of seniority…will have no choice but to replace you because of mere practicality.”
She might as well have slapped him in the face, so sharp was the sting of her words. And yet, for once, Mosscrow was not overcome by the urge to slap her back.
More the urge to slap himself.
You fool. He would never forgive himself if he failed the king in such a way. Had he really become so consumed…
“Don’t trouble yourself overly much, my lord Crow,” Despiris soothed. “For the solution is before us, a simple fix, and then you need not worry about your position. Simply stay in your arena, and I will stay in mine – each of us left to our own expertise, without call to interfere with one another. Return to your duties advising the king on the diverse spectrum of matters that will surely require the full breadth of your concentration, and I will catch the Master of the Shadows. You will get your satisfaction twofold – by becoming once again indispensable to his Majesty, and living vicariously through me as I see to your lifelong, insatiable desire to purge the streets of that insufferable nuisance.”
It was a low blow, to be sure, giving up the reins of the hunt, but when she put it like that… Well, he would not go as far as to believe she actually cared about him remaining in the king’s good graces, as much as she cared about him staying out of her way, but there was a kernel of attractiveness to what she suggested. A certain luxury to the idea of retiring from the fray and watching from his plush tower while another did the dirty work. If the outcome was the same, he could relinquish some of the operation’s responsibility, surely?
The brunt of it, anyway.
Would he truly be happy, living the experience vicariously through the Shadhi girl? Well, that was debatable, but he knew one thing – he could not abide losing his position as the king’s right-hand man.
He could not fall prey to the Shadowmaster’s most passive tactic, letting the obsession prove just as much a thief as the fiend himself. One had to be careful, chasing shadows, lest he get lost in the darkness without ever even coming close to his quarry.
He was being given the opportunity to rest. To regroup. Without the rascal slipping beyond his radar.
Perhaps he should be thanking Despiris.
No, I don’t think we will go that far. But he was old. He was not going to lie to himself and say the opportunity to hang back, to kick off his swampy stockings and elevate his bunion-barnacled feet did not appeal to him. He could watch the game like a bit of sport from the plush pedestal of a chaise lounge, sipping expensive brandy and laughing through mouthfuls of puff pastries as the Shadowmaster scrambled like a dog through the streets.
And, really, was it not in the end the smarter technique, finding a way to expend the least amount of effort for the greatest result? In that way, he could gloat about outsmarting the Shadowmaster.
Could pretend he’d been banking on the Spywoman’s betrayal, and subsequent command of his operation, all along.
Yes, he could use a lackey doing his dirty work. Let her think she was hedging him out of his own operation. Ha.
He relaxed suddenly. Completely.
A smile that disturbed even him dribbled across his face like grease in a tilted frying pan. “An agreeable solution, indeed. Godspeed, then, Lady of the Night. Happy hunting.”
And with that he turned to stride haughtily down the hall, pausing only to keep from running smack into a pillar before carrying on his way.
*
He ordered the brandy and pastries straightaway, and had the servants arrange a chaise lounge before his vast window. With a glorious view of the city and the great bit of sport about to play out there, he kicked up his feet and made himself comfortable, a gusty sigh of contentment blubbering out of him.
Presently, his aide Osprey appeared, stumbling in with a sense of great urgency and dusting poppy seeds from his morning muffin off the front of his robes. He composed himself before his master. “You sent for me, milord?”
“Indeed. Fetch a ledger, and a quill with which to keep score.”
“…Score, my lord?” Puzzled, Osprey glanced out the window, as if hoping to spot what had Mosscrow so engrossed.
But the Lord Advisor’s gaze had gone distant, his imagination tracing the antics to come through the far, unseen corners of the city. “Yes. It has begun.”
“Forgive me, my lord, but… What is it, precisely? Which has begun?”
“Oh, come off it, Osprey. What do you think?”
“I’
m sure I don’t…” Osprey peered again out the window, but found no more clues than the first time.
Mosscrow tossed a hand up in exasperation. “Are you, Osprey? Are you really sure of anything?”
Osprey hung his head. “No, my lord. I am not.”
“Then I shall enlighten you.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
“But first,” Mosscrow said with a devious grin, a rare playful mood coming over him, “do you have any guesses?” He could practically feel the frantic little wheels of Osprey’s mind churning, searching for a kernel of insight.
“The…loss of your hair, my lord?”
A glower clouded Crow’s brief dalliance with amusement. “I do hope that was a joke, Osprey.”
Osprey humbled, eyes falling quickly to the floor. “Of course it was, my lord.”
“Very good.” Crow resisted the insecure urge to tug his hood over his pasty bald head. “Anyway, no – what has begun is the greatest game of all time.”
Osprey stole a glance at the decorative chess board that rested on a corner table, where the pieces stood frozen in the middle of a game. Crow played against himself, every now and then, moving perhaps one or two pieces per session. It was a thinking tactic, nothing more – an exercise to stimulate the strategy sector of his brain. But Osprey seemed to catch on all at once, seeing it there.
“Would that be…a game of chess, my lord?” he concluded as if suddenly privy to the conversation.
Rolling his eyes, Crow began to wonder why he had even invited Osprey for the festivities. He was decidedly killing the mood. “No, you fool. It is the game of shadows.”
Osprey’s brief spark of comprehension fizzled, the poor halfwit wilting back into a state of fumbling ignorance. “I have…never heard of it.”
Mosscrow took pity on the grasping fellow for once. “No one has heard of it, Osprey. Don’t trouble yourself. Simply fetch the ledger, and bolster your spirits about the fact that you are about to witness history being made.”
Though still just as bewildered as when the exchange began, Osprey pursed his lips and decided against pressing the matter, contenting himself with an obedient nod. “Very good, my lord.”
Game of Towers and Treachery (The Shadow's Apprentice Book 2) Page 5
