Game of Towers and Treachery (The Shadow's Apprentice Book 2)

by Harper Alexander

  He fetched the ledger and returned with great haste, taking up station at Mosscrow’s desk and uncorking the inkwell. With palpable anticipation, he dipped the quill in the ink and held it over the ledger, looking to Mosscrow to await instruction on his first notation.

  Still clueless as to what they were witnessing.

  Crow wondered if he should continue to mess with him. I’ll have him tallying snowflakes into the late afternoon! He barely resisted a guffaw.

  The pastries and brandy arrived shortly. Crow stuffed a decadently-iced cinnamon bun into his mouth, tearing off a hearty chunk. A sticky grin glazed his lips. “Let the games begin.”

  6

  The Long Shadow of Towers

  “The Master of the Shadows doesn’t sleep,” insisted a tired little boy intent on following the Shadowmaster’s example. But everyone had to sleep, sooner or later, somewhere amidst the relentless pace of the city. Even the Master of the Shadows.

  *

  Clevwrith watched from a sky-scraping ledge as the last of the excess militia rode north through the city. It had taken an extra day for the outfit posted in the South Quarter to receive word of their retreat and pack up camp, but once initiated it was a swift departure, the synchronized clopping of shod hooves and flash of gold uniforms crushing down the main avenue like a majestic, molten river.

  After so many weeks of military occupation, the soldiers’ exodus left Fairoway feeling like a ghost town. Too quiet. Too still.

  And no sooner had the last, braided draft-horse tail disappeared into the northern wilderness than a whispering snowfall came on their heels, officiating the eerie, dormant ambiance.

  Clevwrith let out a frosty sigh, releasing tension he hadn’t realized had nestled between his shoulder-blades. Had he been holding his breath, praying there would be a break in the swells of opposition sent after him? Of course not. But he would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little, well…tired.

  Things had become increasingly complicated of late. He relished the challenge, naturally, but there was this nagging feeling lurking just beyond his resolve that warned he was nearing his limit. A weariness he was unaccustomed to creeping in from the edges and threatening to sink into his bones if he didn’t slow down and catch a moment’s rest.

  There were just so many elements to keep up with, now. Guards to elude, beasts to evade, crafty ex-partners to watch out for, schemes to thwart, mistakes to avoid, pawns to nudge about the board, detours to take – to other countries, no less – missions to intercept, wars to play with…

  Emotions to grapple with.

  The Master of the Shadows had never considered himself moody, but lately, he couldn’t for the life of him stop swinging between extremes. One minute, he felt the bite of betrayal like a knife in the gut, renting him open and letting the dead of winter into his core. A bitter, cold, breathless ache of disbelief. The next minute – a warm swell of pride, like a sunrise he had painted coming to life and touching his face. It was a glorious thing, when muse turned to masterpiece and took on life of its own.

  And yet in the next moment, a flash of contempt. How could she? After everything he had done for her. Everything he had given her. He had given her the world on a platter, and with bright eyes she had seized it and sunk her claws into it and turned the world into a cruel, lonely, dark place.

  Which brought him to the next feeling. Loss. A nonsensical reaction, in light of losing something that had proven itself cruel. Wasn’t it then not a loss at all, but for the best?

  Should he not be rejoicing, bidding her good riddance?

  Retaliating in kind?

  ‘You’ve become cruel, Clevwrith,’ Despiris’s words came back to him. Maybe he had. But that was rich, coming from her.

  Then he would realize how tightly he was clenching his jaw, and guilt thawed straight through the bitterness. Immediately, he rebuked any such sentiments, appalled he could even think that way. Despiris deserved not an ounce of contempt. Not when she was only doing what he had taught her.

  And there it was again – the pride.

  It was a dizzying, disorienting cycle. For one used to a level-headed existence, composed and analytical to a fault, the distraction had quickly become a nuisance.

  For the first time since being thrust into his premature debut as a Shadhi when he was a child, the Master of the Shadows felt like he was one pothole shy of being thrown off his game. He was flirting with uncharted territory.

  With finding himself out of his element.

  But it was not time to admit that. Not just yet. For there were temporary solutions for his afflictions, still. Solutions like sleep. Everything seemed simpler after a good day’s rest.

  Eager to stave off the encroaching weight of his weariness, Clevwrith left his snow-dusted ledge to return to his lair in the Cob. It seemed Despiris had taken to heart his prod regarding her independent efforts and bragging rights thereof, for there was no sign of beastly sentries prowling his alleys today. Either he’d anticipated her intentions or manipulated them; regardless, it was a welcome relief, paving the way for a much-needed nap.

  He paused before the image of his immaculately-made bed, wondering when he had last slept.

  A vision of Despiris flitted through his memory, pressed beneath him atop that button-tufted, black satin bedspread. A smile tugged fondly at his lips at the memory. She had snuck into his room to play-ambush him, one of many attempts to catch him off-guard. Of course, he had sensed her coming, awakening to wrestle her beneath him before she got the upper hand. To her credit, she had managed to pilfer one of his daggers in the scuffle, and a delightful stalemate of holding blades to each other’s throats had ensued.

  Not the average man’s idea of a good time in bed, perhaps, but Clevwrith held the memory close, somehow innocent and provocative at once.

  And there it was again. The loneliness. The loss.

  Clevwrith climbed into bed alone and stared up at the dusky canopy, glazing his mind to the memory of her warmth, her laughter – that keen spark in her eyes that greeted him eagerly every night, thirsting for whatever the Master of the Shadows would give her.

  Gone were the days when she needed him to call the shots, and he was going to have to accept that. The transition had already been in motion, initiated when he declared her graduated from Shadeling to Shadhi.

  You cannot hold a shadow in your hands. Grasp at the darkness, and it will slip through your fingers every time.

  She was not a thing to possess. She might always be his little Shadeling, in his heart, but at some point he had to admit that the shadow she cast from the tower in which she’d elevated herself might soon stretch longer even than his.

  And he could say that she had cheated, using a tower to cast such a shadow, but the truth was…he’d never believed in cheating.

  All was fair in meddling and mischief.

  And so he could do naught but swing back to pride, cherishing the time they’d had together and looking forward to the next time she came calling. His last thought as weariness finally overcame him was that if she caught him off-guard while he slept and ambushed him in bed for another delightful tussle in the sheets…all the better.

  7

  Glass and Iron

  “Once you realize travel does not have to be linear simply because it is presented as such by the streets laid out for that purpose, your environment will explode into a multidimensional playground that transcends the world as most people experience it.” – A Shadhi lesson.

  *

  Transforming from a creature of the night into an agent who didn’t discriminate, adapting to ungodly hours of the day, was both Despiris’s least favorite and proudest aspect of her new role. She was conditioned to shy away from the noise, to shrink away from the people, to squint against the glare of the sun and keep to the shade as much as possible. But when she forced herself not to – when she consciously rooted herself in the midst of the hustle and bustle, letting the clamor assault her until it rolled off of her,
letting the teeming crowds part around her, letting her eyes adjust until the sun warmed her face and chased away the winter chill…

  In that moment she realized she was omnipotent. A full chameleon. A true double-agent.

  When you could blend in anywhere, you didn’t need the shadows to disappear into.

  It wasn’t as if she and Clevwrith had never worked during the day, but such instances had always been as a last resort or brief interim. And always uncomfortable.

  Now, Despiris could numb herself to her surroundings, quieting the din and willing the people’s eyes to slide off her, until all life around her was an inconsequential blur, and all she heard was her own heartbeat, her own breaths, echoing inside of herself.

  It was safe, inside herself. No one could reach her there.

  Having quieted the world around her, she went in search of Clevwrith. Her initial tactic of the day was to ambush him in his sleep. As a habitually nocturnal creature, he should be tucked away snoring himself into oblivion right about now. Of course, he would be too smart to make it that easy on her, but on the off chance he was assuming that she was assuming he wouldn’t stick to his old routine and could therefore get away with it, she had to try. Just to rule it out.

  She wasn’t surprised to not find him in his bed. The black-satin bedclothes had nary a wrinkle, as if he hadn’t slept there in weeks. If he was smart, he hadn’t, but then he’d always been meticulous about keeping his room in order, so it was impossible to say.

  Since she was there, she took a peek about the room. Nothing was out of place, not a quill left on the desk or tunic left on the floor. No signs of life. Skimming the desk with a fingertip and rubbing her thumb and finger together, however, she found not a speck of dust, either.

  He had to have been here recently. Perhaps he hadn’t bothered to vacate his beloved haunt at all, even knowing she’d clued in the Shadowhunters to his general whereabouts. Even knowing she would come looking for him there.

  And why should he? She recalled the last time she’d tried to surprise him in his sleep. She hadn’t exactly come out on top. No pun intended.

  A blush crept up her neck.

  A strange urge overcame her, then, and although she scoffed at herself and resisted momentarily, she ultimately decided no harm could come of it. No one else was there to see, after all. What did it matter if she climbed into the Shadowmaster’s bed?

  Just for a moment, she promised herself, skirting the gothic post at the corner and trailing her fingers over the smooth satin bedspread before seating herself quietly on the edge. See? No harm. Lying back with a sigh, she stared up at the canopy. The Shadowmaster’s perfume enveloped her, the bedclothes saturated with it. It was like lying in a satiny pool of Clevwrith. She relished it, closing her eyes and breathing in.

  Then caught herself.

  What was she doing? This was foolish.

  Eyes flashing back open, she sat up. Well. Not here, she decreed, returning to her original objective. Just in case, she ascended through the stacks to the green house, and while the flora and fauna were well tended, Clevwrith wasn’t there either.

  Despiris took in the panoramic views of the city before turning to leave, spotting a single wilted rose just before starting her descent back through the stacks. You missed a spot, Clevwrith. Old habits saw her fetch the sheers before she could stop herself, going to clip off the expired bloom. With a satisfying snip, brown petals fell to the ground.

  Since she was already there, sheers in hand, Despiris switched tactics and preened the bush for the best-looking bloom, snipping off that one as well. She returned to Clevwrith’s bedchamber long enough to leave the rose on his bed, just so he would know she’d been there.

  Then it was back to ground level. Since she didn’t know where to look next, she decided to run one of their old training routines through the Cob. It was a good way to pick a route, and to cover a lot of ground quickly. Muscle memory propelled her gleefully through her paces, and she scaled, leaped, and flipped her way through the crumbling tiers of the Cobweb District.

  Still no sign of the reclusive Shadowmaster.

  Refusing to be discouraged, Despiris dismissed her empty-handed search thus far as a mere warm-up. She’d always known she would have to try harder than that. So, then. How to take it to the next level?

  You have to think like him, Des. Which he spent that last half a decade conditioning you to do, so it shouldn’t be that hard.

  If I were the Master of the Shadows, where would I be, right now?

  She had wandered out of the Cob, into the Warehouse District, when it came to her, clear as gleaming crystal.

  I would be following me.

  Goosebumps prickled her arms. Not letting on that she had thought of it, she kept her stride even until she rounded the next bend, and then all at once she lurched to a halt, spun on her heel, and sprinted back the way she had come.

  Barreling around the corner she had just traversed, she readied herself to tackle anything that resembled a man, knowing that if Clevwrith was there, he would probably be mostly camouflaged along the shadowed edges. And she was right to think that, for no sooner had she squared herself with the alley than the vaguest impression of a shape that didn’t belong leered out of the shadows to tackle her instead.

  Despiris went down under the dark blur that was Clevwrith. He rolled her quite discourteously across the ground, awarding her only the briefest, rocky glimpse of his face in the commotion.

  And then he robbed her of even that, his face dipping too close to focus on as he spun her over, planting a rude kiss on her lips before using his momentum to roll back off and bolt into the shadows on the opposite side of the alley.

  It happened in such a whirl that Despiris hardly even registered that the crude pressure against her lips had been a kiss until she had already climbed to her feet, searching dizzily for her quarry down the alley. Even then, she didn’t have time to let it sink in, to properly react. Later she might sit in her room, touching her bruised lips and sorting through the confused butterflies, but now–

  Clevwrith was disappearing into another alley.

  She took off after him, refusing to let him give her the slip like the first time.

  At the crossroads, she skidded into the adjoining lane just in time to watch Clevwrith leap from one drainpipe to another to gain altitude across the width of the alley, catching the lip onto the rooftops on his next pass. Hoisting himself aloft in one fluid motion, he vanished overhead.

  Arms pumping to bring herself up to speed, Despiris echoed his path to the rooftops, bounding from one creative stepping-stone to the next with similar ease. Hauling herself up over the ledge in his wake, her gaze darted wildly for his form. He was an easy target, exposed under the afternoon sun. No shadows or alleys to disappear into now, ay, Clevwrith? Her moment of gloating was short-lived, however; the rooftops in the Warehouse District were flat, and at a dead sprint he made quick work of their current platform, tucking his feet up to fly across an alley gap to the next.

  Despiris wasn’t so naïve that she thought she could outrun him on the straightaways. Illuminated by the sun he might be, but he’d known what he was doing, moving the chase up a tier.

  Prime opportunity for a winged accomplice to swoop in, she lamented, but didn’t allow herself to dally far down that path. She would catch the bloody Master of the Shadows herself, or she wouldn’t catch him at all. She respected him too much to take him down for anything less than her own glory.

  Charging after him at a feverish pace, she threw herself across the void to his building, crumpling into a roll on contact. She was up just as quickly, using her momentum for a seamless transition.

  Clevwrith zagged ahead to skirt a vast skylight, then jumped another gap and teetered between a grid-pattern of panes on the next rooftop. Suddenly every rooftop sported skylights in various shapes and sizes. A quick glance down through the glass showed Despiris a hazy crush of vegetation.

  The Greenhouse District.r />
  The Shadhi’s safe path had become a precarious maze, slowing the chase considerably.

  A treacherous notion came to Despiris. Clevwrith avoided the panes because he was obviously afraid they wouldn’t bear his weight. But would her smaller stature prove too light to crack the glass?

  If she could tread safely across skylights, she could avoid the tedious diversions and cut straight to him.

  It was the only option she could think of to gain ground.

  But the idea didn’t come without a sickening rush of trepidation, her history with skylights not exactly one devoid of trauma. They were, after all, the reason she’d first been caught by the king’s men.

  The glare of sun on glass was a visceral, slashing knife in her memory. The terrifying, instant blindness. The nauseating shift in gravity as she pitched down the slant of the rooftop. The panic as she scrambled to find purchase, to get her bearings. Feeling like a wounded animal dragging itself away from a charging predator.

  The horrifying weightlessness as she fell over the edge.

  She shoved the traumatic memory away, reminding herself the glare of the sun had been her downfall. Not the structural integrity of the glass itself. A small voice of reason in the back of her mind squeaked that if this bright idea backfired, it could be just as disastrous – even more so – than her first skylight mishap. But if the risk paid off, it would be a daring, legendary move indeed.

  Be it adrenaline or recklessness or the fact that she’d fallen prey to the infamous obsession of catching the Shadowmaster, she committed to the gambit.

  Instead of circumnavigating the next skylight, she sprinted directly across it.

  Her blood sang as solid ground vanished beneath her feet, a breathless gasp of nothingness telling her brain she should be falling. Premonitions of shattering glass and sickening falls and shards raining down around her pummeled her composure, but she’d already skimmed halfway across the pane. The only way off now was to make it to the other side.