Despiris recognized those eyes. Realized without surprise who the new candy-thief of Fairoway had been all along. “Hey!” she called, instinctively breaking away from Clevwrith to pursue the little fiend. No apprentice of hers was going to resort to an illustrious life of crime, if she had anything to say about it.
She’d barely started after him when it occurred to her she was abandoning her prime quarry. Clevwrith didn’t seem much interested in running, at the moment, but if he was smart he’d know there was a good chance they were only enjoying a brief interlude in their conflict. It was too much of an investment, and too complicated, to just evaporate because they’d let adrenaline get the best of them and shared a passionate moment together.
Wrestling her priorities into order, Despiris trailed off, letting Radu go. “Look what you’ve inspired,” she chided Clevwrith instead of pursuing the little thief. This was a prime example of why she’d grown to question the SFH lifestyle; Radu had always idolized the Shadowmaster, and here he was enterprising as his interpretation of the criminal mastermind he’d exemplified.
If she didn’t put an end to this, soon she’d be hunting him too.
Despiris turned back toward Clevwrith with a lecture on her tongue, but the words never manifested. For the alley before her was empty, nothing but a dozen scattered knives remaining as evidence of the fleeting tryst between shadows.
He had known.
Of course he had known. And he’d seen his window to make his escape.
Despiris nodded to herself in cynical resignation, acknowledging her negligence. She’d let her quarry divide her attention. Of course, they’d taken advantage, scattering in opposite directions while she was torn between them.
And just like that, she lost them both.
After everything she’d put herself and Clevwrith through tonight – the vicious extremes, the unprecedented last-resort sensationalism – she had utterly nothing to show for it.
Once again, the Master of the Shadows got away.
He was a creature of habit and no mistake.
28
Little Shadow
“There is a rampant new thief abroad, taking advantage of shops and stock-rooms left unattended, and streets left unpoliced. He is a peculiar creature, though – stealing mostly sweets and candy.” – King Isavor
*
Clevwrith knew the shadows in these parts, and it was easy to tell which shadow didn’t belong. It was a clever little shadow, no doubt ordinarily skilled in evading detection – just not when it was the Master of the Shadows pursuing it.
Admittedly Clevwrith was exhausted, and bedraggled, and soul-weary, and all he wanted to do was slither into the nearest hovel and curl up in the fetal position for the next week – maybe two – but he was keen enough to take a moment to track an amateur. Within a few alleys, he caught up to the terrified little thief. The poor fellow had panicked when he realized he was being followed, had disoriented himself down too many rapid twists and turns, and quickly abandoned his sacks to hide when the maze proved too confusing.
Reaching behind the stack of crates, Clevwrith grasped the little shadow by its collar and hauled it out for its reckoning. Gasping, the boy struggled, beating at Clevwrith’s hold with his scrawny fists.
Unfazed, Clevwrith seized one arm, then switched his hold on the boy’s collar to the other, subduing the child’s struggle and crouching to look him straight in the eye. “Cool it, sweet tooth.”
The boy went still.
Hiding his amusement, Clevwrith hooked a finger beneath the boy’s makeshift mask and stripped it off over his head.
“Hey!” The boy ducked away, trying to hide his face, but it was too late. Obstinately, he glared back at Clevwrith, opting for defiance in place of his dignity.
Inserting a finger into an eye hole, Clevwrith twirled the mask tauntingly around his digit, considering its craftsmanship. “A mask doesn’t do you much good, you know, if you leave a trail of candy right to your lair.”
The boy set his jaw. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No? You’re not the Candy Crook?”
“The what?” A flash of horror, then intrigue, crossed the boy’s face as he wondered whether or not that was what people had actually started calling him.
“The Champion of Chocolates?” Clevwrith asked, as if the boy had been living under a rock and ought to know his own claim to fame. “The Marauder of Macaroons?”
It took a moment of careful calculation, and then the boy concluded Clevwrith was having one over on him. “No one calls me those things.”
“No?”
“No. I’m the Master of the Shadows, you bug bully. So get off me before I summon the darkness.”
Suddenly Clevwrith had to try much harder to hide his amusement. He let a grave expression overcome him, pretending to pale at the suggestion. “You wouldn’t.”
“Oh yes, I would.” Gaining confidence, the boy drew himself up, eyes flashing fiercely. “Don’t test me, old man. A flick of the wrist, and you’ll learn what nightmares truly are. A snap of my fingers, and the roaches crawl out of the woodwork. The night’s a hungry beast, and I will let it devour you. When she’s done with your sorry hide, there will be nothing left of you but a cloak and pile of bones in an alley.”
Old man? Clevwrith wondered. The other stuff came through as an afterthought, nightmarish bravado having little effect on the true deviant of darkness. Despiris wasn’t kidding. I really have created a monster.
Clevwrith cleared his throat, appearing to consider his options carefully. “Well,” he concluded. “I wouldn’t want that, now, would I?”
“No. You wouldn’t.”
“There’s just…one problem.”
“What problem?”
“You see… I am the Master of the Shadows. And at a flick of my wrist, your worst nightmares come out to play. At a snap of my fingers, the roaches crawl out of the woodwork. The night is a hungry beast, boy, but it prefers prey with a little sugar in its veins.”
The boy paled in earnest, looking at Clevwrith in a new light. Then he sneered. “You’re not the Master of the Shadows.”
“No? And just why not?”
“I saw you kissing Des. She would never kiss the Master of the Shadows.”
“And why is that?”
“I told her I wanted to be just like you. And she wouldn’t let me.”
“She implied I was a bad man, didn’t she?”
“The baddest.”
While Clevwrith suspected that was an exaggeration on the boy’s part, purely to insult him, he didn’t argue. “She’s not wrong, you know.”
“So? I’m a bad man too.” Scowling hideously at him, the boy tried to pass himself off as threatening, even as he trembled in Clevwrith’s grasp.
For a time, they both stared obstinately at one another, and then Clevwrith cracked a grin. “Radu, right?”
“How do you know?”
“I know things.”
“A likely story!”
Clevwrith couldn’t help but laugh at the boy’s amateur yet undying spirit. “I’d be careful if I were you. When a boy gets too big for his britches, he never knows when he might split them up the bum just walking down the street.”
Radu sulked. “I’m not too big for my britches.”
“Ah, then what is this?” Reaching into one of the boy’s over-stuffed pockets, Clevwrith withdrew a fistful of candy.
“Hey!” Radu swiped at his fist, protective of his stash.
“You’re bulging everywhere. How do you expect to stay agile and slip away into the cracks and crevices with jutting gumdrop appendages and nodules of taffy bulging every which way from your form? Not a smart way to do business, no sir.”
“Where else am I supposed to put it? It’s not like I have a wagon.”
“You’re supposed to put it right back where it came from. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
“What?”
“That’s right. And then I
’m going to put you right back where you came from, and your mother will hear all about this.”
“I don’t have a mother,” Radu snapped.
That gave Clevwrith pause. A twinge of compassion moved through him, but he tucked it carefully away. He had a reputation to uphold. Children to scare straight. “Well that is unfortunate. But we can arrange other means of supervision.”
Radu jerked against Clevwrith’s hold, overcome by a renewed sense of desperation to get away. “I don’t” – yank – “need” – yank – “supervision.”
He really was a brat, wasn’t he? Well, Clevwrith was going to put an end to this before a spoiled brat grew up to be a true terror. He would not be the reason Fairoway acquired a new, worse kind of Shadowmaster.
And anyway, there can only be one.
Abruptly, he gave the boy a little shove. Coupled with Radu’s own efforts to jerk free, it sent him stumbling backward, falling against his buttocks – and a pocketful of candy – on the filthy cobblestones.
“Ow!” Radu cried, but shut up instantaneously as Clevwrith rose from his crouch to tower ominously over him.
“Pick it up,” Clevwrith commanded in a tone that brooked no argument. “All of it.”
Radu swallowed, wavering between obeying and risking another spell of defiance. In the end, he caved under Clevwrith’s domineering stare, scurrying to retrieve all of his spilled candy.
Clevwrith waited, austere and unmoving, overseeing the task with a critical eye. When every last piece was accounted for, Radu brought his re-stuffed sacks before the Shadowmaster, meekly awaiting further instruction.
Clevwrith prolonged his judging silence, just for a moment, then relented. “Good. Now follow me.”
“Where are we going?”
“First the shop you took it from. Then the palace.”
“The palace?” Radu balked.
“A thief must answer for his crimes.”
“You’re a thief. I don’t see you answering for any crimes.”
Weary, Clevwrith cast him a look of longsuffering. “Then your eyes deceive you. For my reckoning has been bitter and hell-bent and there looms no end in sight.”
The flowery response clearly running over his head, Radu scowled in bewilderment, then let the expression flare into a fresh glare of rebellion. “This is poppycock! You’re not going to lock me away in some dungeon for stealing candy, while you get away with murder and roam free. You just don’t want a fresh little upstart stealing your thunder, that’s all. You want me locked up because you’re threatened by me! Well I’ve got news for you, Shadowmaster. You can call me Sugar Bandit or Cookie Crook or whatever bakery bologna you want, but you’re not the only shadow on the streets, and you won’t be laughing when you’re trapped in my dark factory of swill, stuck in a vat of taffy with your wrists tied in licorice!”
He had to give the boy props for creativity, but that was quite enough. Seizing him abruptly, Clevwrith lifted him from the alley with a surprised squeal and slung him like a sack over his shoulder. Candy went everywhere again, but he’d never been overly concerned about that. He’d made the boy pick it up for the principle of it, and now they could continue with phase two of his rehabilitation.
The Master of the Shadows carried the candy thief kicking and screaming from the alley, through the city one painstaking, bone-tired step at a time, and left him tied to the palace gate surrounded by his depleted spoils. Giving a sharp whistle to draw the guards, Clevwrith melted away into the shadows, the bloodcurdling oaths of a furious boy vowing to hunt the Shadowmaster to the ends of the earth following him into the night.
29
Reckoning
“The Shadowmaster’s affections are owned by ‘the game’,” Despiris had assured Lady Verrikose. But of course, she’d been lying, and lies rarely aged well at court.
*
It had been no secret who had delivered Fairoway’s aspiring candy thief to the palace, thanks to the shrieking vows of vengeance spitting from the child’s lips when the guards found him.
“The Shadowmaster turned him in?” Isavor asked, brows pinching at the curious plot twist.
Despiris stood before the throne to lobby on the boy’s behalf, growing increasingly weary of how tangled the situation became around her. How much more convoluted could her position among the slew of characters get? Her relationships were becoming dizzying. “Yes.”
“What are his motives, with these stunts?” the king wondered aloud, obviously hoping Despiris would have some insight into how Clevwrith thought. “First the recovery of the rampant gargoyle, now a thief… Is he attempting to buy our good will? Get the heat off his back?”
“I don’t think so, your Majesty. The gargoyle might have been a statement, a taunt, a deflective tactic. But Radu… I think this time it was merely an intervention. For the boy’s sake.”
“Radu. You speak as if you know him.”
Despiris tempered a sigh. “I do know him. He was a friend of Po’s.” As soon as she said it, she cringed at her own unwillingness to take responsibility, amending her explanation: “Also…an apprentice of mine.”
“One of yours?”
“You sound surprised,” Lady Verrikose interjected drolly. “As if she doesn’t keep company with criminals.”
Despiris flicked an annoyed glance her way. “He is a child. Not some demon. Merely in need of some direction.”
A knowing look crossed the king’s face. “And I suppose you believe we can offer him this ‘direction’.”
“Really, Despiris?” Lady Verrikose asked. “Another stray in the palace? Don’t the servants have enough fleas to exterminate already?”
A blade of anger slashed white-hot through Despiris’s skull. She was at the end of her tolerance for the nasty, meddling noblewoman. “Well, I can’t imagine that squalid familiar of yours or the rest of your mangey menagerie has anything to do with that.” Indicating Slasher where he dangled unassumingly from his usual perch, Despiris let slip an uncharacteristic sneer of distaste. It wasn’t the creature itself, per se, that filled her with derision, but anything that served as an extension of the noblewoman’s body and conscience. “If the palace has fleas, I think we all know where the infestation came from.” Disregarding the insufferable woman, she turned back to the king. “And yes, I do believe that with a small amount of direction under our care, a wayward soul like Radu will flourish, or at the very least find a place in society that saves Fairoway from a vast heap of trouble were you to leave him to his own devices. You can try him as a petty criminal and release him to fend for himself again, or you can rehabilitate him. I am willing to take responsibility for him, as I did Po.”
Isavor rubbed his chin in thought. “Speaking of the Shadowmaster, I have to ask – how goes the hunt?”
It might have been offhanded, Isavor merely taking advantage of the opportunity to ask while the subject had come up, but Despiris couldn’t help feeling it was a loaded question. There she was, asking for further leeway to use her resources and privileges at the palace, and still she had not delivered her end of the bargain. Hadn’t given anything in return. An inevitable creeping of dismay wended through her, the fear that she was whittling away her probationary trial period with nothing to show for it never far from her mind these days. The king was a reasonable and understanding man, but he would not humor her forever. She had to give him something.
Yet her latest failure was fresh and demoralizing in her memory.
How to make him believe it was worth retaining her services? “I caught him last night,” she revealed suddenly, realizing her failure didn’t have to be the discrediting event she was defining it as.
The king perked up at that, and Lady Verrikose snapped to attention, both taken aback by the revelation.
Despiris stood straighter, gaining confidence at spinning the incident to her advantage. “I caught him. Caught him, cuffed him, had him halfway to the palace in my custody – the Master of the Shadows in chains. And then…then he esca
ped,” she admitted, but didn’t let it hang like the defeat it sounded like. “It’s what he does. It should come as no surprise to any of us. But we were close. I had him. It might take a few times to stick, but one day soon it will stick. We are wearing him down. Cutting closer and cornering him for longer. You will have your Shadowmaster.”
The twist in her gut might as well have been a knife, her feelings for Clevwrith so devastatingly at odds with the convictions found in her new life.
The king opened his mouth to respond, but it was Lady Verrikose who got there first.
“Don’t be afraid to put it as it is, Despiris. I believe the apt verbiage would be to say we will have your Shadowmaster,” the beastress corrected, treading a dangerous line with her choice of words. The underlying implications drew a sharp glance from Despiris, the threat of revealing certain lapses in her allegiance hanging brazenly between them. As if she hadn’t already made it clear she held a poised axe over Des’s head, polishing it daily.
Isavor glanced between the two of them, no doubt divining more than he let on, but he chose to maintain his neutral position amidst their rivalry. Perhaps he still found their little tug-of-war amusing. Perhaps he still had too much to gain by turning a blind eye to the details. Perhaps he still had high hopes for what Des could become in his service and thought it worth a few compromises to get there. “Promising news,” he chose as his response. “I look forward to your next update, with this notable progress in mind.”
Refusing to squirm, Despiris held her head high as she turned back to him. She’d always said it was a riddle, her exact position in all this. As far as she was concerned, she had never misrepresented her stance. Lady Verrikose could slip condemning hints into the conversation until she had implicated the very leather of Des’s boots for the crimes it had committed when it was an ox, for all Despiris cared. She was safe under the king’s clemency for the time being, and she was going to grab that and run with it as long as she could.
Game of Towers and Treachery (The Shadow's Apprentice Book 2) Page 23
