Perfect Shadow: A Night Angel Novella

turn down a woman as beautiful as Gwinvere Kirena.
    He pulled her into his arms.

    * * *
    “There’s only one kill left,” Gwinvere said. She was in her dressing gown, her cheeks still flushed from their lovemaking, but she was abruptly all business.
    Gaelan sat up in bed. “Who?”
    “Scarred Wrable, Gaelan. He’s the only one who knows who you are. He’s the only one who can guess what I’m doing. And he’s been ordered to report to the Shinga.
    Tonight. I’m sorry to ask you to do this, but it’s the only way.”

    * * *
    “ Arutayro? ” a voice asked next to Gaelan’s table. It was an old wetboy tradition – an oath of nonaggression for one hour. The inn was dark, smoky with tobacco and riotweed.
    The kind of place where no one asked questions of strangers.
    “ Arutayro ,” Gaelan affirmed. On the table, wrapped in a sash, were all of his weapons.
    Ben Wrable set his sash full of weapons on the table next to Gaelan’s. He sat. “I didn’t expect you to know arutayro , Gaelan. That’s old. Real old.”
    “So am I.”
    “I doubt that. I bet I’m older than you are,” Ben said.
    “Hmm. How long we got?”
    “I’m to report in three hours. So if you’re going to try to kill me, you’ll need to – ”
    “I’m not.”
    “Go on, Gaelan. Give me the dignity of honesty. I know Gwinvere. I don’t take it personal. Her back’s to the wall. If you let me go, the other wetboys will…” He trailed off. His eyebrows climbed. “You already got the others?” Gaelan nodded.
    Ben cursed. “Even Jade and Saron?”
    “They were tough.”
    Ben whistled. Thinking he was being summoned, a serving man came over. “Uh, two ales,” Ben said. The man left. “If you don’t kill me, Gaelan, the Shinga will order me to kill you . You’ll only push your problems back a day or two. And he’ll send the bashers and all the apprentice wetboys after you.”
    “I lied to you about that symbol you cut into your chest,” Gaelan said. “I have seen it before. It’s a pictogram. Literally, it means split-head. Moron. Idiot.” Ben’s face darkened, fingers twitched toward his sash. Then he laughed ruefully. “I could tell you were lying the other day when you said you’d never seen it before. By the Night Angels’ balls. Moron. And I prove it by cutting the fucking thing into my chest over and over for fifteen years. No wonder the Friaki villagers wouldn’t say what it meant. And you, you’re an asshole for telling me.” Gaelan nodded, acknowledging the truth of it. Took a drink. “Then I found this,” Gaelan said.
    He put a pendant on the table. It was two horseshoe nails, one bent into a circle, the other piercing it most of the way. Ben’s lost pendant, the very one that had been taken from him when he was put into the Death Games.
    A quick sneer, like You expect me to believe this? I told you what it looked like! was replaced by puzzlement. Ben flipped the pendant over, looking at the scores and scratches in the iron, matching them with memories over a decade old. He looked up sharply. His voice was stricken, awed. “How did you possibly find – ” Gaelan lifted the pendant from Ben’s limp hand. Suspended from the chain, the weight of nail flipped the symbol upside down: instead of being split from the top down, the circle was split from the bottom up. Gaelan said, “You were a kid. You copied the symbol wrong, Ben. This symbol means split-heart: The one who’s claimed half of my heart. It means beloved, favorite. It’s the kind of thing a gorathi war chief would give only to his firstborn son.”
    He gave the pendant to the wide-eyed wetboy.
    Ben put the pendant on. He threw back his ale, cursed quietly. Then he held the pendant in his palm – holding it like that, picking it up from how it naturally hung, it was inverted. That was how he would have seen it last when he was a boy, when it had been taken from him. That was how he’d gotten it wrong. He chuckled, delighted. “You are something else, Gaelan.”
    ~I’m still surprised you didn’t put contact poison on the pendant. Every time I want to give up on you, Acaelus, you do something like this.~
    “I memorized that book you gave me,” Gaelan said.
    “What book? The poisons book? How’d you memorize the whole – how’d you even read the – Oh shit.” Ben looked at his empty flagon. “You motherfucker. You took an oath! Arutayro – ”
    “Doesn’t apply. The poison I used isn’t lethal. It’ll just knock you