Perfect Shadow: A Night Angel Novella

a shadow in the waters.
    More than one. Dozens. Fucking fanged fish. Undeniably stupid, but I’d heard they could smell blood for a league. Apparently I should have believed it.
    With a surge of my Talent, I shot out of the water. I stabbed fingers and bare toes into the shit-slick walls, pushed off, twisted, leapt for the inside wall of the chute, twisted, and had both my left hand and left foot betrayed by bad holds.
    I fell, fingers clawing at the walls, toes scratching, tearing off toenails, finally stopped. I gave myself a few deep breaths and then launched upward again with magic-augmented strength. This time, I bounced lightly from one side to the other.
    Almost at the top, I found the remains of a grate. It must have been installed hundreds of years ago, because the iron was corroded to little more than nubs sticking out of each wall. Too much trouble to replace, apparently, or too gross. Now it made good footholds for the very kind of man it had originally been intended to keep out.
    The problem with a place like Chateau Shayon wasn’t that it had a weakness. Every castle has weaknesses. The problem was that when you steal a chateau from Gwinvere Kirena, you have an enemy who knows your weaknesses exhaustively. If I’d thought there was a grate in the chute – well, I could have made it through regardless – but most assassins wouldn’t have tried the garderobe. Certainly not first.
    Balancing on the stubs of the grate, ignoring my bleeding toes, I drew a plane saw.
    The privies were a simple board: oak, with three holes in it. Three so you and two friends can drop mud together, I guess. Call me unsociable, but no thanks. Regardless, if Gwinvere’s intelligence were still accurate, the board was fitted with a lock and bolted down. No one even had the key to that lock any more. I picked the middle hole, setting the plane saw to work inscribing a circle slightly larger than the current one.
    ~This goes against everything you’ve lived for. Gaelan, this isn’t you.~
    No, this isn’t Gaelan. There is no Gaelan. I’m nameless.
    No one came to use the lords’ privies in the time I was there. Lucky. It does happen.
    That’s the thing. If you’re prepared to get shit on and do your work anyway, sometimes you get lucky. Over the distant sounds of laughter and carousing – You will be alone. You will be separate. Always. – I listened for footsteps.
    None. I scraped some feces off the wall next to my head, reached my hand up through the right side privy-hole, and plopped the feces on the seat. I pulled an empty leather winebag, smaller than my clenched fist, from where it was rolled flat under my belt. I opened it, balanced somewhat precariously on the grate-stubs, and pissed in the bag.
    Then I poured the urine liberally around the left-side privy’s seat.
    I’d barely finished when the door banged open. The baron. He was preceded by a soldier carrying a lantern.
    The soldier searched the room for intruders, though there wasn’t much searching to do. The room was bare rock with a low ceiling and only the one entrance. Apparently the baron was nervous.
    The soldier walked toward the privies. I pressed myself against one wall and drew the shadows around me. It wasn’t anything like invisibility, but it helped. And the lantern’s light was diffuse – that’s the problem of using a lantern to look straight down: the base gets in the way. The man’s head appeared, but he was light-blind.
    “Quickly, would you?” the baron said. “I’m going to die of a burst bladder here.” No, you’re not.
    The light above steadied as the soldier put it on a hook, and then the door closed.
    A moment later, I heard the baron swear, mumbling to himself, “…swine. Can’t even piss without missing the hole…whoreson Alitaerans.” There was a rustle of clothing as he dropped his trousers, and his ass blocked out the light over the middle privy. “…wines from Seth, chef from the best Modaini…Probably shat on the edge on purpose.” He was a lean man, but the wood groaned slightly where I’d incised the larger circle.
    But it didn’t give way. Not yet.
    I let him finish his business. Never say I’m not a gentleman.
    I was once the avatar of retribution. Now I just try to be polite.
    A moment later, the baron disappeared down the privy without a trace. When his soldiers grew suspicious and checked, he was simply gone. You’ll forgive me if I don’t dwell on the details. You see, this isn’t the tale