Perfect Shadow: A Night Angel Novella

black horses with blinkered eyes, tended to those who’d overindulged, carrying off those who were ill, tucking pillows under the heads of the unconscious, and covering nude bodies with blankets. The earl’s wife, now wearing nothing but her swan mask and one silk stocking, ran toward Gaelan squealing, pursued by two lascivious lords whose masks had fallen off.
    Before she could run into him, or look to him for protection that she really didn’t want, Gaelan ducked into a noisy side room. Musicians were sitting behind an opaque curtain, muscling out a bastardized version of Haranese tribal beat. Two older lords smoking ornate bowls of riotweed were watching a third lord as he danced with a woman. Gwinvere.
    The big ape had his fist wrapped around Gwinvere’s slender neck. She ground into him sinuously, her back to him, running her hands down his hips.
    She saw Gaelan, missed one beat, and then continued dancing. As she took fistfuls of the young lord’s trousers and pulled him tight against her ass, she didn’t look away.
    Gaelan did. He ducked out into the party, and then out into the night.
    He was followed.

    * * *
    Whoever was following Gaelan, he was good. Very good. But Gaelan had options.
    The hunted always has options, and Gaelan’s futures spun out as simply as the different men he’d been over the last 680 years. Different men, different choices, different futures, splitting:
    As a young man, the man he’d been born, as Prince Acaelus Thorne, he identified a choke point that even a careful pursuer would have to pass through lest he lose his quarry. Acaelus hid behind the first good corner and waited. He gathered his Talent, ready to overwhelm his pursuer, capture him, hit him a few times to find out who had sent him. He waited –
    No, no, that wasn’t true. Prince Acaelus hadn’t had even that much subtlety.
    Hiding? Acaelus? Ha!
    No, Acaelus turned as soon as he became aware of his pursuer. Stopped in the open street.
    “I know you’re there! Come out! If you want a fight, I’ll give it to you. If you want to know where I’m bound, come ask. I am crown prince of the dead kingdom of Trayethell, and I’ll not have this mummery. Face me!”
    The spy fled. Acaelus heard the skittering of scattering gravel, zeroed in on the sound, and ran in pursuit. His Talent lent strength to his muscles. He ran faster. He drew his sword, rounded a corner that was too sharp for the speed he was running.
    He leapt, pushed off a wall, blasted the spy off his feet. The man tumbled head over heels, lay still.
    Acaelus approached the spy. The little man lay on his back, hooded and cloaked.
    At the last second, the spy convulsed. Two daggers flew through the air, straight for Acaelus.
    With preternatural speed, Acaelus’s blade swatted left, right, riposte. The daggers were batted aside and his sword was in the spy’s heart before he had a second thought.
    …And he learned nothing.
    Not that Acaelus had ever had second thoughts. Not that he would doubt his own actions.
    No, Acaelus had been a noble fool. His way would be a disaster. Rejected.
    Dehvirahaman Bruhmaeziwakazari would have – no, the Ymmuri stalker was a canny hunter, but he would have never come into a city. His leather pouches and camouflage cloaks had been perfect for his natural environs, but here clothes mattered in a different way. Rejected.
    Rebus Nimble. There was a life that might have had some success here. Rebus was a sneak thief turned folk hero for making several hundred pounds of a corrupt king’s gold rain in the streets in every market in town simultaneously. Rebus would have headed to the rough side of town. Here, the west side, the Warrens.
    Rebus took a circuitous route, as if careful of being followed but not aware that he actually was. Spies always like to think they’re good.
    If the spy were simply some lord’s or lady’s lackey, he’d get nervous and break off his pursuit as Rebus crossed the Vanden Bridge into the Warrens. He didn’t. That meant the spy had been sent by someone formidable. Rebus abandoned his apparent caution once he reached the slums, walking quickly, which always made his limp more pronounced.
    He limped down an alley. Took a left, a right, two lefts, followed a street so narrow his outstretched hands could touch both slumping walls to either side. And after three hundred paces with no outlet, reached a dead end. Dammit. These weren’t the slums of Borami, where he knew every bolthole. In fact, he