Perfect Shadow: A Night Angel Novella

might have just played right into his hunter’s hands.
    He turned. The spy stood there, dual longknives drawn. So, not a spy, an assassin.
    And two archers who looked like they knew what they were doing stood on either side of him.
    “Rebus Nimble ,” the assassin said, lifting his chin toward Rebus’s twisted right foot.
    “Irony?”
    “Older I get, the more I hate irony. But I was young once. I made it up when I started serious body magic. Making your arms and legs longer makes you clumsy as all hell for a while. I was hoping to make the name ironic eventually.”
    “I’ll guess we’ll see how that turned out.”
    Arrows streaked forward, burning holes in the night.
    More blood, more death, and no more answers.
    No, Rebus’s instincts were all wrong. Besides, in his fine clothes, Gaelan might get jumped by robbers in the Warrens before he even had a chance to get cornered by an assassin. Rejected.
    So Gaelan, those men you’ve been are no help to you. What will the dirt-farmer-turned-war-hero do? Who will you be now? Who will you be next?
    Gaelan wouldn’t let the spy dictate to him. He was done with that. He simply didn’t care. Truth was, Gaelan – the Gaelan he had envisioned when he discarded his previous life as Tal Drakkan, the Gaelan he had been for the last twenty-five years – was plain and direct. More like Acaelus. Until the end. Now, that Gaelan was dripping away, like a wax mask exposed to fire. And he wasn’t sure who was emerging. Or what.
    He walked to his inn by the most direct route. There was only one good place for an assassin to attack him – if assassin he was. Gaelan walked through it. No attack. He went straight to his room, bearing a lantern that the sleepy-eyed porter handed him. He opened the door into the darkness of his room, stepped inside, and blew out the lantern.
    The garish light of the lantern should have spoiled the night vision of any assassin, if one waited in his room. And the sudden darkness should leave him blind.
    But Gaelan wasn’t blind. The shadows had welcomed his eyes since he bonded the ka’kari. No one was in his room. His magical seals on the windows remained.
    He went to bed, not having confronted anyone, not having killed anyone. It was the right move. Patience was a lesson immortality should have taught him long ago.
    Wisdom is boring.

    * * *
    “You’re the best I’ve ever had,” Gaelan said, after their fourth round of lovemaking.
    “I get that a lot,” Gwinvere said. Teasing, but keeping her distance, her professionalism. They lay together in her bedchamber, naked, her head on his chest.
    Not from men who are 680 years old.
    He tweaked her nipple in punishment. She laughed, and he joined her.
    “Someone followed me here,” Gaelan said. “One of your people?” A half second of hesitation, a bit of tension in her body against him. A yes. But she didn’t try to lie. “He followed you last night, too. I wanted to see if you’d report to anyone that I was trying to hire you.”
    “Mm-hmm. So what you want me to do is treasonous. And all you know is that I don’t have to report daily. Maybe I’m just on a long leash.” So he had done the right thing. Killing a servant of the Nine mightn’t have been the best way to start in a new city.
    She traced designs idly on his chest, weighing her words. Finally, she said, “You’re a risk I’ll take. You’ve heard of wetboys?”
    “Magic-using assassins?”
    “There’s only a limited number of them at any one time. No one ever knows how many. But they all swear a magically binding oath of fealty to the Shinga. They can’t harm him or take contracts without his approval. Right now, there are only five wetboys.
    I want you to kill four of them.”
    “And the fifth?”
    “Will train you. He was the man who followed you last night and today. Ben Wrable.”
    “Scarred Wrable?” Gaelan had heard the name, but not much else.
    “He’s got a few…quirks.”
    There was only one reason you’d get rid of all the Shinga’s assassins if you were already on the Nine. “And after I kill these wetboys? You want me to kill the Nine as well? The Shinga?”
    She sat up, and despite his satiety, he couldn’t help but look at her body first, then her eyes. “No,” she said. “I’m taking care of them in other ways.”
    “So you become Shinga, and I become a wetboy who hasn’t sworn the oath of obedience to you. After using me, won’t you find me too dangerous to keep around?” A