Perfect Shadow: A Night Angel Novella

pause. “You’re a clear thinker, Gaelan Starfire. I like that. Most men would have expressed some shock at being asked to kill. Or some doubt about a woman running the Sa’kagé.”
    I’ve known Irenaea Blochwei and Ihel Nooran. No doubts. “So?” he said instead.
    “You’ll look into my history, of course. See how I’ve treated prostitutes who retire.
    Find out how I treated rivals who ended up working for me. See what place malice and vengeance hold in how I rule.”
    “Tell me.” He would check, too, of course, but he liked to hear it from the woman herself.
    “Vengeance only when my power is in question. Not for personal satisfaction. I don’t throw away tools lightly. Especially sharp ones. If I send you after four wetboys and you kill them all, and you learn the secrets of the fifth, how could I possibly threaten you? I would rather keep you.”
    “A pet?”
    “An ally. A lover – insofar as you don’t interfere with my work or who I bed.”
    “You won’t ever ask me to take the magical oath?”
    “I don’t think I’ll need to.” She smiled. Beautiful.
    “That’s not what I asked,” Gaelan said.
    She smiled more broadly, pleased to be matched. “I won’t ever ask or compel you to take any sort of oath of obedience.”
    “So if I do this, what are you going to give me? Aside from piles of coin and the best lovemaking of my life? Which I take as a given.”
    She smiled again, then said, “A network of spies who will find the man you’re looking for.”
    A fist of stone wrapped around Gaelan’s chest. A long moment. He couldn’t breathe.
    “Very well,” he said finally. “Assuming everything is as you’ve said. I’ll check, and you have this Scarred Wrable meet me at my inn tomorrow night.” She smiled. Trailed her fingers down the lines of his abs. Lower. “One more time?” she asked.

    * * *
    Scarred Wrable was a lanky man of Friaki ancestry. Round-cheeked and sallow-skinned, with hair like a sheaf of black wheat and the long, lean muscles of a martial artist. He was seated in Gaelan’s bed, in his locked room. The seals on the door were intact, the lock not obviously picked. Professional pride.
    “Ben Wrable?” Gaelan asked. Gwinvere’s story had checked out, as he had expected it would. She was ferocious when crossed, but magnanimous when she could be.
    Generous to the best or those she suspected could be the best. Never one to destroy what could instead serve. Liked kids.
    Ben rose and two daggers popped out of nowhere, flying, hilts first.
    Gaelan snatched them out of the air, unthinking.
    Ben grinned recklessly. “The Night Angels favor you,” he said.
    “Night Angels?” Gaelan asked. His heart dropped into his guts. The wetboy opened the window, cracking the magical seals Gaelan had put on them.
    Scarred Wrable said, “Come, the Devil’s Highway awaits. Follow as well as you can.
    First test.”

    * * *
    “I still don’t understand what this has to do with the ka’kari,” the little redhead Yvor Vas says. He is a member of a secret organization called the Society of the Second Sun.
    They are ostensibly dedicated to studying the ka’kari. In truth, they study immortality, which they believe the ka’kari gives. They’re a loose-knit organization, though, because for all that they hope otherwise, the ka’kari-given immortality can’t be shared, and most of them suspect as much.
    “The ka’kari is what brought me to Cenaria in the first place,” I say.
    “Looking for one? Or because the one you already have told you to come?” I drain another flagon. Every since I bonded the ka’kari, it takes me a lot to get drunk.

    * * *
    It wasn’t the first time that Gaelan had traversed the rooftops of a city – both Rebus Nimble and Dav Slinker had had rocky relationships with the law. But both of those men had lived in cities with more stable construction materials. It was one thing to jump from wattle roof to wattle roof or from stone to stone, quite another to jump from slate and bamboo to thatch to crumbling terra cotta. Cenaria grew or mined very little of its own resources, so builders used whatever they could get.
    In cities where you could trust your footing, you could move faster, take great leaps.
    Here, Gaelan and Ben Wrable moved at little more than a sprint, jumping lightly and landing lightly.
    Gaelan landed on a section of terra cotta that crumbled under his feet, rolled, and sprinted on.
    “Good!” Ben shouted from a far rooftop.