Shadowdance 01 - A Dance of Cloaks

With her longer legs, perhaps there was another way…
    In a single quick motion she unbuckled her belt, counted to three, and then ran off the side of the house. When the fence neared, she looped the belt around one of the spikes and then did her best to hold in a shout of pain as her body rammed into the bars. She started to fall, but then the belt tightened. Using a technique similar to Haern’s, she kicked off the bars and somersaulted. Her breath caught in her throat as she passed over the incredibly sharp tips. She pictured herself impaled, her corpse upside down like some grotesque ornament, and then closed her eyes to banish the image.
    Then she was over, and blessed ground met her feet. She rolled along, then scrambled toward the nearest tree. Compared to the house, it made easy climbing with its many shoots and branches. Haern was waiting for her among the leaves.
    “Keep quiet,” he whispered. Tears ran down his face, but he kept the sobs out of his voice. With a slender hand he pointed through a gap in the leaves where the street was visible to them both. Soldiers ran past, torches in hand. They scoured the area, but not once did they inspect the land behind the walls.
    “Laurie Keenan’s property might as well be a foreign nation,” Kayla whispered. “No city guard will dare trespass onto property of a lord of the Trifect, not in the middle of the night for a whelp like you. A smart call, though you have the courage of a lion to leap like you did. If your knee had buckled…”
    “It didn’t,” Haern said. “Not until I landed.”
    She pulled up his pant leg and looked. His knee had already turned a shade of blue, with the very center an ugly brown. When she touched it with her fingers, she could tell it was badly swollen.
    “We need it wrapped and iced,” she whispered. “And you need to give it rest.”
    Haern nodded. “How long can we hide here?” he asked.
    Kayla shrugged. “We’re pressing our luck as is, but if we stay away from the mansion we should be safe. I hear all his traps are within its halls.”
    Haern leaned his head against a branch and closed his eyes.
    “Don’t let me fall,” he said. “Please?”
    “Sleep if you must,” she said, reattaching her belt. “I’ll keep us safe.”

CHAPTER
3
    M aynard Gemcroft paced the halls, his bare feet cushioned by the thick carpet. He paced far from the windows. Even though he had paid handsomely for thick glass, he did not trust it. A heavy stone followed by a single arrow was all it’d take to lay him out on the carpet, bleeding red on the blue weave. A thin, wiry man, he lived amid constant protection with over a hundred guards. One of the three lords of the Trifect, he controlled the Gemcroft empire from within his fortress-mansion, hiring mercenaries, plotting guard routes, and approving a dozen trades a day. Only the king was as well protected.
    Yet two days prior, Maynard had nearly died.
    A guard opened a door and stepped inside. His teeth were crooked, and when he talked the sight of them disgusted Maynard. He wore chain armor, with a dark sash wrapped around his waist signifying his allegiance to the Gemcroft family line.
    “Your daughter is here to see you.”
    “Send her in,” Maynard said as he checked his robes and smoothed his hair. He always prided himself on his appearance, but lately he found less and less time to primp and preen. It seemed as if every other night he awoke to alarms and cries of trespassers. Come the morning, somewhere on the grounds, yet another guard would lie dead. It made keeping their ranks full a nightmare.
    The guard stepped out, and his daughter entered.
    “Alyssa,” said Maynard as he approached with open arms. “You’ve returned early. Were the men in the north too boring for you?”
    She was short for a lady, but her slender body was supple and strong. Maynard had never seen a man best his Alyssa in any feats of dexterity, and he knew she could outdrink many as well. Her mother had been a wild one, he remembered. A shame she had slept with another man. Leon Connington’s gentle touchers had never been given a woman so fine.
    Alyssa brushed a hand over the red hair cropped around her shoulders and woven into tight braids. Her fingers pulled aside an errant strand and tucked it behind an ear. Her green eyes twinkled with mild amusement.
    “
Boring
does not go far enough to describe them,” she said in a husky voice. “The women there preen and prattle like they’ve