Sianim 01 - Masques

to investigate the magic she’d used—but he didn’t come. Human magicians weren’t usually sensitive enough to detect someone else using magic, but the ae’Magi was a law unto himself.
    The mouse shook herself briskly, twitched her whiskers, and scratched an itchy spot where the tingle hadn’t quite worn off yet; then she climbed up into the pipe.
    It was dark, which didn’t bother her much, and smelly, which did. Centuries of sludge had built up in the opening, and if several other bold rodents hadn’t foraged through (perhaps to escape a castle cat), she wouldn’t have made it. As it was, she was belly deep in slimy stuff. Busy not thinking about the composition of the muck, she almost fell out of the pipe and into the moat some distance below—only saving herself by some ungraceful but highly athletic scrambling.
    Poised on the edge of the old copper pipe, Aralorn shivered with nervous energy. Almost. Almost out. Just this one hurdle, and she would be away.
    The little slime-coated mouse leapt. The air blurred, and a white goose flapped awkwardly over the water, one wing dripping goo from the moat. There were plenty of birds who could fly better than a domestic goose—most birds, actually, since the goose could manage little better than a rough glide. But the goose was the only bird Aralorn knew how to become.
    Hampered by the wet wing, Aralorn was unable to gain any altitude and came to a flapping halt several hundred yards beyond the moat, in front of the bushes that signaled the beginning of the woodland surrounding the castle. She straightened her feathers and waddled toward the woods, carefully leaving the ooze-covered wing stretched away from the rest of her body.
    A black form erupted from the shadows, its ivory fangs catching the light of the moon as it halted directly in Aralorn’s path. The goose squawked and dodged backward, resuming a human form just in time for Aralorn to fall on her rump rather than her tail.
    Her own rump, too. She was back in her own skin: short, brown-haired, and plain-faced. Her anger fueled the speed of her transformation.
    “Allyn’s blessed toadflax!” she sputtered, using her father’s favorite oath. There had been no need for drama, and she’d been scared enough for ten lifetimes in the past few days. “Wolf, what are you trying to do to me?” Mindful of the proximity of the castle, she lowered her voice to a soft tone that didn’t carry but did not lack for force either. But anger faded into sheer relief, and the abrupt transition left her giddy.
    “I could have died of shock”—she put her hand theatrically over her heart—“then what would you have done? Why didn’t you warn me you were here?”
    The wolf stood over her, fey and feral, with the stillness of a wild thing. The snarl had disappeared at her furious whispers, and he waited for a moment after she finished, as if he wanted to make certain she was done.
    His macabre voice, dry and hoarse, was passionless when he spoke—he didn’t answer her question. “You should have told me that you intended to spy on the ae’Magi—if I had known that you were contemplating suicide, I would have killed you myself. At least it would be a cleaner death than any he would bestow.” Fathomless golden eyes gazed at her coolly.
    A green mage could speak in animal form—though it required practice and a great deal of uncomfortable effort. Wolf wasn’t a green mage, though, not as far as she could figure him out. And those few human mages who could transform themselves to animals were lucky if they remembered to transform themselves back again. Wolf was an endlessly fascinating puzzle who didn’t fit into any category she could find for him.
    A reassuring puzzle, though.
    She watched him for a moment.
    “Do you know,” she said, after weighing his words, “that is the first time I have ever heard anyone say anything against him? I even asked why I was being sent to spy there—and none of it struck me as strange at all.”
    She nodded at the dark shape of the castle where it stood on the top of the mountain, its silhouette almost blacking out the sky to the east. “The Mouse said that there were rumors of an assassination plot, and I was to investigate it and warn the ae’Magi if necessary.” Her customary grin restored itself, and if it felt a little stiff, that was all right.
    Safe. She was out, Wolf was with her, and she was safe. “If there is such a plot, I can only wish them luck in their