Stalking Darkness

courtyard outside—not an especially taxing task for a necromancer of his degree, but a necessary one, as it turned out. Soon after their arrival, he suddenly felt a silent call from the
dra’gorgos
. Closing his eyes, he sent a sighting through his dark creation and discovered the intruder on the roof overhead, a rough-looking young fellow with a knife.
    Vermin
, he thought.
A common thief
. With a barely perceptible smile, he mouthed a silent command. A moment later he felt the stalkerlunge and heard a satisfying thud from the yard below. Mardus glanced up from the document the smith was showing him.
    “It’s nothing,” Ashnazai assured him, going to the window and pushing back one of the warped shutters. As he looked down at the body sprawled below, a small figure darted over to it from the deep shadows across the street. Ashnazai sent a quick stab into this one’s mind: a child thief, too grief-stricken at the loss of his compatriot to notice the ripple of blackness flowing down the side of the building toward him.
    The
dra’gorgos
gave a hungry, questioning call. Ashnazai was about to release it for another kill when his hand brushed something on the windowsill, something that sent an unpleasantly familiar tingle through his skin. Incredulous, he forgot the child completely as he bent to scrutinize the sill.
    There, so faint no one but a necromancer would ever have noticed, was a thin smear of blood. And not just any blood! Pulling out the ivory vial, he compared the emanations of its contents to these.
    One of
them.
Yes, the boy! Known here as Alec of Ivywell, minion of the Aurënfaie spy, Lord Seregil
.
    That much they’d learned since their arrival in Rhíminee. Urvay had tracked the troublesome thieves as far as a villa in Wheel Street, where they acted the fine gentlemen as they consorted with nobles and royalty.
    Ashnazai had seen them several times since then, could easily have had them at any point, but the two were still under Orëska protection; any move against them would alert the real enemies in the Orëska House. So he had stayed his hand and soon after the Aurënfaie and his accomplice had dropped maddeningly from sight yet again.
    Vargûl Ashnazai clenched a hand around the vial for a moment, using its power to detect other traces of Alec’s blood around the room: droplets on the shutter, a smudge on the table by Mardus’ elbow, a tiny brownish circle dried on the floor near the hollow bedpost that Rythel thought such a clever hiding place, and none of it more than a day or two old.
    Standing there, surrounded by the essence of the hated boy, Ashnazai experienced a brief twinge of the fear a hunter feels realizing that the prey he’s been stalking has circled to stalk him. In the midst of his silent fury, he was startled to hear Rythel speak the Aurënfaie’s name.
    Seated at ease across the table from the smith, Mardus was regarding his spy with polite attention.
    “Lord Seregil, you say?” Mardus inclined his head slightly as if greatly interested, but Ashnazi saw through the pose; at such moments Mardus reminded him of a huge serpent, chill and remorseless as it advanced unblinking upon its prey.
    “A lucky meeting, my lord,” the smith told him proudly. “I happened across him in a gambling house one night last week. He has quite an interest in the privateering fleet and likes to brag about it. A puffed-up dandy, full of himself. You know the sort.”
    Mardus smiled coldly. “Indeed I do. You must tell me everything.”
    Ashnazai bided his time impatiently as the smith described how he’d courted the supposed cully, and the information he’d had from him. He made no mention of the boy.
    Standing behind the smith, Ashnazai caught Mardus’ attention, pointed to the window, and held up the vial with a meaningful look. The other gave a slight nod, betraying no reaction.
    “You’ve surpassed all expectations,” Mardus told Rythel, passing him a heavy purse in return for the sewer map, together with a packet of the sabotaged grate pins. “You’ve done an excellent job with the map, and I believe I can arrange an additional reward once you’ve completed your work in the tunnels.”
    “Another week and it’ll be done,” the smith assured him, eyes alight with greedy anticipation. “If there’s anything else I can do for you, you just say the word.”
    “Oh, I shall, I assure you,” Mardus replied with a smile.
    Unseen and unheard under the cover of Ashnazai’s