Perfect Shadow (2 page)

“Stories. Half true at best. They bore me.”

“The Alitaeran commander turned up dead a month later,” she said.

“Really?” he said, too slowly. How could she know that? “Serves that bastard right.”

“When he recruited you, he promised you vengeance on the Ceurans, didn’t he.” It wasn’t a question. “Then he took
their
bribe to call off the campaign.” Again, not a question.

“So you think I’m a murderer. You want me as an assassin?” Gaelan asked. “What? Some pretty rival slight you? A lover spurn you?”

He intended her to take offense. Wanted to see her angry.

She smiled indulgently. Full lips, beautiful smile, light in her eyes at being challenged. Enjoying being challenged. “I’m Sa’kagé, Gaelan.”

“Of course you are.” The underworld lords, the Sa’kagé, ran all of the significant crime in the city under the watchful eye of their ruling Nine, who were in turn watched by a Shinga, whose power would make kings jealous. One of those Nine ran all of the prostitution in Cenaria. That man, the Master of Pleasures, wouldn’t let a beautiful woman like Gwinvere Kirena operate independently. So maybe that was it. Maybe she wanted out.

“I wasn’t finished.” She stood, walked over to check the lock on the door. He noticed that the gold chains actually disappeared into a cut in her dress, apparently wrapping beneath her body to emerge at her bare back, which it covered in an artful golden lattice of bondage. Her beauty made his breath catch and his mind slow, and he needed his mind with this one. “I’m one of the Nine,” she said. “The Mistress of Pleasures.”

It was not a secret to be casually shared. “Young to be—”

“I have a plan, and I need you for it.”

He thought about it. Gaelan Starfire was supposed to be forty-five years old now, and he looked at least a decade younger. Gaelan was famous, but he had few real friends, and many enemies. Maybe it was time to move on, let that name die. There were worse things than to ally yourself with a beautiful, intelligent woman.

“What’s your plan?” he asked.

She turned. “There’ll be time for that. First, we need to take care of something.” She extended her hand. He took what was in it.

It was the golden key she’d been wearing on her choker.

He cocked an eyebrow, trying to ignore the shock running to his loins. Having the body of a young man meant having the reactions of a young man, too. “Why?” he asked.

“Because if we don’t fuck tonight, you might fall in love with me. But if we do, you’ll probably still desire me—in fact, I’ll consider it a professional failure if you don’t; this
is
my work, after all—but you’ll never trust me. You’ll know that I’ll do the same with any other man who catches my fancy. It’ll make things simpler.”

~An honest whore. A rare woman in a dozen ways. She’s poisoning the well and telling you, Acaelus. Is tat really what you want?~

“And you?” he asked her. Are you in no danger of loving me?

She came close, slowly, gently, into his arms. The scent of fine perfume and the insidious softness of silk and skin. Cold gold chains on his skin and a warm breath in his ear. “I intend to enjoy my work tonight.”

In their little farmhouse, Gaelan held his wife’s bare ass, balanced on the edge of a table he’d made himself. She held his shoulder and the back of his head, her pupils wide, hips trembling against him with the aftershocks of their lovemaking.

She dug her fingernails into his shoulder painfully, playfully. “You know Ali could be home any minute.” But her eyes were shining, and she didn’t uncross her ankles from behind his butt, didn’t push him away.

“There’s worse things than a girl finding out her father still finds her mother irresistible.”

She grinned, and squeezed him with her thighs.

“Your smile is a century of solace,” he told her, trying to lock her face in his memory. She was beautiful, hair atumble, face flushed with sex and joy. Content and content with him. It was a treasure. She would grow old, die, and he would remain, young, immortal, following the directives of a long-dead king. A long-dead friend.

“Flattery already got you everything you’re going to get,” she said.

He laughed and pinched her ass.

She swatted his hand, eyes aglow.

“Why is all our happiness doomed?” he asked her.

She looked into his eyes, loving, gentle. “You are a cipher, my lord.”

“No, I was Samon Cipher six lives ago,” he said, winking, trying to salvage the moment.

“Mother!” a girl’s voice called out, right outside the door to their little cottage.

Gaelan pulled back, hiked his trousers up, yanked his belt tight, and slapped at his hair, trying to flatten it. Seraene hopped off the table, smoothing her skirts, grabbing a rag so she could pretend to be cleaning.

The door opened and Alinaea stepped in, carrying a basket of fresh-picked herbs in one hand and the day’s eggs in the other. If she’d been much older, he and Seraene would have been totally caught. The smell in the cottage wasn’t exactly subtle, and neither was the sex flush visible on Seraene’s chest, or the stubble-burn from his whiskers in the bit of cleavage her dress showed. But Alinaea was eight years old. Innocent. She was the light of Gaelan’s eyes.

“Da,” she said, serious, cocking her head to one side. “I’ve decided. I’m old enough now for a little brother.”

Gaelan looked over at Seraene. She was beaming. She put her hand on her belly.

“This? This is how you tell me?!” he demanded.

She laughed.

By all the gods that were and all the gods that had never been, how he missed Seraene’s laugh.

The pleasures rolled over Gaelan—and passed, leaving him cold. Gwinvere was astride him, clad only in those delicate golden chains. She stopped once he finished, not having climaxed herself. This was business for her, after all, not pleasure. But she didn’t get off him.

She stared at him, her hair tussled, figure magnificent, letting him bask in her radiance, letting him store up the image of a woman of her supernal beauty, making love with him. She leaned over him, and something like pity flashed through her eyes.

“You are a god clad in flesh, Gaelan Starfire, and you’re more fragile than you know. Be ware.”

She lay on his chest and tucked her head into his shoulder, but just for a moment. The room was cool, and he was warm; maybe she was just appreciating that physical warmth and nothing more. She got up almost immediately. She began dressing, and he knew with a cynical twinge that she must have practiced dressing like this in a looking glass, because every move was graceful. She wasn’t just a whore; she was an artist, and this last impression he would carry of her was as important to her as the first.

“I want to fuck again,” he said. “Now.” This time he wouldn’t think of Seraene. Gwinvere was a wonder. He should appreciate her. He should please her.

“So do I, but I’ve three other men to bed before dawn, a fourth if he’s kind.”

“Was I your first—” He cut off. Ridiculous question. He couldn’t believe he’d asked it. He didn’t know where it had come from.

“Yes, Gaelan, I was a virgin until just now,” she said flatly.

“I meant of the night,” he said in a rush, flustered. “Never you mind. Stupid question.”

She looked at him, hesitated. “You’re magnificent. Distracted, but magnificent. Let’s fuck tomorrow, after I finish dinner with the ambassador. Then you can tell me if you accept my business proposal.”

Proposal? She hadn’t even asked for anything yet.

A few minutes later, Gaelan pushed through a fog of riotweed, through which he saw the vague outlines of the debauched. Silent servants, costumed uniformly as black horses with blinkered eyes, tended to those who’d overindulged, carrying off those who were ill, tucking pillows under the heads of the unconscious, and covering nude bodies with blankets. The earl’s wife, now wearing nothing but her swan mask and one silk stocking, ran toward Gaelan squealing, pursued by two lascivious lords whose masks had fallen off.

Before she could run into him, or look to him for protection that she really didn’t want, Gaelan ducked into a noisy side room. Musicians were sitting behind an opaque curtain, muscling out a bastardized version of Haranese tribal beat. Two older lords smoking ornate bowls of riotweed were watching a third lord as he danced with a woman. Gwinvere.

The big ape had his fist wrapped around Gwinvere’s slender neck. She ground into him sinuously, her back to him, running her hands down his hips.

She saw Gaelan, missed one beat, and then continued dancing. As she took fistfuls of the young lord’s trousers and pulled him tem" against her ass, she didn’t look away.

Gaelan did. He ducked out into the party, and then out into the night.

He was followed.

Whoever was following Gaelan, he was good. Very good. But Gaelan had options. The hunted always has options, and Gaelan’s futures spun out as simply as the different men he’d been over the last 680 years. Different men, different choices, different futures, splitting:

As a young man, the man he’d been born, as Prince Acaelus Thorne, he identified a choke point that even a careful pursuer would have to pass through lest he lose his quarry. Acaelus hid behind the first good corner and waited. He gathered his Talent, ready to overwhelm his pursuer, capture him, hit him a few times to find out who had sent him. He waited—

No, no, that wasn’t true. Prince Acaelus hadn’t had even that much subtlety.

Hiding? Acaelus? Ha!

No, Acaelus turned as soon as he became aware of his pursuer. Stopped in the open street.

“I know you’re there! Come out! If you want a fight, I’ll give it to you. If you want to know where I’m bound, come ask. I am crown prince of the dead kingdom of Trayethell, and I’ll not have this mummery. Face me!”

The spy fled. Acaelus heard the skittering of scattering gravel, zeroed in on the sound, and ran in pursuit. His Talent lent strength to his muscles. He ran faster. He drew his sword, rounded a corner that was too sharp for the speed he was running.

He leapt, pushed off a wall, blasted the spy off his feet. The man tumbled head over heels, lay still.

Acaelus approached the spy. The little man lay on his back, hooded and cloaked.

At the last second, the spy convulsed. Two daggers flew through the air, straight for Acaelus.

With preternatural speed, Acaelus’s blade swatted left, right, riposte. The daggers were batted aside and his sword was in the spy’s heart before he had a second thought.

…And he learned nothing.

Not that Acaelus had ever had second thoughts. Not that he would doubt his own actions.

No, Acaelus had been a noble fool. His way would be a disaster. Rejected.

Dehvirahaman Bruhmaeziwakazari would have—no, the Ymmuri stalker was a canny hunter, but he would have never come into a city. His leather pouches and camouflage cloaks had been perfect for his natural environs, but here clothes mattered in a different way. Rejected.

Rebus Nimble. There was a life that might have had some success here. Rebus was a sneak thief turned folk hero for making several hundred pounds of a corrupt king’s gold rain in the streets in every market in town simultaneously. Rebus would have headed to the rough side of town. Here, the west side, the Warrens.

Rebus took a circuitous route, as if careful of being followed but not aware that he actually was. Spies always like to think they’re good.

If the spy were simply some lord’s or lady’s l1em">Acy, he’d get nervous and break off his pursuit as Rebus crossed the Vanden Bridge into the Warrens. He didn’t. That meant the spy had been sent by someone formidable. Rebus abandoned his apparent caution once he reached the slums, walking quickly, which always made his limp more pronounced.

He limped down an alley. Took a left, a right, two lefts, followed a street so narrow his outstretched hands could touch both slumping walls to either side. And after three hundred paces with no outlet, reached a dead end. Dammit. These weren’t the slums of Borami, where he knew every bolthole. In fact, he 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.