Changes

me. So I cain’t be certain-sure.::

Now Mags left his perch and followed the men. He had the “flavor” of their thoughts, even if he had not probed deeply enough to read anything. With that, unless they worked their way into a crowd, he would be able to find them.

::Oh, I think you’re right. These men were better prepared than the first lot—they speak Valdemaran extremely well, and they’re dressed like locals in old clothes—but they can’t hide what they are, and they are too well-trained to be local thugs.::

Mags continued to gather what he could from them, passively. Whatever else these men were, they were not insane—or at least they were not as full of rage as the other assassins had been. Cold, definitely. Calculating. Purposeful. And literally nothing meant anything to them, not even each other, except the job. The first two assassins had been the flawed copies of which these two were the perfect originals. Mags didn’t want to get too close to their minds, though, because he sensed that they were very much like the second assassin in another aspect. They were not Mindspeakers—but they could be. They were not shielded—but that something was protecting them. So long as he hovered passively, that “thing” wouldn’t notice him, and he could pick up bits of what they were thinking. Images, feelings, mostly. Unlike the first and second assassins, they did not hate Valdemar. Nor did they like it. They were entirely indifferent to the place. For them, it was just another place that held a job, and it was always the job, not the surroundings, that mattered.

He followed on the roofs; he wished he could have gone down to the ground, but he didn’t dare. These men were too good. They just might spot him.

There was a definite purpose in them, not just whatever the long-term job they had come for. They had an immediate task, one that had to be performed very, very soon. He balanced on a rooftree and scuttled down the slates while his mind oozed around them like a weasel circling something very dangerous, but asleep. The task was to take care of something unfinished. There was contempt. Contempt for the task? No. He crossed between two roofs as he followed that faint wisp of contempt. Not contempt for the task. Contempt for... for . . .

There was a flash of an image, but because he had seen this man with his own eyes, and more than once, he knew it immediately. The supposed “head” of the phony “trading envoys!”

The contempt came strongly with the image. Contempt for him—contempt, presumably, for the rest of the men who had been with him. Disgust... .

Mags negotiated a drop to a lower roofline, then scrambled up it to reach a higher one. Disgust. They had... they had . . .

Well, he already guessed at that. These men were disgusted with their predecessors because of their performance—or more correctly, lack of performance. They’d failed at the task, the greater task that these two had taken over, and failed at it twice.

Oh, but there was anger as well. Why anger? It was cold and distant. It wasn’t for the failed agents. It wasn’t for anyone in Valdemar. Someone else. Someone had—no, he couldn’t make it out, it was too abstract.

But now they had stopped; he couldn’t hear their footsteps on the street ahead, and he felt himself getting nearer to their “presence.” He slowed his own pace and slipped up on them at a crawl, careful to remain below the roofline on the opposite side of where they were. When he was as close as he dared get, he hugged the slates, his chin pressed into the roof, and closed his eyes. He let go of everything except the need to listen, with his ears, with his mind. Like a sponge, he soaked up everything around him.

He could hear them talking, but not clearly. He didn’t think they were speaking Valdemaran now; the cadence, the accents were wrong.

What were they doing besides talking? Why had they stopped? Did they realize they were being followed?

No.

It was this place, this building that he was on. It wasn’t much, one of those narrow two-story houses that was a scant two rooms up, two rooms down, and an attic. There was no one in it. But this was where they had to take care of that... unfinished business that was smaller than the greater task the other assassins had left undone.

. . . an image of a broken trail.

. . . a little cruel pleasure. The sense that punishment had been meted out.

One went to the front door and unlocked it. The other stood guard in the street. The strange not-shield tightened over both of them, letting nothing out now.

Whatever it was that he went in to do, he was done quickly. He came out, conferred with the other, and then, the two—

Burst into a run from a standing start, with absolutely no warning.

They ran like deerhounds; Mags could scarcely believe how fast they were. They ran so quietly that he actually hadn’t realized they were moving at all until their “presence” shot away.

They were already at the end of the block before he had gotten to the edge of the roof. He gazed after them in disbelief and crushing disappointment; he couldn’t hope to catch them or even keep up—already the mind-traces were fading with distance, and in a moment—

While he tried desperately to keep hold, the faint traces slipped from him and were gone.

::Nikolas—:: he said with despair.

::I was following,:: came the reply. ::Dallen let me “ride” his link with you. It can’t be helped. See what they were doing in that house, if you can.::

Well, one thing for sure, he was absolutely not going in the front door. If he’d been in the shoes of these men, he would have left a trap on the door. But they might not be aware that most of the buildings in this part of town had rooftop hatches; that was what he would look for first.

It was easier to find than he had thought. The owner must have had reason to be up here more frequently than most, for he had installed a real hatch with a solid door, the kind that was in Nikolas’ shop, rather than a makeshift thing you had to move tiles to find. It was locked, but only by a sliding bolt; working by feel, Mags got it