Jenien lay curled in a fetal position, clutching her abdomen, breathing raggedly. She looked up at him, and her eyes went wide in her pale face.
'Watching,' she whispered. 'Bel Zheret are here.'
Paet's heart leapt forcefully at the name. He stood and whirled, brandishing the knife. Nothing moved.
He turned back to Jenien and knelt before her. 'If they were here I either slipped past them, or they're long gone.
'Said they'd be back for me,' Jenien wheezed. She was having trouble breathing. Paet gently pulled her hands away from her belly, pulled aside her shredded blouse. Jenien was going to die; there was nothing he could do for her. These were wounds that not even a Shadow could recover from.
Paet found a pillow on the overturned cot and put it under Jenien's head. Her hair was wet with perspiration. She reached for his wrist and grabbed it with weak fingers.
'Mab's coming,' Jenien observed. 'Thought we'd have a few more days.'
'Things at the embassy have become frantic to say the least.'
Jenien chuckled softly. 'Traet running around like a headless chicken?' 'Yes.'
'Is that knife sharp, Paet?' she said after a brief pause.
'I'm getting you out of here,' he said. 'Just rest a moment longer.'
'Remember that night in Sylvan?' she asked. She was starting to slur her speech. Her body trembled. 'The little theater with the terrible play?'
'I remember,' Paet said, smiling.
'I bet if we were normal we could have fallen in love that night,' she said, sighing.
Paet felt his emotions receding as she spoke. The world became flat. Jenien was an object; a bleeding thing with no impact. A problem to be solved. Was this lack of feeling something he'd always had, or something he'd developed? He couldn't remember. Had he become empty like this when he became a Shadow, or was it the emptiness that qualified him for the job? It didn't seem to matter.
'It was the mulled wine,' he said, sitting her up. 'It was strong. Hard to tell through the cinnamon and cloves.'
She winced as he maneuvered himself behind her. 'You looked very dashing. You had one of those red cloaks that were so popular back then.'
'Just blending in,' he said. Then, after a moment, 'What was so important about Prae Benesile, Jenien?'
She shook her head sadly, worked to speak clearly. 'Someone from the City of Mab had been to see him. Five times in the past year. I was just curious. Bel Zheret showed up when-' She winced.
Paet brought up the knife. 'They take him?'
Jenien nodded. 'He struggled; they killed him.'
'Ah.'
'I don't want to die,' she said. It was a statement, merely an observation.
'We've been dead for a long time,' he whispered in her ear. He drew the knife across her throat in a quick, sure motion, and pulled her neck back to hasten the bleeding. She shook; her chest lurched once, then twice. He waited until he was certain she was dead, checking her eyes. He looked into them until all the life had gone out of them. It took time. Dying always took time.
Paet took a deep breath and braced his knee against her back. He put the serrated blade of the knife to Jenien's throat again, using the original cut as a guide. He buried his other hand in her hair and pulled, hard, as he began to saw.
Ligament popped. Metal ground against bone. With a sickening crunch, vertebrae parted. A few more strokes and the remaining skin tore loose soundlessly. Jenien's head swung obscenely in his grasp.
He laid it gently on the floor and reached into his cloak. Among the few items he'd brought with him from the embassy was a wax-lined canvas bag, for just this purpose. He unfolded the bag and placed Jenien's head, dripping with blood and sweat, gently inside.
That's what you got for being a Shadow.
He didn't hear them so much as feel the disturbance of the air as they flowed into the room.
Paet turned and saw two tall, dark figures flanking the door. For an instant they looked as surprised as he, but to their credit, they recovered more quickly than Paet did. The first one had his sword out before Paet could begin to react.
Paet stepped back, feeling the position of the corpse behind him and moving easily around it. He stepped into a ready stance, his knife already
