“Who sent you?” I demanded in the brief space between attacks.
The assassin wasn’t talking. He tried to headbutt me, and when that missed, he threw a knee at my midsection, grazing my ribs with little effect.
With one arm trapped, the enemy couldn’t defend himself against my blows. I hooked a series of rapid uppercuts into his abdomen, lifting him off his feet with every strike. He grunted with the impacts, but didn’t fall.
The damned armor was blunting my offense.
I unleashed the Thief’s Shield technique and my aura siphoned aspects of fortitude and resilience out of my attacker. It wasn’t the usual rush of power I’d experienced when using the technique against other opponents, though. It was a slow drip of aspects and jinsei. Enough to weaken my opponent. Not enough to drop him.
My attacker realized the new danger and tried to free himself with a sudden frenzy of activity. His knees bounced off the outsides of my thighs as I raised one leg then the other to fend off his strikes. His free hand clawed toward my face, and I slapped it to the side with a backfist. He gambled on another headbutt, and I stopped it cold with a short, sharp elbow strike across his chin.
My technique had drained enough power from my attacker’s armor to let that attack through, and the blurred aura that had surrounded him faded. For a moment, I caught a glimpse of gray eyes between layers of black cloth. I reached for the man’s mask, hoping to tear it free and get a good look at him. The elders would want to know who’d tried to kill me.
My Eclipse nature wanted to see its victim’s face. The dark urge had been amplified by my advancement and rose up within me so quickly I didn’t notice until it was almost too late. If the man hadn’t been protected by his armor, he’d have been drained dry in that moment.
Instead, my Eclipse nature gorged itself on half the jinsei in his core and stole away the last of the protection aspects in his armor. He was vulnerable. I could disable him and haul him off to face the elders.
Unfortunately, my assassin had an escape plan. He knew when he was outclassed and decided to run away to fight another day. The masked man made a complex gesture with his free hand and vanished in a burst of red light. A cloud of thick, stinking smoke filled the kitchen.
I staggered back into the living room and took a deep, shuddering breath. I raced upstairs to make sure there wasn’t another attacker hiding in my bedroom. The windows on either end of the upper floor gave me a good vantage point to confirm there were no other enemies hiding outside the cottage.
The assassin had come alone.
How the hell had he gotten into my quarters in the first place?
I stormed back to the school. Hagar and I needed to talk.
The Lure
I HAD NO IDEA WHERE to find my handler, so I started with her room. I banged on the door, and when that didn’t work, I pounded at her neighbors’ doors until someone answered.
“I’m looking for Hagar,” I told a final-year student who looked more than a little annoyed to have been woken up before his first class. “Have you seen her?”
“You know what time it is?” he asked. “Have you checked the exercise yard? I know she likes to do her calisthenics before breakfast.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I hustled down the hall and willed the school to show me the fastest way to the courtyard. I was surprised to find how much more quickly I could move through the building, now. It was as if my advanced core exerted more control over the shifting architecture.
Hagar wasn’t in the courtyard. Of course not, nothing could ever be easy.
I concentrated on my handler, fixing her image in my mind. When I had it as clear as I could manage, I demanded the school take me to her.
I wound my way up and down staircases, through twisting halls I’d never seen before, and up a spiral ramp lined with burning candles glued to the walls by ridiculous stalagmites of once-molten wax. I raised my fist to hammer on the door at the top of the ramp and almost punched Hagar in the face.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. For a moment, she looked as angry and displeased with me as the old Hagar.
“Someone just tried to kill me.” I showed her my bloodied arms through the shredded sleeves of my robes. “In the cottage.”
“That’s not possible,” she started, then shook her head. “Of course it’s possible. It happened. You can’t come in here. Let’s go back to your cottage.”
“What if they send another killer?” I asked.
“You defeated one, you can defeat another. Plus, I’ll be there to back you up,” she said.
“What if they send something else? Like a bomb.”
“That’s a fair point,” she said. “Give me a second.”
There was a loud clatter inside the room, and a series of grinding noises like Hagar was dragging furniture across the wooden floor. Light flashed under the doorway, red, green, and a shade of blue so bright it was nearly white. Finally, the noise stopped, and the door flew open.
“Come in,” she said.
I followed my handler into a room that was as plain and boring as any I’d ever seen. The circular chamber had stone walls topped by a plaster-domed roof crossed by a heavy pair of dark support beams. There were no windows or furniture, and no decorations on the walls. The only door was the one we’d entered through, and the only light came from a single dim orb
