suspiciously.
Thus, he waited for Jet to lumber up the steps to the battlements above the gate to relieve him. As he’d half expected, the surly beast ignored his greeting. Nothing made the griffon resent his current inability to fly more keenly that having to negotiate the often cramped and narrow castle stairways.
Dai Shan descended to the courtyard with its litter of broken golems and frozen corpses, an assortment of the latter missing their heads for a reason he had yet to understand. Glancing upward to make sure Jet wasn’t watching him instead of the snowy wasteland beyond the walls, he slipped into what had once been a stable. The enclosure had a couple of mangled corpses of its own, both, by the look of them, zombies before Aoth and Vandar’s warriors hacked and battered them to pieces.
The Shou slipped into one of the stalls, where neither Jet nor Vandar would see him simply by peering through the doorway. Then he sat down cross-legged on the frozen dirt floor with its scatter of ancient rotten straw, breathed slowly and deeply, and emptied his mind of everything but his purpose.
When he felt himself centered, poised, his consciousness leaped from his body to hurtle south like an arrow. After an instant of exhilarating, almost dizzying lightness, he suddenly stood between a whitewashed longhouse with the heads of dragons, unicorns, and hounds carved into the eaves and a smallish amphitheater dug out of the ground.
His return to Immilmar was possible because he’d previously created a shadow and sent it on ahead of him. He’d initially told Jet and Vandar the truth when he’d said he’d exhausted the capacity to spawn such servants, but he’d lied when claiming it had yet to renew itself. For why should his rivals share in whatever knowledge he garnered?
Unfortunately, it had taken the phantom a while to make the trek, for, tireless as it was, it hadn’t been able to travel by day. Nor had that been its only deficiency. Its thoughts murky and inhuman-stupid, if the truth be told-it hadn’t known any better than to lurk near the Witches’ Hall, the one place in the capital where someone was most likely to detect it.
But apparently, nobody had, and now that Dai Shan had inhabited it, obliterating its own identity in the process, he wouldn’t linger. He whispered a charm to cloak himself in darkness, then skulked away.
As he neared a little stand of oaks, he caught rhyming words and registered a sort of rhythmic pressure impinging on his arcane sensitivities. He paused and peered because he recognized the voice. It was Yhelbruna herself working magic alone in the freezing night.
Or trying, anyway. Dai Shan couldn’t identify the language she was speaking. Some tongue of the Feywild, perhaps. But as a mage of sorts in his own specialized fashion, he recognized the strident insistence in her tone. It was the way ritual casters sounded when their magic was failing, when the spirits ignored them and reality balked at bending to their will.
Yet this was the most celebrated hathran in Rashemen struggling to exert power in what was surely a consecrated and thus conducive spot. Her current lack of success was accordingly strange, so strange Dai Shan felt tempted to continue spying.
He wouldn’t, though, because time was short. He needed to stick to his plan, and besides, even if she was having an off night, no one was more likely to take notice of him than the witch in the leather mask.
He prowled on to Blackstone House, a shabby excuse for an inn but the best the Rashemi capital had to offer and the establishment where he’d secured accommodations for himself and his retainers. He surveyed what the rough exterior timber wall afforded in the way of hand- and toeholds, and then he clambered upward.
Halfway to the shuttered window that was his destination, he realized he didn’t actually know if his followers still occupied the rooms on the other side. They might have gone home to Thesk after his disappearance, especially if Bez had reported him dead.
Oh, well, if someone other than a Shou responded to his tapping, Dai Shan could likely still elicit information somehow and ensure his informant’s silence afterward as well.
As it turned out, though, it was moon-faced, round-shouldered Cheng Lin who hesitantly opened the shutters and goggled out. “Master!” he yelped.
Inwardly, Dai Shan winced at the volume of his retainer’s voice, the naked astonishment in his expression, and, well, everything raucous and raw. With attendants of this caliber, was it any wonder he had to do everything himself?
“My dutiful helper,” he said. “It gladdens me to find you and the others faithfully awaiting my return.” The gods forbid they should actually have gotten up off their arses and come looking for him. “Perhaps you’ll do me the profound favor of stepping back from the window.”
“Yes, Master!” the other Shou answered, and Dai Shan climbed inside.
As his master’s major domo on the road, Cheng Lin had his own little private room. A couple of Shou voices murmured on the other side of the door, but they didn’t sound excited. Apparently no one else had heard the functionary squawk.
“Captain Bez told everyone you died in the fighting,” Cheng Lin said.
“How kind of the illustrious soldier to mention me. I imagine it was in the course of laying claim to the griffons.”
Dai Shan pulled the shutters closed, making the room darker, so dark, in fact, that the shroud of shadow that still clung to him all but smothered the glow of the little oil lamp altogether. The scant light remaining just barely gleamed on the tusks and glass eyes of the stuffed boar’s head on the wall.
“He didn’t,” Cheng Lin said. “I mean, he
Dai Shan felt a surge of excitement potent enough that habit alone might prove insufficient to preserve his composure. He took a breath and made a deliberate effort to steady himself.
“Then, if I understand my loyal assistant correctly, the beasts remain unclaimed in their invisible birdcage.”
Cheng Lin nodded, his double chin wobbling. “Yes.”
“In that case, please relate all that’s occurred hereabouts since the brave captain was generous enough to grant me passage aboard his skyship.”
Cheng Lin obeyed in a somewhat disjointed, backfilling fashion, but still, the tale of Bez’s disappointment, botched assassination attempt, and subsequent flight emerged clearly enough. At the end, the pudgy servant said, “I wrote to your father to tell him of your death. I mean, your supposed death. I had no reason to doubt what the southerner said.”
Dai Shan’s thoughts turned to three of the dozens of empty-hand techniques he’d mastered-the first, a blow with the heel of the palm to the base of the nose; the second, a chop to the throat; and the third, a stab to the solar plexus with stiffened fingers. Any one of them would kill Cheng Lin instantly.
“That was exactly the right thing to do,” he said. “I commend my retainer on the diligence with which he attends to his responsibilities. Has my lord father’s answer arrived?”
“Not yet, Master.”
“When it does, you will of course understand that because he wrote based on false information, we can only truly serve him by disregarding instructions to return home or do anything else that would preclude the completion of our errand. And to avoid confusing those less discerning than yourself, you won’t disclose that such invalid orders even exist.”
Cheng Lin hesitated. “Master, our lord, your father, has always said that when he gives a command-”
“He expects unconditional obedience. As well he might, given that for longer than either you or I have been alive, he’s been the most frightening man in Thesk. Still, he
Cheng Lin swallowed. “Master, naturally, as always, I depend on you for guidance as to how I may best serve our house.”
“Which is why I trust my wise aide above all others and will always reward his fidelity as it deserves.”
“Thank you, Master.” Cheng Lin paused in the manner of one deliberating whether to speak further or hold his peace. In the end, reticence yielded to curiosity. “May I ask, then, if we’re aren’t going home even if our lord orders us back, what
What, indeed? If not for the indignity implicit in acknowledging perplexity to someone as lowly and lacking in
