GIRL OF ROOFTOPS
AND SHADOWS
HARPER ALEXANDER
4th Edition © September, 2020
By Harper Alexander
Originally published as ‘Spychild’
1st edition text Copyright © June 2007
All rights reserved.
This product may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction.
Any likeness to real people
or events is purely coincidental.
Cover art and design by Laura Moyer of
Thebookcovermachine.com
1
Cobwebs and Crossroads
“She will not live out the night,” they said – and when she did, they were not there to see, for they had long since left her for dead.
*
A tomb-like darkness haunted the alleys of the Cobweb District through the night. The ‘dark before the dawn’ was a regular in those parts. Even by day, the place affectionately referred to as the Cob kept a tight fist on its brooding reputation. Moon and sun alike sailed out of sight overhead, blocked by the broken and slouching walls that rose with ominous regime over the ancient sector of the city.
To walk in the light was a foreign and unseemly notion to the inhabitants of the Cob’s corridors. Inhabitants which mainly included a legion of mice, rats, and really rather beautiful but reclusive spiders.
For the most part, Clevwrith might consider himself a spider.
Some would definitely call him a rat.
He clung to the shadows, eyes downcast away from the biting cold, hardly able to make out his own boots on the broken cobbles. Hands deep in his trick-filled pockets, he brooded right along with the dark, thoughts like a kaleidoscope of ink poured in water. An easy scapegoat for the heaviness that weighed often on his shoulders, his cloak drooped around him, sweeping the ground in his wake where it accrued a lacy hem of cobwebs.
At least the maze of walls kept out all but a slight draft. That was something to be thankful for. It was already cold enough in the still, dank shadows.
But he walked in the chilling shadows nevertheless.
The shadows were his home. His curse, he supposed. Not even candlelight was permitted in these parts after dusk. They had to be careful.
Who was he fooling? He had to be careful. They were gone. In the past, there had been so many. Clevwrith had grown up hearing of how his grandfather had fallen from glory. Then he’d watched his own father trip into the same pothole of demise, his legacy cut short. The rest of them, those not related to Clevwrith’s family by blood, just didn’t seem to possess the spark, and had all fallen prey to capture too easily, coming and going like ghosts on the wind. Their names faded with them, never lingering in memories, never earning any fame. They had all made too many mistakes.
Now Clevwrith was the only one left. Everyone else had been caught. The infamous legacy of the Shadhi lived on in one man’s mischief alone.
Shadhi – a contraction of Shadows for Hire, also sometimes shortened to the SFH. Professional trespassers, eavesdroppers, and the reason for the saying ‘the walls have eyes’, whose methods haughtily skirted the law and whose loyalties were bought by the highest bidder.
Or had been, when it had been a thriving operation, back in the golden days. Now, not even the highest bidder knew how to get in contact with the sole remaining proprietor.
Some liked to say he had grown skittish, due to his predecessors’ demise. Perhaps there was a kernel of truth to that. But more than that…Clevwrith simply had no interest in the business side of things.
Only in the legacy.
Time and time again, he had evaded the hounds that strove to bring him down. Somehow, they always came up short. He swore and knew they would only ever snap at the emptiness where he should have been. Forever, the Master of the Shadows would remain a haunting mystery.
Clevwrith smiled thinking of the pet name he had been given, as suspicious nobles whispered about the mystifying spy who seemed almost more shadow than he was man, and the most wanted trickster across the land. He stirred up mystery and intrigue wherever he went, making his presence known just to influence a chase before disappearing like he had never been there.
And only a youth – a gangly adolescent who could pass as ordinarily plagued by all things clumsy, awkward and ungainly. No one suspected.
Something caught Clevwrith’s eye, bringing him out of his wandering thoughts. He knew every inch of midnight shade along this path, and the deviation of shadow ahead was not usual. He worked to bring it into focus and concluded it was a form, something raised off the ground. Depth perception came slowly, leaving it up to wild speculation. Cautiously, Clevwrith approached, making no more sound than a cat on the prowl. The aberrant deformation of his alley was a shivering mass of…
It was a girl, misplaced and forsaken, a deposit of traumatized prey in his alley. She was young, fragile, possibly a few years younger than he.
She made no indication she was aware of his company, though she was conscious and he stood only a meter or so from her disheveled form. Stayed by a moment of conflict, Clevwrith hesitated, trying first to decide what to make of the girl, then what to do about her. What was she doing out here all alone? And in this sorry state?
Visitors were not unheard of even though the Cob had been chosen as Shadhi headquarters due to its abandoned, ghost-town state, but a young girl wandering into the heart of the haunting sector at night? Clevwrith didn’t know what to make of the child. His ordinary predicaments embodied a rather different nature.
Finally deciding she was harmless, anyway, he treaded into what his rule book deemed dangerous light, but what might render anyone of a less nocturnal persuasion blind as a bat. Delicately, he rolled the body over with the toe of his boot to behold the girl’s pale, dirty face. Then he crouched beside her for a closer look, extinguishing the element of silhouette that cloaked him and offering a view of his own face. It would not do to traumatize the girl additionally by looming over her featureless like some nightmare from the alley shadows – never mind that that was the identity he claimed.
Staring up at him without seeing, through eyes that flickered weakly, the poor creature made no attempt to so much as squint into his face. She wasn’t going anywhere – but her eyelids sank closed in a most tragic manner, and he couldn’t let her go there…
“Don’t go,” he discouraged neutrally, his tone steady in the grave moment.
Looking confused at the intrusion of his voice in her fading senses, the girl’s eyes fluttered back open. Her gaze swam dizzily over his face, searching blindly for answers.
Good. His voice held onto her, forcing her dying mind to focus. “You have a name?” he asked simply, not sure if she could answer but wanting to give her awareness something to latch onto.
Her lips parted with an effort and she uttered one strangled word: “Despiris.”
Clevwrith nodded, taking her speech as a positive sign, and slid his arms under her form, finding his hold among her tattered clothing. He lifted her easily, light as a bird, gathering her limp limbs and supporting her lolling head.
And then as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he continued on his shadowed way – but this time, he did something extremely unorthodox, and took another on his solitary path.
2
Ashes to Shadows
“You will have manners, girl,” her mother scolded time and again – but ‘manners’ were not to be her fate. For along came a turning point in a fateful alley, and thereafter she was no
t the young lady she should have been, but in fact quite the opposite – and also something no one would have ever expected her to become.
*
As far as Despiris was concerned, ‘society’ had never once saved her a seat. Not when she was a wee thing teased for a constellation of dark freckles and couldn’t make friends, not when times got rough and she fell into disgrace as a street urchin, and not when she was clapped into a pair of irons and stuffed into the back of the ominous buggy bound for the king’s dungeon. So it just fit the pattern, really, that fate saw her rescued by an eccentric passer-by whose entire livelihood thrived behind the scenes of society.
The strangest of angels took her under his wing that night in the alley, and for half a decade she grew in his exotic, quirky shadow. Those crucial years that shaped the young woman she became were a blur of outlandish escapades and near-magic. More adventure than one might fit into a lifetime became her new normal. Her standard of living.
The night was like the spirit of the howling wolf, calling her awake. It had been strange, at first, the nocturnal habits of her master. But now she felt the tug of the moon, and might have howled at it alongside the wolf spirits if howling did not break the sacred rules of stealth.
Whisper, always whisper, came the mantra to tame her excitement. But her blood pumped hot, a case of constantly-stoked adrenaline making it sometimes difficult to remember the rules. It didn’t feel like there were rules when her Shadhi master turned her loose on the sleeping city with instruction to get from Point A to Point B as swiftly as possible, and she was bounding, leaping, and flipping to maneuver between ground, walls, rooftops, and rails.
It didn’t feel like there were rules when she scaled sheer walls with little but the cracks between stones as foot- and hand-holds.
It didn’t feel like there were rules when she played a bit of mischief on the authorities and they gave chase, and she slipped away down shadowed routes or over impossible obstacles.
But the rules were there, and the Master of the Shadows was determined to make them stick. And so they trained. Endless, exhilarating missions of action and intrigue. The nights flew by on dark, darting wings as Despiris catapulted through them, days blurring into years, the present blurring into the past – everything blurring until half a decade had come and gone, and it was far more than her body that the Master of the Shadows had brought back to life that night in the alley.
She had been fading that night, descending into that half-welcome place where a tragic void of relief awaited her.
But now....
Now she was rising. Rising from her destined ashes to take on the world as something new. Clevwrith had thrown open the shutters of the dormant, drab vestiges inside her, a pedestal lifting her from the rubble. “You will be queen of the night,” he told her, over and over, “Unsung hero to the underdogs of the world.”
Over and over until she believed him, that pedestal trembling beneath her, rising still, breaking through ceilings that once caged her and lifting her toward the stars. Up and up it went – propelling her toward a bright future, and much darker destiny.
*
The dagger flew with deadly precision, but with aim meant to avoid the girl – loving aim. “Death does not fly on metal wings, today,” Clevwrith liked to say to reassure her at the beginning of these lessons. And foolishly, perhaps, she believed him.
But Clevwrith was never wrong.
In the next instant the knife would whistle past her, unless she fulfilled her goal and intercepted it. Her ready hand whipped out, like a viper striking, to cancel its flight. Lacking precision, her sweaty fingers collided with the sharp metal, and she recoiled with a curse.
The stricken dagger clattered to the ground a meter or so away, a smear of blood gleaming on the blade from a pinprick of moonlight.
“You’re psyching yourself out anticipating it,” Clevwrith advised, moving to retrieve the weapon. He folded the blade into a fist and yanked it through his fingers to clean her blood from the steel.
Despiris tried not to cringe, but it was impossible to suppress the reaction even though she knew his hand came away completely unharmed. The only blood staining his flesh was her own. I’d sever every finger if I tried that.
Clevwrith took his place again, expressionless and calm. “You sense its path, but you overthink it.” His shrewd eyes sparkled with perfect understanding of the stunt’s mechanics. His analysis was always total and precise, tuned to brilliant detail. “You’re still afraid of the blade.”
Despiris lowered her fingers from her mouth, blood sucked clean. Flexing experimentally, she shook off the injury. “I know.”
“Good. Fix it.”
Easy for him to say. He was no less than stunningly perfect. Gritting her teeth, Despiris positioned herself for a repeat of the exercise. She knew better than to argue; after years of tireless instruction from the Shadhi master, she knew he could win any argument simply with his infuriating patience. There was seemingly nothing she could do to exasperate him. She had never seen him angry – dangerous, assuredly, but never angry. He took pleasure in being dangerous.
“Catch it this time.”
She ignored the expectation that came with the order, refusing to let the added pressure get to her. Slowing her breathing, she sank into a void of concentration, watching almost as if in a trance as Clevwrith raised his arm back and flung the dagger at her again. This time, she lashed out and completed the arc down to the hilt precisely on time. The weapon whistled snugly into her palm.
Clevwrith’s gaze flashed approval, but only for one cherished moment. “Better.”
At least it wasn’t criticism.
“Clean up your fingers,” he said with a sense of finality. “We’re done here.” As he bent to pick up the pile of training weapons at his feet, his knee-length black summer cape flowed around his form, concealing his motions. Not one blade clashed with another when he lifted the tangle of weapons from the alley. Despiris lingered, marveling at his careful grace, studying him in admiration.
The Master of the Shadows didn’t display the typical appearance of dark legendary fiends. Legends liked to tell of tall, dusky-featured rogues, hair and eyes as black as night – intimidating figures that could kill you where you stood with nothing but a chilling glance. Clevwrith was different, more enchanting than daunting, shorter than most would guess him, eyes shockingly crystalline light blue. His short brown hair was kept dashingly slicked back, his face clean-shaven, his demeanor as gentlemanly as it was brooding.
“Go on, Des,” Clevwrith encouraged, sensing she lingered.
Obeying this time, she wandered off toward the gap where the alley wall crumbled away low to the ground. The gap served as one of many unintended entries to the Cob’s hidden nooks and crannies eroding throughout the vacant sector of the city. Through the gap, Despiris descended a make-shift drop of stairs down into an underground tunnel.
The soft tinkle of dripping water echoed down the shaft. Clevwrith had told her of the underground rivers that used to run through these tunnels, veins of nature buried by the developers of the capital centuries ago. They had run all but dry a generation past. Now, only hollowed-out shafts remained where the water once rushed.
The Shadhi master could access every wing of the city from these tunnels. It was one reason no one ever caught him. In their time, the rivers had carried a copious amount of mineral runoff from the Jaggeth Mountains, had never been safe for drinking, and had therefore been sealed off and all but forgotten since the Twilight Ages. Hardly anyone noticed when they dried up, out of sight and out of mind. While Fairoway officials might know of the ancient network in the backs of their minds from crumbly old plans or rumors, they’d long since been dismissed as inconsequential. The once-gushing channels were left to collect dust as tomb-like catacombs, employed by the SFH for generations.
At least until the dawn of the Pure Ages, when the revolutionary company Cobble and Burrow came through with its grandiose designs for a sewer.
The project had made good use of the river routes, revamping many into streamlined shafts to transport waste. Clevwrith had been forced to adapt and employ the sewers as often as the river routes, not always pleasant but still affective.
Despiris stepped into a side-shaft where a trickle of river water still ran along the smooth-worn bottom. Sections of the original riverways were still scattered wherever they didn’t intersect with Cobble and Burrow’s network, and it was one of these remnants she accessed now.
She crouched to thrust her hand into the cool liquid, watching the dribbling water turn dark as her blood washed away in an inky cloud. For just a moment, it seemed to swirl in unnatural lacy patterns, but then she caught herself daydreaming and blinked to snap herself out of it. The stream appeared normal again, suggesting she’d imagined it.
She shook her hands dry, flinging droplets throughout the passage and wincing at the raw, throbbing slit.
Don’t be a baby, Des. She’d had worse. Much worse.
Finished in the shaft, she headed back topside, joining Clevwrith in a cozy, crumbling courtyard.
“What do you have for me tonight?” she asked, hiding her eagerness. Hopefully it was something dangerous.
Clevwrith’s brows formed a slight frown. “I’ve heard rumors – whispers, really – that the west quarter has adopted a new, zero-tolerance policy for my mischief. I hear something about ‘wanted posters’. Perform a thorough sweep of the sector; cover every inch, tear down every sign. I want it so clean it sparkles in the moonlight.”
Despiris silenced a sigh before it could give away her disappointment at the mundane chore. It wasn’t what she’d had in mind. But she supposed not every night could be frivolous thrills and dangerous games. There was real work to be done.
“Go in stealth,” Clevwrith bade her farewell.
She rose at his dismissal and vanished out the rugged archway. Into the dingy streets, she found the darkest edge and fell into a silent lope toward her destination. Once out of the familiar region of the Cobweb District, the adrenaline of vulnerability rippled through her nerves. She wished briefly she had taken the concealed route through the tunnels under the city, but she knew Clevwrith would have refused.
Girl of Rooftops and Shadows (The Shadow's Apprentice Book 1) Page 1