Game of Towers and Treachery (The Shadow's Apprentice Book 2)

by Harper Alexander

  She told herself it was the king’s diversion in sending her off to Tricova that had kept her from acting – not her own hesitation. But a small, taunting voice suggested it seemed an awful lot like Clevwrith’s provocation spurring her to action now. That perhaps she might not yet have had the guts to meet him on the field without him meddling with her mission.

  She squashed the whisper of doubt under a boot heel, switching to lace the next foot. There was a difference between being ready and biding one’s time. Timing was everything.

  Now it was time to act, and she need not explain herself to anyone. Least of all herself.

  Finished with her boots, she swept her hair up into a quick, messy topknot. Next came her belt, into which multiple knives found their sheaths. Then the dagger that banded her thigh. After that, her bag of tricks – slung cross-wise across her chest and secured with a clip at her belt to keep it stationary, and handy, during any excitement. Finally, her gloves.

  A glance out the window showed a glorious night, the glittering, lantern-lit palace grounds haughtily unaware of the breathtaking city competing for greatest spectacle just beyond the wall. Tightly-clustered rooftops painted with moonlight rambled like jagged facets of crystal to the horizon, where the gigantic full moon, just rising, arched through nearly half the sky.

  Despiris took a moment to admire the beacon, soaking in its ethereal pallor where it spotlit her windowsill. Shall I howl at your fair face to really get the servants going? she wondered cheekily. Then with a smirk she stole from the room.

  Few were about the halls at this hour, leaving her to make her escape with a single startled glance from a skulking chambermaid and only Hanzel trailing after her. Once she reached the gates outside, he let her continue into the city alone, his assignment not stemming beyond palace grounds.

  “Safe night, my lady,” he bade, always so polite. Despiris glanced briefly over her shoulder in acknowledgement, then swept her hood off her shoulders and over her head, striding covertly down the avenue into the night.

  The thrill of freedom and comfort of seclusion washed over her at once, a tension she hadn’t even realized was there leaking out of her shoulders. She breathed in the fresh air, the flush of excitement that warmed her neck contradictory to what one might expect plunging into the pre-winter chill.

  Whether or not she encountered the Shadowmaster this night, she would be reacquainted with a dear old friend. A missing piece of her soul.

  The night itself.

  It had been too long since she’d indulged. She’d all but started having withdrawals. That business in Tricova had kept her occupied, but she’d begun to lose herself, just a bit, behind the new façade, down the rabbit hole of foreign court intrigue. It had been inevitable, really. An all-consuming venture that demanded she dedicate her entire self to the role.

  But just like that, she was back. Back to her old shenanigans in her own city. No more gowns, gossip, and glitter. Give me the shadows, dark and daunting.

  In spite of her eagerness, Despiris took a long route through the city, trying to limber up the lingering stiffness in her body. If she’d bothered to check herself, she might have concluded she was not at her prime, that she should give herself another day before charging into the fray. But she did not check herself. In the back of her mind she told herself that Clevwrith had been back and forth to Tricova just as she had, and if she could not keep up with him, then she had no business challenging him in the first place.

  ‘Your body’s limitations are far beyond what it tells itself,’ Clevwrith’s phantom voice came back to her, one of his many teachings over the years. ‘In your mind, you will find your true adversary, and your true ally. Master your mind, and you master your body. Pain will merely be a suggestion. Discomfort a mere annoyance. You will find that mastering such things is as simple as convincing yourself to take just a single step more. And then doing that again. And again. Into infinity.’

  Into infinity, she repeated in her own mind, her lips tracing the words absentmindedly. Her body ignited at the incantation, keen and hot, as if someone had just held a match to her kerosene-flushed veins. Breaking into a jog, she forsook the streets for the elevated tier she preferred – the rooftops.

  Gaining confidence and speed, she bounded from rooftop to rooftop, pushing gradually upward toward the highest peak in the vicinity. There, she paused to catch her breath – and to drink in the view, squaring a certain formation in the South Quarter in her sights.

  The Cob huddled coy and dormant due south, still little more than a jagged cluster of crystal-like facets from her vantage point. But where many would see crude, dull quartz and pass it by for flashier locales, Despiris saw the Cobweb District for the unpolished diamond that it was. Knew that hidden within its folds was the Shadowmaster’s own secret palace. That the cracks and crevices yielded intricate, imaginative spaces of luxury, all carefully curated by legendary thieves with expensive taste.

  Her gaze landed on the tallest peak nestled within that cluster, where she knew a glass-walled pinnacle with panoramic views to be. It was the Shadowmaster’s greenhouse, a tiny, lush paradise perched atop the city, a favorite haunt for both of them when she had resided there. She imagined him there now, standing at the window surrounded by his cascading crush of roses, solemnly admiring his dark kingdom.

  They locked gazes across the distance.

  Despiris’s breath caught, what had started as imagination registering as more of a sixth sense. She could feel him there, looking back.

  Waiting for her.

  Long had there been some unfathomable, intangible connection between them. As if, in the darkness, everything ran together, making it difficult to tell where the shadows ended and the other being sharing the shadows began.

  For a moment she let that sense of him look at her, suffering the strange vulnerability of being caught in the glaring-moon spotlight.

  Being caught in the light was as good as being caught naked. But a small tingle of delight went through her, letting him see her this way.

  How else was she to show off what she had become? It wouldn’t be much of a debut if he didn’t even get to look at her.

  But a moment was all he got.

  The shingles rattled in the wake of her abrupt departure, and she took the shadowed side of the rooftops the rest of the way to the Cob.

  She paused at the perimeter, excited breaths fogging in the chilled air around her face. She had opted for the ground level for her homecoming, the intricate network of alleys being the district’s claim to fame. Most supposed the sector was entitled the ‘Cobweb’ District because of its ancient, abandoned nature, little but skeletal remains of what once was, collecting dust and cobwebs. But Despiris fancied it referred to the web of alleyways, a delightful maze that made the district ideal for secret passages and all manner of trickery.

  It was stranger than she thought it would be, stepping back over the imaginary threshold into her old stomping grounds. Cloying nostalgia washed over her, thicker even than the shadows. It was a funny thing, nostalgia – haunting and gratifying at once.

  She had only been gone a scant few months, yet it felt like far longer. A lifetime of fond memories danced down these passages, elusive and just-out-of-reach, as if some intangible veil now divided her from them.

  As if the echoes of herself were no longer quite her.

  But one thing, she knew, would remain constant in these alleyways. And that was the Master of the Shadows. Even after death, she was certain, he would haunt them.

  Into infinity.

  Suddenly she was centered again, the stutter of nostalgia mastered and tucked away – whisked into one of the many cracks of stone to seep out at some later time. There was no place for sentiment in the middle of a mission.

  She had a shadow to catch.

  Gooseflesh prickled down her arms as she entered the vicinity. The shadows reached forward to taste her, seeping into every pore and crevice. Some might recoil from the sensation, unable to
suffer the foreboding chill, but to Despiris the shadows had always felt like velvet. Lush and luxurious. A cloak she wanted to don about herself.

  Rare was the fiend who would mess with you when you wore the night itself like a cloak.

  Clevwrith, of course, was no ordinary fiend.

  Where are you, Shadowmaster? There was always a chance he had vacated the premises when Despiris had revealed to the Shadowhunters that he dwelled here. But Despiris doubted the extra attention would have made a difference to him. He had probably just amused himself watching from the wings while search party after search party fumbled about in his maze of alleys. You’re welcome, for that little bit of entertainment.

  Despiris muted her footsteps, analyzing the shadows with a trained eye as she moved down the alley. Gaping black windows watched from above, each teasing there could be more than a soulless gaze observing beyond the crumbling archways.

  Despiris was deep into the ancient labyrinth when she caught wind of the first sign of Clevwrith. It was his scent that gave him away – a distinct draft of sandalwood, clean linen, and roses wafting down the alley from behind her. Her nostrils flared in recognition, her steps halting. A feeling like hackles rising ghosted down her spine.

  She turned knowingly, peering past her hood into the shadows from whence she came. At first, it seemed as if nothing but darkness congregated at the beginning of the alley. Then a silhouette sauntered forward, slowly separating himself from the dark.

  He stopped when still barely perceptible, just defined enough that Despiris was certain of who she beheld. She would know that silhouette anywhere. He may have been cloaked by the night, but he was in no way disguised by it.

  A breeze drifted down the passage, the edge of her hood fluttering briefly into her line of sight. When she pushed it out of the way, the silhouette was gone.

  Oh no, you don’t.

  Despiris took off back down the alley without a moment’s hesitation. He could disappear that quickly, and not show his face again for a month.

  She’d be damned if that was as close as she was going to get.

  Old stone reeled past as she went after him, her heart leaping into an erratic thrum. She careened around the corner just in time to see a dark blur disappear into a first-story window. Her boots chopped quicker over crumbling pavement at the urgency to keep from losing him. She dived through the window into pitch blackness, rolling across dusty stone. A shard of something scraped beneath her, but she hardly noticed, already pushing herself away from the ground and jumping back to her feet. Another clatter like broken crockery sounded in the darkness before her, giving away Clevwrith’s position. Despiris lurched toward the sound, forearms raised in front of her face to intercept any obstacles before she ran full-tilt into them.

  In a scant few moments, her eyes had adjusted enough to distinguish the sheer blackness of obstruction from the hollow blackness of a void. It was the smallest difference, a sensation as much as it was visual – almost like an awareness of the way her body ushered air through the space, the subtleties of its resistance and flow. Years of practice had turned her into a creature of the night, nocturnal in near-superhuman ways. The same way the blind became ultra-aware of their surroundings with their available senses, so did Despiris navigate instinctively through total darkness.

  Like mice through the catacombs the Shadhi scurried, a lingering tendril of the Shadowmaster’s scent assuring Despiris that she was right on his tail. Until suddenly the air pressure changed, whisking upward and purging the stuffiness from the passages. The cloying sweetness of roses and sting of freshly-bleached linen gave to the chilled freshness of winter. Despiris took her cue, feeling for the ascent and following Clevwrith up an unseen, twisting flight of steps. They shuddered beneath her, suggesting an old, skeletal structure of wrought iron. No sooner had she thought as much than the first blushes of moonlight found their way in from above, illuminating snatches of the rust-flaked, wedge-shaped platforms stacked to bear her to the second floor.

  She flew up the rest of the fragmented steps to the top, emerging dizzily to a level of just-perceptible stone ruins. Like a startled fish glimpsed darting away beneath murky waters, the tail-end of a cloak flourished into the shadows of an adjoining chamber. Despiris charged after her elusive quarry, leaping over a toppled pallet of bricks and sliding over a layer of powdery decay through the doorway.

  And there was that taunting curl of cloak, disappearing into the next room.

  Is this what it feels like? she wondered, empathizing briefly with the poor souls sent time and again after her master.

  Not to be deterred, however, she fumbled for traction and bolted after him again, convinced it would be different for her. After all, he’d spent years conditioning her, challenging her, to keep up with him. Unless he’d been going easy on her all those years, never allowing himself the thrill of full speed or the gloat of giving it his all, it stood to reason she could catch up.

  Just like any other time we kept pace with one another through the city. Trailblazing the shadows together.

  Together. Partners.

  Equals.

  She didn’t stop to think that ‘equal’ might not be enough. That she might have to prove better than him, in order to catch him. Because what was stopping them from keeping pace with one another, trapped in an inescapable stalemate, this epic unending chase through the city, forever?

  She couldn’t think of it.

  She would catch him. If for no other reason than that he underestimated her ruthless determination to do so.

  Really, Des? a skeptical voice trickled into the back of her mind. Since when are you ‘ruthless’?

  She shoved it away, opening the floodgates for the adrenaline pumping through her veins and slinging herself faster through the second-story ruins. Exhilaration replaced all doubt. She let herself feed off of it. Reminded herself this was what she was born for. That no man could stand against what destiny had already foretold.

  It was the mindset of transcendence. The certainty that took her to that place few ever rose to.

  Clevwrith might be the night. But she could seduce the night – could run her fingers through the shadows and bring them to their knees. Could reel in the constellations like fish on a line, becoming the puppet-master to the stars themselves. Could trip Clevwrith in those strings before he even realized she’d brought the sky down around him.

  Before she realized they were her own heartstrings, instead of puppet strings–

  Careening through an archway, Despiris identified the void before her just in time to skid to an urgent halt, arms pinwheeling to cancel her momentum as she collapsed in a heap and slid dangerously close to the edge. Her boots went over, crumbs of stone raining into the void. Almost the entire floor of the chamber had caved in, leaving little but a ledge around the edges.

  A ledge she had barely managed to cling to.

  Her heart clogged her throat, adrenaline turning momentarily sour in her veins. Too close. She was just pulling her composure back into place when she realized the fragments spilling into the void weren’t making a sound at the bottom.

  How many floors had collapsed beneath her? How deep did the pit plunge?

  Curiously, she peered over the edge. Moonlight filtered down from above, a gap in the ceiling two floors up revealing the cave-in had started at the very top.

  And at the bottom, a mere floor beneath her, the pale shaft landed on a soft, crumpled fold of fabric. A cloak.

  The Shadowmaster’s cloak.

  A gasp stole her breath. Oh, gods…

  Clevwrith!

  She scrambled to get her feet underneath her again, leaning precariously over the void to bring his cloak into focus. Surely he hadn’t fallen. He was better than that.

  “Good evening, Shadeling.”

  Despiris’s gaze came up, landing on the sliver of ledge across the void. It took a moment, and then she saw him. A silhouette framed by the archway opposite hers.

  Shadeling. The term
of endearment for novice SFH.

  Despiris fought to slow her panicked breaths, blaming the chase through the Cob rather than the fear of thinking Clevwrith had taken some foolish, fatal misstep. She sat back, resting her hands on her knees. “I haven’t been a Shadeling for some time.”

  “You’ll always be my Shadeling, Des. There’s naught to be done about that.”

  He was trying to get in her head. Make her believe in some fundamental way she would always be his apprentice. Less than him.

  And, flustered from the shock of thinking he lay at the bottom of a ditch, still, she coined no immediate come-back. Found little but relief to fuel her response. Followed inevitably by the realization that it was no mistake his cloak lay strewn as a decoy across the rubble below.

  With Clevwrith, there were never mistakes. Just mind games.

  Endless, tireless mind games, stacked one on top of another. Into infinity.

  It rather soured the relief.

  What had he just said?

  “A little distressed?” the silhouette taunted, reading the flustered zigzag of her thoughts like an open book.

  Keep up, Des. He’s toying with you. Quenching her natural inclination of relief, she hardened herself against his games.

  “That’s a dirty trick, Clevwrith,” she accused stoically. “You’ve become cruel.” It was fair enough, though, after she’d just resolved to become ruthless if that was what it would take to catch him.

  He was one step ahead of her. As she should have expected.

  “You’ve become sensitive,” he countered. “It was a harmless prank. Did you really think I could have fallen? If you didn’t, then I wouldn’t have.”

  Her eyebrows rose and fell in wry conjecture. “There’s always a chance the floor will simply choose that moment to fall out from underneath you, in a moment of unpredictability.”

  “Then I would choose that moment to discover I have wings. Come on, Des. Don’t insult me. The fun has not even begun, and you think I have tripped into a pothole, and broken my fool neck?”