The Shadows of Inveritus are not spies and assassins. Well, we aren’t just spies and assassins. At our heart, we are a political force, designed to safeguard the interests of our great city and protect it from military threat. You must hone your skills of negotiation, charm and reading people, as these will often of greatest import. The right smile will often serve you better than a knife. That being said, keep your knives sharp too.

* Shadows of Inveritus training manual.

Kalissa spent the next day writing her reports and catching up on some much-needed sleep. She had been badly hurt and—though her changeling heritage let her accelerate her healing somewhat—it would be weeks before she was back to normal. She was looking forward to spending a least a few days recuperating. She had earned it.

Unfortunately for her, Sal’s assessment of when the Lhintish arrived turned out to be wrong, and they showed up early that afternoon.

The man who came to talk to them wore fine trousers but no shirt, and his body was covered in what looked like one long scar. It ran down one arm, twisted around his torso and along his face then down his back and into his trousers, before appearing again on his chest and running down the other arm. Kalissa had no idea how he could have sustained such an injury, and it certainly wasn’t the result of any Lhintish practice she had ever heard of.

“I am called Lukas,” he said. His voice was serious, and his eyes were flat. His breath was visible in the air as he spoke despite it being a relatively mild autumn day. “I have come for the Frozen Dagger.”

“Of course,” the bland man said, handing it over. They had all met the Lhintish envoy in the main room of the safehouse.

“Where is the man who stole it?”

“He escaped,” the bland man said. “It was Saladeen Hadon. He stole it for a local criminal named Philious Bracken. One of ours killed Bracken, but Hadon escaped.”

Lukas’s mouth twitched up in what might have been the aborted beginnings of a smile. “Then I will hunt him down. Where was he sleeping?”

Kalissa cursed herself for not having the presence of mind to destroy Carlton’s reports, which had included the details of the Snake Pit. If the Lhintish went there, they’d find him immediately. And Sarina too.

“He was staying at a local brothel for a time,” Kalissa said.

“The Snake Pit,” the short man supplied.

Kalissa suppressed the urge to give him an angry look and continued. “However, I believe the last place he slept was in a burned-out farmhouse just outside of town. If you want to track him, I’d start there. I can show you the location if you like.” If she could take the Lhintish to where the Yarrls had camped, whatever tracking method they were using would send them off in the wrong direction while she warned Sal and Sarina.

Lukas shot her a disparaging look but addressed the bland Shadow. “Why does the servant speak to me?”

“She is one of us,” the short man said. “She’s the one who killed Bracken.”

Lukas looked at her again, then seemed to dismiss her entirely.

“You have done a service to your souls,” he said to the Shadows as a group. “Good work.”

“It is always a pleasure to help our friends in Lhint,” the bland man said. “It is our hope that this travesty will bring our two people’s closer together.”

This was a very innocuous comment, only vaguely alluding to the political favours Inveritus would be expecting after this. It wasn’t the least bit inflammatory and anyone representing the interests of a country, even Lhint where they tended towards being uptight, would have responded to it with banal agreement.

Lukas did not.

“What are you implying?” he asked, his voice dangerously low.

“I am not implying anything,” the bland man said. “Only commenting that Inveritus welcomes any opportunity to grow closer with the great nation of Lhint.”

“You want to exploit the theft of our sacred artefact for political gain?” Lukas asked. His eye was twitching, and he didn’t seem entirely stable. Kalissa had no idea how this guy had gotten the job of representing Lhint in such an important matter.

The bland man seemed not to know how to respond. It was clear that “Obviously” wasn’t going to go over well, but there was no way the Shadows could let this lunatic go back and tell his bosses that Inveritus helped out just to be nice.

“We don’t want to exploit anything,” the short man said. “We are just pointing out that this could bring our countries closer together.”

Diplomacy apparently wasn’t on with this guy, as Lukas literally snarled at this and began to raise his hand.

Kalissa moved quick, getting out of the way so she wouldn’t hit her comrades and then pulling a knife. The bland man and the short man were slower, but also went for weapons.

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Lukas pointed his hand at them, and they caught fire. A wave of incredible heat surged forth from the man’s hand and everything in its path, including the two Shadows, burst into flames.

The bland man and the short man screamed as their skin melted from their bones. Kalissa chucked her knife at Lukas and ran for it, diving out a window and bolting as fast as she could force her body to move. She was still sore from her ordeals, and her skin was blistering from being too close to that wall of heat, but the prospect of being burned to death was more than motivation enough, and she practically flew down the street.

Kalissa had a choice of where to go. She could find the nearest Shadow contact and get word to Inveritus about what had happened. Her superiors would want to know about the attitude of the Lhintish immediately and they would be able to take steps to salvage the situation, politically speaking. It would also get her to safety and out of the line of literal fire. It was the smart move, the sensible move, it was what she was trained to do. But…

Sarina had put herself at serious risk to save Kalissa when she really didn’t have to. She didn’t want to leave her to that fanatic Lukas if she could do something about it.

Pointing the Lhintish in the wrong direction was one thing, and it cost her little to do it. Helping Sarina now would mean putting her own life on the line. More than that, it would mean taking direct action to help criminals against the nation she was meant to be assisting. She would be going against the Shadows for someone she barely knew and owed no allegiance to.

But Sarina had saved her life and, despite her ulterior motives in befriending the delkin woman, Kalissa found she really did consider her a friend.

One of her professors, one of the good ones rather than the pretentious buffoons, had once said that we are who we choose to be. So, Kalissa had a choice: was she the sort of person who let a friend die if she could do something about it?

She thought of Carlton and how she had felt when she found his body.

Damnit.

Minutes later, Kalissa burst into the Snake Pit, exhausted, sweaty and more than a little sore.

“Ah, can I help—” a bouncer began, seeing the state of her.

“Trouble,” Kalissa wheezed. “Crazy. Coming here.” She took a second to catch her breath at least a little and then asked where Sarina and Sal were. They were in their rooms, and Kalissa heaved herself up the stairs.

She burst into Sarina’s room first and found her naked, straddling a very muscular, and very naked, man.

“Whoa!” Kalissa said, turning away for a second before remembering how important this was.

“What are you doing here?” Sarina asked. “I’m not sharing.”

The man looked a little disappointed at this, Kalissa ignored that and ploughed ahead. “The Lhintish and their Hunters are in Cadersville already. They killed the other Shadows and could be on their way here right now. You need to get out of here.”

Sarina practically leapt off the man in her bed. “Very well, we must tell Saladeen.”

“I’ll do that. You get some clothes on.”

Sarina looked down at herself and seemed to only just now notice she was naked. “Ah yes. Good idea.”

Kalissa burst into Sal’s room next to find him thankfully clothed, and still using his little pendulum thing.

“This is getting to be a habit,” Sal said as she entered.

Kalissa quickly outlined the situation, including that a guy covered in one long scar named Lukas has just murdered two of her fellow Shadows.

“Shit,” Sal swore. “Sounds like the Tower made something new with the Dagger before I swiped it. If he has Hunters with him, and he will, then once they get my trail, they’ll follow me forever.”

“Then we need to be gone before they get here.”

“You’re coming?” Sal said.

“Apparently. I figure Sarina won’t leave you and I’d rather she not die because of me, so I’m coming.”

“Okay,” Sal said, running a hand over his close-cropped hair. “But running won’t work. I’ve been staying here too long. And Siphoning force too. Hunters track by vis. They’ll pick that up easily from here.”

Kalissa didn’t know much about vis and certainly didn’t know you could track anyone by it, but she was too scared for her life to be curious just then. “So, you just want to stay here and die? If that’s the plan, forget what I just said, I’m out.”

“No. I just need to think. If I find Carrus, maybe his mysterious skard benefactor will help us. Even if he doesn’t want to, I’d rather be standing close to someone with a lot of influence and probably a lot of armed guards when the Hunters show up.”

“Well, that’s something at least. But I thought you didn’t know where Carrus was.”

Sal waved his hand. “I was just being aloof. He went to the local lord’s estate to tell him about the sheriff’s dirty secrets hoping to put a stop to the whole blackmail thing.”

“Okay,” Kalissa said, happy to have at least a vague semblance of a plan beyond running and screaming. “But how do we get Lord Bermont to let us in the front door? We’re not exactly nobility.”

“Speak for yourself,” Sal said. “I’m very much nobility. I’ll get us in, you just worry about paying me back for getting me into this mess in the first place.”

“I’m not having sex with you.”

“Who’s talking about sex?” Sal asked, grabbing up possessions and stuffing them into his cloak. “I meant with a big bag of money.”

“That’s off the table too.”

“I don’t want it on the table. I want it in my pocket.”

“Can we just go?”

The pair left Sal’s room and found Sarina waiting for them in the corridor outside, dressed in leather and with her wicked looking surbow at the ready. The three of them unhitched their horses, including the idiotic one Sarina had kept for Kalissa, and started towards Bermont Estate at a brisk trot, which was the quickest they could go in town without immediately drawing attention to themselves.

They turned a corner and came face to face with four Lhintish men with spears and two Hunters.

Kalissa had never seen a Hunter before, but it was immediately obvious what they were. The creatures looked like people, in this case one man and one woman, but with all trace of humanity missing from them. They were naked and grimy, covered in dirt and splattered with blood and filth. Their nails were long or broken, their teeth cracked and chipped. Each of their chests bore a terrible scar in their centre, and their tongues and genitals had been removed and the wounds burned closed.

Worse than all of that though was their faces. They held no expression, staring vacantly into the distance. There was nothing left behind their eyes. Kalissa met those eyes briefly and the whole world seemed to fall away, leaving behind only this wretched creature and the feeling that it represented something fundamentally wrong. That it was not alive, but rather a perversion of life. Kalissa had never been so scared of anything in her life.

“Run!” Sal roared, jolting Kalissa back into the moment. He kicked his horse into movement and Kalissa and Sarina were right behind him. Kalissa’s horse may have been an idiot, but even it seemed to recognize that near Hunters wasn’t a safe place to be, and it ran for all it was worth.

The Lhintish were yelling something behind them, but they were going nearly thirty miles an hour, so they could yell whatever they wanted.

Kalissa heard something behind her and turned to see whether their ride through town had freaked out a local or something.

The noise wasn’t a local.

The Hunters were chasing them. And they were gaining.