13. Slipping Through the Dark

Once the yellow star vanished beyond the horizon, Emerier sank into darkness. Verevain, however, never truly slept. Even at this hour, a few stubborn lights still burned behind shutters or over late work. Their glow leaked onto the streets in thin lines and trembling patches, painting walls in faint gold and leaving the spaces between them deeper by contrast.

One shadow moved through those dark spaces without torchlight or shardlamp. It slipped along corners, clung to the blind stretches between buildings, and crossed the quieter streets carefully until it reached a certain inn. There it paused by the front, then drifted around the building as if testing it for weakness. When it reached the back, it hesitated briefly and then dissolved into nothing.

A little later, another shadow arrived. This one came with company. A hooded figure moved with it, slower and more solid, advancing with obvious care toward the back door. The cloaked body stopped there and began fumbling at the lock. A few breaths passed. Then came the faintest sound: a tiny unlatching click, metal yielding to pressure rather than force. The cloaked figure vanished at once, as though never there at all. The door opened a crack. The shadow slipped inside. The door drew almost shut behind it.

Inside the inn, the shadow flowed immediately toward the darkest corner it could find, where the weak lamplight from the common room barely reached. It waited there long enough to be sure no one had heard the door or come to check it. Only then did it cross to the stairs and climb to the second floor.

The corridor above lay in near darkness. A little light reached it from below, and another weak line came from somewhere farther down the hall, but not enough to reveal much. That suited the shadow perfectly. It moved from door to door, pausing at each. Sometimes it crouched and listened. Sometimes it leaned toward the lock, testing what little could be seen through it. Once or twice it remained still for so long it seemed to merge with the wall itself.

There was no sign of the girl.

It slipped back downstairs, crossed the lower room again, and returned to the back door. There it paused once more, listening for any shift inside the inn. Hearing none, it dissolved.

Time passed.

Then another shadow entered the same way, sliding through the cracked back door and retracing the same path. It visited the corners, crossed the familiar stretches of floor, and checked the upper corridor again. This time, however, it did not leave immediately. It settled near the head of the stairs and waited.

A moment later, the back door opened again. Two more hooded figures entered, moving more slowly and more carefully than the first. They crossed to the stairs, climbed them, and followed the waiting shadow down the corridor. The shadow remained ahead, always just far enough to scout the path without interfering. The two cloaked bodies advanced as if feeling for some invisible trail. Their pace slowed near one particular door. There the first figure stopped. The second vanished. In its place, the remaining one crouched before the lock and began working with even greater care than before.

The corridor tightened around the faint sounds. The shadow nearby went utterly still.

At last the mechanism gave with the soft, whispering scrape of released metal.

A faint sound answered from inside the room. Not a voice or alarm. Just the slight stir of someone shifting in sleep.

The crouched figure disappeared instantly. In the same motion, the shadow took its place at the handle, one hand already steadying the door before it could swing or creak.

Then came another long wait.

The corridor held its breath. No door opened, no footsteps shuffled into the hall, and no voice called out from within the room. Only after several tense minutes did the shadow finally ease the door open enough to enter.

The room beyond was almost completely dark. The only light came from the faint glow slipping under the door and the weaker glow of the hall behind it. That suited the clone perfectly. It pressed into the dimness and became nearly impossible to distinguish from it.

At first, the room seemed ordinary. A bed stood on the far side, and under the blankets two adult shapes lay close together, sleeping with the careless heaviness of people who believed themselves safe. But to the right, near the corner, another shape lay on the floor.

A small shape lay there: a child, thin, trembling, bound, and left exposed to the cold.

The shock that went through the Shade clone almost ruined everything. For one dangerous instant hatred flooded the connection so hard that Alistair’s control nearly slipped. If the clone had held a knife in that moment, he might have buried it in the sleeping couple without a second thought. Consequences, noise, and exposure would have ceased to matter beside the sight of that girl bound on the floor like an object waiting to be delivered.

He had to wrench most of his consciousness away from the Shade just to keep it still.

Once the immediate surge of fury had been forced into a colder, tighter place, the clone regained something like professional control. Even then, the body seemed to tremble faintly in the dark.

Alistair forced himself not to go to the girl first. Instead, he pushed the Shade clone to search. Darkness helped as much as it hindered. It hid him beautifully, but it made the room difficult to read. He could make out the edge of a chair, the rough lines of travel bags, the bedposts, and the blankets. Fine detail was another matter. Twice he had to stop completely because one of the sleepers moved. Once the man gave a heavy sigh and rolled slightly, and the Shade froze so completely that the locked breath inside the clone nearly gave him away when it finally escaped.

Still, the couple remained asleep.

In the end, taking proved faster than searching by sight. The Shade clone lifted both travel bags and slipped back out of the room with them, leaving the door nearly closed and a tiny wood chip in place so it would not lock behind him. Outside, in a darker corner of the corridor, he searched through the bags by touch as much as by sight.

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Most of the contents were ordinary. Clothes, cheap food, and little personal things. Then his hand found parchment.

The message on it was short. A time and place at the voidport.

Alistair stared at the words through the clone’s eyes and felt the conclusion harden in him. His improved WIS and INT were unnecessary for this conclusion. It was a meeting point, likely a handoff. The girl was being moved in the morning.

He returned the bags exactly as he had found them.

Back inside the room, the sight of the girl struck him even harder now that he knew what was coming. The girl was awake. He could tell by the tightness of her body and the way her fear seemed to radiate through the dark. But she was doing exactly what fear and experience would demand of someone in that position. She was silent. Motionless except for the trembling she could not fully suppress.

For a long moment, Alistair stood hidden in shadow, looking at her.