When I was close enough to overhear the day elf, I stopped and held myself perfectly still behind one of the high sections of wall. Another day elf had come out of the jails and had just joined the first beside the pale-faced halfling in the pillory. I adjusted the hood of my black cloak so I could better hear their conversation.

  “…your lucky day,” the first elf was in the middle of saying.

  I watched the halfling’s lips move from where his neck was twisted sideways in the stocks, but I heard no sound. At first, I thought perhaps I had not gotten close enough, but then I realized that I couldn’t hear him because even though his lips moved, no sound came out.

  “Maybe he needs a drink to wet his tongue,” the second elf laughed as he grabbed the piss bucket and held it underneath the halfling’s nose.

  I clicked my tongue to keep from grinding my teeth to bits inside my mouth.

  “Please,” the halfling managed.

  The second elf just laughed again and dropped the piss bucket back to the wooden platform.

  “The Empire hears your apology,” the first elf sneered. “That was an apology, wasn’t it?”

  “Y-yes,” the halfling stuttered through dry lips.

  “Well, then the Empire hears your apology and has granted that today be your lucky day,” the day elf continued. “We are releasing you and trusting that you will never taste the foul drink again.”

  The halfling would have blubbered his thanks if he’d had enough moisture left to cry, but as he struggled even to wet his tongue, I felt my eyes narrow in confusion. None of this made any sense. As far as I could tell, the elves hadn’t interrogated the halfling at all. They had kept him locked up in the pillory, apparently for days, but they had not asked him any questions or probed him for any information, and I couldn’t figure out why.

  All I knew was that it damn sure wasn’t because the elves were suddenly feeling generous.

  There was something else going on, but I would have to keep watching to discover it. The elf with the keys unlocked the halfling, and he stumbled out of the stocks with such force that he almost tumbled off the platform and broke his neck.

  It was too bad he didn’t. I had a feeling that it might have been a mercy.

  “Go on,” the first elf smirked. “Run along home, little halfling.”

  The pale-faced halfling made it down one of the platform’s stairs before he tripped and tumbled down the rest. He found his legs again and struggled toward the courtyard exit, and for a moment, I thought there might be an archer hidden somewhere that would take him out just as he believed he had regained his freedom.

  But the halfling staggered out of the courtyard without an arrow wedged between his shoulders, and again, I wondered why the elves seemed to have just let him go. I felt my own crossbow hidden inside my cloak, but I released my grip on it. I didn’t like where I thought this might be heading, but I knew I couldn’t take the halfling’s life until everyone had voted on it. It was a good rule, even if it made my job more challenging.

  Just as I started to think that the elves were actually going to release him, I saw the second day elf move from inside the courtyard. He nodded to the first elf, slipped through the courtyard entrance, and headed down the street a dozen paces behind the halfling.

  The bastard was going to follow the halfling home.

  That was one way to track his movements. There were only two possible reasons I could think why the elves let him go instead of interrogating him, and each option was just as likely as the other. On the one hand, the elves could just be toying with him. I had seen the look the two elves shared back at the prison as the halfling stumbled out of the jail. They had laughed at his eagerness to run, and they both had the look of a predator when they knew their prey was mortally wounded. They might have let him go just to give him the thrill of freedom before they killed him or locked him up again anyway.

  On the other hand, they might have really let him go, but only to follow him and see if he returned to the scene of the crime. If the halfling made a beeline for Wyatt or Sully’s, I knew we were fucked. I hoped he would just go back to his home so everyone would have a chance to vote on whether he lived or died. Preferably before he sold out the twins, accidentally or on purpose.

  Either way, I knew it would be a miracle if the halfling survived much past the end of the day. The only question was how much information they would get from him before then.

  I rocked forward onto my toes and prepared to jump down to the ground, but the owner of the food cart below waddled past just before I took flight. The cart rumbled along behind him, and my stomach growled again at the smell of spiced breakfast cakes. He moved so slowly that I almost lost my patience and jumped down right on top of him, but even though the halfling had disappeared, I still had the elf guard in sight.

  After the food cart rumbled a safe distance past, I checked the street again to make sure there were no other curious eyes, but the street in front of the elven jail wasn’t exactly a well-trafficked area. I slipped through the gap in the courtyard wall and jumped to the ground far below.

  There was a brief sting in my knees as I landed on the hard stone, but I had landed well. If any of the guards in the courtyard had seen movement, they would have thought my cloak was the broad wingspan of some great black bird and then gone back to their meaningless routines.

  I edged past the food cart, nicked a breakfast cake, and hurried past the cart owner with my face concealed inside my hood. It was early afternoon, so it was difficult to keep to the shadows, but I did my best to remain unseen as I picked my way down the street in pursuit of the elf guard and the halfling. I didn’t want anyone from the elven towers to spot me and send an arrow through my throat before they even bothered to ask questions.

  The day elf disappeared around a corner up ahead, and I waited long enough not to be suspicious before I rounded the corner after him. One of the first things Adrian had taught me was not to follow a mark too closely. Nothing would give you away faster than following just a little too quickly, and then the next thing you knew, you would turn around a corner and come face-to-face with the very fucker that you were trying to track.

  It had taken me some time to find the balance between too close and too far. I stayed so far back at first that I lost several targets, but there were only two that caught me following them too closely, and one of those had been Adrian in a practice run. That was before I learned to blend into whatever surrounded me. If I walked down a street of early afternoon shadow, I would be just another early afternoon shadow. If I walked through a market, I would be just another buyer looking at wares for sale.

  But I always willed myself not to be seen, and so I never was. I could be invisible right out in the open, and that came with a remarkable feeling of freedom. Adrian warned me that it would get lonely too, but I had only just started to feel what he meant.

  I had never felt lonely before. Alone, perhaps, but never lonely. But whenever I was around Wade’s friends, I felt like I was always a shadow that people knew was there but never paid much attention to. But whenever Wade looked at me, I didn’t feel the same way. I wasn’t sure how he could see me like none of the others could, like I was made of flesh-and-blood and not just shadow. But I never doubted the fact that he did.

  As I followed the elf who followed the halfling through the streets, I felt that we had just begun a very involved game of cat-and-mouse, and there was no question who was the cat and who was the mouse. The elf might think of himself as a cat, but to me he was just another, taller mouse. Sure, the elves were the predators of the Empire-- they had forced their way to the top of the food chain, no doubt about it. But they hadn’t gotten to the top through their ability to sneak around in city streets and pounce on their prey undetected. They had gotten to the top through sheer force and cruelty.

  And magic. Their magic definitely hadn’t hurt their odds.

  Of course, the elf didn’t need to have the stealth of an assassin to follow the halfling, since halflings weren’t exactly known for their awareness. Thieves and assassins were the exception to this rule, but from what I had seen of Dar so far, the halfling tendency to daze out was still strong, even in a thief.

  We moved into a more residential part of the halfling district now, and I knew it would be more difficult to hide myself. There were fewer places to idle at, and there would be more eyes on me now. Anyone who hadn’t gone to work would find it all too easy to stare at the window and start to ask questions about the dark-cloaked figure who trailed behind the elven guard.

  Since I could no longer stop if I drew too close to the elf, I slowed down instead and took my time as I moved down the street after him. At one point, I lost sight of him completely, and when I turned onto the next street, he was still missing. It would be too suspicious simply to stop mid-stride, so I moved forward as if nothing had changed, and halfway down the street, I caught sight of him down a smaller side street to my right.

  I followed again until the elf himself stopped outside a one-story home that was hedged in by other homes that shared its walls. I had heard the quiet thud of a door close before the elf came into view, so I could only guess that the home belonged to the halfling. The elf settled into the shadows of a stoop a few doors down from the halfling’s residence, and I supposed it was a decent lookout spot as far as elves were concerned. After all, they could go wherever they wanted.

  I had a critical decision to make if I wanted to continue to observe and remain unseen. I could set myself up to watch the elf or the halfling, but I wasn’t sure I could find a position on this street to do both, at least not in the afternoon sunlight. I clicked my tongue and moved forward into the halfling’s street, but I kept my head down and walked in the opposite direction from where the elf waited.

  To my surprise, he didn’t call after me to demand what I was doing on this street when I was so obviously not a halfling, but I thought he might not have seen me. He was probably too busy with his eyes fixed on the halfling’s ivy-covered door to notice any sign of movement.

  I pivoted when I reached the end of the street, headed down the cross street, and then doubled back down the lane that led behind the halfling’s residence. There were more homes on this side, so there was no back window that I could slip through to get inside his house, but I could find another way in more easily without the possibility of the elven guard catching me.

  I glanced up and down the street when I reached the same thirty-nine paces it took me to reach the end of the halfling’s road. When I didn’t see anyone, I looked up at the lamppost, crouched, and launched myself up at it. I collided into it, but before I could slide down, my legs gripped the top of the pole tightly enough to keep me in place.

  I had moved silently, so now I twisted from my new position to gain the one I really wanted: the roof of the house beside me. None of the curtains had moved on the houses around me, so I knew at least for the moment that no one watched me. As soon as I had twisted into the angle that I needed, I stretched out my back and reached my arms as far as they would take me.

  My fingers grasped the edge of the roof and slipped only once before they managed to lock into place. When I was sure of my hand grip, I slowly uncurled my legs from around the pole and let myself swing free before I pulled myself up entirely onto the roof.

  I didn’t stop to catch my breath. Instead, I stayed low against the roof and darted across it like the shadow of a cloud that passed overhead. From my height on the roof, I could see the elven tower as I ran, but I knew I moved too quickly and too shadow-like for them to see me. On the opposite side of the roof, when I knew I stood on top of the halfling’s home, I dropped to my stomach and peered over the edge.

  The elf was too preoccupied with the door of the home to notice the roof, so I reached over and pushed on the round window to the attic. It flipped open without so much as a squeak, and I smiled to myself. It seemed that the Ancients favored me today.

  I gripped the edge of the roof, slowly lowered myself down, and then went through the window. The window was small, so it was a tight fit, but I was as slender as I was tall so I managed to slip into the attic without any sound to alert the elf waiting below.

  As soon as I closed the window behind me, I crouched down in the shadow of the wall and looked around the attic of the halfling’s home. It looked about as I expected, full of dusty trunks and assorted china that he had probably inherited from a dead aunt but had no place for aside from in his attic. Only sentiment kept it in his home at all.

  When I felt assured that there was no one in the attic with me, I moved toward the door, found it unlocked, and slipped downstairs as silently as a ghost. I heard dishes clatter below me, so I kept my back against the wall and slipped further down the staircase until I reached the first floor.

  The staircase emptied onto a small sitting room, but I could see the doorway that led into the kitchen from the bottom of the stairs. As soon as I made sure my hood covered my face completely, I stepped into the kitchen and walked on silent feet until I stood right behind the halfling at the sink. He still didn’t realize anyone was in the kitchen with him, and since I didn’t want him to scream and alert the elf outside, I took one more step forward, wrapped one hand around his middle, and pressed my other hand over his mouth.

  “Do not make a sound,” I hissed into his ear.

  He struggled for a moment, but he was so weak from the pillory that he gave up after only a few seconds.

  “Listen closely,” I warned him, “you are being watched. My advice would be that you do not go anywhere. Do not leave your home until the dust settles, or at the very least, do not venture to the same places that got you arrested in the first place.”

  The halfling whimpered against my hand, and I released him. Before he could turn around and see who had broken into his house, I bounded silently up the stairs back into the attic. I glanced through the round window at the street below to make sure I would still be unseen, and then I pulled myself out and back up onto the roof, where I laid flat to catch my breath.

  It was a little off-script that I had entered the halfling’s home and tried to warn him not to go back to Wyatt or Sully, but I hadn’t killed him, so I was still playing by the rules. In fact, I was trying to save his life. If he didn’t return to the twins in the next few days, the elves might get bored and forget about him.

  Or they might just interrogate and then execute him after all.

  Since the elf was still hidden a few doors down from the halfling’s home and since I figured I had scared the halfling enough to keep him indoors for at least a few hours, I decided to send an update to Wade in case things progressed here. I didn’t want to leave my post long enough to go all the way back to Eloy’s and wait there, but I’d have to venture back out of the residential area at least far enough for me to find a messenger.

  Once I dropped down to the street, I headed back out of the neighborhood the same way I had come in, although I was careful to avoid the elven guard. I had just entered the edges of the more commercial part of the halfling district when I felt someone try to reach their hand into my cloak to pick my pocket.

  I whirled on them and pressed my knife to their throat before I saw it was just a kid.

  “Sorry, sorry, I was just--” he apologized with wide eyes.

  “Save it,” I cut him off. “You’re not a thief, or you’d have done a better job. Do you work for Wilimar Brindle?”

  The halfling kid’s eyes grew wider as he nodded.

  “Good,” I approved. “Go get Wilimar or Olly for me and bring them back here. You have five minutes.”

  I stepped back and slipped my knife underneath my cloak again, while the kid took off through the streets. I didn’t wonder whether he would come back-- the look of fear in his eyes had told me that he firmly believed I would hunt him down and Jill him in his sleep if he didn’t do exactly what I said.

  A few minutes later, the kid returned with Olly in tow. When they reached me, the one-eyed halfling crossed his arms over his chest and tried to look bigger than he was.

  “You work for Wade,” I announced.

  “We work with him,” Olly corrected. “Sometimes. For coin.”

  “Then I have a job for you,” I said. “You go to Eloy’s, and ask Wade if I have the go-ahead, if it comes to that.”

  Olly held out his hand. I rolled my eyes but placed a few coppers in his palm as payment.

  “Repeat it back to me,” I demanded.

  “I’ll go to Eloy’s and ask Wade if it comes down to it, do you have the go-ahead?” Olly repeated.

  “Yes,” I sighed. “When he gives you his answer, meet me at the corner of Oak and Bramble, and if I’m not there, then wait for me until I show up, understand?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Olly muttered.

  “Go!” I growled, and the two halflings scattered.

  When I returned to the other halfling’s street and resumed my watch from the roof, the elf was still in the same place that I had left him, so I knew my target hadn’t left his house yet. Despite my warning to him, I knew it was still probably only a matter of time before he led the elven guard to the twins, so I hoped Olly would hurry up with the message to Wade.

  The afternoon passed by quickly, and while I waited to see Olly appear on the street corner just out of the elf’s line of sight, I finally ate the breakfast cake that I had nicked from the food cart earlier. It was a little on the tough side, but the chewy nuts hidden inside the pastry calmed my hunger enough that I could focus on my mission.

  When the sun started to set and the sky swam with vivid pinks and purples, I heard a quiet thud from the street below me. I swore to myself as I realized it was my target’s door. I’d thought that he would at least wait until later that night to try to leave his home, but his need for a drink-- or just his terror of being alone-- had overcome my warning in his kitchen.

  The lamp post below gave me enough light to see that the halfling glanced both directions after he closed his door. He failed to look up and see me, of course, but he also failed to see the elf who watched him from a few doors down. When he was satisfied that no one was around, he headed down the street, and my gut told me he was heading for one of the twin’s establishments.

 

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