Page 46 of Reap & Sow

Eda loosed a shaky breath. She wasn’t totally invisible, then, but perhaps the mantle made it hard for people to notice her. Like a mirage. A shape you could only see from the very corner of your eye. But what were its limits?

“Ah. There you are.”

Eda spun around. She recognized the mustachioed stranger at once: one of Lich’s men. He’d been casing Shaws’ Antiques for weeks, watching them from across the street. Beneath his feathered cap, his brown eyes wavered as though she were solid as mist. She’d never seen him up close before—had only ever known him as the ominous shade lurking about their shop in the early hours.

“Clever trick. We knew you must be with the shape-shifter, but I thought him alone at first. Lucky you bumped into that fellow.” He glanced at Kit, who placed himself between them with bristling fur. “Easy, demon. Just saying hello. I’ll let Lord Lich know how resourceful his new associate is, shall I?” He winked at her, put a cigarillo between his lips, and wandered off.

Eda watched him go. Lich’s people knew about her mad flight from the city, then. Knew about Kit. They were keeping tabs on her—were they in the countryside, too?—and this was a pointed reminder. She owed Lich. He wouldn’t let her forget it.

As if she could. Any life the Shaws might yet painstakingly claw back was forfeit if Lich didn’t get his Gateway. The crime lord had no need of magic to express his displeasure. People who crossed him turned up floating in canals or saw their businesses burned to the ground. Eda once heard of a local Crowgate man who returned from Alderport with two bloody stumps for fingers. Lich’s people had cut off the rest, one for each hundred marks owed. They took an ear, too—interest for making them hunt him down. No one could prove any of it was Severin Lich’s doing. But everyone knew.

Eda had no wish to test the man, and his underling’s sudden approach unnerved her. But at least she now knew that plowing into someone or talking to them was beyond the mantle’s ability to conceal.

Kit’s tail flicked in agitation.

“Guess it works after all,” Eda muttered. “Let’s go.”

They crossed the Waterway via Saint Leoric’s Bridge. It was the largest in Blackbridge, and here the whole river buzzed with the sound of sloshing oars and crowing traders below, wreathed in the smell of tobacco and oil smoke. One building overshadowed the river entirely, outshone only by the soaring belfry of the Great Templehouse.

Fell Keep. It was ancient, built as a holding fortress in the days of monarchs long before the city sprang up around it. The keep itself was a prodigious square building with four crenellated turrets on each corner, all ashlar stone and silverwork adornments. The Order of the Blade’s emblem flew high at each turret: a white sword and sun atop a field of red.

The fortress was surrounded on three sides by a bailey, walls seven feet high separating it from the city beyond. Besides the gatehouse entrance, arrow slits dotted along the walls were the only way to get a look inside. Eda stood on her tiptoes.

The courtyard was vast, much of it dedicated to training. Small buildings within were active with work—an armory, a smith, the stables. She fixed upon the huge portcullis guarding the keep’s entrance: a latticed iron grill inlaid with silver, gleaming and conspicuous against the dour stonework. The Alchemists’ Cloister crafted that gate, Ben once told her, like many of the fortifications here. Fell Keep was a building well protected against both mortal and demonic attack.

Standing before it, Eda felt incredibly small. Fell Keep was familiar. Ben worked here. How many times had she walked through its shadow? Yet now it seemed positively hostile in the challenge it posed.

A brush against her leg drew her from her maudlin thoughts. Kit met her gaze before slinking off.

“Hey!”

He led her along the bailey wall, tracing its curve until they came to the opposite side of the courtyard. There was another gatehouse here, smaller than the first. Eda knew it well. Ben came and went this way.

Peering through the silver-wrought bars, she observed the stables. Horses were being groomed and saddled. Eda wondered who was acting as Head Stablehand. If any of them wondered what had happened to Ben, or if they knew already. She hated the thought of them all whispering about him, thinking him some sort of villain.

The air behind her stirred. She turned and jumped. “Shit.”

Kit was practically breathing down her neck. “What?”

“Don’t just change like that. You’ll take years off my life,” she joked, but saying it aloud only depressed her. “What if someone saw you?”

“There’s no one around.”

He was technically right. The street ran narrower here, sandwiched between the bailey and the walls of the Botanic Gardens, where great waves of ivy crashed over the sides. There was no one in the immediate vicinity.

“Still. There are better places to magically shape-shift in broad daylight.”

“Let us skip the tiresome admonishments. You were the one that mentioned the eastern gatehouse, no?”

Eda pursed her lips. “Because the main gate is far too conspicuous, as I said. It only opens for official processions or diplomatic visitors. This is where most day-to-day traffic comes through, and with the mantle, it should be easy enough to slip in unnoticed alongside everyone else. Stablehands are always coming and going. Ben used to personally deliver new geldings and mares from the livery yards. You can take the shape of a horse, so I thought…”

Kit’s withering expression made her doubt herself. “I see. You mean to roll me out like a prize stud.”

“If it will get me into that courtyard, yes. I don’t know about ‘prize stud,’ though.”

He didn’t rise to the slight. “They’d realize I’m not an expected delivery.”

“That’s fine. I just need long enough to use the mantle and get inside.” She studied the towering portcullis. “But it’s pointless if the main entrance is barred. We need to figure out when it’s usually open—”