The Cloak of Belonging

by Chris Willrich

Chapter 4: The Ultimate Weapon

Mortil spun only just in time to let loose a spell. Colors ravaged Gull's eyes, and he felt dizzy, as if a full drunken night were compressed into one heartbeat.

When his senses returned, Mortil was gone, a crowd of people was combatting the fire in the kitchen, and Tambour was speaking urgently.

"She'll be all right, Gull, but we must speak, now."

"Corvine..."

"I'm telling you, your friend will be all right."

Gull stumbled onto the veranda where Admiral Kasaba and Governor Bozbeyli themselves were among those tending to Corvine Gale.

Not a mark was on her, but Corvine looked as weak as Gull's elder brother the day a horse kicked him and permanently scared Gull away from honest work.

"Corvine..."

"Gideon... It will be all right. Whatever that bastard's up to, you stop him, okay...?"

"Me?"

"Hey, you're Gideon Gull, gentleman adventurer... I saw..." She handed him a crumpled piece of paper, patting his hand. "Take it, for luck..."

"Corvine..."

He took the poem, and she closed her eyes.

"Is she—"

Mortil, the governor's man, is more than he seems.

"I've seen this sort of injury before, Lion Blade," the admiral told Gull. "She should recover."

"Go with Tambour," the governor said. He passed a bejeweled ring to the corsair. "You Lion Blades are authorized to do anything necessary to hunt down this traitor."

"'Lion Blades?'" Gideon said, rising.

Tambour took his arm. "We'll talk as we walk."

The corsair steered Gull through garden and guards and gate, out into the moonlit streets of Old Cassomir. They passed the public gallows called Pharasma's Pulpit after the goddess of graves, and Gull was unhappy with the omen. He made the sign of the antlers, but good Erastil seemed as far away as Andoran.

"There's no time to spare, so we'll plan as we go," Tambour said. "Most destinations in Cassomir are south of here."

"What plan?" Gull said.

Tambour's response was a grim laugh. "You aren't thinking like a Lion Blade, my friend."

"That's because I'm not a... whatever that is..."

Tambour seemed not to hear him. "We don't need a plan of our own so much as we need to guess Mortil's. He spoke of a target, yes? I don't think he could have meant the admiral. Mortil had enough opportunity, and enough power, to kill her just now."

"But—" Objections crowded Gull's brain as thoroughly as rich houses crowded this walled section of the city. The Admiral's Citadel rose ahead, its towers jabbing at the moon. Beyond, across the harbor, lay the even larger edifice of Grayguard Castle. "Isn't the admiral key to all of Taldor's defenses?" Gull said. "She was vulnerable tonight. Why else plan an assassination for now? Who else to kill?"

"Ah! Now you're thinking, rather than mooning over your diva back there."

"Shut up. She could have died."

"Count yourself lucky. I've lost comrades tonight. Rack your brains, gentleman adventurer. Did the dog Mortil specifically speak of killing?"

Gull thought. "No," he admitted. "I don't think he did."

"I fear he has another target in mind. Something important, something less carefully guarded what with the admiral's party. Something Mortil could still attack with his magic—and certainly will, now that he's exposed."

"The shipyards?" Gull guessed.

Tambour nodded. "That's my thought as well. We have magic-sniffers scattered throughout that district, but as a governor's man, Mortil could bypass them. As ever, betrayal is the greatest weapon."

"Magic-sniffers?"

"I don't have to tell you everything, Gull. Come, let's be quick."

They ran through Old Cassomir's gate and dashed near the looming ruins of Quickfall Abbey. To distract himself from ghosts within and without, Gull said, "If not magic-sniffers, can you tell me of Lion Blades?"

"Why not? Since Lion Blades don't officially exist. We serve in the shadows and the light. For it is a dark time for Taldor. We Taldans are a mutinous crew on a sinking ship—at each other's throats when we need to patch the hull and watch for sharks. Sometimes it's only those who do not properly exist who can do what must be done."

"Why did the admiral and the governor call me a Lion Blade?"

"Well, it was an understandable error. From their perspective you helped me, so you must be one of us."

"Am I not obviously a minstrel—not a spy?"

Tambour chuckled. "My dear Gull, we recruit from the all the bardic schools of this land. Most of us sing quite well. I am a rare exception."

Gull laughed. They were approaching the shipyards, and the lights of the dens of ill-repute lightened his spirits. "If you wore this cloak," he said, "you would no doubt believe yourself a fine singer. Just as it made me think I was an adventurer."

"Yes, that cloak... At first I thought it a strange tool for an infiltrator. Why not a blade? Or something that makes one invisible? But I see now that the cloak allows one to enter into any setting and be accepted—in its way, a greater power than invisibility."

Gull said, "That suggests the agent needed to get very close to something... what's wrong?"

Tambour had stopped. "Listen."

There was a lapping of waters, patter of conversation in a nearby tavern, chirping from the marsh.

"I hear nothing."

"Exactly. No sound of assault."

"Mortil may have fled the city."

"Perhaps... but what you said just now... the Chelish agent wanted to get close to something. Perhaps it isn't a target as big as the shipyards. Perhaps it's something enclosed. A treasure, a device. Can you think of anything else Mortil said?"

Gull could not. Yet his mind was twisting something else, as he'd twisted the poem that lay now in his pocket.

A river swells to spill, dark and rapid through the silent room—

He'd awakened that morning startled from a dream, a dream of the music of the spheres...

What if I'd rolled it out, banquet-carpet, banner unfolding?

And what awakened him was a sound of mechanical grinding, stamping, booming...

Dancing dark, shadow-whisper, marked for crumpling.

"A device..."

"What?"

"Do you know of any mechanical device, Tambour, a large one, inside Grayguard Castle? For I've heard such, from the Dog's Teeth."

"I do not, Gull. But I think we should be going there."

∗ ∗ ∗

"This is most irregular," the castellan of Grayguard said, even as Tambour flashed him the governor's ring and led Gull inside the vast grim fortress.

"We've had no trouble here," the man continued, getting in the pair's way.

"We intend to keep it that way," Tambour said airily. "Can you point us to the machine?"

Wariness entered the castellan's voice. "What machine?"

"The one that wakes up drunks in the Dog's Teeth," put in Gull. When the castellan blinked, Gull added, "Oh, yes. We have informants everywhere."

Whether it was the cloak or Gull's voice or the governor's ring, the castellan gave in. "There's nothing about the apparatus that need worry the crown, Lion Blades."

"Show it to us," Tambour said.

The castellan muttered to himself, told a guard, "Send a runner to the governor," and led Gull and Tambour through a wide, soldier-lined passage into the castle courtyard. After passing a magnificent temple dedicated to many gods (none of them the being that Mortil had sworn by) they reached the far wall and there entered a much smaller passage with a stairway snaking up.

"You realize," the castellan said, "the governor is entitled to his personal projects..." He stopped as he nearly stumbled over a dead guard, whose face was frozen in pain though he bore no obvious wound.

"No!" the castellan cried.

Looking up the stairway, the trio beheld more armored corpses.

"Summon help," Tambour said. "I will deal with the wizard behind this."

"The castle is my responsibility," said the man.

"That's why you must summon help."

The castellan hesitated, but Gull gave him a curt nod and the man turned and descended, bellowing for guards.

Tambour motioned in the direction of the retreating man. "You too, Gull."

"No," Gull said. "I'm finishing this."

"Is that you speaking, or the cloak?"

"Either way, I do this for Corvine Gale."

Tambour grunted and led the way.

The torchlit room at the top was stuffed with machinery—or rather with one single machine. For a long disoriented moment Gull could not understand the sprawling steel mechanism's purpose, but it came to him that the walls of the room were lined with paper and books. He saw titles like A True History of House Thrune and The Benefits of Infernal Rule for All Chelaxians.

"It's a printing press," Gull said. He'd seen them before, for his politically minded compatriots back in Andoran grew ever more fond of posters and pamphlets and broadsheets. But this machine was to a normal printing press as a hydra was to a newt. An octopus of hinged arms terminated in presses that seemed poised to hammer out publications at a blinding rate. The heart of the mechanism possessed a steel face with eyes of blue crystal and a flat, determined expression. It reminded Gull of a bookplate.

"Yes," Mortil said from across the room. The man grasped a tome of great thickness, bound in red leather, and Gull suspected no printing press had ever touched it. This was surely the stern elder kindred of Corvine's gentle reference works: a true book of spells.

Mortil continued, "This thing, this apparatus, this is the great weapon Taldor dares aim at Cheliax."

"But it's all merely words," Tambour answered, voice full of honest confusion. As he spoke crept around the mechanism toward Mortil. "For that matter, it would seem to be words praising Cheliax and its masters."

"'Seems' is the correct term," Mortil answered. "This printing press is producing official-seeming works that are to be smuggled into Cheliax. But unlike the approved works, these contain ideas that would plant the seeds of sedition."

"You mean," guessed Gull, sidling toward Mortil in the opposite direction, "they tell the truth."

"'Truth' is hierarchical," answered Mortil. "Wizards all understand this, though some may deny the knowledge. Not all revelations are appropriate for all people. The common folk need not know every detail about the lives of their betters. Certain lies are, for them, better than truth. Only Cheliax understands this reality and acts upon it. That's why Cheliax will triumph."

"I don't understand," Tambour said. "It's just a printing press. With all this effort, you might have thrown our navy into chaos."

Mortil laughed. "You lack the immortal perspective of our patrons. To you, the struggle is all about land and gold. We understand it is equally about thought. This weapon here is more significant than any warship. And more insidious. The words it prints, though brimming with Chelish pride and patriotism on the surface, magically imbue the reader with sentiments quite the opposite. We need to discourage Taldor from trying this tactic again. I would come no closer were I you."

"You're finished, Mortil," Gull said. "You can't kill both of us and destroy the printing press all at once."

"I don't need to." Mortil cried out in a strange tongue Gull did not understand, and the crystal eyes of the printing press glowed as it rumbled to life.

Inert, it had allowed Gull and Tambour just enough room to step around the perimeter; active, its gyrating arms—grabbing paper and bindings, sinking stamps into ink buckets, pounding out text—made hazardous any path to Mortil. The machine was so thunderous Gull could barely think. He needed to hug the wall to avoid a concussion and at best could only inch his way along.

Tambour was in worse shape, having been tripped by a metal arm and now lying flat for fear of being beaten with the weight of history.

Tambour shouted the strange words the wizard has used to activate the machine.

"Alas!" Mortil cried, laughing. "To shut it down takes a different phrase!"

Gull swore.

"That's not it!" Mortil said. "Now, you've cost me enough time and magic." The wizard began incanting.

Unless the spell was absurdly convoluted, Gull doubted he'd reach Mortil in time to stop its casting. However, his movements did bring him near a bucket of red ink.

It was not so big he couldn't lift it—

Gull ducked and grabbed and heaved, and red ink spilled across the room. Most of it splashed the printing press or the floor, but enough of it hit Mortil to distract the wizard and ruin his pages.

"You!" Spattered with red, Mortil looked as though he bled from a thousand paper cuts. "Whom do you work for? Taldor? Andoran? Rebels in Cheliax?"

"I work for a sad, sweet moment on a long winter's day." Gull shifted ever closer. "I work for the lumberjacks coming home with too little pay."

"What?" Mortil began a spell, this time one from his own memory—perhaps nothing that could destroy the magical press, but surely enough to slay one minstrel with delusions of grandeur.

Gull kept going. "I work for the child's laughter and the lover's kiss. I work for weeks of sorrow and seconds of bliss."

"You're mad!"

Gull laughed. "I am Gideon Gull."

"Then die, Gideon Gull." And Mortil began the words that would make his spell complete.

And screamed.

Sebastian Tambour had crawled beneath the swinging limbs of the machine and planted a dagger in Mortil's foot.

Now Gull reached Mortil, knowing he had just moments to act.

He removed the cloak.

Standing there beside the contraption, the corsair, and the traitor, Gull suddenly felt frail and foolish, like a mouse chasing cats. But he did not falter.

He threw the cloak over Mortil's head and shoved him into the works.

The wizard howled with the pain and outrage of being pummeled with the very propaganda of his Chelish masters. Yet amazingly, Mortil scrambled free of the machinery and on some blind instinct dove for the window.

By the time Gull and Tambour could reach that location there was only moonlight on the waters outside, and the silvered crags of the Dog's Teeth, and no trace of Mortil.

The governor of Cassomir appeared in the doorway and shouted something in a strange tongue.

The printing press slowed and ceased, and the light faded from its eyes.

"It seems I owe you a great debt, Lion Blades," Governor Bozbeyli said in the silence that followed, lowering his scimitar. Armored guards beside him looked around in wonder.

"I'm just a singing drunk, Governor," Gull said, looking again toward the Dog's Teeth. He shivered as his body recognized the danger was over. "Not a Lion Blade."

"Perhaps we should fix that," said Tambour.

"At any rate," the governor said, "I repay my debts. You've exposed a traitor and preserved my little project. What might I do for you?"

Tambour smiled. "I assign my prize to the captain of the corsairs. I'm sure he'll think of something."

The governor frowned a little, but eventually nodded. "And you?"

Gull began to refuse any reward, but he withdrew Corvine's poem from his pocket, stared at it. "This printing press..."

"Yes?"

Gull smiled and held out Corvine's poem. "What I ask is that you print enough copies to make the author of this poem, one Corvine Gayle, well known in Cassomir and Oppara and beyond."

Governor Bozbeyli took the poem. "Corvine Gayle. Ah, the young lady from the birthday party. Yes, it shall be done."

As the minstrel and the man in motley took their leave of the governor and walked through the castle courtyard, Gull watched the constellations and heard Tambour's voice as if from a great distance. "I have two questions."

"Yes?"

"I was in earnest, Gull. You could join us."

"I'm no corsair. I'm a singing—"

"A singing drunk." Tambour laughed. "Yes, I know. That's why we are visiting the Knotty Mermaid. But it's also why I bring up the Lion Blades."

"You know I'm no bard."

"You could become one. We could ensure you are enrolled in an appropriate school... and an appropriate Shadow School at the same time."

Gull did not even bother to ask what that meant. "I'm not a Taldan man, Tambour. I'm Andoren. More so now than ever."

"Yet you've seen what Andoran and Taldor face together. We have our differences. But if you stand with us, you'll stand with civilization, against whatever it is that Cheliax represents."

Verses came to Gull's mind. He wondered if that would happen more and more, now that he'd left the Dog's Teeth behind. He hoped so.

I'm halfway down the road to dead
But woman you have cleared my head
And now the best that I can see
Is to make me worthy of thee.

"The college," Gull said. "Just the college, for now. We can speak again about the rest. In a year."

Tambour nodded.

And I'm busy with the living.

They left the castle, passed the barbershop, entered the muddy streets of Admiral's Fen. Gull said, "You said you had two questions."

"Will you see her again?"

"Ask that also in a year, Tambour. For now, I am not worthy, or ready."

"Much can happen in a year. She may be someone else's then."

Gull shot him a look. "You?"

Tambour shrugged.

"Love is risk, sir," Gull said stiffly. "I would not burden her with the man I am now. But the man who returns in a year—perhaps."

To the wild corners of the page and back again.

Tambour laughed as they reached the threshold of the Knotty Mermaid. "You are ever the hopeless romantic, aren't you, Gideon Gull?"

"No. There is always hope."

Coming Next Week: Chasing down monsters in Chapter 1 of Josh Vogt's "Hunter's Folly."

Dive into more adventures with Gideon Gull in the new Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust!

Chris Willrich is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust. He is a former children's librarian best known for his sword-and-sorcery tales of Gaunt and Bone, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and elsewhere, and which continue in the novels The Scroll of Years (Pyr, 2013) and The Silk Map (forthcoming). Chris lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. Visit his website at www.chriswillrich.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

The Cloak of Belonging

by Chris Willrich

Chapter 3: The Unexpected Assassin

Old Cassomir was like a stately anchorage of petrified ships, and in the case of Madame Velm's domain, one strewn with harbor lights.

Gull, Corvine, Thea, and Nicolaus presented their invitations first to the constables, then the navy officers, then the manor guards, and finally the doorman. The doorman proved the most difficult.

The man, a thick-built but by no means thick-headed Taldan, was by his accent from Zimar and the Qadiran frontier. Luckily he was new to Velm's service and unacquainted with Gull, but he frowned at Gull's invitation. "Seems to me I've heard you sing, Mr. ‘Alaric Reynard.' The harp looks the same, but seems to me you looked different then. Younger. Healthier."

"Perhaps I have degenerated some..."

"Degenerated. De-gen-er-ate. Sounds like a word a Chelaxian would use. You Chelish? A Chelish sympathizer?"

The objection that he was a free man of Andoran rose to Gull's lips. It was Corvine who saved him from such a foolish declaration. She glared at the doorman. "Are you a Chelish inquisitor, to speak thus to my partner?" She linked arms with Gull, squeezed his hand.

The doorman blinked, though his face remained stern. "My apologies, Madame Gale."

The musicians entered the mansion, Gull whispering to Corvine, "Thanks."

"Don't mention it. And don't rely too much on that cloak of yours. It doesn't seem to work on everyone."

"Agreed. Those of mighty spirit seem able to resist."

She blinked at that, as though turning the remark this way and that to discover the hidden insult.

Inside they got a glimpse of the powers of Cassomir. There was Governor Bozbeyli, gray-bearded and stout, holding forth on the promise of magical mechanization, bearing a war-trophy scimitar where weapons were otherwise forbidden. There was Admiral Kasaba, frowning in obvious impatience at all the fuss, in her dress uniform the plainest woman among the mighty, and, despite these things—or perhaps because of them—a striking presence to Gull.

There was the high priest of Gozreh beside Madame Velm, white beard beside black crown of hair, silken sea-green robe beside shimmering evening-blue gown. The first had tried to convince Gull to set aside the crude worship of Erastil for the fickle benefits of the god of ocean and weather. The second had seen Gull as a project, a gem to be cut, before disgustedly tossing him aside.

He turned away from the mighty. Household staff steered his group from the party proper toward an unobtrusive passage and the narrow hallways and rooms beyond. While not secret, these servants' domains were easily ignored by the family and guests. It was clear to Gull this was not to be his party.

He looked around for signs of trouble but saw nothing.

And why should he? The true assassin was dead, and since Gull had no intention of harming Admiral Kasaba, why, surely all would be well.

Except that by morning Mortil would know he was a fake. Soon enough Gull would meet a Chelish killer again, and this one wouldn't be conveniently dead.

As Thea and Alaric located the free food (an important skill for musicians), Gull and Corvine claimed their waiting spot beside the garden, where statues of heroes embellished a stone veranda. They stood beside the visage of Sir Gothmoor, shown carrying the head of the enchanted Knight of the Pit, who according to legend had cheerfully continued talking after Sir Gothmoor beheaded him, and whose advice proved surprisingly helpful on subsequent quests. Gull rubbed his neck as he regarded the Knight of the Pit's fey smile.

"All right, Gideon," Corvine said, "I think we can talk. I asked around. There were indeed sightings of a man in a purple cloak. The sightings today all match your story. But the sightings last night had him fighting a group of corsairs at the shipyards. They said the man fell into the harbor with a knife in his back."

Gull felt the rip in the back of the cloak. "That fits."

She shook her head. "What have you gotten yourself into?"

"The sort of thing a bard gets into."

"You're no bard, Gideon."

"Perhaps I will be yet. A little fisticuffs, a little swordplay, a little magic—these seem achievable talents, just now."

"It's that cloak. It will get you killed."

"No. I have a plan."

"This ought to be good."

"I will seek a new patron tonight, and thereby find security."

"Just like that?"

"With this cloak I can do it. I feel it."

Her eyes searched the garden's topiary as if the green animals could offer up auguries. "It's a false confidence, Gideon. It will betray you, and you'll be back in the Dog's Teeth."

"Amazing. You broke off what we had because I failed to rise as a singer—"

"That's not—"

"And now that I have a new chance, you want to reject that too."

"Gideon—"

But the call came for the quartet, and there was no time for argument.

There was indeed a giant cake, and there was Admiral Kasaba beside it, her stern face registering resigned patience. She brightened a little as the quartet performed.

Gull struggled to pull his weight. It was not that he lacked skill with voice and harp; rather he lacked formal training in this sort of music, as well as the practical experience that might compensate for such a deficiency.

He forced himself to smile. A frown could poison a perfect performance—and this was not going to be perfect.

Happy happy (la la la) happy birthday (la la) birthday birthday (la)...

And yet, where in the past an icy winter of fear might freeze his throat and stiffen his fingers, a spring returned to his voice and his joints, and he was at least able to carry his part. The audience clapped and even the admiral looked pleased. No one jumped out of the cake (and that seemed just as well to Gull, for Kasaba's earlier glares looked sharp enough to cut rope) and the group was briefly free to mingle with the elite.

"Bravo," said Admiral Kasaba. She squinted at Gull. "Have I seen you before?"

"I have sung here and there."

"I hope we'll hear more of you. And your companions, of course."

And Gull understood. The listeners had been unaware of Gull's struggle; from their point of view he was the strongest singer, because of the effect of the cloak.

It was unfair. And yet... why should he not enjoy their mistake? Having sold himself through magic, he would apply the hard work necessary to make good on the deal. Was that really so dishonest?

He abandoned any thought of the satirical song they'd discussed at Corvine's. He gave Alaric's harp into Nicolaus's keeping and commenced weaving in and out of conversations, collecting promises of future performances, encounters that could secure patronage. At first he avoided individuals he'd met before, but he needn't have worried. Even Madame Velm seemed to consider him somebody new. Everywhere he left some witticism gleaned from unwritten songs, and was greeted with rapt attention.

"Common sense can't be that common. It's mainly brought up when people are accused of lacking it."

"People talk about being fat and happy as if that were a bad thing. I'd like to try it, just to make sure."

"You live long enough, everything's a phase. Live a little longer, life looks like a phase, too."

However, even with the cloak there was an ebb and flow to the party, and as desserts vanished and drinks took their place, Gull began getting hints the powerful wished to keep their own company. He found himself alone in a corner among gilded eggs on display, counting his unhatched chickens.

Corvine reappeared. She actually seemed a trifle shy.

"I..." she began.

"Yes. It's okay. Say something."

"You were wrong."

That was not exactly what he'd been hoping for. He tried to sound unconcerned. "I'm shocked."

"I didn't break it off because you were failing to rise. Do you have any idea how many good musicians never get anywhere? Even among bards—"

"Don't."

"I just need you to know. I always respected you. Except when you were trying to be someone else."

"You mean, sophisticated. Charming. Witty. The things the nobility appreciate. What I was finally managing to do, just now."

"I liked my blunt Andoren man," she said, "who wasn't afraid of anyone, high or low." She leaned in closer, touching his face, as if reading the music written in his weathered face. "Except, you were afraid, weren't you? Down deep, where no one could see. Afraid of not measuring up."

"Not anymore."

"I wanted you to read this." She passed him a scrap of paper filled with words, and also strikes and smudges and second thoughts. "I don't have the music yet. Something I've been working on."

He read it.

Spilled Ink

I dressed your name in inkwell silks
And curled it slow through the dance of hand and pen
To the wild corners of the page and back again
Dancing dark, shadow-whisper, marked for crumpling.
What if I'd rolled it out, banquet-carpet, banner unfolding?
Would you have divined the grace that runs
From hand to pen to eye, from me to you?
Or would words and grace have drowned together in your eye—
Spilled ink, black oil, a blot on white water.
A voice dams up behind a quiet smile.
A river swells to spill, dark and rapid through the silent room
Where I'd sing or swim, your hand in mind,
In the water-dance where voices break
Crying ever over spilled and unspilled ink.

He twisted the paper in his hand.

"What do you think?"

The first thing that came to his mind was not words. He wanted to take her hand. He wanted to kiss her lips.

But something old and bitter rose within him, and it glittered like the courts of Oppara and smelled of the Dog's Teeth.

"It's... precious."

She hesitated. "Precious?"

"I mean, its heart is in the right place but it's a little... adolescent, don't you think? A trifle... twee?"

"Oh." She took the paper back. "I see. Thank you for looking at it."

He'd expected an angry waving of hands, lashing like wild calligraphy. But her manner, her voice, was compact, withdrawn, controlled. A blot of ink.

"I mean—don't misunderstand—it's good..."

"Don't." She turned and strode to where the servants were scavenging the leftover desserts.

He stared after her, reaching out. His glib remarks of the past half hour were like dead moths on his tongue.

He shuffled toward the veranda.

"Leaving so soon? You haven't tried the cake." Gull glimpsed a servant with a tray veering in close.

"I am not hungry..." Gull began, and felt a dagger against his back.

"Look at that," came the voice of the thug Eutharic, whom Gull had last heard what seemed a thousand years ago this morning, outside the Knotty Mermaid. "There's even a rip here in the cloak, just right for a dagger. Guess it's an unlucky bit of treasure. For you."

"Um, no need to be prickly."

"I got a message for you. From Tarik the Unclean."

"Is it really necessary to say Tarik the Unclean? It's not like I'm going to confuse him with Tarik the Washerwoman, or Tarik the Singing Barber, or—"

"Outside, Gull."

They stepped among the statues of heroes. Eutharic herded Gull toward the statue of Sir Gothmoor. Gull wished the Knight of the Pit's head would give him advice. "What's the message?"

"You know," Eutharic said, "I got confused. The message isn't for you. The message is you. Your bloody corpse at a fancy house, showing the whole city no one cheats Tarik the Unclean—"

"There you go again."

"Cheats Tarik the Unclean of his salvage. They won't miss you, Gull. You're fooling yourself with this lot. You're just another commodity. Plenty more where you came from."

"You might be right." Gull closed his hand on empty air where verse had been. "But you wouldn't be talking about this message unless there was another option."

"You're right. There's stuff going down with Cheliax, stuff you maybe know about, stuff Tarik might profit from. I whistle, my pals Adamantius and Thok create a diversion, we get out of here, you spill to Tarik."

Spilled ink, Gull thought.

"So..." came a new voice. "It is as I thought."

It was the governor's man—and Chelish agent—Mortil. He emerged from the veranda's shadows and raised his hands in a way that instinctively made Gull as nervous as if Mortil had raised an axe. He'd seen such poses from Corvine, after she'd consulted certain books.

"You have not sought the target," Mortil said to Gull. "Instead you have wasted your time on nonsensical activities—or so I thought. But your true purpose was to sell your information to the highest bidder. Disgusting."

"Who's this guy?" Eutharic said.

"I am your death," Mortil said, "if you do not leave now."

"Nobody talks to me like that."

"Hey, that's right," Gull said, "you lose face like that, I might have to write a song..."

Eutharic lunged. It wasn't clear which—Gull or Mortil—he was seeking, especially as Mortil immediately spoke some manner of trigger word and a blast of blue light engulfed Gull's vision.

When he could see again, the Knight of the Pit's head lay at his feet, freed from Sir Gothmoor's stony grip by an eldritch blast. The same blast that had burned a hole through the chest cavity of the gaping Eutharic.

The thug fell, smoking, and Mortil stepped forward. "I will say," he said thoughtfully, "that I exposed enemy agents. It is true enough..."

"You!" called a strident voice. "Governor's man. Stand back from that musician. He may be a spy—and a sorcerer it seems!"

It was Sebastian Tambour, stepping ahead of the astonished partygoers, a few of his fellow corsairs close behind.

Sebastian Tambour is first mate of the Happenstance.

Mortil stepped back, chuckling at his good fortune.

Gull's normal tactics in this sort of situation would be to stare, or plead, or duck, or pray.

Instead, he did two things. With one hand he jabbed his thumb toward the statue and shouted, "Would I blast something behind me?"

With his other hand he hooked the Knight of the Pit's curly stone hair and flung the bemused-looking boulder at Mortil.

The Chelish agent swore—and the being sworn by had an address far removed from those of Taldor's patron gods. Gull did not wait for the crowd's reaction, however, but dashed for a servants' entrance and the kitchen.

At the door he paused only to stick two fingers in his mouth and whistle.

Once inside he was confronted by pots, pans, dangling meats, a brick oven big enough to roast two boars, and a gaggle of scattering servants who'd probably already heard the shouted word sorcerer. "Boo," said Gull.

He was doomed, so he might as well enjoy it.

Once alone in the kitchen he grabbed a large iron skillet and crouched beside the door. It was Sebastian Tambour who entered first, and Gull found it rather satisfying to swing something heavy at Tambour's head.

Alas, the corsair ducked sufficiently to be merely clipped. Tambour rolled, snarling, into a bucket of fish heads.

"I'm not a sorcerer!" Gull said. "I'm not a wizard! I'm not a Chelish agent!"

Tambour swept fish guts from his eyes. "Hit me again, Gideon Gull. That will make your case more convincing."

"Would a sorcerer use a skillet?"

Tambour was up now, knife unsheathed. "I might just believe you, Gull. If you are a spy, you are perhaps the sloppiest, most ridiculous clandestine agent I have ever seen."

"It's Mortil. I think he wants the admiral dead. He thought I was working for Cheliax too. But you killed the real assassin, didn't you?"

"Perhaps..." Tambour backed away with a calculating look.

And Tambour's men grabbed Gull from behind.

Gull did not resist. At this point, surrender was safer.

Thok.

Suddenly the men let go, slumping to the floor.

Gull turned to see Eutharic's compatriots, Adamantius of the demonic tattoos and Thok of the big stick.

"Who killed Eutharic?" snarled Adamantius.

"Thok weeps," Thok said. Gull was startled. This was the first time he'd ever heard of Thok saying anything.

"It was not I," Tambour said. "Nor my men. I am beginning to believe it wasn't Gull."

"Gull could never kill Eutharic," scoffed Adamantius.

"Gull is weak," Thok said.

"Hey..." Gull began, and finished, "that's right. It was the governor's man, Mortil."

"That knowledge," came Mortil's voice, "will die with you all."

Fire filled the doorway.

Adamantius and Thok screamed as an explosive magical blaze consumed them and Tambour's fallen men. Gull and Tambour were barely able to take cover behind a counter. An unused chicken on a hook burned above their heads like a comet of culinary omen. The reek of roasted flesh made Gull gag.

"And when you are finished," Mortil said, "so will the target burn. I may be implicated, and that is regrettable. But in Hell my masters will laugh."

Wedges of light erupted from Mortil's fingertips, and Gull heard a scream.

He knew that voice. Corvine.

Gull scrambled around the counter, skillet in hand, and Tambour was with him, dagger ready. Together they rushed the wizard.

Coming Next Week: The ultimate weapon is revealed in the conclusion of Chris Willrich's "The Cloak of Belonging."

Dive into more adventures with Gideon Gull in the new Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust!

Chris Willrich is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust. He is a former children's librarian best known for his sword-and-sorcery tales of Gaunt and Bone, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and elsewhere, and which continue in the novels The Scroll of Years (Pyr, 2013) and The Silk Map (forthcoming). Chris lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. Visit his website at www.chriswillrich.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

The Cloak of Belonging

by Chris Willrich

Chapter 2: A Roving Young Fellow

Gentlemen adventurers needed to mind their steps, especially on roofs. Gull discovered that hard lesson—as well as that cold, wet, and muddy lesson—when he slipped off the mist-slick summit of Skua Croon's Curiosity Shop and toppled into the mud.

He stood up painfully, brushed the muck of Admiral's Fen off his new cloak, and acted as though such things happened every day.

The passersby nodded and smiled exactly as if it were so.

Striding through the fog toward Cassomir's shipyard like an admiral and not a vagabond minstrel, Gull wondered at the new poise that enveloped him. True, he was clearly no more coordinated than before, nor tougher, as his bruises informed him.

But something had kindled his spirit. Perhaps it was the strange rattles and cranks he'd heard from Grayguard Castle, or the stares he'd attracted with this peculiar cloak. Whatever the reason, Gull walked without fear through the heart of Taldor's naval power. And despite his odd appearance, workers, sailors, merchants, and officials all nodded or waved as he passed.

Once or twice he heard shouts behind him—the corsairs or the ruffians perhaps—and he took care to slip through fog-shrouded alleys between the businesses that catered to the navy and its sailors, the provisioners, sailmakers, coopers and the like, as well as the brothels, fortune-telling halls, and gambling dens. No one challenged him, though some beckoned him toward this ill-reputed doorway or that. Perhaps, with more time on his hands and fewer foes on his tail, he'd have lingered.

But now he'd a destination in mind.

He emerged from the maze of ship-related concerns and braved the shadowy ruins of Quickfall Abbey, making the sign of Erastil's antlers on his chest as he passed that reputedly haunted locale. Like the splintered bones of dead giants, the crumbled walls jabbed through the sunlit fog. Gull whistled, mentally revising an old Andoran drinking song.

Oh, my name's Gideon, I'm a songman gone bad,
And a roving young fellow at need.
So be easy and free, if you're haunting at me—
I'm a man who will run far away.

No spirit deigned to trouble his morning. The tune's energy seemed to pour into his feet, and it was with a light step that he emerged into the northern end of Cassomir, a realm of cobblestone lanes and pleasant cottages and houses. As the rising sun melted the fog away, Gull located a certain flower shop and purchased a red rose from a matron whose suspicious look similarly melted in the light of his smile.

"Why, Master Gull," she said. "You've not been this way in weeks."

"The life of an musician is a busy one, Mrs. Amaranth." Gull looked toward the ceiling. "Ah, is Corvine..."

"She is in, but I don't think—" But by then Gull was out the door and ascending one of the exterior stairs. Abbey Green held many such locales, harboring a shop or two on the ground level and lofting dwellings overhead. A widow, Mrs. Amaranth owned this building and reserved for herself a flower shop and a small home above, while renting the rest of the ground floor to a navy wife who supplemented her husband's pay with needlework and flag-making. As the wife lodged at the Citadel, the remaining space was rented to a pair of female musicians.

Gull had known one of them quite well. The other had regarded her roommate's taste in men as a mental affliction.

As he knocked, a snatch of song came to him, a piece with a backwoods sound, something he'd not worked on in years.

Howling like a mangy old wolf at the moon
Sleeping through the warmth of the sun
Worrying too much about getting the girl—
Not enough about getting the right one.

The door opened. It was the one who'd thought him an affliction.

"You."

Thea Zephyr (a stage name if Gull had ever heard one) narrowed her eyes beneath her artistic beehive of hair, which loomed above like a russet thunderhead with black hairpins for lightning. Taldan women fought endless skirmishes via their glorious crowns of hair. Men who supposed these displays were entirely or even mostly about them were naive.

Gull's own naivete lay elsewhere. "Me," he confessed, smiling.

"You selfish bastard." Thea stepped out, her stare pushing him backward as though she were warding her roommate from the very sight of Gideon Gull. "Do you have any idea how long Corvine looked for you?"

"I..."

"She thought you were dead!"

"She minded?"

Thea finally got a good look at him, taking in the shave, the wash, the raised hands, the cloak. She blinked.

"She minded," she said. She studied him a little longer, her expression shading from anger to confusion. "I'll get her." She shifted slowly inside, then slipped back, snatched the rose from his hand, and gave it a quick sniff like a child stealing a sweet. In she went, and now Gull wore the confused look.

Curious.

He heard new voices from the fog to the south. They might be Sebastian Tambour's men, or even Tarik the Unclean's. He practiced looking as inconspicuous as a minstrel in a gold-embroidered purple cloak on a second-story stairway could be.

A woman with a more subdued tangle of black hair, held by a single ivory pin, appeared at the door. She had bronze-looking skin and pale blue eyes that made Gideon shiver like a newly plucked string.

"You," she said.

"Me," he said.

She handled the rose like an idle conductor with a baton, tapping the blossom against one palm. “So?”

"Yes..." he began, and stopped. The word was like a steppingstone leading into fog.

"Well?"

He held up his hands. "I know."

"And?"

"I'm sorry."

The last thing Corvine Gale expected was a visit from Gideon Gull.

Corvine Gale's fresh appraisal of Gideon Gull did not seem to banish her disdain as it had Mrs. Amaranth's and Thea Zephyr's. Rather the opposite. "You're sorry?"

"I'm sorry."

"You're sorry..."

"Yes. May I... come in?"

"No." She followed his gaze to where a group of figures appeared to be emerging from the fog around the abbey. She noted his concern. She sighed. "Yes."

"Okay. Thanks."

"Don't thank me," she said as she led him into the crowded room.

Just before the door closed, Gull heard something hit one of the fallen stones of Quickfall Abbey.

Thok.

Gull looked around, seeing many familiar faces, most with a musical instrument to go with them. "Why, Alaric, Nicolaus, Walpurga... It's been too long."

Several people looked as though they might question that assertion. But they shifted uncomfortably and were uncharacteristically silent in the presence of the new Gull.

Corvine placed a hand on his shoulder, spun him to face her. In the process her balance faltered and she weaved into him. He smelled gnome whiskey. He had an excellent nose for that sort of thing. She stiffened and pulled away. "I'm having a party, Gideon. Well, a rehearsal with a friendly audience. Not much difference. You know how it is."

"I used to."

"Well. Four of us are singing at Admiral Kasaba's birthday at Madame Velm's." She gave Gull a scrutinizing look, for they'd both known Velm well.

"Maybe three," put in a harpist named Alaric. "I've been feeling ill..."

"You'll make it," Corvine insisted. "It has to be a four-part madrigal. And I believe they're going to surprise Kasaba with a giant cake and have a handsome midshipman jump out or some damn thing. I don't know, she's not my patron anymore." Here came another hard look. "They're just paying us to sing. But we need to be good. Just about everybody who's anyone is going to be there."

Gull said, "That's why you're practicing drunk? Madame Velm doesn't like lushes."

"You are not going to lecture me about drink. Nor about a patronage you deprived us both of. You are going to sit right there and not make a fool of yourself."

Gull knew when to shut up. Sometimes. He bowed and took a chair beside Corvine's bookshelf. He tried easing the commotion he'd caused by peering over his shoulder at the books. Although Gull could read, it was no easy task, and he'd learned music entirely from mentors, starting with backwoods fiddlers back in Andoran. Corvine, now, she was a reader. Gull saw books of ballads, scores for operas, and ragged collections of songs and folk tales collected from the villages of the Taldan interior. He saw, too, books about magic—The Olde Companion, The Magister's Tunebook, Songs of the Azlanti Twilight—not the intricate tomes of professional spellcasters, full of maddening esoteric formulae, but the sort of homely references collected over time by those worthy of the title bard.

For all the bravado of this day, he now felt fully the bumpkin, and as the quartet resumed its jolly madrigal the feeling only grew.

Raise the sail, strike the drum
The long-awaited hour's come
Let all who live by wind and wave
Stand attention proud and grave.

Alaric's part faded in a fit of coughing. The man waved for the others to go on, and Corvine proved her status as a bard by gesturing and conjuring an enchanted mouth to sing from the wood of the door. The mouth used her own voice but made it possible to proceed without Alaric.

Though Taldor's foes yet ring us round
Our admiral runs them all to ground.
Though alarums summon all too soon
Hearken to this happy tune.

Now the song seemed to disintegrate like a flock of birds startled by human voices, only to careen back into formation at a higher pitch:

Happy happy (la la la) happy birthday (la la) birthday birthday (la)...

Gull knew there were variances and flourishes here he'd not the education to appreciate, but he understood this tune was both respectful and teasing, and would bring joy to the listeners, and applause—and then be forgotten. That was the way of much Taldan music. In contrast, he'd had only blunt verse, with whatever truth he could muscle behind it. Even songs of battle had eluded him, for he'd focused in Andoren fashion on the horrors common folk faced in war, not on the glory, real or supposed, chased by nobles in polished armor.

His musings led him so far from Corvine's chamber that he only slowly understood the rehearsal was over, the enchanted mouth had faded, and the quartet and its small audience were now gossiping and talking shop. Some snatches of conversation cut through his bitter reflections.

Alaric: It helps to first compose several stanzas about the history of the campaign, the battle setting, the distribution of forces, et cetera. Then you can just tack on an ending that celebrates the victory or mourns the loss. Last, you add a prologue about it all being destiny. Saves time and worry...

Thea: Could it be? Could I truly have been born to sing?

Corvine: Born to talk about it, maybe.../p>

Nicolaus: Alaric, give it up. There's no such thing as imitation quirky...

Alaric: But of course we trust pretty people more than honest people! Taldor's great tragedy is that we value faces over facts.

"Andoran's worse," Gull muttered, "in its way."

Conversation ceased. Gull uneasily looked back at these musicians of Taldor, each better versed in the craft than he. Corvine frowned, as though she'd forgotten he was there, and was unhappy to be reminded. "I'd have thought you would be missing Andoran," she said. "For a while, I thought you had returned there."

Gull saw no choice but to plunge in. "In Andoran anyone can hold high office. So even though we've no king, we the people are in the same position as a king choosing his ministers. But we don't have the leisure or learning of kings. We are busy... well, my fellow Andorens are busy... with our lumbering and bee-keeping and harvesting. So we are like the most foolish of kings—a wastrel prince, maybe, suddenly inheriting the crown and choosing his servants in a hurry. And so we choose the pretty. Or the silver-tongued. Or someone with a famous name, even if they were famous for something utterly irrelevant. Or we choose whomever now seems angriest at the last fool we elected."

He expected to be laughed off, a fool speaking of fools. Or worse, tsked and tut-tutted at by the superior folk of Taldor.

Instead they nodded with interest at his words. Had he spoken better than was his wont? Or was the strange charm of this day working upon them?

Alaric coughed and answered. "Far be it from me to praise Andoran before Taldor... but I think you are too harsh. What you speak of is simply human nature. It applies everywhere. Perhaps the consequences have special meaning in Andoran, but I assure you shallow judgment is as devastating here."

The other man in the quartet, Nicolaus, nodded. "And if the great of Taldor are foolish, who's to stop them? At least in Andoran the fools can expose each other."

And indeed, Gull felt a sudden yearning for his old land.

"I did not know," said Thea, "that you were a philosopher, Gideon Gull."

The other guests made encouraging sounds to echo Alaric, Nicolaus, and Thea's responses. All but Corvine.

"He's not!" she scoffed. "He talks a good story, always has. Maybe he's a little more polished now. But it's the same old Gideon!"

But the others ignored her, and from then on Gull was the center of the party. Alaric loaned him a harp, and with the other musicians' help he began composing something on his theme.

In Andoran, the founders so fine
Gave us all a bottle of wine.
Common Rule, the label had read
A glorious vintage of martyrdom red.
In drunken sprees we drank it all down
Rejoicing that no one would wear a crown.
In sickly dawn's light we needed to pee
And so used that bottle called Democracy.
O Andoran, you land of the free,
You drank up the wine of Democracy
But the price of gettin' some more of that drink
Is a plunge in cold water and a promise to think!

Alaric and Nicolaus jumped in with a verse they'd just concocted:

O Taldan lords, you trample our rights
While you battle each other for miniscule slights.
Our lords eat and drink while the commoners thirst,
True nobles would always put common men first!

"You'll get thrown in the stocks," Corvine warned.

"Just like I'll get tarred and feathered in Andoran," Gull said.

"It's the song that gets you in trouble everywhere!" Nicolaus said.

"But don't you see?" Thea said. "If we are more careful with the words... this song could actually criticize the nobility. It sounds at first like it's mocking Andoran. But it's not actually mocking Common Rule. It just says that Andoran's people don't live up to the ideals."

"Our royals would say," said Corvine, "that no one can live up to those ideals."

"But if we go on to poke fun at Taldor's foils," Thea went on, staring into the daylight beyond the window, "we can have a song that argues for a better world—and sing it right under the nobility's noses."

There was a chorus of assent.

"What?" Corvine said.

"Friend Gull," Alaric said, "you should take my place tonight in the quartet."

"What?" Corvine repeated.

"We all know I'm not feeling well," Alaric continued, "and it's affecting my voice. And just maybe, if there is the right moment, you can sing your song where the powerful can hear. Hold on to the harp. I'll return for it tomorrow."

"What?" said Corvine looking from one companion to another.

"You know," Nicolaus said, "I have had a few ideas of my own, for songs that mock the mighty..."

"I too," said another musician.

"And I," said a third.

"You are all mad," Corvine said. "Out of here, all of you! Gideon is addling your minds. Get some fresh air. I'm serious. You too, Thea."

Thea was the last outside, giving her roommate—or was it Gull?—a last, probing look.

Corvine slammed the door, and turned to face Gull. She did not look enchanted. "Where did you get it?"

"Eh?"

"The cloak, Gideon. It's obvious that's it."

"That's what?"

"The thing you're using to become such a smooth talker. A philosopher." She shook her head. "I knew something was amiss when I noticed Thea of all people making eyes at you."

"She was?"

"Don't act so innocent! You saw how they behaved. I swear they're ready to write limericks about the Grand Prince!"

"All right... yes." He steepled his fingers, leaned back in his chair. He'd seen scholars act like that. "I know there is something different about today. Something extraordinary has come over me. But it could be a concoction of my own mind." He remembered his dream of the music of the spheres. "Perhaps desperation has kindled something in me. Perhaps I am finally ready to awaken from my drunken dreams..."

"It's not you, Gideon. It's the cloak. It wouldn't be the first magic item to enhance a person's presence. Take it off, and you'll see."

He smiled. "Are you actually telling me to take my clothes off?"

"Go to hell."

"All right, all right. That's a spooky thought, you know, when you're wearing a Chelish cloak."

He began to remove the garment, albeit with reluctance. I can take it off anytime I want to, he insisted silently. So why did he hesitate?

He made a show of negligently draping the cloak over a chair.

"Ah," said Corvine. "There you are."

"What do you mean?" He suddenly felt naked as a mole rat, for all that his old clothes clung clammily to his body.

"I mean, you look like yourself."

He let out a long breath, as if weeks of hard living were woven through that gust of air. What had he been doing? Had he really taunted thugs and corsairs, run along rooftops, encouraged sedition? He was insane.

And yet, he'd rather liked it.

"Ah," he said, looking at his feet. "Myself."

"Where did you get it, Gideon?"

He stared at her. "Why do you really want to know?"

"I've the feeling you're mixed up with something bad. Magic like that doesn't just fall from the sky."

"No." He smirked. "It washes onto shore." He told her the story of his day. Her eyes widened at each new episode.

She gripped his shoulder, firmly this time. Her hand stayed put. Startled, he looked into her eyes. He found himself hoping he could keep doing that...

"Gideon,” she said. “I'm glad to see you. Truly. But you are impossible. You don't need magic to rise out of the gutter."

"The gutter has been a step up..."

"Enough. Stay off the streets. Stay here for a while." She rubbed her temples. "I know how to put an ear to a wall. I will go and see what I can learn about strange Chelaxians with purple cloaks—and those who might murder them. You... well, Alaric is sure to come to his senses, but if he doesn't..."

“What about your senses? You've been drinking.”

“Shut up.” She set down two sheets of handwritten music. "Do you remember what I taught you about reading notation?"

"Of course."

"Then practice. If you do end up joining us tonight I don't want you embarrassing us in front of Madame Velm."

"I am sorry. About all of that."

"Sorry you got sloshed before a duet, and cost us both our patronage?"

"That... and that I convinced you to come to Cassomir to work with her. Where there were no other patrons of similar stature."

"This... is not the time. Give me one of those gold coins."

"I have but three left."

"You need clothes." She sniffed. "Don't argue."

He didn't argue. To a degree he was enjoying the fuss. When she left he even dutifully studied tonight's madrigal, so he could adequately perform Alaric's part. He was still a musician. And moreover, he did not enjoy the disdain that had colored Corvine's words.

So he focused on this one small thing.

Presently he was nagged by a desire for drink. He looked about the room for something to sate it. A tiny, persistent disgust at himself crept in through some corner-crack of his soul, like a little animal stubbornly nesting in Gull's mental cupboards. At that moment he found an actual cupboard containing a bottle of Zimaran wine.

He gently closed the door.

And opened it again. And closed it.

He was somewhat in need of willpower.

His eye turned to the cloak, and in one fluid motion he was across the room and swishing it onto himself, tying it off with a dramatic half-turn. "No," he said, "Gideon Gull drinks when he wishes—not when the bottle demands."

And in that manner, proud and purple, he returned to the problem of the madrigal.

So focused upon the music was he that at first he believed the knock at the door to be some rhythm-induced hallucination.

On the second knock, he rose languidly and opened the door. "What did you—" he began, but choked on the words, for it was not Corvine.

Here instead was well-dressed man of hard bearing, his red woolen jacket buttoned with pewter, his blue felt hat bearing a silver pin depicting the Lion of Taldor crouched upon a ship. "At last," said the man.

"Are we acquainted, sir?" The man seemed somehow familiar.

"We know of each other. I am Mortil, assistant to Governor Bozbeyli." More quietly, he added, "I am also your contact." He waited for Gull to take that in, and although Gull failed, Mortil went on. "Are you alone here?"

"Well..."

Mortil brushed past Gull, eyes focused on the musician as if he thought Gull a dangerous customer. Gull was reminded of a look he'd seen back home in the eyes of wild dogs. Mortil took the chair beside the books; Gull shut the door and sat at the nearby bench along the wall.

Mortil said, "I had to call in help to find you. Do you know what that cost me?"

By now, Gull did indeed recall Mortil, someone he'd met once or twice under the patronage of Madame Velm. The recognition was not mutual, however, and Gull suspected he had the cloak to thank for that. A good thing, too. Despite the bland tones, something in the other's eyes spoke emphatically of prices like murder, torture, blood, and madness. This discouraged Gull from his normal loquaciousness. He ventured, "We all must pay the piper..."

"You were not at the rendezvous," snapped Mortil. "Where were you?"

"I—have had my difficulties."

"I have been assured you are exceptional at your work."

"Well... you know, back home I was considered great..."

"We are not in Cheliax. Things are different here."

That annoyed Gull. "Do I look Chelish?"

"Come now, don't fence with me. It doesn't matter to me where Cheliax finds its agents. I have been awaiting the man with the purple cloak for days, and in that time the target has begun working to undermine the efforts of our masters. It is time to strike back."

"Ah."

"Yes. The event is tonight. Never will the target be more vulnerable."

Gull had an uncomfortable feeling he knew who the target was. "I might be able to get close," he ventured, not sure why he was playing along, unless of course it was to avoid getting killed.

Yes, that might be it.

"Good," said Mortil. "I have been unable to divine your plans. You, of course, need not give me details...." Mortil paused.

Gull said nothing.

With a disappointed look Mortil continued. "... but I will ensure the guard is light. There will be enough distraction that you should have no great difficulty. I would do the deed myself, but I would likely be discovered."

"And what of escape?"

"That is your problem."

"And what of reward?"

"That is our masters' problem."

Gull made himself chuckle. "Of course."

Mortil was unamused. "You seem to take this matter too lightly. I assure you our masters, on Golarion and elsewhere, see your mission as essential to their plans."

"Oh, I take it seriously." Gull leaned forward. "Damned seriously." Gull kept a straight face. Mortil studied him, and slowly nodded.

"Very well, I take my leave." Rising, Mortil added, "I hope to hear a tale of woe upon the morning."

Gull opened the door. "Woe's the word."

Mortil shot him a grave look and departed.

"Well, Cloak," Gull muttered, once he was alone. "It seems we have a choice. Disappoint Cheliax and the hordes of Hell. Or assassinate Admiral Kasaba."

He stroked his chin and came to a firm conclusion.

"Where's that wine?"

Coming Next Week: Birthdays and mayhem in Chapter Three of Chris Willrich's “The Cloak of Belonging."

Dive into more adventures with Gideon Gull in the new Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust!

Chris Willrich is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust. He is a former children's librarian best known for his sword-and-sorcery tales of Gaunt and Bone, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and elsewhere, and which continue in the novels The Scroll of Years (Pyr, 2013) and The Silk Map (forthcoming). Chris lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. Visit his website at www.chriswillrich.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

The Cloak of Belonging

by Chris Willrich

Chapter 1: A Vagabond and a Gentleman

The clank and whir of infernal machinery called Gideon Gull back from the music of the spheres. At first he thought the din was dragging him down to Hell, but in a way it was worse. He woke up on the Dog's Teeth.

As he sorted the mechanical noise from the pulse of his throbbing head, Gull's namesakes scattered around him, foiled in their efforts to pry last night's crusty bread from his death-grip. Since making a home on these coastal islands, Gull had become used to the squawking scavengers. They were an honest crowd of greedyguts, and their voices possessed a kind of desperate music. In any case, he liked them better than his human and near-human neighbors.

Better get up, Gideon, he thought, before one of those neighbors knifes you.

The thought was a prophetic one, for when Gull rose blinking in the tentative gray dawn, he saw the dead man.

The corpse and the ongoing mechanical racket were both located across a tide-covered waterway. Gull beheld the dark cloak and sprawled limbs of the former, facedown on the shore. Meanwhile the latter boomed from the high windows of the great castle looming above the body. For a moment Gull had the eerie impression that the carcass was a sacrifice to some clattering stone god.

The mechanical sound ceased, and what passed for silence returned to the Dog's Teeth. Amid the screeches and ripple of waves and the stirrings of work in the harbor city of Cassomir, Gull cast a look over his shoulder, nibbled a bit of the bread in his left hand, swirled the nearly empty bottle in his right. The look reassured him that the various vagabonds and thugs who occupied these islands were either sleeping off the night's adventures or hatching new plans, and that he was unobserved. The bread nearly cut his lips, but the combination of food and pain helped revive his wits. The bottle held just one crimson drop, the same color as the cheerful red hat pictured on the torn label—a reminder of his home in Andoran, a handful of miles and years of broken promises away.

The past was gone. He sucked out the last drop and tossed the bottle. Hands itching for his lost harp, Gideon Gull took another look at the corpse. He shivered from more than the morning chill. That's a nice cloak, he thought.

I'm halfway down the road to dead
Armed with a bottle and crusty bread.
And friend, the best that I can see
Is that you're doing worse than me.

As he walked through the knee-high tidewaters toward the mainland, Gull was already thinking through a tune for his bitter ballad, something spare and sharp, far removed from the celestial sounds of his dream. Once he'd followed such dreams to the bustling squares of Andoran and beyond to the glittering manors of Taldor. Now he'd hit bottom in this border city between, and he was learning that his true nation was the Dog's Teeth outside this Taldan navy town, and his true calling the songs the dogs of the Teeth preferred.

You wore a cloak so fine
I wore a reek of wine.
I'd say our places are reversed,
But dead man, you're no longer cursed...

The sandy shore was covered in a hash-pattern of webbed seagull prints, like a carpet woven by a weaver with a mania for threes. Gull shooed the birds away, and although he looked nothing like his family's emblem, what with his haystack of blond hair and his sun-parched gangly limbs, he could squawk with the best of them.

Alone, he bent over the pale, dark-haired body. He made the sign of the antlers and checked for a pulse. But the man was cold and his spirit gone, and no servant of the good god Erastil clomped forth to gore Gideon Gull. He took this as permission.

For the cloak was indeed beautiful. It reminded Gull of opera cloaks he'd seen in the capital, its strange purple material silky soft but warm to the touch like velvet. Golden designs swirled about it with strange interweaving patterns that drew the eye into endless labyrinths. Even soaked by the waters, the material looked vibrant, and where the dim sunlight had hit it, the cloak was already dry. Only a small rip testified to the violence that occasioned this find. The tear matched a gash in the dead man's shirt, with a deep knife-wound beneath.

Almost as an afterthought did Gull search the man's pockets for coin—gold Andoren sails, oddly enough, and what's more there were six, enough for some high living.

If he was living high, he thought, he should have a nice cloak, torn in the back or not. He put it on.

The wine-haze and dog-tiredness seemed to bleed away like harbor fog beneath the sun. He stood and tied off his cloak in one swift movement. The rocks and sands around him came into sharper focus. Shore-grass twisted on the breeze, and sand fleas danced—and boot steps sloshed and crunched their way to shore.

He turned to see three ruffians approaching from the Teeth.

"Off to the opera, Gull?"

Eutharic is the sneering lieutenant of the lord of the Teeth.

He knew these three, two Taldans named Eutharic and Adamantius, and a wanderer from the Mammoth Lords' lands named Thok. Folk declared Thok got his name from the sound his only real possession—the improbably big tree branch he carried everywhere—made when connecting with a target. They said he rarely failed to produce that sound. It was probably an apocryphal story, but Thok never tried to correct it, nor communicated at all save to grin whenever he had the opportunity to make that sound.

Adamantius was hardly less intimidating. The man was wrapped in salt-brined leather armor, and what one could see of his skin was a strange blend of scars and tattoos, the artwork portraying monstrous claws and tails erupting from the old wounds, as though the depths of Adamantius were akin to the demonic Abyss.

Eutharic was the brains of the trio, a lieutenant of Tarik the Unclean himself, unofficial lord of the Teeth. Eutharic was only unthreatening by comparison with his colleagues. Thin, taller even than the barbarian, the man exhibited nothing overtly menacing other than the clammy calculation written all over his sneering face. It was Eutharic who had spoken, and Gull knew immediately it had been foolish to assume this loot was unobserved.

The smart move now would be to offer the cloak and some coin to Eutharic. Gull would still come out ahead. Maybe he'd even earn a little gratitude from Tarik's organization.

The deal was upon his lips, and his body was starting its descent into the correct amount of cringing, when something peculiar came over him.

Gull stood up straight as a martial flagpole and said, "I might be. I might not. I haven't decided how to enjoy my salvage."

Eutharic looked amazed. "Your salvage? What washes up on the Dog's Teeth is Tarik's salvage. Give it up, minstrel, and sing us a ditty, and maybe Thok'll only thok you once."

Gull knew about now he ought to be placating the man. All the loot and a round of "The Qadiran's Winsome Widow" might save him from some broken bones. But something buried within him, something like good Andoran steel, rebelled.

He thrust out an imperious finger.

"Then you ought to be about Tarik's business, Eutharic, for there are the Dog's Teeth. Here is the very wall of Grayguard Castle, where Gideon Gull has dared to strike. And what Gull has risked his life to claim, Gull keeps."

By the time he reached Gull keeps, his voice was booming nearly as loud as the surf on the outer reaches of the islets and the strand. The ruffians stood amazed; even Thok's eyebrows rose. Gull felt then almost as though he were two individuals: one who blazed with righteous fury at the threat to his lawful salvage, and the other who fully expected to be gutted and crushed beside the corpse at his feet.

"You... what?" managed Eutharic, too startled even to sneer.

Knowing this was his last chance, Gull raised his hands to implore the thugs to break only a few bones.

Yet something deep and dark as his hometown woods reared up snarling in Gull, and told him no.

And as his fingers rose they did not spread in supplication, but began tracing imaginary designs in the air as he'd seen wizards or bards do now and again. Deep in his throat he gurgled out nonsense words thick with consonants. "Mrrglurrg rumdiggity belchighast blurff! Glark-snaarfl aftblast gassbaggen floof!"

"It's a spell," shouted Eutharic, rushing three paces back, and Adamantius and Thok followed suit, the first crouching low to present a smaller target, the second cursing with the old contempt of his people for civilization and its wizardry. For there was yet about Gideon Gull the reputation of a bard, for all that he'd never truly mastered bardic lore, let alone bardic magic.

Astonished that his bluff had worked, Gull bowed, tossed a gold coin over the trio's heads, and ran like a corsair in a fair wind.

Gull did not stop to scream over the toe he stubbed while rounding the castle wall and scrambling over the breakwater into the town. Nor did he take much notice of his surroundings until he was gasping in the stone streets of the district of Grayguard's Shadow near the Admiral's Barbershop and attracting the stares of two constables.

Little good could come of such attention, so Gull staggered into the shop, struggling to breathe normally. Familiar faces looked up. Though Gull was not a frequent customer, sometimes he came here to sing a shanty or two and earn a shave for his trouble.

He expected a friendly grunt from Bosun Rack the barber, curt indifference from the Taldan sailor in the chair, and easy waves from the laborers waiting for shaves. Instead he got immediate attention.

"Mr. Gull," said Bosun Rack, pausing with his cream-dabbed blade in the air, sounding as if he still had two arms and was serving aboard ship. "What can we do for you?"

Gull searched the tone for sarcasm and found none. The laborers straightened in their chairs. The sailor, half-shaved, sat up, studied Gull, and said, "You seem to be in a hurry, sir. Perhaps you'd like to go first?"

Gull felt as stupefied as the thugs he'd just left behind. But with constables watching outside, he thought a shave would be a good choice about now. He thanked the sailor and sat down, saying, "Nothing fancy, Bosun. Don't want to put on airs."

Bosun Rack brushed cream onto Gull's face and chuckled.

"Full shave, please," Gull said meekly. Bosun Rack was acting as though Gull were still a noted musician, the toast of the capital even, not a washed-up minstrel in a military town. This was becoming an odd day indeed. Maybe the strange mechanical noises of dawn had disturbed everyone's dreams, left them funny in the head. Soon his companions would notice the reek rising from his clothes. The sailor cleared his throat—here it came.

"Begging your pardon," the sailor said, "but are you singing at the admiral's birthday party? It's tonight, you know."

"I... had not planned to."

"Oh, well. That singer, Corvine Gale—didn't you used to do duets? She'll be there, I hear."

Bosun Rack finished the shave while Gull blinked his surprise, and insisted on washing and trimming Gull's hair too, a task fit for a combat veteran. The thought of Corvine darted through Gull's mind like a crow diving for corn. She'd been about the last good thing to happen to him. And like all good things, it had ended it badly. Bosun Rack ended too, by cajoling Gull for a song.

So Gull entertained the group with a rendition of "What Shall We Do with a Sober Sailor?" and the tapping and hooting brought the constables inside. They tapped and hooted too, and clapped Gull on the back as he left. Gull smiled, bowed, and got away from the barbershop before their sea-fevers broke.

What was happening here? By odds he ought to be locked up or bleeding. One thing was sure, he had gold in his pocket, and close by the castle was no place to spend it. He needed a good meal—and perhaps some paid companionship? He hummed a tune as his feet took him toward the rowdier district of Admiral's Fen, in search of the sign of the twisted-tailed mermaid.

Half-dead man with a dead man's cloak
Where do you think you're going?
Pocket full of gold from a man that's cold
Dead on this fine morning?
Off to the Admiral's Fen, my friend
Where streets are ripe and muddy
'Cause dead man's gold is better sold
For wine than left all bloody.
Half-dead man with a dead man's cloak
Do you not have pity?
Well, I'm still alive with gold coins five
And I'm busy with the living.
And I'm busy with the living.

He was not fool enough to drink at this hour, of course, and the gold he offered the barkeep at the Knotty Mermaid wasn't bloody. Nor was Gull a murderer as his new song implied. Nevertheless he resolved not to sing it here. One coin bought him eggs and sausages and bread and a seat beside the common room's sunnier windows. The windows were of straightened and polished strips of ram's horn, which let the light bleed in all golden and glorious but more importantly kept Gull hidden from the street. A return to the Dog's Teeth was surely unwise, and Gull would have to find somewhere else to live. Homeless men in Cassomir had a way of getting press-ganged. The Knotty Mermaid had rooms, but Tarik's operation had fingers in Admiral's Fen. Perhaps Gull could sing in the streets up in Abbey Green. He was feeling energized, with many new ideas for songs. Something peculiar was happening.

From outside, the voice of Eutharic cut through Gull's thoughts. "Word is," Tarik's man was saying, "there's a foreign agent in there."

"Indeed?" said a haughty voice. "We'll handle it."

Knowing some sort of officialdom was entering the inn, Gull hastened to the bar and used his new line of credit to get quill, ink, and paper from the tavern keeper. "Of course, Master Gull," said the man. There was no irony, no sarcasm. There were no complaints about his stench from the shipwrights preparing for a long Toilday. It was almost as if Gull were a respectable citizen.

As if in answer to that thought, a group of sailors strode into the Knotty Mermaid, all dressed in mismatched rich clothing, and their leader did indeed have a whiskered chin. This motley crew received a rousing spontaneous toast from the laborers, for it appeared they were among the corsairs who operated out of Cassomir. Gull belatedly lifted his tankard of water, but he drew attention as the privateers claimed a table.

He tried to ignore their stares and focused on his work. If he appeared to be just what he really was—a musician come into some luck—perhaps all would be well.

So he worked out the details of the dark ballad that had rattled through his mind since seeing the cloak's dead owner. Gull had no superstitions about projecting himself into his work, and gleefully put his narrator into a noose. He'd not worked this swiftly in a long time. Why had he not composed more? It only went to show that fooling yourself you were a musician was easier if you did it every day. Only the conversation of the corsairs impeded him, for he caught distracting snatches of talk from their table.

"Wrong wrong wrong," the bearded man was saying, and Gull knew him for the man who'd spoken with the thug Eutharic outside. "You're all wrong. I'm wrong too, but I look better when I do it."

There were chuckles from the shipyard workers. More came in, and waved at the corsairs.

"I'm just saying," answered one of seamen, "the Chelish are chumps. Making a pact with Hell, well it's about as stupid as getting a loan from my uncle Wulf."

"No, no," said the bearded man, "the Chelish are just recognizing their true value. Look, a Taldan vessel is worth, what, ten Chelish ships?"

There were snarls of agreement.

"And a Taldan corsair is worth any ten Chelish fighting men?"

There was laughing affirmation.

"And a Taldan lady in bed is worth any ten Chelish women in bed?"

That gave the men a moment's hard consideration, but patriotism won out.

"And so," concluded the bearded man, "while any of us would think our souls a matter of high price, for a Chelaxian it may not be much to speak of. 'My soul for a pint! My soul for a chair by the window! My soul for sausages and a good cloak!'"

The corsairs' laugher had a pointedness to it, and Gull snapped out of his ballad (sometimes you got to do, he was writing, what you got to rue) and realized the pirates believed they were goading him. He looked up, bewildered. They were all looking back at him, expectantly.

"I am sorry, good sir," said the bearded man with a deep nod. "I did not mean to offend. I merely wished to cheer these good sailors after their hard weeks harrying foreign merchantmen. Why, just three days ago they sank a Ch—ah, but again I risk offense." He smiled, and made a fair impression of a dandified crocodile.

"Excuse me," Gull said. "You believe me to be Chelish?"

The smile stayed fixed as a steady blade. "You are not, sir?"

Anger flushed in Gideon Gull. "You speak to a free man of Andoran. Many a Chelish bottom still wears the imprint of Andoren boots."

That earned laughter from the other tables. The corsairs glanced around them in surprise. Their leader narrowed his eyes. "I could have sworn that cloak was of Chelish make."

"Perhaps. Do you not also wear clothes taken from Cheliax? Or from Qadira, Osirion, or Nex? Or, dare I say it, from Andoran?"

"The sea provides," said the leader, scratching his bearded chin as though sizing up an attack.

So it does, Gull thought, pulling his cloak tighter around him. "Our lands are not at war, and I may overlook the presence of a familiar style of red hat on one of your companions, my friend. But do not insult me again by calling me Chelish. I may be a fool, but I am not a damned fool."

The shipyard workers rewarded him with laughter and a few raised mugs. This response clearly annoyed the bearded man, who was used to adulation. That made Gull smile. He decided to finish things off. "Let me buy the heroes of Cassomir a round."

The privateers seemed rather appreciative, and the one with the red hat tipped it to Gull, but their leader's face became more set, his gaze more appraising. "Sebastian Tambour takes what he wants. He needs no bribe from foreign agents."

Gull knew the same Sebastian Tambour. The man was first mate on the Happenstance, the current flagship of Jean Coromant's crew of corsairs, who operated out of Cassomir with the full blessing of Taldor.

As with his encounter with the trio at the Dog's Teeth, Gull knew he really ought to be quaking now. Instead he was furious.

In an exaggerated rendition of Tambour's voice, Gull said, "Sebastian Tambour has a stick up his backside. Sebastian Tambour is too proud to let his men drink."

Now the guffaws spread to Tambour's own table.

The man stood. "I will show you a stick, dog. Let us settle this outside, like men."

"I will be glad to do so," said Gull, turning away and taking a long swig, "as soon as any men arrive."

The laughter was this time confined to the laborers, as the corsairs all frowned at the jibe.

So it was that the whole group descended on Gull.

Slammed into the table, his already-aching head concluding that whatever new confidence had bewitched him this day had not made him a skilled combatant, he punched and wriggled in a futile attempt to escape.

All at once he was dropped and fell with a thud upon the floor.

The tavern had rallied to his defense.

The laborers had set upon the corsairs—the very heroes of Cassomir—with fists and mugs and plates and candlesticks. The barkeep was gesturing him over. Gull scrambled on all fours behind the bar.

"Quickly, man," said the owner. "The fog's rolled in. If you get out by the roof, you'll likely escape. They're just drunk, I'm sure, else they'd not have preyed upon a fine gentleman adventurer like yourself. You'll be safe once they sleep it off."

"Yes, yes," Gull said, "of course. Lead the way, good man."

They ascended the stairs and the owner unlatched and shoved a creaky window and worked a hand-crank to extend a plank toward a neighboring building.

"This sort of thing happens often?" said Gull.

"Many of my clients need a discreet escape route. I have an arrangement with the neighboring landlord."

Gull fished out one of his gold pieces, handed it to the man. "Gideon Gull will remember you," Gull said. The barkeep winked and shooed him out the door.

Gideon Gull stepped outside into mist and mystery.

Gideon Gull, gentleman adventurer, that is. He liked the sound of that. This cloak had brought him luck. He wrapped it tighter around himself and fled across the rooftops.

Coming Next Week: An uncomfortable reunion in Chapter Two of Chris Willrich's "The Cloak of Belonging."

Dive into more adventures with Gideon Gull in the new Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust!

Chris Willrich is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust. He is a former children's librarian best known for his sword-and-sorcery tales of Gaunt and Bone, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and elsewhere, and which continue in the novels The Scroll of Years (Pyr, 2013) and The Silk Map (forthcoming). Chris lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. Visit his website at www.chriswillrich.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

The Dagger of Trust Sample Chapter

by Chris Willrich

In The Dagger of Trust, Chris Willrich introduces us to Gideon Gull, an Andoren musician training at one of Taldor's greatest bardic colleges—and not just as an artist. For in the secret halls beneath the school, Gideon studies to become a Lion Blade, one of Taldor's elite espionage agents. When a mysterious fog starts turning ordinary men and women into rabid monsters, it's up to Gideon and a team of his friends to stop the chaos. But in the murky world of international politics, there's always more at stake than just a few lives...

Chapter Two: Chamber Music for Three Assassins

Taking leave of the headmaster, Gideon raced into the building upon whose roof he'd greeted the day. Footfalls echoed through halls of dwarf-cut stone from the World's Edge Mountains and timber from the grim druids of the Verduran Forest.

Even corridor acoustics concerned the Rhapsodic College.

Weaving and dodging, Gideon passed classrooms, recital halls, dance studios, practice rooms, and the big performance hall, until he reached twin oaken doors carved with musical notes.

The smells of paper, leather, vellum, and papyrus greeted his nose. A gruff "Howzit, Mister Gull?" from the gnome librarian greeted his ears. Wintry light glowed through stained-glass windows depicting the rainbow-tailed bird of the goddess Shelyn and the purple butterfly of the goddess Desna, two powers particularly admired by bards. In their light, bookshelves stretched all around him.

"Need work, Mister Gull?" The librarian's skin was as dark as the oiled wood of his desk, and his gray hair had highlights that matched the colors of the windows. "They say a ship's in port all the way from Vudra. Might have some new sitar tunes."

While the library couldn't match the rival Kitharodian Academy's collection for size and depth, the gnome was fanatical about competing in breadth. Students could make money scouting docks, gates, and markets on the librarian's behalf, hunting for anyone with a new scrap of music. When busking went dry, Gideon often worked for the librarian, expanding his own repertoire in the bargain.

Gideon is a man of many talents, only some of which are musical.

"Not today, Master Spindlegrim. Late for...studying."

"It's winter exams, boy!" As one of the oldest students in the college, Gideon only had to endure the term boy from this ancient gnome; he didn't begrudge it. "You're a little late indeed!"

"Don't I know it!" Gideon retreated into the stacks. He was never sure if Spindlegrim was in on the secret of the Shadow School or not, but in any case Gideon couldn't give the game away.

A dark turn in one corner led to Antique Musicology, a dusty, mazelike nook. The ancient music discussed here preceded all notation, and its true sound could only be guessed at, never recorded with certainty. Most students were too practical-minded to venture here.

If they did—if they slipped around the absurdly narrow last turn and peered through the shadows at the farthest books—they might find a low, slim, volume titled Toward an Ethnomusicology of the Serpentfolk, with letters of onyx embossed on black. It took squinting to find it, and it appeared jammed between its bulkier neighbors.

But if you were a truly determined seeker, seizing knowledge in both hands, you could slide the book out...and in so doing discover it was no book at all, but a slab of stone.

Pulling it further, you'd trigger two silent mechanisms, one shifting the stacks to cut off this alcove, the other sliding the final shelf just a fraction, revealing a dark passageway. If bold enough, you might slip into that tunnel before the shelves slid closed again.

Now trapped in total darkness, you'd have no choice but to descend steep stairs to a landing where magical light suddenly sprang to life. When your eyes at last adjusted, you might notice the murder holes surrounding you, through which guardians might jab poisoned spears if they didn't like what stood revealed in the light.

But if you were Gideon Gull, you said, "The crab catch is catastrophic in Korvosa," giving the passphrase of the week. "And hurry, I'm late."

Someone grunted and cranked a lever. A stone wall carved with notation from a requiem groaned aside and revealed the Shadow School.

It was not the only Shadow School, of course. Everyone knew there were others. It was guessed, but never admitted, that there was another beneath the rival Kitharodian Academy. Gideon suspected there were more, and there was even a rumor of one under Cassomir. The mastermind of the Lion Blades obviously liked both secrecy and redundancy. He also liked keeping his recruits on their feet.

Gideon moved as fast as he could without alarming the hooded guards that stood at attention like pieces of architecture. He passed quickly through a labyrinth of drab corridors whose only ornaments were slogans spelled out with magical glowing stones.

Speech is a sword, said one group of red stones, while Silence is a shield, answered another batch in blue. Around the bend, purple stones announced the silent pun No thieves aloud. Beyond another turn was a kind of mandala composed of green stones spelling out repetitions of Illusion Reality Illusion Reality in an ever-tightening spiral. Students argued as to what the innermost, tiniest message actually said. (Made You Look was Gideon's favorite guess.)

Gideon panted up to one particular slogan, Here lies truth. Gideon caught his breath and pressed the letter s. Stone rumbled.

His first time in the Shadow School had also been his first hazing, of sorts. Students were set loose alone into the maze, which apparently had no particular rhyme or reason, let alone classrooms.

Eventually he'd guessed that the slogans marked concealed doors. Gideon's first class had been behind Silence is a shield, where he'd met the other members of his cell. The instructor there, the Mistress of Lies and Memory, had claimed the particular slogan you first triggered said a lot about you, and determined which students you trained with. What exactly it said in their case, the Mistress never explained.

The concealed door marked by Here lies truth shifted inward, revealing the shape of a tombstone, then slid sideways. Gideon stepped through, and the tombstone rumbled back into place.

He stood within a vast chamber that at first glance appeared mobbed. The magical illumination was silvery as moonlight. As his eyes adapted, he recognized the crowd as fake. Mannequins, statues, straw men, and potato sacks, all wrapped in clothing, filled this arena. Facades like those Sebastian had spoken of created civic scenes. This time, judging by the sharply pointed buildings and the jagged symbols of devils and diabolism, Gideon was supposed to be in Cheliax.

The decor made the locale's nickname all the more apt. Although officially termed the Simulation Gymnasium, students called it the Scar Chamber.

"You're late, Gull."

Above, on the Rhapsodic campus, students were "mister" and "mistress." Down below, you were meat.

"As such, the simulation will incorporate your delay." If tones could cut like knives, this one was a surgeon's blade for that meat.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You're a Lion Blade on assignment in Cheliax, and you've stolen war plans from the desk of Queen Abrogail herself. Her armies mass on Andoran's borders, threatening to destroy Taldor's buffer with Cheliax—and, incidentally, your own native land."

"Yes, ma'am."

His instructor stepped forward into the faux moonlight. She was a short, compact woman with cropped gray hair, wearing a severe black tunic and goggles with lenses of dark crystal. Two dueling scars sliced her impassive face like a chart of the Porthmos and Sellen Rivers, with the curve of her left eye the coast, the Porthmos slashing east on one side of the eye, the Sellen slicing north on the other. She passed Gideon a scroll, sealed with a red, waxen mark that rivaled a sea-urchin for sheer number of pointy bits. "Find your contact and hand over these plans. Escape by locating a spot marked Exit in the language of devils. The word will be incongruous, but inconspicuous."

"How...how will I know my contact?"

"He—or she—is wearing a hat marked with the azure coin of the archdevil Mammon of the Third Layer, Hell's treasurer. Move quickly. Your colleagues Ozrif and Viridia are playing treacherous Lion Blades in the queen's service. Their job is to ‘kill' you. I will unleash them sooner, because you were late. Now inspire yourself!"

With that, the Mistress faded into shadows.

A low growl, nearly inaudible, filled his throat. The vibration's sound and sensation triggered a series of memories: hours spent beside the Mistress of Lies and Memory in a darkened chamber, surrounded by anonymous Lion Blades in leonine masks, all growling and chanting about him.

You are loved, brother!
You will triumph!
Your claws will tear the foe!
Your fangs will rip the enemy!
You will taste the blood of victory!
We are always with you, brother!
No force in the world can stop you!

And so on, in this enthusiastically bloody vein. On one level it was silly. Yet the sensation of trust and support had been powerful. Daily repetitions of the ritual had clawed the feeling deep into his brain, so that now if he merely rattled a soft, wordless echo of the chant, it was as if every Lion Blade stood beside him, urging him on.

Now he stepped into the crowded moonlight. The crowd wasn't moving, of course, but the Mistress would be watching, her magical eyewear bestowing perfect vision in the dark, so he had to behave as though it were. Gideon slipped into the frozen bustle and wove through it.

He couldn't tell where she was—perhaps due to some magical effect—but the Mistress's voice echoed through the chamber, goading and encouraging.

"The structures around you aren't lifeless, Gull! Crowd and city aren't just random flotsam! They're embodiments of what we glibly call ‘society.' They box in your body. Just as rules, strictures, and customs box in your brain."

As a child in Andoran, Gideon had gotten used to teachers who ordered him to sit still while they lectured. He'd never have dreamed of an instructor like the Mistress, who shouted maxims like some Ulfen wrestling coach.

"You can bypass these obstacles. Your body knows how. It's hungry to evade, to twist, to leap. Let it!"

Something in Gideon quickened at these words, as though every muscle he possessed yearned for the challenge of a city and the need to traverse it. He encountered a cart hitched to a wooden horse; he jumped smoothly over the singletree.

"Most people shamble endlessly through their days, as unmindful as constructs or walking corpses. You can be free!"

The faux horse was triggered to kick; Gideon spotted the danger and rolled away, getting himself around a corner.

A sound rose magically in the chamber, that of a multitude upon a busy street.

The Mistress's voice rose above the hubbub. "Remember, city dwellers have a mental shorthand. Class, gender, race, objective—all are surmised at a glance, below the level of true awareness. That shorthand is your friend. Step lightly, and leave no trace in the pliant mud of the mind."

Gideon hustled, searching everywhere for his contact. How long till his hunters found him?

"But not everything can be average or ambiguous. You can't help but present a gender and a class. Viridia! Your gender invites danger and opportunity. There are shadowed streets a prudent woman won't walk alone, yet also social occasions where only a woman blends in."

At Viridia's name, Gideon immediately ducked close to the facade of a building and removed his boots. This would call attention to him, and in daylight would be a critical error. But in this moonlight, it might not matter. He pulled off the boots and tangled the laces in his hand, so that he would have a pathetic little club, if need be.

"Class is more subtle," the Mistress said. "Its power varies by nation, city, and district. Here in Taldor, take special note of what stratum you're emulating—especially you, Gideon."

Now, as if people pulled off their shoes for no reason every Moonday night, Gideon returned to the crowd. His footfalls would be quieter now.

"In Katapesh, everything's for sale—including, potentially, you. Be suspicious, and in that way you'll be acting like everyone else. An innocent is a mark, or an idiot, or has something up his sleeve. I don't fear for you in this, Ozrif, though beware of sentimentality should you return."

A dummy moved, attempting to block him.

Gideon had expected this, though not so soon. Many of the figures were mounted on movable panels, responding to pressure plates or cranks operated by unseen staff. Some of the figures were even magically self-animated.

Gideon dodged.

"In Andoran, swagger—but not you, Gideon—to the point of insulting your betters. For the point is that an Andoren has no betters. Walk down every street as if you own it. For after all, you do."

Now he heard footfalls elsewhere in the Scar Chamber, though he couldn't tell where.

"It's best to think of wondrous Absalom not as one city, but many. Its variety is such that it's always easy to blend in to a degree. But each district has its special customs, and you'll have to learn them to operate with real success."

Glints of red and gold, emerald and turquoise lay on many of the dummies' hats or arms or necks. Gideon's eyes shifted back and forth, hunting for the blue coin of the archdevil Mammon.

"In Cheliax, tell yourself you're smarter than anyone else, and the appropriate sneer will develop. Learn the diabolic deferences, but remember that Cheliax respects devils without worshiping them. And never forget your common humanity with the Chelaxians. They'll surprise you with little kindnesses toward their foes, even amid the business of backstabbing their friends."

At last Gideon glimpsed an azure disc across an alley. He ducked low and veered between the building facades.

A mistake. A foot jabbed from behind a mannequin and tripped Gideon. He fell, rolled, and was up immediately, kicking at a dark shape that skittered backward. Such was Ozrif's style.

The juggler from Katapesh had grown up on mean streets, performing but also stealing, evading grown-up thieves and slavers and worse. Gideon's own street experience—mainly lying insensible in them—could not compare.

Remembering the lay of the crowd, Gideon gambled and danced backward between dummies. When he'd gotten a sufficient distance he threw his shoes to a point beyond where Ozrif must be.

Before the shoes had even hit the floor, Gideon was off through the forest of mannequins, circling the block to bypass the alley.

He reached his contact, an unusually realistic mannequin wearing a cap adorned with a devil-faced blue coin. Gideon stuffed the small scroll under the cap and ran, hoping neither Ozrif nor Viridia had seen. Now his job was to run.

He rounded a corner and met Viridia's knife.

The rough-and-tumble frontierswoman from Stavian's Hold had good hearing, and now that Gideon was taking risks with speed, she was quick to find him. She jabbed and swung like someone who'd grown up with a blade in her hand.

"Die, enemy of the queen!"

"She's a rebel!" Gideon pointed, knowing the Mistress would be imagining a crowd's response. "An Andoren trying to undermine the regime!"

"I'm a loyal servant of Cheliax!"

"Oh, yeah? Name all of the eight archdevils below Asmodeus!"

Viridia spat. "Creepy, Snarly, Greedy, Nasty, Farty, Crazy, Chilly, and Scum! Who the hell cares?"

When you first looked at Viridia, you thought you were looking at a weathered, strong-minded, dark-haired young woman with the plain-spoken wisdom of the eastern frontier. It was only after hearing her snorting bark of laughter, after watching her swill hard liquor with a burp or listening to her haggling at the market, that you realized either your idea of the solemn dignity of the plains was utterly quaint, or that Viridia was unique. Perhaps both.

Gideon leapt onto a facade's balcony. With Viridia swearing beneath him, Gideon jumped to the balcony of a neighboring facade and, with one quick scan for the word Exit, leapt back to the street.

He'd glimpsed a golden word...

Somewhere out there, the Mistress said, "Remember! Whenever you speak in the field, you play a role! When you're silent, only then will you be yourself."

"It's well you should know the names of devils," said a different voice, "for you'll be meeting them soon."

He whirled and ducked beneath Ozrif's spinning kick.

Ozrif's light brown skin, black hair, and almond eyes revealed his Keleshite heritage; and in a nation still remembering a withering war against a Keleshite land, this forever marked him as suspicious. Gideon sometimes wondered if Ozrif's bardic specialty deliberately deflected that suspicion. For a juggler is necessarily apart from his audience, the center of a whirling, transfixing phenomenon—if all goes well, anyway. It's only if one drops the ball that the spell is broken. It helped that Ozrif was also a bit of a comedian.

Oops! Gideon had once heard Ozrif say. Well, every moon must descend. Parents, thank you, and remember I have magic powers to cure your children of childish traits. Za zim zab! There, bring them back in thirty years and we'll see how that worked. Unattended money attracts thieves; save yourselves from such a fate by means of my handy cup!

Ozrif had no juggling clubs or quips today, but his limber punches and kicks testified to his quick reflexes and wit.

Viridia reappeared, flanking Gideon. She jabbed him in the arm. Gideon's old friend Pain rattled the bell of his mind. Ozrif and Viridia were indeed the perfect couple, if you needed someone hunted down.

Spellcasting was unwise under these conditions. But then again, anything was unwise under these conditions.

He wished he'd retained his spell to fascinate a crowd, but you played the instruments you had. He recalled one spell he didn't associate with any particular music, but rather with the random, perplexing, fascinating racket of an orchestra tuning up.

Waving his hands, he intoned syllables that would implant perplexity.

It probably shouldn't have worked, but it did. Ozrif froze. He began babbling what might have been a Keleshite nursery rhyme.

Gideon rolled away from Viridia, noticing that the straw mannequin nearest him, done up as a Chelish Hellknight with cloth for armor, was bound together with twine.

Humming the tune of "Haul Away for Arcadia," he rose beside the dummy. Viridia advanced within a foot of the Hellknight. The shanty opened a hatch in Gideon's mind, and out popped the arcane formulae and gestures for a spell.

The twine unraveled and engulfed Viridia.

As she shouted "Cheat!" and Ozrif's addled brain set the juggler to punching himself, Gideon reached the shadowy spot where he'd glimpsed the word Exit.

He heard the Mistresses' voice again, now from a new direction. "Remember, you're a paradox, for Taldor is flamboyant even in its secrets. Who but Taldor would recruit performers to become its corps of spies?"

He spotted a glint of gold.

The Mistress had never said Exit would appear on a structure.

He ran toward the voice.

"Only Taldor so smoothly blends guile and show," the Mistress said. "Hello, Gull."

"Hello, Exit." The word glittered, golden letters strung upon a necklace.

"Well played," said the shadowy shape wearing it. "But you must tag me to escape."

Gideon circled. "What does this represent in the scenario?"

"The unexpected. No plan survives contact with reality." She moved gracefully, shifting with him. "So sometimes our simulations simply cheat."

Gideon lunged. She shifted aside easily.

Behind him he heard the footfalls of Ozrif and Viridia. Gideon's spells had worn off or been overcome.

All he had to do was tag the Mistress of Stillness and Motion. But she could see in the dark and he couldn't.

Ozrif was upon him then, attempting a flying tackle. Gideon dodged, rolled, rose—and realized what he needed to do. As Ozrif got to his feet, Gideon treated the Mistress as a pillar, an obstacle, and she seemed not to object, so long as he wasn't trying to touch her. He kept his distance, so as to goad Ozrif into another leap.

Now—

Instead of evading, Gideon threw himself into the brunt of Ozrif's tackle. He'd positioned things so that the momentum threw him against the Mistress. Tag.

But even as he knew his gambit would succeed, his ears brought him the sound of Viridia's drawling incantation, the voice swiftly shifting location, for Viridia usually danced as she cast. He recognized it as her sleeping spell...

He awoke to the Mistress of Stillness and Motion splashing water on his face.

"Wake up. You're dead."

He was as groggy as if awakening in a gutter. His arm had the tingling sensation he always felt upon receiving magical healing.

"Twice in one day," Gideon groaned.

"All part of life." The Mistress offered him a hand and hauled him up. The lighting in the Scar Chamber now resembled bright noontime, revealing the mannequins in all their rumpled artificiality, the facades as disguised exercise platforms. "You did achieve your goal, at the cost of your death."

"It's becoming a habit." Gideon blinked at Viridia and Ozrif, who were sitting nearby, drinking some of the cold water Gideon was now wearing. Being dead was thirsty work. He took a cup from the Mistress and gulped it down. "Didn't I escape in the end?"

"You did, but with your opponents glued to you. No clean getaway."

Viridia drew a line across her throat.

"A draw," the Mistress concluded. "Class is done. I have a message for you from the headmaster, Gull. He'd like to discuss this morning's events, whenever you find it convenient." She paused. "And do be cautious, topside, all of you. Something strange is in the air."

"I appreciate the warning," Ozrif said. "I'd appreciate specifics even more."

"That's Kelish for ‘spill it,'" said Viridia, then added, "please."

The Mistress shook her head. "Just an intuition."

As they left the Scar Chamber, Ozrif said, "The longer I know the Mistress, the less I think I know her."

"She's odd," Viridia agreed, "even for this place."

"I'd listen to her, though," said Gideon.

"Well, you're odd too." Viridia turned toward a branching corridor. "See you both later?" The cell usually took different exits to the surface.

"This time let's stay together."

"You do take her warning seriously," Ozrif noted.

Gideon shrugged. "She's an honest spy, as these things go."

"Do you feel a chill?"

At first, Gideon thought Ozrif was joking, but then Viridia answered, "Yes," and Gideon's skin felt clammy too.

All sounds were muted. Usually there was a hint of footsteps elsewhere in the school, but now it was as though the trio walked alone in a long-abandoned labyrinth.

They rounded another corner.

"—what in Desna's name is that?"

Everyone stopped. Viridia pointed.

Mist crawled through the corridor. It was as though the air of some remote bog had been grasped by a divine hand and deposited here, where it had no business being. Aside from the glow of a nearby slogan—Every brain is a pickable lock—the white fog, swirling with hints of green, obliterated vision. It didn't begin gradually, as a natural fog would, but rather blurred into view a few yards ahead of the trio, and filled the hallway like a mass of cobwebs.

Perhaps it was the corridor's chill, but Gideon recalled his sessions in the Shadow School's icy dissection chamber, where exhumed corpses were sliced to show the finer points of humanoid anatomy.

No, that was not entirely true. It reminded him of something else as well. Something long ago, just out of his mind's grasp.

"This must be a prank," Viridia said. "The Night of the Pale's less than two weeks from now..."

"An expensive prank," Ozrif said. "Some sort of magic..."

"There are shapes inside," Gideon said, unable to look away.

Three long shadows of human forms stretched into the fog, as though he and his companions were backlit. Above each shadow twisted even darker images. At first Gideon thought of these as ink spills, then as octopuses, and finally as shadow plays, like those Leothric performed with certain puppets imported from Jalmeray. For now in crisp silhouette there loomed scenes from each bard's life.

Above Ozrif's shadow Gideon saw a dancing, juggling boy he was sure was Ozrif himself. The boy jumped aboard a ship and was embraced by the people there. The ship soon encountered a larger vessel, and it flew a chiaroscuro flag of a crown above a lion. Many on the smaller ship were killed, and many treasures taken from it. The ship sank into the mists.

Meanwhile over Viridia's shadow there rose a farmstead, where a girl rode a horse through the grass. There came an ornate carriage bearing the crown-and-lion banner, and the girl's parents pleaded with a robed official. In the end many bags went into the laughing tax collector's hands.

Gideon didn't want to look at his own shadow.

Above Ozrif's there was now a bazaar scene, with the boy fleeing a slave stockade where his old crewmates stood for sale; and above Viridia's were hangman's nooses, their purpose fulfilled, with the girl raging before them.

And still Gideon did not look to the third scene. He saw instead his friends' expressions, haunted, contorted in old anger and pain. But worse, they looked also toward him.

"Gideon," Viridia said, "what are we seeing? I know the girl is me, and I know enough about Ozrif's past to recognize...but I don't understand yours."

"These are scenes torn from our pasts," said Ozrif. "Grim things. Yet yours seems different, Gideon."

Now Gideon looked.

In his own shadow play, a boy wrestled with his older brother. From the little cape worn by the bigger boy, Gideon knew it was his brother Gareth. And from the smaller boy's toy sword, Gideon knew that he was looking at himself.

The idyllic scene by itself was not the cause of his dread. The Singing Knight had fought the Opera Ghost many a time, sometimes with the participation of their sisters in the form of the Captive Diva, the Master Detective, and Chomper the Dinosaur. (That was Zitha, the littlest, who introduced Chomper into everything from tea parties to formal dinners; after a while it made a strange kind of sense.)

There was no diva or detective or dinosaur this time, but there was another element. Little specks flew back and forth in the air above the brothers.

"What are the dark dots?" Viridia asked.

"Bees."

"Did the bees attack you?" asked Ozrif.

"No! The bees are just bees." What mattered was not the bees but what their presence said about the time and place. "Those are the bees of Bellis."

The fog curdled and thickened near the bees, and the swarm dispersed. The boys looked up, the Singing Knight and Opera Ghost forgotten as they looked to where the fog had congealed.

"What are they looking at?" Ozrif asked.

"It," muttered Gideon.

"What?" said Viridia. "I don't see anything."

"That!" said Gideon, for it was plain as a bear on the Grand Bridge. And now it was as if he were back in time.

He unsheathed his dagger and confronted the fog.

"Gideon!" Viridia shouted, and Ozrif tried to restrain him. But he plunged forward.

The touch of the fog was like the caress of some undead lover. It sickened him, for all that he remembered it well. And within it, something touched his mind. The same presence he'd felt on the conservatory roof. Laughing.

All at once, the fog withdrew around a corner. He followed, his friends close at his heels.

When they rounded the bend, it was gone.

"What manner of monster was this?" Viridia demanded.

"Now you're leaping to conclusions," said Ozrif. "It was a trick, a spell effect..."

"I suggest," Gideon said, trying to return to the here and now, "that you two reach an exit and inform the guards. I'll see if the headmaster will speak to me early."

"You sure?" Viridia asked.

"You seem most affected—" said Ozrif.

"I'm fine." Gideon turned and walked toward the headmaster's nook of the maze, not wanting to speak further. He needed to be alone.

The past was the past. And Gareth was gone.

Gideon at last reached a wall where silver light stones spelled out the sentence If you want to know what lies ahead, learn what lies behind. He found a spot on the unmarked wall directly opposite the word behind, and pressed the stone there. A panel slid aside, and cold rock gave way to warm wood, silk curtains, and embroidered furnishings.

The headmaster had an open-door policy—if you could figure out how to open the door.

In Xeritian's office hung portraits of the sort that great men, or men who fancy themselves great, commission. Each noble or official or wealthy merchant stood in a pose of ease and power, often fondling some token of authority—a heraldic shield, a book of laws, or brass scales—as though it were a concubine.

In each picture Xeritian stood in the shadows behind the great personage, a dagger in his hand, a smirk upon his face.

There was a large chair facing a vast desk strewn with papers. Xeritian made a point of having his back to you if you entered his office. A dare, Gideon supposed, though he personally thought it theatrical.

The chair was empty, however.

"Gideon!"

Sebastian came down the hallway from the direction opposite Gideon's.

"I was hoping to catch Xeritian," the corsair said. "What are you doing here?"

"Sebastian. I'm glad to see you." Gideon explained about the fog, though something made him hold back anything about dead brothers or voices in his head.

Sebastian frowned. Entering the office, he leaned over a brass horn embedded in the desk, its cone opening onto some cavity in the wood. He blew. Gideon heard nothing.

"That should bring everyone running," Sebastian said. "They'll also send a messenger to Xeritian, wherever he might be."

"They?"

"A school like this requires many hidden staff. Will you show me where this fog manifested?"

When they reached the spot in question, Ozrif and Viridia were gone, but there were guards present, as well as the Mistress of Stillness and Motion. Sebastian conferred with her, adding, "Do you think it was the same?"

"That's supposition. But I mistrust coincidences."

"The same as what?" Gideon asked.

Sebastian took his arm. "Come with me, Gull."

They reached a guard post and ascended a switchbacking stairway in the dark. "There've been reports across Oppara of these manifestations," Sebastian said. "Even in the Senate's halls."

"An attack?"

"A strange one, if so. Only certain people perceive it. Thus we've not been able to convince the mighty. Also, no one's suffered worse than a scare, and a riling of their emotions." He paused. "You do seem upset."

"I'm fine. On the green, you mentioned a fog. Are these apparitions similar to what Corvine described?"

"Her letter was brief, but yes, I think so. She requested an investigation. I was personally inclined to wait, but given the excitement her messenger caused at the debate, I had to show her letter to the headmaster. He insisted we inform Director Rell. I did so personally, and was returning to Xeritian when I found you. Evidently the headmaster chose to do some investigating of his own."

"I'd volunteer. To go to Cassomir, I mean."

"You're eager to see Corvine."

"Well, how would you feel?"

Sebastian laughed. "That's unclear, since no one but you and she understands your relationship. You were clearly lovers once, but something happened—"

"I became a worthless drunk is what happened. Well, became one again. She's hinted we might start again. But I need to build a life that doesn't center around a bottle."

They reached the top of the stairs. Dim light seeped through the edges of a secret portal. They emerged between wine barrels into a storeroom with frosted window-slits lining the upper ceiling. A permanent illusion portrayed the squeak and scuttle of a rat infestation. Sebastian pulled down a trapdoor from the ceiling as Gideon rolled a barrel back into place, with beady, illusory eyes glaring at him all the while.

"She knows you've gone to the Rhapsodic," Sebastian said. "Does she suspect the rest?"

"I don't think so."

"Do you think she's the sort who can love a Lion Blade?"

"I think that's a premature question." Gideon paused. Unless he's asking for his own benefit. "By the way, I hope our little argument on the green didn't raise a cloud between us."

Sebastian paused on the trapdoor ladder. "That could never happen. Even if I'm a great believer in the Taldan way and you're an addled democracy-fool of Andoran."

"Thanks, I guess. It's been a long while since I voted, however."

"Do you ever want to go back?"

"I love Andoran. But we're...estranged."

"Hm."

They ascended to the owner's office of The Harp and Harpoon, a tavern and inn popular with bards and sailors, and thus a natural safe house for the Lion Blades. Sebastian hailed Tithra Sparksteel, the proprietor, who grunted invisibly from behind her stack of ledgers.

"Thought that racket was you, Tambour. By the way, that girl from The Cat and Feather came by."

"I hope you told her I'm busy."

"I almost told her I had an opening. If she's going to keep popping up, she might as well work."

"You won't, of course."

"Settle your business, man."

"My business is Taldor, madam."

Sebastian pulled a heavy book from a shelf and led Gideon to the common room. Amid the bright babble of seafaring conversation and snatches of song, Sebastian said, "I must take my leave for now. For even without these apparitions, I've a full schedule."

"You won't be investigating?"

"Not primarily. Not with the faculty already involved. I've an appointment with a ship's manifest and a mug of Bellis Mead. I'd hoped to find the headmaster here, but a school messenger's surely found him by now. My own business with him isn't urgent, and I'd best resume my duties."

"What should I do? Before all this happened the Mistress of Stillness and Motion told me the headmaster wanted to see me."

"You've made the effort. I'll vouch for you. I suggest you return to the college, prepare for exams, and let him find you." Sebastian smirked. "If he does, mention I'd like to speak to him again as well." After a pause, he said, "Do be careful out there."

"You mean the fog?"

"I mean everything."

When Gideon emerged from the tavern into the street, the air had changed. The sky, once so bright and clear, was now pale gray.

As he stepped onto the cobblestones, something swooped out of the pale sky.

Gideon dove across the street, ducking around a carriage, a trio of sailors, and a flower girl in a way that might have impressed the Mistress of Stillness and Motion. He rolled into a crouch beneath a townhouse's timber jetty, dagger out.

Swooping past the staring faces, the pigeon landed beside Gideon. A little scroll clung to its leg.

Gideon rose and bowed to the passersby. "Alas, pigeon training is never done!"

There was muttering to the effect that there ought to be laws against this sort of thing as the wayfarers moved on. Gideon removed the scroll. The pigeon looked familiar; some of Corvine's couriers returned to her, which spoke well of her treatment of animals.

Bard said to bird, "Thank you. Go free."

The pigeon fluttered into the dour sky. He opened the scroll and squinted at rows of intricate and increasingly diminutive handwriting.

Dear Gideon,
Salutations, greetings, waves! I'd have sent a seagull, Gull, but pigeons are better at this, and I need to move fast. How are you? I'm haunted by eldritch forces, but otherwise fine. No, don't be alarmed. It's not me personally, just my whole city. Maybe that doesn't reassure you. Maybe it doesn't reassure me. Anyway, the long and the short of it is, there's a mysterious, magical, fog-like effect that seems to drive people mad. We've had reports of it around town and up the Sellen. Actually one of the reports is mine! Earlier I sent a letter to our mutual friend Sebastian

"A coded message from the Qadiran Satrap, Gull?"

Gideon started, and pocketed the scroll. "Headmaster!"

Headmaster Xeritian chuckled. He was still dressed in his spattered groundskeeper's robe. "I fear you mistake me for someone else, Master Gull. I'm but a simple groundskeeper." His eyes flashed a warning.

The day grew suddenly warmer as Gideon realized his error. They stood in the middle of a busy street, and here he was loudly proclaiming the headmaster's true identity. "Of course. My mistake."

Xeritian nodded to the pocket containing the scroll. "Your blushing haste suggests not treachery, but romance. Your friend in Cassomir, then."

Gideon's face burned hotter still. He stepped closer and lowered his voice to a safe level. "The Mistress of Stillness and Motion said you wanted to see me? And you were informed about the apparition at the school?"

"Yes and yes. Walk with me."

He followed the old man through Westport, feeling increasingly agitated at Xeritian's lack of agitation.

They crossed some of the rougher streets of that rough district. Sometimes Xeritian would chuckle at this folly of humanity or that. Gideon had no sense of what the headmaster was up to. From time to time a disturbance would make Gideon ready to spring. A man came hurtling through the much-abused window of a tavern. Beside a brothel a woman in a man's clutches laughed in a shrieking, mocking way that hammered the ears. A man in a gutter gripped at Xeritian's leg and gasped, "Money for pesh?"

Gideon wanted to say, You have enough trouble without sucking up that stuff, but Xeritian passed the man a coin, to a babble of thanks from which the headmaster silently removed himself.

"You disapprove?" Xeritian asked Gideon.

"I've seen pesh carve brains like melons."

"His fate isn't my concern, and I admired his candor. A little honesty is a fine thing in this deceitful world."

"In that case: why aren't you back at the Shadow School, when something like that fog's gotten in?"

"The truth isn't going to be at the school. This is a city of a million lies, and I'm a master of liars. Sifting the lies, I may find the answers."

"If you admire honesty," Gideon wondered aloud, "doesn't it bother you, being a master of liars?"

Xeritian raised an eyebrow. "Not at all. I train them, but I have the privilege of being an honest man myself. If anything, I feel guilty at the discrepancy. Do the lies bother you?"

"Somewhat." If Xeritian appreciated candor, then Gideon would give it to him. "Every song's a lie of sorts, you know. You take the pose of a narrator. Sometimes that narrator is you, sometimes not. Spycraft is kind of like that, I think. Except it isn't a show, it's a con. It does bother me, sometimes..."

"Spoken like a bard. You're not the first with that reaction."

"Were you a bard, Headmaster?"

"No. I was a historian." A few unexpected snowflakes fell around them as they spoke. Xeritian caught the year's first snow in his hand. "When you grow up amid the bones of past greatness, it's a lively field." The snowflake melted, and they walked on.

They departed Westport, and the snowflakes became a throng, dancing on the air like fat, lazy gnats. At first they left only a little moisture on the cheek or a few brief bright motes in the glorious weaves of a Taldan woman's hair. Opparans, busy with the business of the City of Empire—or surviving the City of Empire—ignored it. But the sky's gray mills weren't to be denied, and relentlessly churned out their snowy flour. Bit by bit, the streets and rooftops were covered in white, and the Gilded City became silver.

Xeritian led Gideon to the doorstep of the House of the Immortal Son, the temple of the dead god Aroden, now converted to an opera house. He pushed open one of the great doors and gestured inside.

"Headmaster? What does an opera rehearsal have to do with the fog?"

"Nothing, Gull. I summoned you because of your performance this morning. It concerns me. Crises come and go, but the need to train new Lion Blades remains."

A singing troupe was rehearsing inside, sans orchestra, yet augmented with the presence of spellcasters. As Gideon watched, illusory fires seemed to fill the air around the singers, and blasts of water withered the fire; yet the waves were outflanked by further flames.

"Have you heard of the thaumacycle?" Xeritian asked.

"A composition that incorporates magic. A revival of a lost Azlanti tradition. A difficult form." While true bards studied both music and magic, each discipline was quite demanding on its own. The combination defeated most composers. By tradition, every spell in a thaumacycle performance had to be at least theoretically castable by the author. The exact form was up to each composer, but most entries were operas.

"You're aware of the Taldan Thaumacycle Festival?"
"I've heard of it but never witnessed it. It travels around." Corvine had spoken of it with interest, and had mentioned wanting to try her hand at it.

"The next one will be held here on Longnight, a little over a month from now. This group's already rehearsing." Xeritian winked. "But I believe there's enough time for you to enter and compose something."

"Me? What about the fog?"

"You're forgetting you're still a student, Gull. More experienced hands will deal with today's danger. I still need you in training, to face tomorrow's threats."

"But—respectfully—how does this help me become a better Lion Blade? I could do it, but I'd have to drop everything else, and I doubt very much I'd win." And if he were to devote his winter recess to the work, he wouldn't be able to travel to Cassomir to investigate the fog. And see Corvine. "Maybe I'd manage the score, but the magic..."

"Challenging, yes. But experience is the point, not victory. You seemed reluctant to employ magic during the Shadow Taunt."

Gideon reddened. It was true. He was a quick study at spells, and could cast them at need, but they never seemed natural to him. Outside of immediate danger, he rarely thought of employing them.

"I suspect your difficulty with magic's less a matter of talent, and more that you have a lopsided interest in music."

"Well, I was just a musician until recently."

"Quite. Sometimes we must coax the brain, rather than flog it. I have recommended the thaumacycle for others before."

Gideon smirked. "And it'll keep me out of trouble?" And possibly, Gideon considered, give him something that could entice Corvine to visit him.

"There's that. I'll place you on special assignment. For the college as well. As it's almost winter recess, that will be simple. Indeed, as soon as I return I'll cancel your commitments for the day, and rearrange your tests, so you may begin work. It might be good to keep you out of the official eye. Be careful this fine frosty day." Xeritian turned.

"Wait."

The headmaster stopped.

"You're the third person today who's warned me to be careful," Gideon said. "Is there something I should know? If there's danger, why can't I investigate along with you? What does the future hold?"

Xeritian smiled. "I'll use the historian's standard answer: ‘That is not my period of study.' As for the rest—you're simply not ready, Gull. I'm sorry. Even I must be wary, as I go hunting."

"Be careful, Headmaster."

"Always, Gull." The headmaster paused. "You dislike lies, and that is admirable. Remember the value of truth. It is high. But it is not infinite."

"I don't understand."

"I believe you will."

Xeritian walked into the crowd, and there should have been no way that the old historian could simply disappear from Gideon's sight, but that was exactly what happened. Of course the headmaster of the Shadow School would have access to magic. But Gideon knew that thought was merely an attempt to salvage his own pride. You're forgetting you're still a student.

Hoping his pride would be burnished by Corvine's letter, Gideon pulled it out and finished reading.

as we both know he must be rather connected in government. But he may be at sea. Alert whom you can. You're surrounded by bards, I'm sure you can get the word out. Sorry this is so rushed. I have good gigs, will report later. Am I done? No, I'm never done! But there's no more room and these letters are as tiny as I can make them GBYE

Gideon reread the letter and pocketed it. He smiled. The concerns about anything between Corvine and Sebastian dissipated like morning mist. He strode jauntily into the snowfall, looking here and there for swirling shadows. He took the letter out and read it again, put it back in his pocket. He whistled.

A dim part of his mind replied, You are pathetic, Gideon Gull. Your would-be lover is under threat and all you can think of is how relieved you are there's probably no reason to be jealous of Sebastian.

A bright-lit part of his mind said, You have that part right, Gideon Gull! But she did say not to be alarmed!

Pathetic.

Whistling, his mind drifted toward the problem of a thaumacycle. It was a welcome change after the visions of the fog. Perhaps if he completed the work quickly, he could still be involved in the investigation, somehow.

As his thoughts drifted, so did his path through the snowfall, his feet leading him through the city, the deep parts of his mind in charge.

Gideon's boots led him to an empty sliver of city park dominated by a bust commemorating the sponsoring royal. Dark trees cradled the air and brought a hush to the white cobblestones and granite benches. It reminded Gideon of the Verduran Forest that enfolded the border of Andoran and Taldor far to the north. He remembered the family trip to Bellis on the Andoren side, and running around trees trying to tag Gareth...

But best not to think of that day.

He stopped and stretched. Gideon appreciated the park but could never remember the benefactor's name, only the patrician expression the sculptor had conjured. He decided the royal looked like he'd take chill without a hat, so Gideon molded one from snow.

The two took up parallel views of the river, as men in serious discussion might.

"You know much about women, Prince?" Gideon asked the bust. "I'm assuming you were a prince. If you appear to desire a woman, she frequently edges away. If you give up your desire, she frequently returns. This would seem to be perverse behavior, yet I've seen it time and again."

Gideon paused and nodded.

"Yes, of course you're right, the obvious stratagem is to pretend a lack of desire. And as a performer I normally find pretense as simple as plucking a note. Yet in the matter of Corvine Gale, I'm just not myself. For I find, with her, I can only be myself. Maddening."

A long-suffering member of the Lighters' Guild shuffled into the park with his pole and began to kindle the park's lantern. He stopped to study Gideon as the bard conversed with a stone head. Gideon waved. The Lighter muttered a prayer to Abadar, god of cities, and hurried about his work.

"True," Gideon continued, as if the bust had just lectured him, "she's no flower wilting in the snow. If I want Corvine's attention, I must live what, to my lights, is a life of attainment and honor, whether or not she consents to share it. She won't want a man whose chief occupation is talking about her with rocks. Thank you, Prince."

The Lighter might have set a speed record, for his work was already done, and he padded on. The sky darkened, and with the lantern ablaze there was a wash of amber light about the white-frilled, dark-wooded branches, as though the park were some old etching in bronze.

The stillness was broken by the sounds of a snapping twig and the unsheathing of a blade.

Gideon's well-trained ears had alerted, him but couldn't make out the exact direction. So he did the prudent thing and scrambled onto the bust.

A thug was approaching with a dagger, faster now that he was discovered. The man wore a leather jerkin and breeches and a fine cloak. Even in this prosperous swath of the city, he might pass as a well-to-do merchant or a buccaneer who'd fetched a rich haul. For that matter, perhaps he truly was one of those things, and was angling for supplemental funds. This was not the finest of times for Taldor.

"First snow's beautiful, eh?" said Gideon.

"It is, good madman, it is!" said the other. "Now howsabout you throw down your purse, and you can enjoy it with your eyes still in your head?"

"Crude! Uncouth! Good sir, I've lived in places where mugging is a refined art, with certain protocols. I might say, ‘Lovely weather,' and you might say, ‘Yes, but it's cold,' and I might say, ‘Ah, and you are seeking a donation for those without good winter gear, who've only a rusty knife to see them through,' and of course you might say, ‘That's about the size of it,' and then I offer my purse out of generosity, you bow, and I run like mad. Civilized!"

"I got your civilization right here." The mugger waved the blade. "Just hand it over!"

"Ah, you didn't specify, ‘it.'" Gideon reached into a pouch, but not his coin purse.

He pulled forth a small rolled piece of parchment, wider at one end, upon which he'd written the aria "Valley of Echoes." Under his breath, Gideon incanted strange syllables to the song's tune...

"Who dares disturb the peace of my park?" rumbled a voice.

"What?" screeched the mugger. "Who's there? What was that?"

It was Gideon who mouthed the words, but the sounds seemed to emanate from elsewhere. "It is I, Prince..." (he thought a moment) "...Acerbic, of the...Age of Enthronement!" (As the Age of Enthronement had lasted over four and a half thousand years, Gideon figured he could tuck an imaginary prince in there somewhere.)

"Where are you hiding?" The mugger, while frightened, had still not discerned that the voice emanated from the bust.

Gideon rolled his eyes and slapped a hand over his face. He thought of the old Carpenden song "A Helping Hand" and murmured another incantation as he spread his fingers to keep an eye on his assailant.

With his other hand he gestured and caused a clump of snow to rise from a bench and move toward the thief.

"Boo," Gideon said, and remotely shoved snow down the man's back.

This sort of trick was commonplace enough, but the thief was already nervous. He screamed.

Some people, if taken by fear, will run. Others will lash out. This one was the second kind. He whirled and jabbed madly at the air, shouting, "Where are you where are you where are you—"

Gideon, a person of the first inclination, was already fleeing the scene. He could probably overpower the thug, but it wasn't his job to protect the streets, and no amount of training was a guarantee when a knife was involved. Besides, the college didn't need a criminal investigation on top of their run-in with Matharic, Royal Adjunct Pain in the Posterior.

Panting, Gideon at last stopped upon the Grand Bridge over the River Porthmos.

A river. The thought hit Gideon like a snowball to the face. The thaumacycle—my characters will escape assailants by taking a raft upon the Sellen. That northern river, greater even than the Porthmos, churned with more than a thousand miles of adventure and mystery. Where better to let loose a raft of vagabonds?

His characters would come from Galt, he decided. They would flee the guillotines of that failed democracy and ride the river south, encountering elves and dwarves and gnomes, crusaders and traders and pirates, Andorens and Taldans and druids. They would argue and laugh and weep. And sing, of course. At last at the sea, all would be resolved, as much as anything in life is resolved. Blood and crescendos.

Smiling to himself, he nodded to the passersby, for there was always somebody on the bridge. He came around the foot of the statue of General Coren, leader of the Third Army of Exploration. There was a legend that if you touched Coren's foot you would always make a return journey to Oppara. He reached out and patted the statue. "Just in case," he murmured.

An image came to him unbidden, of a small hand touching a huge insectile leg.

Gideon stopped in his tracks.

Snowflakes hit his face like scores of tiny biting insects, the kind that attack once and perish. His eyes saw nothing of the bridge or the city or the wayfarers who glanced at him curiously.

In his mind's eye, he was ten years old again, looking up at a monster. It resembled a giant beetle with legs like broken halberds, vast green eyes and curved mandibles, and antennae that flexed and quivered far out from its nightmarish head. Behind it swirled an unseasonably thick, cold fog. His heart was pounding, in the past and in the now, and the monster had him half-entrapped by the spears of its legs. Yet terrified as he was, the boy Gideon knew the creature didn't mean to eat him. An eerie sound like a pipe organ cut through the fog of memory, and Gideon imagined the monster turning its head, and the boy following its alien gaze.

Then the vision was gone, and Gideon stood alone on the Grand Bridge.

But he could still hear the dirge.

No one else appeared to notice. The sound seemed to emanate from somewhere upriver. He moved to the eastern edge of the bridge, leaned upon it, and looked out. He had a good view of the river and the city. The crescent moon was up, and the lamps were lit everywhere except the slum district known as the Narrows.

The eerie music came louder to his ears, and squinting for a source he saw a ship beyond the city, a long way upstream.

It was a ship that had no business being that far inland. This was a galleon with a sweeping prow and high stern, wide amidships, with four spindly masts, and a deep draft. Gideon was no mariner or boatman, but even he knew that the river's unseen shallows should gut such a keel.

And perhaps such a fate had already occurred, and this was a dead ship. For the vessel was suffused with a ghostly glow. Its torn sails gleamed, its gargoyle figurehead glinted, and its crew stood at attention with skeletal poise, eye sockets aimed at the Grand Bridge.

"Do you see it?" Gideon demanded of the nearest bystander, a Taldan nobleman. "Do you see the ship?"

The richly garbed man's expression was unreadable. "There are many ships," he ventured, with a nod toward the harbor.

"Not like this! Right there! Something right out of Blacwin's Wanderloss. Isn't it the spitting image of Wanderloss's adversary, the cursed ship Demonwake?"

The man took a step back, then appeared to find his courage. "Good sir...your accent marks you as Andoren, no? You must be a stranger here. I happen to contribute to Madame Floret's Home for Troubled Travelers, and I'm sure they can assist you with whatever afflicts you. If you'll just come with me..."

"Don't you see?" Gideon looked around at the few other witnesses who might validate his vision of the ship (sailing closer, blithely unconcerned about the Taldan noble's reaction). All looked at him blankly or with unease. A young girl did venture, squinting at the river, "I think, perhaps, I do see a glint of light..." before her parents hauled her over to watch something suddenly fascinating on the bridge's seaward edge.

No, Gideon realized, they didn't see.

And even as he'd made the comparison, Gideon had realized that the spectral craft didn't simply resemble the fictional Demonwake. It was Demonwake, just as he'd seen it in a performance in Almas many years ago. It was correct down to the flag of the horned skull above the crossbones and Captain Crookwing there in his torn black cape, and his daughter Desdimira beside him, the only human-appearing spirit aboard, ready to tempt the similarly dead cabin boy Wickham of the Wanderloss.

All in a rush the ghost-craft reached the bridge, far swifter than a true sailing ship should manage, and as Desdimira passed beneath Gideon she looked up at him, mouthing some secret message. Then there was a flash of light, and she and her ship were gone. Gone, too, was the mournful dirge. Only a trace of bubbles remained below the bridge, and in this lunar illumination Gideon doubted even these.

No one else nearby was looking at the waters.

Just at him.

The Taldan grandee was saying, "If you'll just hold still a moment, sir, everything will be all right..." The noble inched forward, and was joined by a tough-looking sightseer dressed for dockland work. First a thief, and now these excessively honorable citizens. A man can't win.

He bowed. "Let this be a lesson to me. This is what comes of too much opera."

From his spell component pouch he plucked a feather and a clutch of diminutive fruit tarts. He stuffed the tarts in his mouth and commenced waving the feather at the dockhand.

"What?" said the man, and with that Gideon blessed his good luck that his spell looked too ridiculous to be considered magic. Mouth full, Gideon began the incantation.

"Fate and Chance walk into a tavern," he said, magic embellishing his words. "‘I wasn't expecting you,' says Chance. ‘Just the person I wanted to see,' says Fate, adding, ‘I wanted to play some chess.' So they agree to play chess, but every time Fate and Chance flip a coin to see who chooses colors, the coin explodes. Every time they pick a taverngoer to choose, the taverngoer's head explodes. By now the chess pieces have been so knocked around by exploding coins and so bloodstained from exploding heads that you can't tell which is white and which is black. And Fate and Chance both smile and say, ‘I choose red.'"

The man's eyes got big and he commenced a horrid giggling. He collapsed upon the ground, unable to do anything but gasp and titter at the cosmic joke.

The noble stared at Gideon.

"I can tell another," Gideon said.

The noble ran toward the far end of the bridge and the vagabond camp there, which said something about his desperation.

Gideon wasted no time dashing in the opposite direction, toward the city.

He had to talk to Xeritian about this. Even if the headmaster decided Gideon was insane, Gideon instinctively trusted the man. Once off the bridge, Gideon panted in the shadows of an alley and watched the river a little longer, until the call of the fire-lit dormitory and his pillow proved too much, and he retraced his steps to the college. Apparitions, he decided, could wait until morning.

But in the morning Headmaster Xeritian was dead.

Purchase the whole novel here.

Coming Next Week: Web fiction will be going on hiatus for two weeks due to the holidays, but stay tuned for an all-new story starring Gideon after the break!

Chris Willrich is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust. He is a former children’s librarian best known for his sword-and-sorcery tales of Gaunt and Bone, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and elsewhere, and which continue in the novels The Scroll of Years (Pyr, 2013) and The Silk Map (forthcoming). Chris lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. Visit his website at www.chriswillrich.com.

Illustration by Eric Belisle.