“Go,” Fia murmured.

Ithíofan nipped at Fia’s fingers before he turned and trotted out into the street. Seconds later, he disappeared, sinking into the shadows once more to follow the trail of new shadow magic. 

A lucky encounter. 

Upon their arrival in the city, Ithíofan had been unable to pick up anything useful, running circuits through the city’s shadows and always ending up at one of its main gates but never scenting anything beyond them. Whoever they were dealing with had set a rather elaborate trap and, unlike the emperor’s own magical advisers, hadn’t entirely discounted the idea that someone with a link to the shadows might pursue them. 

Him.

Fia had gotten but a glimpse of the man through the small sparrow spying on the inn. Just a breath’s worth, but enough to put a face to his supposed thief. The question remained whether or not the man worked alone or with others. It very well could be that he was the first line of defense. Something he would have to ask Ithíofan about later. For now, the opportunity could not be wasted.

Pushing open the tavern’s door, Fia stuck his head inside and set his gaze on the table where the rest of his group sat nursing their mugs of mulled wine. “I’m going for a walk.”

The largest of the men turned around in his seat and eyed Fia warily. 

Mikko, head of the king’s Winter Guard and one of the empire’s most formidable fighters. The fact that both he and Fia had been sent after the egg all but screamed of the emperor’s desperation to recover it. He was a taciturn man, taller than Fia by a head, with his silver-blond hair drawn into a high ponytail, thin braids threaded throughout the looser strands, and marked by the glint of small silver and gold beads woven into them. Each spoke of a victory in battle. Fia had lost count of them on the ride to Syehnäki. 

“Bit late for a walk, don’t you think?”

“Ithíofan picked up something.”

Mikko glanced over at his companions. The one beside him, Isak, shrugged. Another veteran, though younger than Mikko by almost a decade. He had spent most of the morning recounting the battle that had earned him the broad scar across his back. 

“That heräkuom dog of yours?” Mikko asked.

“My wolf, yes.”

Isak snorted. “Death upon you…”

Across the table, the two other members of the Winter Guard, the smallest of their group but no less deadly on the battlefield, drank from their mugs, then turned and spat their mouthfuls into the fire. Isak sipped from his and did the same, his mouthful landing on the stone floor behind the bench. Only Mikko kept his mug on the table, one large hand wrapped firmly around it. Even from where he stood, Fia could see the tension pouring iron through his grip. 

“Be quick about it.” Mikko twisted back around to face his fellow guardsmen once more. “And remember, vertniell, where your obligations lie.”

Fia offered no response but simply turned and stepped back outside, letting the door shut behind him with a rough clang. Shadow fell over him. He exhaled. 

As far as the Winter Guard was concerned, Fia held no real feelings toward them. A thorn in his side at times and one he would readily pluck, but he could manage well enough if needed when it came to them. He had fought through the ranks of his own army, had endured the same sort of tumultuous footing in trying to prove himself to those older and more experienced. The only difference had been that when he had earned it and stood at the forefront of his own men, he had felt their respect and honored their camaraderie with his own.

He would find no such thing in the Aurinon Empire, and yet, he was as bound to it as heat was to flame. Even now, that sense of duty pulled at him, urging him to place one foot after the other or succumb to the horrors wrought by his inaction. He had no time to waste. 

“Iloforine, can you follow him?”

It took him a moment to find the bird as it hopped from shadow to shadow, eventually dropping from the eight-foot wall where the inn’s run-in shelter stood to the ground where the shadows of the horses shifted to and fro like puppets dancing in time with their movements. Finally, the crow side-stepped into the light and gave its wings a wide, languorous stretch. It peered at Fia curiously, head cocked to the side.

Waiting.

“All right, Ilo,” Fia corrected himself. He gestured toward the direction Ithíofan had taken. “Would you please play navigator for me?”

The crow clacked its beak once, then waddled away from him until it was out in the middle of the street. Fia stared at her.

“This is not funny.”

More click-clacking. 

Laughter.

Fia sighed. “One pearl for your service to be delivered to the usual spot in the capital. Would that suffice?”

Ilo hopped forward one step, followed it with a second hop, then up in the air she went. Hovering for only a moment, as if to tell Fia to get on with it, she then surged forward down the street and disappeared around the corner. He broke into a steady jog, following the path Ilo flew along. She kept several paces ahead of him, every so often tucking her head around to get a glimpse of Fia as he ran in her wake. 

Would it have been easier to pick up Ithíofan’s trail himself? Perhaps. However, allowing Ilo to take the lead gave him time to better assess the city's streets. The shadows here were not quiet. They rustled with latent intent, restlessly so in some areas, quietly patient in others, but all very much alive, waiting and watching. 

Hungry for opportunity. 

Whoever he was dealing with had the full faith of this other world. Parts of it, at least. Fia knew the borderlands of that world well enough. He had seen the various creatures that called the shadows home and even befriended a few on occasion. To call them malicious in any true sense of the word would be offensive. They existed the same as any animal here, no different from the birds in the sky, the deer in the woods, the voles tunneling beneath the earth. All part of a vast network of life, each with its part to play in sustaining that life, even if most humans could barely comprehend their existence. 

Fia held no fear of that world or its inhabitants. 

But, he understood the danger they could put him in if directed against his objectives. 

Unlike his adversary, he did not have many contracts in place, earning him the support of the shadows’ usual denizens. He had a few, but nothing like what seethed in the darkness of Syehnäki tonight. His particular brand of shadow magic ran deeper, down into those places even most radhasgài refused to go. 

He had never much cared for the word Shadowscrawler. Even if it was all anyone seemed to use to call those like this thief now.

Radhasgài. Beloved by shadow. Leave it to the empire to strip all beauty from the concept.

Ilo cut sharply around a corner, forcing Fia to abandon his thoughts and slow down to make the turn without crashing into the opposite building. She let out a rattling chitter as she dove low toward the street in front of him. 

“Tch…”

Incredibly intelligent and yet annoyingly infatuated with her own amusement. The left corner of Fia’s mouth twitched. Despite her constant laughter, all seemingly at his expense, he remained rather fond of the crow. Not just fondness, but more than that: he trusted her implicitly. 

For all her antics, she always held up her end of the bargain without fail.

His faith was well rewarded. Further down the road, the thief burst out of an alley and onto the side street Ilo had guided Fia into taking. He was running. Fast and sure, not a step out of place. Was he a resident of Syehnäki? Or had he some other plan in play?

Around him, the shadows bubbled. Fia glanced to his left where the darkest of the shadows, tucked into a network of body-thin alleys, began to shift, roiling like a frenzied mass of snakes, coiled together and now breaking apart and sending ripples through the darkness that flooded out onto the street. 

Ilo rose sharply, then doubled back on her initial trajectory, plummeting toward the street. She didn’t let up but instead crashed into the shadows just as Ithíofan surged up from them, hot on the thief’s tail. Thick, black tendrils clung to his fur. Some broke easily under the force of his momentum, but as they snapped free, more would shoot out from the darkness to try and entrap him once more. Every so often, he turned his head to bite at them, tearing through them with teeth sharp enough to saw through bone. As they gave way, he lengthened his stride to compensate for the lost ground. 

The thief cut down another alleyway with Ithíofan close on his heels. To his left, the city’s defensive wall, twenty feet high. To his right, the end rows of Syehnäki’s poorest houses. The thief moved easily, as graceful and calculated in his steps as a cat on the hunt. Not once tripped up by the debris scattering his path. The more Fia watched him move, the more he was certain he was being led on a chase. All of this carried purpose, and for a man who seemed to have this city’s shadows infested with his intent, that purpose could bear nothing good for Fia. 

They were coming up on the north gate. 

Fia whistled, the sound sharp and clear as an eagle’s cry. Ithíofan’s ears laid flat. 

“Now,” Fia murmured. 

The wolf veered to the right and dove into the shadows. Fia put on a burst of speed, sprinting down the small roadway now and gaining on the thief with every stride. 

If he timed this right, they’d arrive at the gate, in the full light of its bonfires, with the support of the night watch and the thief trapped long enough for capture. He continued to press forward. The shadows running alongside him had gone silent. Fia glanced over and saw the way they now bled down along the stone sides of the homes there, thin, inky trails oozing toward the ground. Through the center of the darkness, a ragged gash that ran on toward the gate, splaying the shadows open.  

Ithíofan howled. 

Fifty yards to the gate. 

Fia could just make out the wolf’s body, poised at the end of the road, his black fur burning like a dying star under the glow of the gate’s fires, violet eyes vivid as a fever dream, black liquid dripping wetly from his jaws. The guards of the night watch shouted in confusion from the top of the gate. Fia opened his mouth.

“Ähtviarn!” the thief called out.

Too late. 

Before Fia could direct the gate's guards to the thief, a ramp, translucent and dark like smoky quartz, erupted from the shadows of the city wall. Soundless in its arrival, as though as much a part of the night as the stars in the sky, it curved up and fed into the wall’s patrol path.

But that wasn’t the real problem. 

As the ramp manifested, the shadows to Fia’s right fluttered. The movement traveled up to where the thief still ran, and as it matched his stride, the darkness parted like curtains pulled open across the stage before a play's start. Beyond it, a black so deep even nightmares would have questioned venturing there. Fathomless, but not empty. From it emerged a black horse, its rump frosted with moonlight. Its hooves struck the street’s stones with a muffled clack, then silence enveloped it. 

Two, three, four beats, then the horse slid into the thief’s path, allowing him to haul himself onto its back. 

Fia watched as horse and rider veered off onto the ramp and took to the wall. They were up and over in a matter of seconds, not a sound to be heard. 

“Through the gate!” Fia called out to Ithíofan. “Go now!”

The wolf dashed through the iron network of the north gate, his body dissipating like smoke and dreams before the morning sun. He landed with an excited yip on the other side of the roadway and took off into the surrounding woods. 

“Bháridnac, to the hunt!” 

Unlike the thief’s mount, the one that answered Fia’s call slipped out of the shadows with little fanfare. It spilled from the darkness seamlessly, taking form as each hoof met the ground, its body piecing itself together with every breath, solidifying from lower forelimb to shoulder, withers to neck, mane flowing like water as its face took shape, spine running vertebra after vertebra until its haunches pulled themselves free. With a clatter of hooves, the horse cantered toward Fia as its night-dappled coat settled over its form. 

“Open the gate!” Fia called out. Above him, the guardsmen rushed to comply as recognition dawned. Before settling into the inn for the night, Fia and the Winter Guard had made a small tour of the city, noting its defenses and introducing themselves to the night watch. 

A suggestion he hadn’t needed to make as Mikko had already insisted upon it. But Fia was grateful they counted him as part of the party and made him known to the city's watch. Otherwise, this whole instance might have earned him a spot at the morning’s gallows. 

As the gate clanked open, Fia took off up the ramp and leapt toward the mare as the last of the smoky pathway dissolved beneath his feet. His right hand found a fistful of black mane while the left steadied himself against the mare’s shoulder. He shifted his weight and settled in over the horse's back as she continued on toward the gate, barely losing a step in her stride. 

The thief wasn’t leading him back to the egg. He wouldn’t. Not someone who had mapped out this whole scheme down to his escape route. All Fia could do was see where this led him. 

Beneath it all, though, he couldn’t help the flutter in his chest, the excitement spurring his heart. What this man had in store for him, with his skills and that last look in those copper-brown eyes, more than the fear but that reckless brand of thrill that made games of life and death, Fia found himself eager to meet it.