Lila rolled her wrist, and the blade whispered against her palm.
She stepped into the road, as if to cross, and in a shopfront window, she saw it, the flicker of movement at her back. A hooded figure, blending almost perfectly into the dark.
She turned, the blade already singing through the air.
The shadow lunged out of the way just in time, but Lila twitched her fingers, and the dagger followed, dropping an inch at the last second so that it buried itself in the fabric of their cloak, and the wooden door behind.
The figure gasped in surprise, pinned like a moth to the wood.
“Well, hello,” she said, as if stumbling across a friend, and not a Hand. Perhaps this had not been a wasted night at all. Beneath the hood, the shadow wore a mask, featureless and black. Even their hands were hidden beneath black gloves, which reached not for Lila or for magic, but the dagger, the metal scraping against the wood as they dragged it free an inch.
“Not so fast.” Lila flexed, and the metal drove back in to the hilt. “I have some questions—”
That was as far as she got before a small object tumbled from the figure’s hand, hit the street between them, and exploded. There was no force to the blast, and barely any sound, only a flash of blinding light, followed by clouds of choking black smoke. Lila’s arm flew up to shield her eye from the flash, and then the smoke was everywhere, swallowing the lanterns and the street and every other source of light.
She braced herself for an attack, a weapon or a body surging out of the dark, but nothing came. The smoke hung, unmoving, and she sliced her arm through the air. A gust of wind sliced with it, cutting through the wall of black, revealing the door, and the place where the figure had been pinned against it. But they were gone.
Her dagger lay on the ground, abandoned, and she swept it up, and turned, surveying the street as it came back in pieces. She caught the edge of a black cloak as it vanished down another road.
Lila ran.
The shadow was fast, and as her boots thudded over stone, she cursed them for fleeing, and making her chase, when they could have just stayed put and fought and lost.
By the time she reached the corner, and turned onto an alley, they were nearly to the other end.
She missed her flintlock then. Her lovely gun, which had run out of bullets years before and been relegated to the bottom of her trunk. Aim, and fire, and down they would go. Instead, she was about to make a mess.
Lila took a deep breath.
Tyger, Tyger, she thought, and even though she didn’t need the words, she felt the magic rise to meet them, folded into hard steel by the sounds they made, if only in her head. Lila turned her hand, palm up, and the street beyond the figure buckled, and rose.
The night shook, and the world beneath her trembled with the force of earth and stone scraping together as they were hauled up to block the road.
A dead end.
The figure spun, looking for another way out, and perhaps they would have found one, but she was tired of running. She clenched her hand, and the street grew up over their boots, binding them in place.
“Now,” she said, ambling down the road as if she had all the time in the world. “Let’s try this again.” In one hand, she held her knife. In the other, fire bloomed.
But as she neared the figure, they fell forward, collapsing to their hands and knees, and for a moment, she assumed they were injured. The truth was much worse. They were bowing.
She reached the kneeling figure, and used the tip of her knife to push back their hood. When it fell back, so did the mask, revealing a young face, dark skin and wide brown eyes and cheeks that looked like they couldn’t even grow hair.
Her gaze dropped to his front. His cloak had fallen open, and in the firelight she saw the armor, and the symbol pressed into its surface, black on black, so the sigil barely showed. But she knew it. Of course she knew it. It was a chalice and sun.
Lila’s breath hissed through her gritted teeth. No wonder he hadn’t fought back. He wasn’t a Hand. He was a member of the res in cal. The crows that spied for the crown. For the queen.
“Apologies, mas aven,” he said, folding English and Arnesian together as so many of the guards did among the palace royals.
Lila let go of the magic, and the earth crumbled from his boots.
“Get up,” she ordered, and he rose, eyes flickering up to her chin. “What were you doing at that house?”
The confusion on his face said enough. There were people who knew how to school their expressions, hide whatever they were thinking behind a placid mask of calm. This boy wasn’t one of them. She was willing to bet he’d never won a game of Sanct.