Alaric shakes his head.“Your disguise skills are coming along nicely.Thalia’s lessons are working well.”
Alaric can’t really teach me how to disguise myself, since he can do it so naturally with his magic.It means his lieutenant must show me how to pass unseen instead, using small changes to my appearance to avoid attention.
“Although you still need to relax more,” Alaric says.“Most people don’t go around thinking about every move they make in case it’s something people will spot.You’ll stand out too much.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I reply.“There’s plenty of tension around in the streets.”
People hurry from place to place, looking around as if worried that there might be violence at any moment.There are more demonstrations in the streets most nights, and attacks from the gangs are increasingly common.
“Making it more dangerous to be out here,” Alaric says.“Are you sure you can’t do all of this from a safehouse?”
Icouldfind out plenty for the resistance sitting in one of the safehouses, using my powers to borrow the senses of animals throughout the city.I could track the gang members I’m watching just as easily from some hidden spot as wandering around the city.I could sit in a room somewhere and write reams of notes for them, spying without ever risking myself.But then I would spend the rest of my life hiding.
“I don’t want to just spend my time hiding while the rest of you take risks,” I say.
“But it doesn’t make sense to put yourself in danger if you can do this safely,” Alaric says.
“It wouldn’t be the same,” I reply.“I could watch from the air, listen in to conversations from a distance, but I wouldn’t be able tofeelwhat’s going on.I wouldn’t have any of the context, or any of the emotions.”
This new strand to my powers is almost as useful as being able to watch my foes through the eyes of beasts.I can feel the tension and fear in parts of the city, feel who doesn’t fit in with the crowds moving through the merchant district, who has a layer of determination that doesn’t belong.It means I can take my attention from the gang members for a moment or two, focusing instead on the woman slipping up to a house, a pouch of money clutched in her hands.She passes it to a servant.
“There,” I say, pointing.“She’s bringing some kind of bribe.”
“That’s the house of Fallo,” Alaric says.“He’s on a small merchants’ council that regulates one of the markets.”
It’s another hint of corruption, and one I wouldn’t have been able to uncover if I weren’t out here on the streets.I add it to the list I’m carefully scribing, before returning my attention to the gang members.
“They’re wearing flashes of purple and gold now,” I say.
“The colors of the old empire.”Alaric doesn’t sound happy.
“Selene’s colors now,” I point out, although my anger isn’t any less than Alaric’s.Selene’s gaining more and more control through the city, but if the gangs feel they can declare their support for her so openly, it reflects a sense that she feels she’s unstoppable now.She’s acting openly, where before, she might have worked through the shadows.Instead, Alaric and I are the ones reduced to sneaking through the streets.
“Come on,” Alaric says.“We’ve seen enough for one morning.Let’s head back to the inn.”
We don’t take the streets for this, but instead slip into a side street and then down through a hidden entrance to the tunnels below.Alaric leads the way through them, lighting the way with a hint of illusory glow as we make our way back to the rooms beneath the safehouse.We carefully sidestep a couple of traps and magical early warnings, moving in silence.
We make our way into the inn, shedding our disguises and settling in among the resistance members there in the taproom.There aren’t many there at the moment, because most of them are out in the city.A couple of them are toasting one another with goblets of wine.
“Did you hear?”one of them says.“Our people managed to sink Rok’s ship before it even got close to Aetheria.All his men had to scramble to shore.”
He laughs and Alaric looks pleased.
“No one was hurt?”I ask.
The resistance member looks at Alaric for a second, as if seeking confirmation that he should answer.
“You can tell Lyra anything you would tell me,” Alaric says, loud enough that everyone in the room can hear it.It’s obvious he wants to make it clear that I’m as much at the heart of the resistance as he is.
“None of our people were harmed,” the resistance member says.“Rok’s people all made it to the boats to escape.We thought about holing those, but we guessed you wouldn’t want it, Alaric.”
“We’re not here to murder sailors,” Alaric says.“We’re fighting for the ordinary people of the city, not killing them.We can save that for those who deserve it.”
I have no doubt he won’t hold back with those he’s decideddodeserve to die.Alaric was always more ruthless than me in the arena, quicker to kill his foes.
“Let’s just make sure we aren’t hurting people we don’t need to,” I say.I want to believe that we can win this without resorting to outright slaughter.Even so, I wonder how many people are going to die in the violence I feel sure is coming, how many people we might lose in the fight against Selene.
Thalia comes in, wearing one of her favored disguises as a healer who sets up a stall near the colosseum.She looks excited.
