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Stop, I hiss at myself. I turn away from Phaedron and focus my attention on sustaining our illusion. The air around us reeks of manure and fried food, sweat and flowers and old leather, and of course, magic. The Silver City buzzes with magic. Malron’s magic-detecting spell would light up like a firework around here.
Right? I glance around the crowd, then tighten my grip on the horse’s lead rope. There’s no reason for our little illusion to stand out in this sea of magic. Besides, no one will be looking for two humans and a horse that I’ve disguised as an old flea-bitten nag.
Phaedron nudges me. I turn back to him.
“Let’s follow them,” he whispers.
He’s looking at another group of humans, three men and a woman standing in front of a small cart pulled by a donkey. I nod, and Phaedron steps forward, tugging me with him.
We agreed to enter the Silver City disguised as humans, the species least likely to raise eyebrows. The only complication is that neither of us knows what to expect once we pass through the city’s elegant gates. Where do humans go? What do they do?
Phaedron’s solution was beautifully simple: We’ll pick a group of humans and follow them.
But then we step through the towering gates, and I lose the group of humans almost immediately. The strange tug of magic drags my eyes upward. The fabled Towers of the Silver City rise above us like a wall of knives, piercing the sky’s underbelly. The pulse of magic rippling off the Towers thrums inside my body.
My eyes trace the sky, following banners and pennants streaming off buildings, catching the flash and glimmer of birds and illusions as they dash across the clouds. Some of the illusions and flags are messages, some advertisements, and some are written in languages I don’t recognize.
We round a corner. Phaedron stops. I bump into him, our illusion trembling as the horse clatters along the cobblestones behind me. Phaedron’s hand is as hard as iron around my arm. I drag my gaze down, away from the Towers and toward the corner where a crowd of elves has gathered.
And I see Malron. My body runs cold as I take in his dark hair and narrow eyes, the sharp contours of his face that somehow always looks angry, as though he were the vessel for King Grathgore’s constant wrath. Malron is speaking, proclaiming something accompanied by fast, furious gestures, but his voice doesn’t carry across the square, which is teeming with livestock and market stalls and an ever-moving crowd of humans, elves, and dwarves.
It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to hear him to know exactly what King Grathgore’s head magician is telling the citizens of the Silver City.
Because he has an illusion standing next to him. And the illusion is me.
Fear closes around my throat like a steel vise. Panic claws at the edges of my mind, and suddenly I’m thinking of the cave spider’s body around me, its hard exoskeleton pressing into my sides, bringing the knowledge that I am staring directly at my own death. Malron raises a hand toward the illusion of me, which is sulking defiantly with a hand on her hip, and Phaedron yanks me backward so quickly I almost fall.
For a heartbeat, I think we’re running blind, crashing down a narrow side street and away from the marketplace as quickly as we can. But then I notice the group ahead of us, leading a cart pulled by a donkey.
It’s the humans. Surprise ripples through my chest as I stumble forward, my mind racing again and again over what we just saw. Malron is here, in the Silver City. Malron is looking for us.
And Phaedron didn’t lose the humans we agreed to follow. Despite everything, the crowds, the crush of bodies and sounds and scents and magic flashing in the air, despite Malron displaying my illusion to a crowd of people in the center of what appeared to be a very large marketplace, Phaedron kept his eyes on a small group of three humans and a donkey. Phaedron led us here, to a quiet little street whose lack of magical energy makes it feel almost dead. He found a refuge.
“Hold up,” Phaedron whispers.
He stops walking and turns toward me, pretending to fuss with something on the horse. And he actually touches her this time, giving her a cautious, gentle tap behind the ears that makes me smile. He’s started calling the mare Edwin, because he claims she looks like an Edwin, and I haven’t had the heart to tell him that she’s a mare.
I glance over Phaedron’s shoulder and see two of the humans entering a dingy-looking stone building that looms over the little road. An older man comes out of an alleyway and, after a brief discussion with the woman, leads the mule and cart away. The door slams shut as the woman enters the building. Phaedron turns around.
“Okay,” he whispers. “Here goes nothing.”
Slowly, we approach the stone building. It’s the largest building on the street and, as we draw closer, I see that the straw-roofed structure I’d taken for an abandoned storehouse next door is actually a sort of stable. As we approach, the older man who led the donkey away comes out of the stable and gives us a wide smile.
“Afternoon,” he says, with a clipped accent. “Will you be looking for a place to stay?”
Phaedron nods and grins through his illusion. “That we are,” he says. “The missus here’s always wanted to see the big city, and my cousin came here a ways back and said the Spotted Dog’s the place to stay, and no mistake.”
The man from the stable laughs. I stare up at Phaedron with my mouth open. Where in the nine hells is he coming up with this nonsense?
“Your cousin told you true,” the man says. “There’s places around here where us humans aren’t exactly welcome, if you get me. But there’s no better place to see the Silver City than right here.”
I stand frozen in place while Phaedron peppers the man with inane questions about sightseeing and restaurants, only handing over the horse’s lead rope when Phaedron asks me to and then throws in asweetheart. I’m still blinking in amazement as the older man pockets the gold coin Phaedron hands him and then leads Edwin into the stables, and it isn’t until I stop staring at Phaedron long enough to walk through the inn’s front doors that I notice the massive wooden sign hanging above the front steps. It’s carved to look like a white dog covered with black spots.
“The Spotted Dog,” I whisper.
“Lucky guess,” Phaedron replies, with a wink that sends a shiver through my entire body.
Shaking my head, I follow Phaedron through the door and into the human world.
