Assail Read Online Free PDF

shut.
    It was Cowl in his tattered finery. He came swaggering up with his maddening knowing grin. The scars across his throat – put there by Dancer himself – seemed to glow in the darkness. His unkempt black hair fell across his face like deeper shadows of night. He offered his manic grin to each.
    ‘You have no part in this conclave,’ Shimmer ground out. ‘Be gone.’
    The High Mage and master assassin of the Guard appeared not to hear. He continued to cast his gaze about the meadow as if he were out for a mid-night stroll.
    ‘There is poetry here,’ he suddenly announced, seemingly apropos of nothing.
    The sensation of
things
crawling upon her skin that always accompanied this man’s presence returned to Shimmer. ‘What do you want?’ she growled. She was emboldened – and encouraged – to see even Tarkhan shift uneasily and rub his arms in discomfort in the presence of his old master.
    ‘It was not so far from here that other masks were removed,’ the man said airily, as if this fully answered her demand.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I mean, dearest Shimmer, that this is not far from the spot where Skinner and I abandoned the pretence of searching for K’azz and he stepped forward to claim command of the Guard.’
    Shimmer’s throat clenched far too tight for words. Bastard! What was he trying to do? Might as well stick the knife in and be done with it!
    ‘I don’t believe Shimmer here means to try anything that radical,’ Blues ground out, an unspoken warning in his voice. He turned his narrowed gaze upon her. ‘’Least not the Shimmer I knew.’
    ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But I cannot stand silently by either. Duty and loyalty drive me to call attention to K’azz’s neglect of his responsibilities.’
    Cowl brayed a mocking laugh and Shimmer fought down an urge to yank her whipsword free and add to the scars across the man’s neck.
    ‘Quiet,’ Blues growled. To Shimmer: ‘I share your concern. What of you, Tarkhan?’
    The Wickan inclined his head in agreement. ‘I, too, am concerned. We are an army yet we pursue no contracts. We are idle. What, then, are we?’
    ‘And you Petal?’ Shimmer asked.
    The giant was pulling thoughtfully on his fat lower lip. He blushed beneath their attention and dipped his head, murmuring, ‘I am come merely as an observer – I have no standing to vote on any of this.’
    ‘We ain’t voting on anything,’ Blues was quick to answer. ‘’Least not yet, anyways.’ His gaze fixed upon Shimmer. ‘What do you propose?’
    The weaponmaster’s gaze flayed her to the bone and she drew a steadying breath. It was as if the man were waiting poised for one misstep from her, one wrong word, and she would feel his blade in her heart before she sensed his move. She found her throat had gone quite dry, and licked her lips to wet them. Even though she felt as if she were declaring her own death sentence, she began: ‘I must formally question K’azz’s fitness to command.’
    Blues’ hands did not rise from where they rested close to the sticks thrust through his belt. Tarkhan’s dark eyes, like glistening obsidian, shifted from her to Blues while he brushed his fingertips across his belt. Petal had stopped pulling at his lip and now stood motionless with it pinched between his fingers.
    A long slow mocking laugh echoed through the clearing and Shimmer, as did the rest, shifted her gaze to Cowl, High Mage of the Guard.
    ‘Quiet from you,’ Blues warned again.
    The man bowed. ‘My apologies. Please, do continue, dear Shimmer. Do go on. You now propose yourself as acting commander given K’azz’s, ah,
desertion
of his duties. Yes?’
    ‘I propose no such thing.’
    The man’s acid smile slipped away and he tilted his head in puzzlement. ‘Oh? You do not?’
    ‘No. I propose Blues as acting commander.’
    The Napan swordsman’s brows shot up. ‘Now wait a Trake-damned minute.’
    ‘I have no objection,’ Tarkhan put in quickly, and he smiled evilly as if