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and killed myself. I was too afraid that I’d do it wrong. But mostly, I was too afraid of what killing them would do to my heart. So, instead, I killed the first good person I met outside of the temple.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that.
    “It’s almost funny how much that first death hurt me, when you consider how many I’ve killed since,” she said after a moment.
    “I’m sorry, Faran. I . . . just . . . I’m sorry.”
    “It’s not your fault, Aral, nor any of the Masters, though you all made me what I am. I blame the man who calls himself the Son of Heaven. He’s the one who sent the soldiers who drove me out into the world before I was ready, and someday I’m going to kill him for it.”
    While I sincerely hoped she got that chance, a sudden feeling of presence from somewhere off to our left kept me from saying anything about it. Instead, I just leaned in close and extended my shroud to overlap Faran’s—a long established warning signal among Blades—so that she would know something was up.
    I’m not sure what it was that aroused my suspicions. Certainly nothing so blatant as a scuffing sound or a change in the light, but I felt certain we were no longer alone. Reaching through the shadows that separated us, I found Faran’s shoulder and squeezed it once, before pressing gently to let her know which direction I wanted her to go.
    Moving with all the exquisite caution that my years of training and experience could bring to bear, I rose and started moving toward that feeling of presence. Through Triss’s senses I could see the deeper patch of shadow that was Faran and Ssithra vanishing around the back of the tomb behind me, following my signal. When I got to the front edge of the tomb, I stopped and spent a long couple of minutes doing a slow scan of the area.
    I focused all of my senses as well as Triss’s on the task, devoting a part of my attention to each sense in turn, as well as to the collective picture they painted. Touch was nearly useless at the moment, telling me little more than the hang of my clothes and gear or the way the carefully manicured lawns pressed into the thin soles of my boots. What it did give me was the direction of the faint and fading sea breeze—about a quarter turn to the right of directly into my face. And that led to smell.
    Most of the news my nose brought me had to do with things rotting in the harbor and several hundred thousand people packed tightly together in the late summer heat. Underneath it all though was a strange and subtle touch like a ghost from some spice markets past. I rolled my tongue, trying to bring up the memory of a taste, but couldn’t quite establish it.
    Hearing brought me a much more densely layered picture. Farthest and faintest I heard the sounds of the city proper, muted now while most of her denizens slept, but still there in the occasional scream or deep bellow. Closer in, the palace noises carried more nuance; the scuff of a guard’s boot on the wall above, a low moan that suggested an assignation in the shadows behind a convenient hedge, the metallic click of a groundskeeper’s shears as they tried to fulfill the impossible charge of keeping things perfect, while never getting in the way of their betters. Nearer still came the faint tinkling of the tiny fountains on the left side of each tomb’s door, balancing the altar fires on the right—part of the traditional display of the elements signifying that the very stuff of nature mourned the passing of each of Tien’s rulers.
    The final piece of my collage view of the world came from Triss. Shades “see” in full round. They use a sense organ we don’t even have a name for, to pick up on changes in the texture of darkness in every direction. Bats “see” with their ears, screaming and listening for the echoes, or that’s what I was taught anyway. What Shades do is closer to that than any human sense, but it’s a passive process, with the dark-echoes provided by the