Excerpt: Nightblade, and other shorts...

Shilo moved with a purpose. He was late and he didn't like being late. Even so, he made sure that his path took him through The Fold. He paused at the corner of a building, checking his pocket absently as if he might have forgotten something. But one didn't become as renown as Shilo by forgetting things, they became that renown by never missing a detail. By always being cautious. By always expecting something to go wrong.

He glanced down at the pocket and checked the alley behind him. He strutinized the last shadows, stretching long in the fading light across the Fold. Then he relaxed. Everything was as it should be. He'd allow himself one brief moment to take it in, then he'd be on his way again.

It was a magical place, The Fold. The entire city met here, pressing inward, every wall leaning in and squeezing the cobblestone path almost out of existence. Twenty strides to his right, laced and lengereid women chirped and cooed at passerbys. Ten strides to his left, the stone wall of a noble's estate held back the line of wooden sheds and stalls used by merchants. One sold precious jewelry to noble women, another fish that smelled half rotten to flea ridden beggers. Every color of the lightbow could be found here, mashed against the ruddy browns and grays of industry, jutting with the pastels of refinement. The fold, on the edge of everything the city had to offer, was brilliant.

But the vision of it was nothing. He closed his eyes and took it in for real with a deep breath. The world exploded into his mind, salty sweat mingled with perfume extracted from Lileandar, so sweet it tingled the nose. The sound of a dock worker rolling barrels from the back of a wagon punctuated the trilling voice of a singer, earning her keep until the lights went low and it was time to lift her skirts to the highest bidder. He smelled gold, heard the clink of silver, felt the ruts of a wagon beneath his feet, and the vibrations of the ground as the whole world moved around this junction of roads and lives.

And beneath it all was the smell of fear. It was a beautiful, wonderful smell. The smell of money waiting to be stuffed into Shilo's pockets. The great city of Bethol was ruled by fear and nowhere was it more prevalent than here, where every person was out of their element, where everything meshed together into a bizarre of endless angles and shadows.

Shilo killed more than one of his early marks in this square. That was before he became bored of such things and more selective of his targets. Now he only took the impossible challenges; only the ones that could captivate his interest. For he was a master of his trade, the most skilled nightblade in Bethol. And for Shilo, every mark had to be perfect, every detail exactly planned and reviewed, contingencies laid for every possible change of plans.

He didn't like the messes the Guild left behind. He didn't care for the tangles and snares of politics that engulfed his rivals. Nobody knew his face, nobody knew his name, and only one tween in the city knew how to contact Shilo. Which is where he was going now. And he was always early, he was always first to arrive, and always the one to pick the position of the light and the angle of their meeting. He was normally there an entire light before the scheduled time, feeling the place and waiting to catch a scent of any compromise.

That thought snapped his eyes open. He started into motion again, taking on a slight gait, as if his leg were less than healthy. He was late, but there was never an excuse for haste. Nothing made a larger mess of things than haste. And...

Shilo caught something on the air and paused, only one foot out of the alley and into The Fold. He dropped instantly and lashed his boot, scanning the air behind him, ahead, and the people lounging here and there around him. It took only a wink to spot the bulk of shadow to his left, perched carefully in the shadows and coiled like a snake. The man rolling barrels from the back of the wagon let his eyes flick to a rooftop and then tried to hide it with a wipe of his brow. But Shilo instantly that they were Guild men.

He could smell the sulpher of their underground tunnels and see the glisten of finely regulated perspiration on their skin. If he touched the man's garb, the dirt would come off too easily, having been applied in haste to the garment rather than worked at length with sweat and the straw of a dock worker's bedding.

He spotted another selling metal works, but he was too small and his arms too equally developed for a smith, no burns or callouses from his forge, his hair not cropped back far enough for one that worked in fire and heated metal, his scar too neat—placed there by a careful knife stroke rather than an errant piece of steel.

There were others, five in total. There would be three on the roof as well. It angered Shilo. Their audacity, their pomp and flair. They were vulgar and crude, understood nothing of efficiency, nothing of the glory from a tidy kill. They were thugs in dark clothing, nothing more.

To kill in this crowd, in this press of people, was no show of elegance. It was simple execution. They were here to make a statement, to make a mess for the world to see. Guild men should be above doing some offended lord's dirty work. And that was exactly why Shilo quit them ages ago.

Had they finally come to exact their measure? Once a guild man, always a guild man, they liked to boast. Perhaps he had been coming to The Fold too often. Maybe they had detected a pattern in his movements. Perhaps they had finally learned his face. No. Nobody knew his face. Nobody living, anyways. Even as a Guild member, he had always kept it hidden. Not like these fools here.

A horse clopped noisily past Shilo and he finished making a show of his boot, standing next to it and walking into the Fold. He took only three steps when the man rolling barrels stuttered a step, glancing his way. The barrel nearly rolled away from him before he caught it and remembered his guise. Shilo would have spit fire on him if he could. Such sloppiness, such stupidity. It was a wonder the Guild hadn't erased itself yet.

The man crouched in the shadows to his left uncoiled and started towards Shilo. They had come for him after all. Somehow they had learned his face. Was there no honor left in the guild? They would grant him no respect, despite his legendary reputation? Clearly not, they were offering him the lowest and dirtiest death a nightblade could earn.

Anger and adrenaline surged into his veins and he directed it, orchestrating his heightened awareness, relaxing every muscle separately as he always had, forcing his eyes to continue to scan the clearing to ward off the tunnel vision that took over simpler minds. Fear could kill a nightblade, or it could grant him extraordinary ability, it was simply a matter of control. A knife appeared from the folds of his cloak and he flicked it towards the lumbering Guild man to his left. He didn't look to see if it landed or if the wound would be fatal, the gurgling sound from the man's throat told him where it hit and the poison would do any work the blade had not.

Kidney swords appeared everywhere, short and slightly curved, the favorite of Guild men. Shilo credited them, they had at least four men he hadn't spotted. That made eight not yet bleeding, plus the three above. They were the real danger.

Shilo ducked under the horse and rolled into a stall, between the legs of the merchant, still crying out his wares, oblivious to the events unraveling in front of him. He caught the man in the back of the head with the butt of a knife as he tried to turn and see what had just tumbled into his stall, laying the man down in front of him as a shield.

But there were no crossbow bolts slicing into the merchant and the Guild men were not bearing down on Shilo. In fact, every eye in The Fold seemed fixed on the short wisp of a woman falling from the saddle of her mount. She clung desperately to the reins, two black shafts jutting from her breast, but the beast was twisting under its own weight, a shaft buried in its own neck and tangled in the reins, placed there purposely to make sure she didn't ride away. At least the Guild had that much foresight.

Shilo cursed himself silently. He had been careless. They weren't after him at all. But he had knifed one of their men in the throat, they weren't going to miss that. In fact, they would probably think him the girl's bodyguard. An idea sparked to life and he explored it. He had only a wink to think it from beginning to end and not nearly long enough to form contingencies. He'd have to make those up along the way.

Messy. Messy. Messy. That's what all of this was.