Crossroads--Short Stories from Panamindorah, Volume 1 by Abigail Hilton

Author:Abigail Hilton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy short stories, dark fantasy
Publisher: Pavonine Books
Published: 2011-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Professionals

In the darkest hour of a fall night, a little white foxling stood at the top of a landing and tried to get up his nerve to knock on a door. It was either too late or too early for any reputable person to be about, but no one would have mistaken him for reputable. He was wearing too much lace, a shirt that could not possibly have been his own, and a cloak that didn’t quite hide it. He hadn’t been here in more than a yellow month, and he’d left on poor terms. Well, Malpin, you were right. If I tell you what happened, will you feel justified or angry? Silveo wasn’t sure, but he was bone-tired and achingly hungry.

“Professionals always have three plans,” Malpin had told him.

I guess I’m not very professional right now. I wonder if he still keeps the key in the same place.

He did. Silveo unlocked the door, grateful to be off the street. Seashine was not as rough a port town as Slag or even Port Royal, but he still didn’t want to be mistaken for a dock rat by the kind of shelts out at this hour. He pressed his hand to the lining of his coat. Still there. He’d brought a book with him—not a storybook, although Malpin would have liked that, too. This was an herbal—the one Malpin always quoted and complained about having lost years ago. He can’t be too angry when I come with a book.

Silveo felt his way down the hall in total darkness. He nearly ran into a table that hadn’t been there before. He stiffened. Another scent. Grishnard. Female. Wyvern piss.

He turned and made his way carefully through the door to the sitting room. He found the sofa and sat down. The flat was completely quiet. They must be asleep. His stomach growled, even as his eyes fluttered closed and his body relaxed for the first time in days. Silveo didn’t really lie down, but he pulled his legs up and curled into the corner of the sofa. Before he fell asleep, he had the presence of mind to shrug off his cloak—surely his dirtiest layer of clothing—to protect Malpin’s furniture. He curled around the book he’d brought as though it were a talisman, and dreamed.

In the dream, he was walking the halls of the palace on Maijha, dressed in blue and gold like the prettiest of serving boys. He was fifteen, but he could have been ten or twelve—dainty, rail thin, with eyes like blue glass and skin as pale as his fur. The real serving boy, the one whose clothes he wore, was lying beneath a bush in the palace garden. He’d been an ocelon.

Silveo adjusted the lace cuffs to make his dagger more accessible, and he rearranged the sweets on their little silver tray. His employer had told him that the prince had a “perversion.” That means he’ll like me. There were so many ways he could play this.

He’d found the prince

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