The Council of Bone by Tyler Earp

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  The Children Rising

  One

  Look-A-Like

  A doppelganger does not in fact exist, but a twin does, and that is almost as chilling to think about.

  - Traveling Bard

  His youthful face drew a lot of looks from the hard-faced men in the bar. The boy's calculating eyes only had time for one man, though.

  His almost dead eyes seemed to stare through everyone and everything. The man he had received a mark on sat in a back corner, playing a dice game.

  His spirited voice and happy eyes showed that he had no idea of what was to come later that night. For Lloyd never failed to take his mark. Even though he was only fourteen he had taken hundreds of men to the Silent Lands– women for that matter, as well. He was uncaring in their gender, age, nationality, creed or species. All would fall to his blades, and then he would move on to the next one.

  To Lloyd it was simply business. Nothing more, nothing less.

  Lloyd did not have to wait much longer for the man to rise from his place at the table and head for the privies nearby. He rose with him, and followed silently.

  Many had not even realized that the boy, who looked so kind, had two elegantly curved knives at his waist, or the other blades he hid beneath his clothes.

  The man simply nodded to him as he relieved his bladder, a dark green cape hanging down his shoulders. Lloyd made no attempt to return the greetings. Since he had been a small child it had been pounded into his head that he much never see his next victim as anything other than that. A victim.

  They meant nothing to him.

  The man turned back to his business, and Lloyd almost released his blades at that moment, but he knew that his master would not be pleased to know that he would be giving himself away in the process.

  He still had three more marks before the end of the week in Morness. Lloyd couldn't afford for anyone to be able to link him to the marks.

  “Are you just going to stand there, staring at me, or are you going to use the privy? No offense, my type does not tend toward the young, nor male,” the man said, breaking him out of his thoughts.

  He looked up at the man, a jovial light, partially because of the ale the man had been drinking, filled his eyes.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said, before scuttling to the neighboring stall and pretended to go himself as the man left, swaying a little in his intoxication.

  Carelessness. The worst enemy of the assassin. It will take your life faster than any blade ever could, Lloyd told himself, thinking back on the lessons of always knowing his surroundings and what was happening in it.

  Regaining his composure, he returned to the main room and saw that the man was gone. Lloyd rushed to the entrance, looking toward both ends of the street, and caught sight of the cape whipping around the corner.

  Lloyd took off at a near run, pushing through several small groups of late-night revelers. None of them gave him a second glance.

  Everyone in the city was too busy celebrating the recent defeats for the young upstart king, Castor of Drunnel. Coming to a stop, he looked around the corner and saw that the young man had sped up considerably.

  That could only mean one thing. Against all odds, this man had somehow figured out that Lloyd was an assassin sent to take him to the Silent Lands. Cursing himself over his lapse in following his training, Lloyd then grabbed several stones jutting out of the side of the building and shimmied up the wall, imbuing his arms and legs with magic for strength.

  Lloyd shadowed after the man for several miles of the twisting streets that made up the magic capitol of the world. Several times the man stopped at late night merchants who chanced the streets at night to try and make a profit, even with the very likely possibility of being mugged by a group of thieves.

  The few times he caught sight of the man's face, Lloyd saw that he was very wary of his surroundings, checking every deep shadow before moving on.

  Lloyd smirked. If I wanted to hide in the shadows you would never even know I was there. He still had one more trick that not even his master had been able to duplicate.

  Lloyd had the ability to hide in the shadows so thoroughly that not even the most well-trained dog could catch his scent. It was as if he actually didn't exist while within the embrace of the shadows.

  Lloyd slowed as the man stopped at a building. He looked around, eyes leering at shadows, before knocking in a relatively complex pattern.

  He laid on top of the building for several hours, so the twin moons could continue past their zenith to shed less light on his next maneuver. He stood, shaking the numbness from his legs and arms in the process, and then backed up to the opposite side of the building.

  With one deep breath, he started forward at a run and threw himself from the roof across the street before he could give it another thought.

  He put his arms out before him, elbows bent to absorb his weight, and caught the edge of the roof. Pulling himself up with ease, he walked to a small hole in the roof with a ladder protruding from the room below. Something that was required on the hot summer nights so people could sleep on their roofs.

  Lloyd crept forward and looked down into the dark

  room, his eyes quickly adjusting. Catching a quick movement out of the corner of his eye, he tried to pull his head out of the hole, but was caught under the arm and wrenched into the room, collapsing onto his back.

  Lights appeared everywhere, blanket thrown from on top of the lanterns and he realized exactly how foolish he had been. A tall man with inky hair and sharp eyes stood over his prone body. “Don't even think about making a break for it. You won't make it five feet.”

  An even larger man with a mop of red hair and a beard starting to go gray snorted. “I doubt he'd get even that far, Rafe.”

  “Don't be fulled, Hans. He's a personal apprentice of Ramas,” Rafe replied.

  Another man stepped forward, and Lloyd recognized his mark with his green cape and light blond hair. “That's all well and good, but what I want to know is why I would have had a mark put on me? Actually– I think I want to know the answer

  to a question I'm sure all of us are thinking. Why does he look exactly like Charley?”