Prologue A Man With No Name #3
He knew immediately what the mist meant.
It was scentless, light in the air despite looking so heavy.
There was no mist in the louder parts of Amaris.
The inn he was standing in front of was not an inn.
It was some other building that Magic didn’t want him seeing, so it was throwing a glamour over his eyes.
“An inconsequential man, and yet you’re lying to me,” the man said.
Glamours were masks for Magic and those with its power embedded in their bodies.
One could slather a glamour on as thickly or thinly as one pleased, but the thicker the blanket, the more noticeable it was.
Eventually, the truth would seep through.
The man himself wore one now to fit in with the humans of this town, but it was a spritz of perfume compared to the pillow Magic was smothering his senses with.
“Highest and farthest room,” Magic whispered, lingering on his shoulders. There was no arguing with it.
The man sighed and scratched his hair, thankful for the pulled back style. He didn’t need to get blood in it, and he knew how messy it was to take out a heart. The gore… Iksha, it got everywhere. His shirt was fucked.
“We can give you another,” the Magic said.
“What do you want in return?” the man asked, twisting his mouth as he snaked to the back of the inn and stretched. Just when he thought his pillaging days were through, here he was, assassin-ing for a mirror at four in the morning.
“We just ask that you slice the heart in two when you remove it,” it said. Once again, the man wanted to ask questions. Magic usually liked its trophies in one piece. Bisected hearts were so much less fun, it’d told him once.
“As long as the shirt is green, you have a deal.” It was his favorite color, and it brought out the red in his eyes.
The man cracked his neck, crouched low to the ground, and then leapt up to an opened window on the highest floor.
He just barely made it, hanging by his arms. The wind whipped at his braid, and he knew by that alone that he had not just jumped four measly floors.
Still, the man threw himself through the window, a little louder than he would have liked.
The glamoured hallway in front of him was doused so thickly in Magic’s glamour, it was sickening.
Just a wide, empty space. He tracked along the hall until he found a place where that emptiness felt full, as if he were wading into a lake he couldn’t see.
He squinted, and the glamour finally rippled away to show him a red oak door.
The entryway was as thick as two of him and as tall as one and a half (which was rather tall, not that the man was boasting).
He ran his fingers over it. Real. It was too warm not to be. Magic was frigid, like grabbing ice.
“Always so smart,” Magic cooed. It wasn’t upset to be seen through. Although it took special pleasure in baffling people, it also liked to be impressed. “Brilliant little boy.”
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
The door was locked, but the man had never let that stop him before.
He broke the lock quietly and eased inside to see a man in his sixties lying on his back in bed next to what looked like a long, red animal pelt.
His eyes were closed, but he was not happily dreaming.
He tossed and turned, splashing in his own sweat.
Every few seconds, he strangled the air, and then his hands slapped back down onto his belly.
The metal knob under the assassin’s fingers melted into the crack of the door and sealed it closed. He and his unfortunate new friend would need some privacy.
Given the rich yellow brocade of the waistcoat thrown on the edge of the bed, his victim was wealthy. Discarded boots had atrociously yellow lacing. Even the sweat-soaked gloves the man had gone to bed in had offensively yellow ruffling.
“Are you curious?” Magic asked, voice low as if to accommodate the sleeping man it wanted him to murder.
“No,” the man lied. Inconsequential, his ass.
This wasn’t an inn and that red animal pelt, now that the man got a good look at it, wasn’t a pelt.
Its paws had red nails and there were gray streaks in its fur.
Its eyelashes were curled. Magic was hiding the person his victim was sleeping next to because they were some clue as to who he was.
“You smell curious.”
“I told you not to smell me anymore.” The man picked up a hefty signet ring off a desk. “I’m taking this.”
“You don’t even know what it is.”
“I don’t need to. It’s solid gold and I’m broke.” The man slid it into his pocket and Magic laughed at him. His horse needed a new saddle, and this poor bastard wasn’t going to need a signet ring.
The man snuck closer to the bed and sighed down at said poor bastard. His face was all wrong, features drifting around to keep the man from recognizing him.
Iksha bless, he was curious. How could he not be? But he cared about a mirror and the chance to see his wife more than this stranger’s identity.
So, with little fanfare, he stabbed the bastard in the chest.