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forced his flight, rendering him guilty in
the eyes of the imperial guard.  He’d fled a second time an hour later when he
heard soldiers approaching his room in Demia’s temple where he had been
gathering his meager belongings.
    What
he needed now was a concise plan of action.  The first step, of course, was to
change his appearance, for he had little doubt the city guard would be looking
for him.  Of course, a disguise wouldn’t fool his fellow priests and
priestesses.  They knew his soul.  Demia, sorter of souls, gifted all her
clergy with the ability to see the peculiar ethereal essence that made each
person unique.  This talent—useful when comforting the dying during their
transition to the afterlife—made disguises superfluous.  He would not be able
to go back to his own temple until his name was cleared.
    Doffing
his distinctive crimson robe, Hoseph spread it on the floor.  Then he selected
a gleaming razor from his bundle of personal items, and stropped it to a fine
edge.  It had been decades since he had performed the ablutions of an acolyte,
but old habits returned easily.  Kneeling on the robe, he deftly shaved his
head, letting the shorn hair fall.  Unfortunately, he lacked water, resulting
in a few nicks and cuts.  He would have to stock the room with some essentials
until he resolved this situation.  When that was done, he shaved his face. 
    Hoseph
bundled the robe to contain the hair and gazed down at his bare chest.  He ran
his fingers over the unblemished skin that last night had been split by Mya’s
dagger.  Duveau’s fleshforge had healed him completely, but there were scars
that no spell could heal.  An unfamiliar frisson of fear shook him.  Not of
death, his long-time acquaintance and ally, but of failure.
    I
won’t fail , he
insisted.  I’ve worked too hard, accomplished too much …
    From
the bag of possessions he had managed to escape with, he withdrew his old
acolyte’s robes.  The coarse gray wool scratched his skin, so unlike the smooth
felt of his high-priest’s robe, but it didn’t matter.  Anonymity was more
important than comfort.  Flipping the tiny silver skull into his hand, Hoseph
invoked Demia’s grace, and the room melted into mist.
    Moments
later, he materialized in a luxurious sitting room.  The golden morning light
glowed through sheer curtains.  It was still early.  Lady T was not present,
but he hadn’t expected her to be up at this hour.  Nobles were notoriously late
risers.  Usually when he visited, he pulled the bell rope and waited until a
servant arrived to summon the lady of the house.  They were used to his comings
and goings.  Today he was in no mood to wait.  He knew that she would still be
abed, so he simply knocked on the door that he assumed led to her bedroom. 
He’d never seen inside the room, so couldn’t use Demia’s gift to travel there. 
Doing so would have been dangerous anyway; assassins tended to be jumpy.
    The
door to his left opened suddenly, and Hoseph found himself staring down the
shaft of a crossbow bolt aimed at his heart.  Lady T stood behind that
crossbow, her fingers on the trigger and her hair disheveled from sleep.  She
wore only a silk nightshift, confirming his supposition that she’d still been
in bed, but her eyes shone as sharp as the tip of the crossbow bolt that could
end his life with the twitch of her finger.
    “Put
that down, Tara.  We’ve got trouble.”
    “Hoseph?” 
Her eyes widened, and her fingers lifted off the weapon’s trigger, though it
didn’t point away from his heart.  “I hardly recognized you!  What the hell are
you doing here?  What’s wrong?”
    Hoseph
saw no reason to beat around the bush.  “The Grandmaster is dead.”
    “ What ? 
How?”  She lowered the weapon, the surprise on her face undeniably genuine.
    “The
Twailin guildmaster and his Master Hunter.”  Hoseph still didn’t know exactly
how they’d managed it, but the who certainly grabbed the