The Shadowhand Covenant Read online

  “Which means,” I said, “we’re not alone here.”

  The four of us sat there, staring at one another as the distant spinning blades hummed.

  “But . . . ,” Reena said, “. . . but that’s good, right? We came here hoping to find the Shadowhands. To prove the Sarosans didn’t steal from the High Laird.”

  “We came here to find the Covenant,” Maloch said firmly, “because the Shadowhands were betrayed by one of their own. And if the Shadowhands are disappearing . . .”

  Holm swallowed. “Here among the spiky walls, the traitor walks these very halls.”

  “Uh . . . yeah,” I said.

  Reena took the torch from me. “Even better. We don’t need the Covenant. We just find the traitor, bring them to the High Laird—”

  Maloch and I shared another look. Reena rolled her eyes.

  “What?” she asked. “There are four of us. Holm and I have blowguns. This will be easy.”

  “You really don’t understand the Shadowhands,” Maloch said, shaking his head.

  “We’re not exaggerating when we say they’re the best of the best,” I said. “They are masters at hiding, stalking, and taking out their adversaries. I heard they were trained by the assassin-monks of Blackvesper Abbey.”

  “We have the advantage, that is clear,” Holm said, “if they do not know we’re here.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But hear that?” I pointed to where the kitchen door had been. The sound of the whirling blades continued. “I bet our Shadowhand friend can hear it, too. They know that a trap has been sprung. They could be looking for us right this very minute.”

  I’d been raised on stories of the Shadowhands. Their tracking skills were as legendary as their distaste for mercy toward intruders. “If they find us before we find them,” I said, “we won’t get out of here alive.”

  18

  The Nursery

  “The greater the guilt, the richer the reward.”

  —The Lymmaris Creed

  Reena, who’d been deprived of a thief’s upbringing filled with stories of the Shadowhands’ prowess and cunning, seemed unimpressed. She turned and continued down the hall to the open doorway at the far end. “We need to keep moving. Come on.”

  We all followed, Maloch and I watching the rear. The hall led to another perfectly circular room. This time, the walls were pink. On the far side, a giant toy chest sat in the corner. A colossal stuffed Satyran doll with crocheted wool horns on its head and fuzzy hooves at the end of its overstuffed legs lay slumped on the floor. A jack-in-the-box that came up to my chin stood just inside the doorway, so that we had to bend over to go under the massive crank on its side.

  “I’m guessing,” Reena said, “the Shadowhands don’t really need a nursery in their bunker.”

  Maloch scrutinized the walls. “Another hardglamour. It’s hiding the way to the next chamber. Find the exit but be careful.”

  We spread out, stepping gingerly around the life-size toys that littered the floor. I stopped, standing over a rag doll that looked like a little girl. It was as big as Aubrin. One of its button eyes was missing, replaced with an X stitch of twine. It grinned up at me with a jagged smile.

  Holm made his way to the center of the room, where a gorgeously decorated table displayed a tall and beautiful dollhouse. It was the only toy in the room that wasn’t oversized. Which made it suspect.

  Holm seemed fascinated by the minihouse. He circled the table, eyeing the house from every angle. Reena came up next to me and whispered.

  “Holm’s always wanted to live in a real house,” she said. “We’ve only ever lived in tents.”

  The boy leaned in and peeked through the tiny windows. Suddenly, his eyes grew wide. He reached out.

  “Holm, no!” I said. But it was too late. The second he touched the house, a shower of blue sparks exploded around him, and Holm was gone.

  The three of us ran toward the house.

  “Where is he?” Reena cried, looking around frantically.

  “Down there.” Maloch pointed to the main door of the house. Standing next to the door was a miniaturized Holm, no bigger than my thumb—the perfect size to go into the dollhouse.

  “Ah,” I said, “so this dollhouse makes its own dolls. Clever.”

  “Holm, are you okay?” Reena asked.

  We leaned in as close we could. It looked like he was talking, but we couldn’t hear him. He kept pointing to the house and waving his arms.

  Maloch chuckled. “I’m pretty sure there’s a minimum height requirement for warrior-bards.” He reached out to give the diminutive Holm a poke.

  “Maloch!” I said. A flash of blue sparks later, a tiny Maloch stood next to Holm at the dollhouse’s front door. Holm gave Maloch a kick in the shins.

  “The house is cursed,” I said to them. “And curses are contagious. Holm got it when he touched the house, you got it when you touched Holm, you naff-nut.”

  “How do we help them?” Reena said, nudging me in the ribs. “Can’t you do something with your pouches?”

  Unfortunately, curses were too powerful to be counteracted by the magic-resistant plants in my pouches. Maloch and Holm could be stuck that way a long, long time.

  Reena bent over and squinted at our small friends. They were waving their arms over their heads and pointing behind us.

  “Oh, that can’t be good,” I said as Reena and I slowly turned around.

  The stuffed Satyran doll loomed over us, its woolen hooves making no sound as it stomped across the floor.

  “Somebody wants to play,” I said. Silently, the doll raised an arm and swung.

  Reena and I each dove in a different direction. As I hit the ground, I saw the other toys in the room stirring. The one-eyed rag doll pulled itself to its feet. The crank on the jack-in-the-box churned sluggishly, and an eerie, dirgelike tune rose up out of the box. The toy chest lid creaked open, and a legion of marionettes painted like harlequins crawled up over the edge, dragging their thin strings behind.

  “When Holm touched the house, it set off the trap,” I said, backing away from the Satyran, which had bent over to attack Reena with its crocheted horns.

  “Yeah,” she said, “I got that.” She rolled out of the doll’s way, then spun and hit it with the torch. The Satyran ignited but didn’t slow down. Its flaming arms flailed, trying to hit whichever of us was closer.

  “I think you made it mad,” I said as we regrouped under the table that held the dollhouse.

  The other toys, much slower than the Satyran, were crawling or walking toward us, arms outstretched. Suddenly, the rag doll sprang, wrapping its cloth arms around Reena’s leg. Reena cried out as the arms squeezed tighter and tighter. I pulled a dirk from my boot and swung it at the rag doll. That’s when the harlequin marionettes leaped forward, darting all around and wrapping me in their thin but powerful strings.

  Reena thrust the torch forward, but a toy par-Goblin hobbled across the floor and snatched it from her hand. I twisted and turned to free myself. But every time I jerked, my limbs were pulled in tighter to my body, and soon it was hard to breathe. The marionettes cackled.

  Shhk!

  I looked around to see a thin dart sticking out of the nearest marionette’s painted face. Shhk! Shhk! Two more darts in two more marionettes. Reena had managed to grab her blowgun and was sending out poisoned darts everywhere she could. The poison had no effect, but the toys were clearly not expecting the assault.

  They paused. My hand uselessly pinned to my side, I dropped the dirk and used my shoulder to nudge it over to Reena. She abandoned her blowgun and grabbed my weapon. With one powerful swipe of her arm, she freed herself from the rag doll’s clutches and me from the marionettes’ strings.

  Together, we crawled out from under the table. I pointed to the hall that led to the saw-blade kitchen. It was the only visible exit.

  “We can’t leave them,” she said, nodding at the dollhouse. But Maloch and Holm were nowhere to be seen. I could only guess that they’d
gone into the house for shelter once the toys had come to life.

  “We can’t help them if we’re dead,” I said, pulling her arm toward the doorway.

  Just as we ran for the exit, the jack-in-the-box lid shot open with a sproing! A massive toy spiderbat on a spring bounded from the box and landed at our feet. With the dollhouse to our backs, we were completely surrounded by the army of toys.

  A flit of motion near the dollhouse caught my eye. I saw tiny Holm jumping up and down on the roof. He was pointing to Maloch, who was smearing something dark on the white shingles to spell TOUCH THE HOUSE.

  At this point, spending the rest of my life as a tiny doll seemed better than being killed by the world’s most vicious toys. I grabbed Reena’s hand and yanked her toward the dollhouse. We fought off the toys as they tried to drag us to the ground. With a final jump, I reached out and touched the roof of the dollhouse.

  My vision filled with blue sparks and the next thing I knew, I was dangling with one hand from the edge of the roof. Reena, holding tightly to my other hand, squirmed precariously below me. I felt two strong hands clamp around my wrist. Slowly, Reena and I were pulled up to safety.

  Lungs heaving, squatting on all fours, I looked up to thank Maloch for saving us. Instead, I met the eyes of my father.

  “Bet it’s a long time before you play with toys again,” Da said, a glint in his eye.

  19

  The Last Shadowhand

  “The enemy of my enemy is my next likely target.”

  —Ancient par-Goblin proverb

  We scaled down the side of the dollhouse. Well, Da and Reena scaled. I made it halfway before I slipped and fell. Da was ready, though, and caught me before I hit the tabletop. Now that I was shrunken, the house seemed normal in size. The larger-than-life toys, on the other hand, were now monstrous. They circled the table menacingly. Clearly, they knew they couldn’t attack without getting miniaturized.

  “Da, what are you doing here?” I asked as he led Reena and me inside the house.

  The second I stepped inside, I was yanked into the vestibule and nearly choked by Ma’s hug.

  “We should be asking you the same thing,” Ma said. She sounded both worried about me and angry about my disobedience. “By the Seven! You’re supposed to be with the Dowager.”

  “Yes,” I said, as soon as I could breathe again. “Well, things got complicated.”

  We all walked into the living room. Holm and Reena hugged while Maloch reclined in an overstuffed chair, hands behind his head.

  “We tried to get your attention,” Maloch said to me. “Holm saw your parents in the window of the house—that’s why he touched it. Your da had the idea to smear the food from our packs on the roof to spell out that message.”

  Da sighed. “What a waste of perfectly good beetloaf,” he said. “But it worked.”

  “Why are you here in the first place?” I asked. “You’re supposed to be off finding the remaining Shadowhands.”

  Ma and Da shared a look of deep concern. “That’s what we did,” Ma said, sitting on a footstool. “We used the information Maloch’s da left for me to search for the last three Shadowhands. Both Alvar and Bennis were nowhere to be found. No one had seen them for days.”

  “What about”—I searched my memory for the name of the third Shadowhand—“Dylis? Dylis Jareen? Did you find her?”

  “And not a moment too soon.”

  I jumped to hear a raspy voice behind me. Turning, I saw a Satyran woman sitting in a high-backed chair in the corner. She looked about Ma’s age, with a few wisps of silver hair among the curls on her head and the whiskers of her beard. The mottled gray horns protruding from her forehead matched the cloven hooves that poked out from underneath the long, flowing mage robes. Her arms, hidden beneath the robes, were wrapped around her chest.

  “I didn’t think the Shadowhands allowed mages in,” I said.

  Dylis Jareen smiled at me. It really wasn’t a pleasant smile. It seemed pained and distant. She nodded down at the robes. “A disguise. I’d figured out what was happening to the Shadowhands and had gone into hiding. It was sheer luck your parents found me when they did. Lucky for me. Otherwise, I might not be here.”

  Da cleared his throat. “Yes, well, that’s a story for another time. Maloch had just started to tell us why you’re here, but he didn’t get very far before the toys started attacking. So out with it.”

  I took a deep breath, and between myself and Maloch and Reena and Holm—in his own peculiar way—we recounted the story of the past couple of weeks, from the kidnapping in Vengekeep to our fleeing Redvalor Castle in search of the Covenant. Ma’s and Da’s faces went from concern to fear to laughter and back to concern again. The whole time, the expression on Dylis’s face barely changed. She showed no surprise, no emotion whatsoever. And sometimes when I looked over to her, I could almost feel her tiny black eyes peering through me.

  When we finished our story, Da folded his hands behind his back and started pacing. “Well, it looks like we all hit upon the same idea: find the Covenant, find the traitor.”

  “But why don’t you have it yet?” Reena blurted out. She immediately looked down, realizing she’d been rude.

  “It’s a fair question,” I said playfully, trying to cover for the awkwardness. “Three skilled thieves. Two Shadowhands who can deactivate the Dagger’s defenses. You should have been in and out in no time.”

  Ma agreed. “Yes, it should have been simple enough. But when we got here, we found we weren’t alone.”

  “We were attacked,” Da said. “Tall brutes in heavy coats. We never saw their faces. They just came at us, swords waving. It was all we could do to keep ahead of them.”

  Ma gestured at Dylis. “It was Dylis’s idea to come to this room. She activated the nursery hardglamour, and we touched the house so we could hide. We’ve been here for two days, hoping that whoever infiltrated the Dagger thinks we’ve left.”

  That didn’t bode well. If the three of them had been hiding in the dollhouse for the past two days, then they couldn’t have switched off the hardglamour in the kitchen. Which meant that whoever had attacked them was still at large.

  “Speaking of which,” Da said, reaching for my pack, “we ran out of food yesterday. Do you mind?”

  I quickly unpacked my supply of food, and Ma and Da dug in. I offered a slab of sanguibeast ribs to Dylis. The Satyran declined, pulling her robed arms closer to her body with a wince.

  “So I’m just going to ask the obvious question,” Maloch said, folding his arms and looking right at Dylis. “If all the Shadowhands are gone except one, and we know that one of them was a traitor—”

  “Choose your next words very carefully, Maloch Oxter,” Dylis said, her black eyes raking over Maloch. I caught a glint of light and looked down to see the tip of a dagger poking out the end of Dylis’s long sleeve.

  “Dylis isn’t the traitor,” Ma said firmly. “We think the traitor may have faked his disappearance to throw off suspicion.”

  “And that person would have gone to great lengths to throw everyone off the track,” Dylis said, her eyes never leaving Maloch. “They might even, say, leave behind evidence suggesting they’d uncovered a plot and were going in search of the missing Shadowhands themselves. . . .”

  Maloch, face flushed, leaped to his feet. “My father is no traitor!”

  “Enough!” Da said, hands raised. “We’re here to help each other, and pointing fingers won’t accomplish anything.”

  Maloch slowly sat. He and Dylis continued to size each other up.

  I tried to ease the tension. “Finding the traitor is one thing. We also need to find out who hired the Shadowhands in the first place.” I said to Dylis, “Do you have any ideas who it was?”

  The Satyran gave a black look. “If I knew, I’d already be spitting on their corpse.”

  Lovely.

  “Dylis,” Ma said, placing her arm around my shoulders. “Would you mind telling your story to Jaxter? He’s quite bri
ght. He might see something that we’ve all missed.”

  Dylis sat up and grimaced, pulling her arms in closer to her chest. She eyed me warily, then shot an untrusting look at Reena and Holm, both of whom immediately bristled.

  I smiled weakly at the Sarosans. “Would you mind heading upstairs for a bit? This is strictly between thieves.” When both took deep breaths, I quickly added, “The faster we get things sorted, the faster we can get your parents out of Umbramore.”

  That shut them up. The siblings collected their things, stormed out of the room, and stomped loudly upstairs. Dylis began.

  “The Shadowhands,” she said in her raspy voice, “were contacted several months ago through the usual means. . . .”

  Contacting a cadre of highly secret thieves is about as hard as you’d imagine. It’s not like they have a shop set up that you can just pop into. You have to know people. And those people have to know people. And if you’re lucky, those people know people who know how to contact the Shadowhands. The Shadowhands had spies everywhere. It wouldn’t be long before word got to them that someone was seeking their services and they made contact.

  “I went to the meeting personally. Yab Oxter came along to watch my back, hiding in the shadows while I made the deal. . . .” She leered at Maloch, who stiffened at the mention of his father. “Our employer supplied us with detailed maps of all the royal vaults, a list of the items to be procured, and instructions on the precise day and time that the vaults would be at their most vulnerable.”

  I thought about what the Dowager and I had discussed, and it still bothered me. How had the contact known exactly when the Provincial Guard would be called away from the duties of protecting the vaults? I kept thinking the answer to all our problems had something to do with that. But I shrugged it off as Dylis continued her story.

  “He paid us handsomely—six thousand silvernibs in advance, with a promise of another four thousand upon delivery of the items. I made the deal, then gathered the other Shadowhands to discuss the job. We quickly divided into teams of three and made off for the vaults. Just as our contact indicated, the Provincial Guard had left their posts on orders. A job that would have otherwise been nearly impossible, even for a Shadowhand, became one of the easiest ever. We all reunited at the Dagger with the four stolen items.”