Valeios's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Valeios wanted a soul, and the man who owned it had never shown her his face. The lord of Pinnacle lived behind sealed gates. He let no one in. She could not charm a man she could not reach, and she had crossed too many miles to fail at his wall. She sat in her cabin at the edge of the woods, watching the keep through the round window. Runes covered the cabin beams. Vines crawled up the walls. Her black cat lay across her lap, its emerald eyes half open. The cat was no ordinary animal. She had watched it slip into the skin of a hawk, a fox, a mouse, whenever it pleased. "I need eyes inside those walls," she said. She stroked its long fur. "You can get where I cannot." The cat rose, stretched, and jumped down. Its shape rippled. Fur shrank to feathers. In a breath it stood as a small gray bird on her table. Valeios opened the window. "Find his face. Find the way in." The bird shot into the night. She waited. Hours passed. She turned the small red creature over in her palm, the tiny charmer she kept for luck, its evil little smile fixed. Near dawn the bird returned and dropped to the floor. It became the cat again, and something fell from its jaws. A brass key, old and heavy. Beside it lay a torn scrap of black cloth, the kind a guard would wear. "You got inside," she breathed. She lifted the key. "Whose is this?" The cat could not answer, but she understood enough. A servant's key. A way through the gate. And the cloth told her the lord kept men on his walls, men who could be reached. That night she went to the keep herself. She wore black. Emeralds glinted in her blonde hair. At the small side door she tried the key. The lock turned. The door swung open. Inside the gate a guard stepped from the shadow. He was broad and dark-eyed, a sword at his hip, dressed in the same black cloth the cat had torn. He raised a hand to stop her. "No one enters here," he said. His voice was low and tired. He had clearly said the words a thousand nights. Valeios did not run. She met his dark eyes and let hers hold him, purple and red and glassy. She smiled. "Then why is your door already open?" she asked. Joesph did not draw his sword. He stared, and his hand fell to his side. He should have called out. He did not. Valeios stepped past the gate. She was inside the walls at last. But the lord was not the man before her. She had won a door and found a guard instead, one who now knew her face and could raise the whole keep against her with a single shout.