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DARKSTALKER

The palace came into view sooner than Darkstalker had expected. When it did, he rotated his wings, lowering himself closer to the treeline to avoid detection. The sun was setting somewhere behind him, and he'd stick out like an oversized fruit bat in the light.

He descended into the evergreens and switched the ring from his right talon to his left. His brain broke a little bit as his body disappeared, and for a moment he thought that he was falling. He placed both talons on the ground and stood motionless for a few heartbeats, just to make sure he wasn't tipping over again.

He started climbing up a nearby tree to get above the overgrowth, where he'd have room to spread his wings and take flight. It felt like he was looking out of one body and controlling another. Without actually seeing his talons grasping the branches, he was constantly second-guessing himself, unsure of whether or not his talons were actually there.

After spending ten minutes doing what normally would have taken two, Darkstalker was finally at the top of the tree. It bent against his weight, and he again thought that he was about to fall when he looked down and didn't see any legs holding him up. Before the vertigo could get to him, he spread his wings and took flight. Once he was finally in the sky, he started settling into himself again.

Getting into the palace wouldn't be a difficult task. Too many nobles left their balcony doors open, especially nowadays when the weather was so warm. The inside of the palace was so heavily guarded that any IceWing that tried to sneak in would be found out within minutes. Besides, the actual war politics happened deeper in the palace, behind much thicker closed doors. Not even a RainWing spy would be able to overhear those conversations.

Still, it surprised Darkstalker how uncommon assassination attempts on the nobility were. It wasn't that the nobility were particularly disliked. It was just that catching nobles while they were vulnerable was one of the things that'd be fairly easy to do. Even Fathom would have been susceptible, if he chose not to be careful. And when Darkstalker landed on the balcony to Fathom's suite and tried opening the door, it was clear that Fathom wasn't careful. Either that, or the goons that swept through his room after he'd been arrested decided not to lock the door. It swung open, and Darkstalker slid inside.

Unsurprisingly, the room was emptier than Darkstalker remembered it being. There were pale circular spots on the ground where potted plants had once been, and gray granite where there had once been mats, rugs, or other furniture.

Darkstalker took a moment to sweep through the suite in the off-chance that his scroll was still there somewhere. What he found instead were small forensic details that made his blood run cold: blood spatter on the walls, chips and cracks in the stone floor, and a large soot stain on the ceiling in one of the rooms.

He knew in his soul that Fathom was still alive. He had to be. If not, Clearsight would have known. He would have known. His future sight wouldn't have kept him in the dark on something that important. There would have been too many implications, too much calamity.

But it was looking like Fathom had gotten hurt. And if he did, then Darkstalker was going to find whoever was responsible for hurting him, and make sure that they got hurt as well.

When Darkstalker had seen enough, he brought an ear to the door to make sure nobody was on the other side. Hearing nothing, he pushed open the door. It was locked, but it was attached to a broken door frame, so it swung open without any resistance. He made his way into the corridors and kept his ears open.

When he was imagining how he'd do this, he pictured himself sneaking through the palace while staying high up and out of the way. It must have been his hunter's instincts that gave him the mental image: securing higher ground so that he could see everything that was going on, and pouncing when the opportunity was right.

It didn't work out that way. The walls were high enough for him to climb, but he would have had no way of moving around quietly up there. There was the occasional rafter that he could cling to, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to keep his balance on them, especially while he was invisible.

Instead, he just walked on the ground. If someone passed by, the corridors were wide enough for him to walk around them. And as long as he walked carefully enough, he could minimize the sound of his footsteps.

His plan, at the moment, was just to learn what he could. Find conversations that were worth overhearing, or minds that were worth reading. Once he had an idea of where Fathom was, or where his scroll was, he could form an actual plan.

The first place worth checking, he figured, was the throne room. If anyone's mind was worth peering into, it would be Acuity's. He descended a flight of stairs, which distressed him both because his invisibility made it a challenge and because it would have been too narrow for him to slide past someone undetected if they were ascending while he was descending. But he made it to the bottom without issue, and after turning into the palace's wide ground floor hallways, he was only a short walk away from the grand doors that led into the throne room.

The doors were open, which was typical at this time. One of the first of the queen's daily responsibilities was to make public announcements, and those would be going on right about now.

Darkstalker passed through the doors, and was instantly met by an audience of around eighty dragons, enough to fill three quarters of the hall. He had to clear away the thoughts of the dragons in the crowd before he could hear anything Acuity was saying from the throne.

"… should be en route back to the palace later this evening, if not at this very moment," Acuity was saying. "Once we have Darkstalker in our possession, and all of our brave soldiers are back home in the Great Diamond, my coronation will be held. Should there be no delays, this could be as early as tomorrow."

Darkstalker could just barely see Acuity above the crowd if he stretched his head up, but he wanted a better view. He found the nearest column and used it to support his weight as he lifted his upper body to stand on his hind legs. His claws scratched the marble and some dragons looked his way, but seeing nothing, none of their eyes lingered.

Acuity's advisors were sitting in a row beside the throne, each wearing a thin red ribbon around their neck in remembrance to Queen Vigilance. And Keen Eye was there too, though she was hiding the sharpness her eyes usually had in place of a dull, almost blank stare.

Darkstalker kept his mind as quiet as possible as he continued to listen to Acuity's announcements.

"… to refuse her given orders, but in the unlikely event that she does, we will postpone my coronation for at least one day as we prepare efforts to safely retrieve both Clearsight and Darkstalker and put them into custody. Until then, it is our opinion that Clearsight should not be considered a suspect in the involvement of Queen Vigilance's murder. But, in either case, Queen Vigilance's funeral will be held, as planned, on the next Moon, three night's hence."

Not important. Darkstalker looked at the boundary of the audience. He'd need to find some way to cut through the crowd and get closer to the queen. But they were too closely packed. He'd have no way of walking past them without drawing attention to himself. And even though there was space overhead, flying was noisy.

"Your Majesty!"

The voice came from the doors. A slender NightWing — Darkstalker didn't know his name, but he looked like a messenger — came trotting up towards the throne. The congregation of NightWings parted down the middle to make room for him.

Darkstalker hastily ran closer to the dragon, wincing at the sound of his footsteps but forcing his mind not to linger on it. He couldn't think right now. He couldn't let anyone read his mind.

His front talons fell right behind the messenger's tail as he started through the crowd. The audience made room for the messenger, but they all returned to where they'd been standing after he passed through them. Darkstalker arched his back like a cat, keeping his tail tucked between his legs and his hind legs close to his forelegs, all while he tried to avoid making any sort of noise. The movements strained his muscles, and he constantly felt like he was on the verge of falling over.

He brushed scales with a bystander, then another, then another. He heard murmurs of confusion and a handful of 'sorry's, but he pressed on. There was no turning back now. No reading anyone's mind to see if they were on to him. No thinking that this was a bad idea. No fretting over how hard this was to do while invisible. No panicking. Head empty, keep walking, don't fall down.

Passing through the crowd took only about ten seconds, but it felt like hours had passed by the time he made it through to the other side. Once he did, he was nearly face-to-face with Acuity. He tiptoed off to the side as the messenger approached the queen and whispered something in her ear. There was a vacant spot where he could stand just to their left. He placed himself there and collected himself, forcing his heart to hold off on exploding for just a little bit longer.

Darkstalker didn't try to listen to the messenger's words. Listening would require too much of his brain, and the messenger probably wasn't whispering anything Darkstalker didn't already know.

When he finished whispering, Acuity nodded, shooed him along, and raised her head. "That is all," she said. "Thank you, my subjects, for your time."

Acuity stood up from her throne, and the audience bowed. Her advisors tailed her as she descended, and she made her way towards the rear door, behind the throne. The two guards blocking the door opened it for the queen, and Darkstalker pulled ahead, slipping through the doorway just before Acuity did, and keeping a forward cadence just ahead of the queen as she and her council filed in.

"Clearsight has betrayed us," said Acuity. "Darkstalker was with her last night, completely free, in Clearsight's company. They appear to be planning an attack on the palace."

One of the advisors spoke. "I warned you about this, Your—"

"—I know what you said!" Acuity snapped. "Right now, we need to figure out what to do. They have an animus on their side and most of our fighting military. They've decided to follow her instead of their new queen."

Now that was interesting. Acuity still didn't know that he didn't have animus powers. Which meant that they hadn't gotten that information out of Fathom yet. Either that, whoever had gotten that information out of Fathom was sitting on the fact.

"I never anticipated Clearsight gaining the support of the army with this sort of act of treason," one of the other advisors said. "The thought hadn't even crossed my mind."

"I confess it hadn't crossed mine either," said another. "Clearsight was never supposed to end up looking good in front of the soldiers. When we issued the request for Darkstalker's arrest, it was supposed to be given to her after she had lost, not won."

"What? What do you mean?" Acuity asked.

"Queen Vigilance had this nasty habit of wanting to get Foeslayer killed in battle," Keen Eye explained. "And Clearsight and I had this nasty habit of wanting to make sure she survived. Queen Vigilance ordered Clearsight to command the siege as a way to separate her from Foeslayer, so that Foeslayer could be sent on a mission without Clearsight's aid. That was really the only reason for it."

"That's terrible!" Acuity said. "Are you certain my mother would plan something like that?"

Darkstalker couldn't help but appreciate Acuity for getting offended on Foeslayer's behalf. It was a shame she'd have to —

Stop thinking, he said quietly to himself. Keen Eye had hawkish mind-reading powers, and she was right behind him.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that they began to file into a small meeting room. Darkstalker gave one look at the size of the room's interior and concluded that there was no way he'd be able to sneak inside without getting caught. He stopped a few feet ahead of the door.

"I am, yes," Keen Eye was saying as they were entering the room. "But if I'm being honest, I don't think it was that terrible in the grand scheme of things. I disapproved as well, but you have to admit, it made a lot of pragmatic sense. Knowing what we do about Queen Diamond, she's much more likely to sue for peace once Foeslayer is dead and we no longer have a reason to keep Arctic around."

And that was the last he was able to hear of the conversation. The door closed behind them, and their words muffled down to inaudible levels.

Darkstalker drifted further away from them, tiptoeing further down the empty hall. Then, once he was confident that there weren't any mind-readers close enough to hear him, he heaved a sigh and let his brain relax.

Okay, they probably still didn't know he was here. That ordeal back in the throne room might start bubbling up into rumors, but by the time they did, he would be out of here.

He didn't seem to raise any suspicion from the council, but he could never be so sure. Acuity was talking as though Darkstalker were still with Clearsight, so they all probably were assuming he was still there. If the messenger had shown up after he'd left, that might have been a different story.

But he still didn't know where Fathom was. And none of them said anything about a scroll, which they probably would have if they'd had it. That was a relief.

Darkstalker started walking along the corridors. He didn't have this part of the palace committed to memory, but he'd been here before. There were elevators to the dungeons somewhere. They were cramped, and he'd have no way of hiding in them while they were moving. And he couldn't go into them alone without alerting the guards. But he might be able to come up with a plan if he could find where they were. Maybe there'd be some other way down.

He searched one corridor. Then another. Then another. Most of the dragons he found were behind closed doors. They were all NightWings, mostly subcommittees of advisors, making plans for the finer grain details of running a kingdom that the queen was too busy to be making. There was an architect inspecting a crack on a narrow column, and she was debating whether it was worth replacing. Further ahead, there was a guard looking forward to his next date with his wife. At one point, he'd found a dragon who was thinking about Arctic, but he turned out to be an assistant cook who'd just delivered him a meal. Darkstalker stopped following him once it became clear that he was just returning to the kitchens.

It was at least an hour before he found something. After turning a corner, he spotted a female dragon walking away from him. He crept closer and peered into her mind.

As luck would have it, this one turned out to be Keen Eye.

He kept his distance from her, only staying close enough to ensure that he'd be able to tail her if she went through an open door or turned a corner. As he read her mind, he gathered that she was entertaining the idea of leaving the palace to go and talk to Clearsight, thinking about how she could convince her to call off her plans.

"Look Clearsight, I get that you're annoyed by the situation, but …" No, I don't want to belittle her like that. "I'm not going to argue that you don't have the right to be upset, but if you want to help your friends, this is not the way to go about it."

"And what do you suppose I should do instead?" Keen Eye thought in Clearsight's voice.

"Just come with me, and help us figure this out. Once we know who's responsible for the queen's death, everyone else can go free. Frankly, I don't understand why you didn't do that in the first place. You should have known that nothing bad was going to happen to your friends if you'd just done as you were told."

She literally saw me being executed! Darkstalker thought, a little too loudly.

Keen Eye stopped. Her thoughts did too.

Darkstalker cursed, and emptied his mind to the best of his abilities.

Keen Eye tilted her head back, her eyebrows folded in concentration. She was looking right at him. I knew you were here somewhere, Darkstalker.

Against Darkstalker's will, his brain started rattling with panic. He put up his best mind-block and began to back away.

Keen Eye turned and started to walk towards him. "You know that mind-blocking doesn't make your mind undetectable, right? I can still hear you doing it. Now quit playing spy and show yourself. And don't run. You're not going to escape from this part of the palace without getting caught, and if you try, you're either going to get killed or you're going to do something illegal enough that Queen Acuity is going to have to kill you anyway. And if you die, you'll make a lot of people very sad, so just be reasonable and take off that ring."

Keen Eye was right in front of him now, close enough to reach out and touch him. Darkstalker concentrated on his future sight, trying to see the inevitabilities of him trying to run away. She was right: he had no hope of escaping. Maybe if he had nothing to lose, it was worth trying. But there was too much on the line for him to make any last-ditch efforts.

He took off his ring and slipped it onto the other talon. Keen Eye jumped back, surprised by how close she had actually been to him. There were a couple of heartbeats where neither of them said anything.

"Smart boy," she said, turning her heel. "Follow me."

"Are you taking me to the dungeons?" he asked, though he followed regardless.

"I'm taking you somewhere where we can have a chat. I think we both have some things we want to find out from each other."

"Are you taking me to the dungeons after that?"

"No. But I won't be letting you go either."

Darkstalker wished that that hadn't come as such a relief to him. He wanted to believe that he'd had enough grit to put up with the unfavorable conditions of the dungeons, but he'd grown too comfortable with being treated like nobility.

Granted, he didn't want to be imprisoned anywhere right now. That wasn't part of the plan. The real blessing here was that it'd be easier to break out of a locked room than an oubliette.

It was a short walk. Keen Eye turned a corner to a narrow hallway that Darkstalker somehow hadn't noticed before now. Judging by how dark and eerie the corridor was, he guessed that not very many other dragons paid much attention to it either. Eventually Keen Eye opened a door on their right, and gave Darkstalker space to walk in.

He stood there, wondering if there was still a chance that he'd be able to make a last-minute run for it. Keen Eye was a little bigger than him, but maybe he was faster. And he still had the ring on him.

Keen Eye's glower convinced him to dispel those ideas. He walked in the room, and she followed, closing the door behind her.

It was a small room. He was quite certain it wasn't a holding cell of any sort. It looked more like an office. There was a desk, a scroll rack, a chalkboard, and three cushions on a carpeted floor. Darkstalker wondered if the room even belonged to Keen Eye.

"I have several offices in the palace," Keen Eye said in a tone that suggested she was deliberately answering his thoughts. "Being the top advisor requires keeping my pulse on everything important that's happening in the kingdom. And that requires talking to a lot of different dragons in a lot of different places, and with different levels of secrecy. This is one of the places I'll go if I don't want anyone to know where I am."

Darkstalker tilted his head at her as he sat down on one of the cushions. "So as long as you're here, nobody will know where to find you?" His first thought was about how vulnerable Keen Eye was right now. If nobody knew where they were, he might be able to take her out somehow.

"Don't try it," Keen Eye said plainly. "I know you think you're a tough guy now that you've seen your first battle, but you're not going to stand a chance against me."

Darkstalker reached for his ring, and Keen Eye leapt on him like a lion on a gazelle. His vision blurred and his body jerked, and he felt the top of his head hit something solid. In an instant, he was on his back. Five claws were digging into the scales under his neck, and five more were digging into his forearm.

"If you want to throw away the last of my patience with you, be my guest and try that again."

Darkstalker hissed. "You're really going to try threatening me? I could kill you right now if I wanted."

"Oh, with your animus powers? Go on, then. Cast a spell on me."

And there it was. She knew. She knew, and Acuity didn't.

Darkstalker said nothing.

"Give me the ring, and I'll let you go," Keen Eye said.

Darkstalker gave her the ring, and Keen Eye let him go. He rubbed the marks on his neck and arm that Keen Eye had left, checking for blood. He seemed alright. When he stood back up and found his seat, Keen Eye had placed the ring on one of her talons.

"Fathom told me about your scroll," she said. "He told me about how you put your animus powers into it. How you are no longer an animus."

"And now you have the scroll, is that right?" Darkstalker asked. He knew the answer to the question already, but he wanted to see how she would respond.

Keen Eye didn't answer immediately. Darkstalker peered into her mind, but it was dense with the fuzz of a mind-block. He prudently decided to put up his own.

"No," she eventually said. "We tried to find out where he hid it, but his mind-block was too effective. If you were the one who taught him how to do that, you did an impressive job."

Right. That was supposed to be the honest answer, but now he was having doubts. If it was a lie, why would she lie about it? She couldn't know more about the scroll than Fathom, could she?

"Did Fathom tell you what would happen if the scroll were to be destroyed?" he asked.

"No," Keen Eye answered. Then, a second later, she added, "But knowing you, I imagine you made it so that your animus powers would return to you."

He really was an idiot sometimes. He didn't have to ask that question. He could have kept his mouth shut. He could have not given Keen Eye that idea. But no, he just had to let her figure out the one secret that he still had.

He considered denying it. It would have been believable enough. But something told him that Keen Eye would see through it, and there was a tingle in his future seeing powers that warned him that now wasn't the right time to get caught in a lie.

At least he learned something from her answer. When he'd told Fathom about the scroll, Darkstalker implied indirectly that if the scroll ever got destroyed, his powers would disappear forever. It wasn't a very comfortable lie to tell, but there were too many risks involved with telling him the truth.

So Darkstalker felt pretty confident that the scroll was still out there somewhere. If, say, Fathom had destroyed it before he got arrested, then he would have mentioned that during his interrogation. There would have been no reason for him not to.

"And if you end up finding the scroll, what will you do?" he asked.

"I don't think you'll believe me, but my plan is to simply look through it for proof that you killed the queen. If I don't find any, then I'll give the scroll back to you and let you go free."

Darkstalker definitely did not believe her.

"If I do find proof," she continued, "you're going to die. The fact that Fathom was unwilling to share the location of your scroll is a bit concerning in that regard. As is … whatever it is you and Clearsight have planned. Why don't you tell me a bit more about that?"

Darkstalker frowned at the question. "I don't really know what else you expected us to do," he said. "Clearsight gets a message from the palace telling her to tie me up and ship me to the dungeons, and her powers tell her that if she follows those orders, I end up dead. What other choice did she have?"

"I don't understand why you would end up dead," Keen Eye said, her voice dripping with skepticism. "Unless, of course, if you actually did kill Queen Vigilance."

Darkstalker was about to say something, but Keen Eye kept talking. "The plan was to hold you in custody while we undertook an investigation. The only dragon who would have the authority to kill you without my approval would be the new queen."

"Well, the new queen probably wants me dead," Darkstalker said, with a half shrug that said, 'Is that really such a strange idea?'

"You forget that I'm the head advisor," Keen Eye said. "I read Acuity's thoughts every day. I haven't picked up any indication that she's convinced you're the one behind her mother's murder. If Clearsight really did see you being executed, there would have to be more to it than just blind rage." She shrugged, though the look in her eyes told Darkstalker that she was deep in thought. "Even if you didn't kill the queen, you might have intended to do so at some point. I saw as much in my own visions. Maybe in the future, you'll plan on killing Acuity. And maybe the other seers will pick up on that, just like they did before."

Darkstalker felt his belly heat up. "I don't need to hear your nonsense accusations about what I might do in some random hypothetical future, alright?"

Keen Eye's neck straightened. "Did I strike a nerve? I'm sorry." And she sounded like she actually was.

"I hear it often enough," Darkstalker said. "Try having a girlfriend who can see all of the flaws that you don't have yet."

"Ah, I see," Keen Eye said, nodding along to his explanation. "Well, I didn't mean to accuse you of anything. I was just trying to make sense of what Clearsight saw. If your arrest put you in actual danger, that makes her disobedience a little bit more understandable. And I do believe you when you say that Clearsight saw you being executed. I'll make sure you stay alive until we figure out whether you're guilty or not."

She let silence hang between them, no doubt in an effort to get Darkstalker to say something in order to resolve the tension. It was the same thing that Queen Vigilance used to do to just about everyone. He wondered whether it was Vigilance who'd taught her that technique, or if it was Keen Eye who had taught it to Vigilance.

Either way, it wasn't going to work on him.

Keen Eye eventually realized this, and began to speak again. "I suppose until we've found your scroll, there's not much we'll be able to do to clear your name. What we can do is manage this insurrection that Clearsight is organizing. I'm willing to let this be interpreted as one big misunderstanding. An overreaction to a reasonable demand that happened because Clearsight is young and naive, and she got scared by a rogue vision. If you're willing to help me, it's possible I can keep both of you from being executed for treason."

"Sure, I'll help you," Darkstalker said with a shrug. "But I hope you realize that Clearsight is going to win this. Nothing you learn from me is going to change that."

"And why is that?"

"Because she has more support than Acuity," he said plainly. "You know that army that Vigilance told her to lead? They're all rallying behind her now. Lieutenant Morningstar, Lieutenant Antinomy, Foeslayer — all of them bowed to Clearsight and hailed her as queen. They're willing to fight for her, even against other NightWings. And if they come to the palace and Acuity does not surrender to them, they will be able to take it by force. This palace is undergarrisoned, and Clearsight's army is not even half a day's flight away. You will not have time to counter anything she throws at you."

Keen Eye frowned thoughtfully. "What is her plan, then?"

"I don't know," Darkstalker said. "Foeslayer shared a couple of possible tactics with me, but she only covered enough ground to convince me that they'd easily be able to do this. Clearsight is probably making her plans with Foeslayer and Lieutenant Morningstar right now."

There was something satisfying about the disappointment that escaped from Keen Eye's eyes. "I wish it was easier to believe that you're lying," she admitted. "Do you think I'd be able to convince her to change her mind?"

The question caught Darkstalker a little off-guard. "What do you mean by that?"

"I don't want violence, Darkstalker," Keen Eye said. "But thanks to Clearsight, I have two options if I'm going to prevent it. Either I convince Acuity to surrender to Clearsight, or I convince Clearsight to surrender to Acuity. What do you think I can say to Clearsight to convince her to bow down?"

Darkstalker laughed at the question, though it was secretly a nervous laughter. This was the biggest hole in their plan, and Darkstalker could only hope that Keen Eye didn't know that. Keen Eye couldn't have gotten so close to Queen Vigilance without being persuasive. And Clearsight needed to be talked into the idea in the first place. Talking her out of it might not be so hard.

"It'd be hard," he said anyway. "Now that you've captured me, I'm in danger, and Clearsight doesn't want me to die. So at the very least, you would need to guarantee my safety from Acuity."

"Like I said before, I'll make sure you're unharmed until we figure out whether you're guilty or not."

"Your promise is not going to be enough," Darkstalker said. "I know you think Acuity is calm and rational, but she just lost her mother, and she's looking for someone to blame. And I'm the most obvious suspect. Once Acuity knows that I'm here …."

That was when he realized the reality of his situation. He felt his mind-block slipping. That happened when he became genuinely afraid. When he started realizing just how much danger he was in. Those primal emotions that kept his ancestors alive when they were nothing more than lizards skittering through the caves — they were impossible to shield from a mind-reader.

Keen Eye sighed, and a strange combination of impatience and sympathy leaked from her thoughts. "Well then, it's a good thing I brought you here, where nobody's going to find you."

Darkstalker swallowed. His heart was beating rapidly, and he had to take manual control over his breathing to calm himself down. He looked away from Keen Eye, hating himself for looking so weak and childish in front of her.

"I'll admit," Keen Eye said, "if you're innocent, then the late queen chose an awful time to get murdered. Maybe you're right. Maybe Queen Acuity will have you killed the moment she discovers that you're here." She rose to her feet. "So I guess I'll need to make sure that she doesn't. Don't make any loud noises while you're in here, alright? We'll talk to each other again soon."

Her words didn't do much to calm the dread in his chest, but it was probably the most assuring thing she could have said to him.

Before Keen Eye opened the door to leave, Darkstalker realized there was something he forgot to say.

"Keen Eye."

Keen Eye turned.

"I didn't do it."

Keen Eye didn't say anything. But she did nod. And buried in the white noise of her mind-block, he thought he was able to hear her think, 'If you say so.'