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Ashvik’s tomb?
    You know it does.
Triss sent back, and there was a strong undertone of anger to his mind voice. He didn’t like the way this was going any more than I did.
    I’d rather say that I’m
sure
that it does, but yes, I agree with you. Somebody set us up. The question is who and why. I have a hard time imagining Jax doing something like that, but two years ago, I’d have told you Devin would never turn away from the order or our friendship either. Look where trust got me there.
My best friend’s betrayal of everything I’d ever held dear was a wound that would never stop bleeding.
    I took control of Triss again and went hunting. But while I did verify the sight lines to Ashvik’s tomb and my meeting place with Jax, I didn’t turn up any more signs of watchers on the tomb-tops over the next twenty minutes. Nor anyone else for that matter. Whether that was because my first target’s companions were that much better at concealing their presence, or because there was only the one, I couldn’t say. Process of elimination wasn’t much help either, there were just too damn many tombs with good sight lines for our meeting point.
    I had circled most of the way back around to my starting point, so that I could make sure of my original target and that I hadn’t hallucinated my initial impressions, when I crossed a Blade’s shadow trail heading toward Ashvik’s tomb. Two actually. Bringing Faran into my life had given me the opportunity to use my borrowed senses to focus on what was—for me—a newfound Shade skill, as we practiced trailing each other around the city.
    But I wasn’t yet good enough at parsing the nuances of Triss’s shadow-tasting ability on my own to identify these traces fully, or tell which came first or how far apart in time the two had been made. I was pretty sure one at least belonged to Faran, and I guessed the second was Jax, but I had to call up Triss to verify my assumptions.
    Faran and Ssithra, with Jax and Sshayar trailing along behind—probably following the youngsters, though there’s no way to be sure,
Triss opined.
    I still didn’t know what Jax might be up to, but the fact that she was on Faran’s trail worried me. Doubly so in light of our unexpected guest on top of the tomb, which meant it was time to make a ghost of the latter. This was going to be that very rare kill that I could truly take pleasure in. After what the Son of Heaven’s people had done to mine, I felt not the slightest bit of pity for any of them. I planned my approach as I hurried back toward the tall mausoleum.
    I was nearly there when a rather sharp darkening of the skies above drew my attention. Great reefs of cloud began to form in the skies above, blotting out the stars, while the wind from the sea kicked up sharply, cooling the steamy air over the city and bringing with it the lightning-burned air smell that always came with the truly brutal thunderstorms. If I was any judge, we were all going to get very wet before the night’s business got much further along.
    It might just have been the weather shifting with that shocking speed you sometimes get in coastal areas, but I made a dash for the tomb at that point because of the other possibility. The elementals most commonly known as the Storms or the Heavenly Host. They took a myriad of shapes, lightning bladed swords, lucent wheels, whirling cones of darkness, but they all shared two features. They all had dense wings of cloud, and they only ever companioned the priests of the Hand.
    The polished black granite blocks of the tombs were tightly fitted with no finger or toeholds. I could still have climbed the back or side walls of one if I reduced my shroud. But I thought it better to keep it at maximum extension under the circumstances, so I took the same route the Hand had: fountain, doorframe, entablature, lip of the roof.
    I chinned myself on the edge at that point, peering across the flat top of the tomb before moving forward. My target was