Read The Inquisitives [2] Night of Long Shadows for Free Online

killing blow to fall. He tried to get to his feet but his hand slipped and he collapsed, catching the metallic butcher smell of blood in his nostrils. Cutter stared blearily at the red pool beneath him. He had rolled into the professor’s blood again.
    Cutter finally pushed himself up. He looked around and saw his Khutai blades lying nearby. He stretched out and grabbed hold of the pommels, dragging them toward him.
    He winced and climbed to his feet, looking about the room. There was no sign of the warforged. It had just disappeared. But why?
    He heard a gasp of surprise. He turned, still foggy, and saw a dwarf—the dwarf from the library—standing in the doorway, staring at Cutter.
    Cutter looked down at his blood-covered body crouched over the corpse of the professor, bloodied knives in his hands.
    He looked up at the dwarf. He was reaching into his jerkin for something. Cutter shook his head, knowing there was no point in proclaiming his innocence here. It looked too incriminating.
    He staggered toward the door. Whatever the dwarf wastrying to reach was caught inside his clothes. Cutter swung his fist, hitting him in the side of the head. The dwarf fell against the door frame, then collapsed to his knees.
    Cutter swept past him and sprinted up the stairs to the rooftop, his breath burning in his lungs and his heart beating erratically in his chest. He crawled back through the window and ran across the bridge.
    Only when he was gliding through the air, safe in the sky-coach, did he allow himself a sigh of relief.

The first night of Long Shadows
Zor, the 26th day of Vult, 998
    A braxis Wren stood on a small hill in Skysedge Park and let his eyes drift down the sweep of neatly-trimmed grass to the crowds milling below him like …
    What were they like? Sheep? No, not sheep. Like expensively dressed and bejeweled peacocks, strutting about with their feathers in the air—or in this case, positioning themselves in strategic locations so that their jewels caught the light of the gently bobbing lanterns.
    He took a sip of his wine and winced, holding it up to check its color. This was supposed to be from Aundair? He didn’t think so. He made a mental note to check how much his supplier had pocketed by palming this goblin’s piss onto him. How did the idiot think he would get this past a half-elf?
    He turned his attention back to the ebb and flow of bodies—
    —ants! They were like ants. That was it!
    He stared at them, looking for something, anything remotely interesting to catch his eye. There wasn’t much. The usualsycophants and boot-lickers, flatterers of women, curriers of favor. He’d already had to fend off three people looking for work, five people wanting an introduction to Celyria ir’Tain—something he couldn’t do if he wanted to, as he didn’t know her—and three rather intriguing invitations he might follow up on, depending on how the rest of the evening turned out.
    He sighed and headed down the slope, aiming for a group of people gathered around a particularly annoying young man he’d had the misfortune of meeting at a gala dinner a couple of months previously.
    As he drew closer, Wren could hear the young man’s irritating voice as he regaled his audience.
    “The thing is, you don’t have time for fear. All you do is get on with the job. And even though my superior officer had died in my arms and handed over command of the unit to me, I had to think about it logically.”
    “What did you do?” asked a vacuous-looking young elf.
    His companion, a female elf who was not at all vacuous looking—rather tasty, in fact—rolled her eyes.
    “The only thing I could do. I wasn’t about to risk any of my men, so when darkness fell, I snuck behind enemy lines and killed the Karrn general myself. Slit his throat.”
    The elf gasped and put a delicate hand to his mouth. “No!”
    “It was war. These things had to be done.” “Tell me,” said Wren. “Where did this confrontation take