Reba spotted her apprentice’s signal from the shadows behind a pile of rotting barrels and beckoned him over.
He ghosted across the street, a pulsing artery of the city’s merchant area in the day time, quiet as a tomb at night.
Misty was draped across Byron’s shoulders, greeting Reba with a sharp-toothed yawn. She was surprisingly cooperative when it came to skulking. Perhaps she approved of it as suitable cat behaviour, although she clearly found their skills inferior.
Byron slipped further into the darkness of the alley Reba watched from and said. “They’re at the Ram and Horn, like they said, but they came in with three others, who are sitting at another table.”
“Hmmmm, could be friends, probably a trap. Do we ghost them, or spring it?”
Bryon scowled. He was unhappy with their detour, he’d been set on seeing palm trees and the colour of the south. Instead, they were in the mountains, still headed more-or-less south, but surrounded by dark trees, dark stone, and dark clouds. He was even less happy with the reason – opportunists hunting to bring a missing prince home to his loving family.
He scratched Misty’s ears as he replied. “I vote we lurk until one of them needs to use the outhouse, then jump ‘em, and leave with whatever gold and information they were carrying.”
A few more years and the boy would be more than a match for his petty tyrant of a grandfather, Reba just had to keep him out of the way until then.
She was about to agree, when Misty growled and the three of them merged deeper into the shadows.
“Pretty sure I heard voices down here.”
“And you want to deliberately chase your own murder by investigating.”
The first voice was unknown. The second, blessedly familiar.
The DNA of Stories 