The Prince of Lies (Night's Masque, #3)(123)

“I’d like to kill you slowly and painfully for what you’ve done to my son,” he said to Shawe, “but I really don’t have time.”

He advanced a few steps into the room. Shawe retreated, stumbled against the velvet-draped bench and fell backwards with a curse. The knife slipped from his fingers and shattered on the tiled floor. Mal ignored him and turned to the other, who swung the thurible like a morning-star. Burning embers fell onto the drapery and a cloud of qoheetsakhan smoke enveloped them both. Mal halted, and for a moment all he could see was the dreamlands, twilit and empty. No, he would not fight them on their home ground. Concentrating all his will on his physical self he slashed the blade of his dagger across the back of his right wrist. The moment blood touched steel, his vision cleared.

Just in time. He ducked as the thurible whistled through the air, trailing smoke and sparks. Some landed in his hair and he shook them free before they could burn through to the skin. The guiser danced out of reach.

“You won’t get me this time, kiaqnehet.”

He swung his thurible again. Mal knocked it aside with his dagger and thrust the rapier blade into the guiser’s belly almost up to the forte. The man cried out and dropped the thurible with a clang.

“No. You cannot kill me again,” he gasped, sinking to his knees and clutching the blade. “Not again.”

“What do you mean, again?”

The dying man coughed twice and looked up, grinning through the blood now running from his nostrils. “Of course, you don’t recognise me in this body. It has been twenty years, Huntsman.”

Mal withdrew his blade, bile rising in his throat.

“Tanijeel?”

The guiser looked puzzled. “You know my name?”

“You’re Hennaq’s heartmate. The skrayling who was butchered for mine and Sandy’s initiation.” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry…”

Tanijeel’s eyes glazed over and he collapsed in a spreading pool of blood. Mal spared a brief glance towards Shawe, who cowered on the far side of the now-smouldering bench, and stepped back towards the door. Enough killing. Time to get out of here.



Coby caught up with Kit on the edge of the clearing and managed to grab him before he could throw himself at Sandy. Her brother-in-law lay with his head in Gabriel’s lap, hands and eyelids twitching like a cat dreaming of mice.

“Sssh!” she whispered in Kit’s ear, hand clamped over his mouth. “See? Uncle Sandy – I mean Erishen – is fighting our enemies. We mustn’t wake him.”

Kit nodded, and she let him go. He walked over to Sandy and knelt by his side, but did not touch him or speak. Ned crossed the clearing, dread written all over his features.

“Mal?”

“He stayed behind to fight Shawe. I… I don’t know…”

Ned put his arms about her and she gasped for breath, fought back tears that she could not spare, not right now.

“We have to get the horses,” she said, her voice raw in her throat, “get Kit out of here. If Mal… if he comes in time–”

“He already has,” Ned replied, releasing her.



Mal jogged down the path to where he had left Sandy and the horses. To his relief Coby was there ahead of him, and Kit was with his uncle.

“Wake him,” Mal told Gabriel. “We have to leave. Now.”

“The guiser?” Coby asked as he embraced her and Ned together.

“I killed the younger one. Shawe lives.”

Ned shot him a doubtful look. When Mal didn’t reply Ned walked back towards the horses, scooping Kit up on his way.

“Come along, little man.”

“I’m not your little man, I’m Ambassador Kiiren.”

“And I’m Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. Now, where’s your mother’s horse?”

“I want to ride with my amayi.”

“Aye, well, your uncle is barely awake enough to sit his own horse, without having to hold onto you as well. Do you want to break both your necks?”

Kit shook his head, and Ned lifted him onto the grey’s saddle.

“Now wait there until your mother comes.”

Coby looked up at Mal, eyes filling with tears. “He’s telling the truth. Whatever magic Shawe worked on him, he’s Kiiren now.”

Mal kissed her forehead.

“We always knew this was going to happen one day, love.”

“Yes, but so soon?”

He had no answer to that. Gently releasing her he went to see to his brother.

They rode back out to the road at a walk, not daring to go any faster in the dark. Mal brought up the rear, ready to fend off another guiser attack, but the priory grounds were eerily silent. At the road he urged them into a trot, riding alongside his wife and son. Kit – Kiiren as he supposed he must call him now – had dozed off, exhausted.

“That was too easy,” Coby whispered after a while.

“I know.”

“The younger one said something about ‘hide and seek’. Do you think he’s spying on us somehow?”

“Not any more.”

He told her about Tanijeel.

“I helped create a guiser,” he said at last, glancing back over his shoulder. Still no sign of pursuit. “I’m certain Tanijeel would never have joined the renegades if he had not suffered so cruelly at our hands.”