Page 1 of Play of Shadows

Chapter 1

Rabbit, Rabbit

Everyone has a talent, and these days, mine is running. So superb is my aptitude for panicked flight that it almost makes up for my less admirable traits, which include cowardice, poor fencing skills and a regrettable tendency to forget those faults while making bold threats against brutish thugs who suffer no such deficiencies of their own.

‘Run, Rabbit, run!’ my pursuers cheered as they chased me through bustling streets and abandoned alleyways, over one crowded canal bridge and across the next. ‘Run down your warren, run up the hill! Run from the Vixen before she makes her kill!’

The Vixen.Of all the sobriquets adopted by professional duellists in the city of Jereste, surely Lady Ferica di Traizo’s was the most apt– and the most terrifying.

I dived under a fruit-seller’s stall, rolled up to my feet on the other side and kept on running. What had possessed me to go and challenge the deadliest fencer in the entire city to a duella honoria?

‘Faster, Rabbit, faster! You’re the one she’s after!’

Damn their tune for being so catchy. Merchants shuttering their shops for the night sang along. Scampering children tryingto run between my legs giggled their way through their own mangled lyrics. I had to shove aside two young lovers out for a romantic stroll as they hummed the melody while gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes.

I dashed through the overcrowded square and into an equally congested courtyard, doing my best to avoid those among my fellow citizens who saw it as their duty to stick out a foot to trip me in anticipation of witnessing a good beating before I was dragged back to court. I’d been keeping up a goodly pace thus far, but I was tiring, and my tormentors knew it.

‘Hide, Rabbit, hide!’ the black-shirted bravos chanted as they closed in on me. ‘She’s searching far and wide!’

When I dared glance back, I caught the flickering light of the brass street lanterns glinting off the metal orchid emblems on their collars. The Iron Orchids called themselves a citizen militia, determined to rid the city of petty criminals and other undesirables, but mostly they were street toughs who sold their services to anyone looking to settle a grudge. Alas, Jereste’s notoriously feckless constabulary did little to curb their activities.

An orchestra of swashing and clanging accompanied my pursuers as the small buckler shields slung low on their leather belts banged against the scabbarded steel hilts of their rapiers and sideswords. The thump of booted heels on the loose cobblestone streets added an ominous rhythm section.

Saint Ethalia-who-shares-all-sorrows,I swore silently,help me escape these mercenary thugs! They’re going to haul me back to court and dump me in the duelling circle so that fox-faced lunatic who calls herself the Vixen can stick her blade through my heart before mine even leaves its scabbard!

The Iron Orchids were herding me deeper and deeper into the narrow alleys of the Paupers’ Market, apparently determined to keep me from the Temple District where I might beg sanctuary.Fortunately for me, I’d no intention of sleeping in a church tonight.

‘Run down your hole, Rabbit, run up to the sky!

Run a little faster, or else you’ll surely die!’

‘Coming through!’ I shouted to a pair of street cleaners wrestling a stinking refuse cart across the street. Grinning in reply, they pushed all the harder to cut me off. No doubt they were hoping for a reward from my pursuers; a coward fleeing a lawful duel always means plenty of coin to go around for those who help bring the fugitive to justice.

Desperation lent my legs the extra ounce of strength I needed to leap high enough for my right foot to reach the top of the wagon’s iron-banded wheel. My left found purchase on the edge of the coffin-sized refuse box– but as I jumped across, my toe caught on the opposite edge and I tumbled headlong towards the cobblestones below. Luck more than skill sent me into a somersault that saved my skull, but it came at the cost of a numb shoulder and an unsettling twinge in my ankle.

I started for the nearest alley, my chest heaving now. If any Iron Orchids thought to circle round and beat me to the other side, I’d be trapped. But I had more pressing problems, as it turned out, because my next step had me hissing through my teeth and the one after that tore a howl from me. I’d sprained my ankle and my race was done.

‘Rest, Rabbit, rest. It’s really for the best!

There’s nowhere left to hide– besides,

It’s long past time you died!’

I ignored them and their lousy rhymes as I staggered onwards, grabbing at every gate and door handle I passed in search of an escape route. Too soon, though, a dozen shadowy figuresappeared at the far end of the alley. The glint of freshly sharpened blades slashed through the darkness.

So close,I thought. Three doors down the alley had been my destination– and, I’d hoped, my one chance at salvation.

‘You’ve bested me, friends,’ I said jovially, as if this had all been a jest on my part, even as my gaze sought out some means of delaying the inevitable. ‘My word of honour, I’ll give you no trouble on the way back to the courthouse. No doubt her Ladyship the Vixen is most troubled by my temporary absence.’

‘Honour?’ the leader of the bravos asked. ‘What honour does a rabbit have? And what trouble could he possibly give a pack of hunting hounds? Fear not, though, little bunny, for we have many games yet to play before we turn you over to the Vixen.’

I stifled a shiver. On his best day, an amateur like me– whose principal sword training had been at theatre school and largely devoted to learning hownotto hit an opponent– might last as long as a minute in the duelling circle against an opponent of the Vixen’s calibre. With a sprained ankle and whatever assortment of bruises my escorts intended to inflict before depositing me at her Ladyship’s feet? The only chance I’d have to score first blood would be if I drove the tip of my rapier through my own eye socket before she got to me.

My gaze went to the stage door barely nine feet away. It would surely be locked right now, which meant I needed two things: a great deal of noise, and a minor miracle.

Actually, given how terrible my plan was, I would needtwomiracles, and not that minor, either.

‘Rabbit, Rabbit,’ the bravos chanted eagerly, closing in on me from both ends of the alley. Clanging their bucklers with added gusto, the cacophony turned positively thunderous. ‘Rabbit, Rabbit!’

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