Page 85 of Shield of Fire

The thought had my nose wrinkling. Carla obviously had no qualms about killing, but her penchant seemed to be poison rather than tearing someone limb from limb.

The council is your purview, the man continued. It’s for you to investigate this matter, not me. But at least this destruction does have one benefit—it keeps Lùtair’s mind on revenge rather than the witch.

Why wouldn’t they want Cynwrig concentrating on me? Surely the opposite should be true, given they wanted him out of the Hoard hunt. Unless, of course, they simply didn’t want me distracted by his hotness.

Halak is now beyond our leash, and I fear the consequences if the witch catches him.

He does not know who I am.

He is aware of where you work. She is quite capable of putting two and two together, given enough information.

Then ensure she never gets that information.

Carla muttered something this audio-only vision didn’t quite catch. You need to remember that Ninkil is not the only power playing in this pool. Our opposition does too.

Our opposition are as restricted in what they can do as Ninkil?—

Ninkil does not as yet hold flesh. They do, and should not be discounted.

Obviously they were talking about the hags—and to a lesser extent, the curmudgeons—as they were the only gods left in this world who held human form. I’d better send Beira a warning, even though she was well aware the Ninkilim were active.

I discount no one. Do what you can to make the harpe’s retrieval a priority.

We need to move slowly. The witch remains cautious, and we cannot risk her becoming aware of us. She is far more dangerous than her mother ever was.

By all accounts, she has not reached her full power—and may never.

That does not mean you should underestimate her.

Oh, I found myself thinking, please do.

I did so once, the man was saying, it will not happen again, I assure you.

His reply suggested he and I might have crossed paths before, in real time. But when? And how? It was damnably frustrating to get all these bits and pieces without the means of gluing them all together.

And if she becomes a problem more than an asset?

An asset? How the fuck was I an asset to them? They were obviously keeping an eye on me, but how... The thought trailed off. The council. They’d already said they had eyes and ears in the council, though up until now, it was something we’d merely suspected.

Then we get rid of her, the man said. In the meantime, use your influence and get the harpe pushed up that list.

I will do what I can, but security has been tightened, and I cannot risk my identity there to force the issue. We lost my Carla persona. We cannot afford to lose any others.

Meaning this woman—whoever she truly was—had more than one identity, and that at least one of them was deeply connected to the council. But how? Was she a sitting member? Or was she, perhaps, the lover of one—or even several—of them?

Multiple identities would also explain how she’d managed to disappear so completely—she’d simply discarded her Carla persona.

But it was one thing to hold multiple identities and quite another to use them at will. The building in which Deva’s council met, like all governmental buildings, had magical inhibitors layered into their fabric as a matter of course. Her Carla ID was a prominent lawyer, which meant she simply couldn’t be using an identity-disguising spell. Besides, not even the most powerful of them could maintain an ID flip for hours—or days—on end.

Which left one other possibility—that she was a face shifter. Unlike their animal counterparts, face shifters could take on the form of any same-sex human they desired as long as they’d had skin-on-skin contact with that person.

Of course, they were also extremely rare, and the few that existed were legally required to be registered. But if she’d come in from elsewhere? Or the registration process had somehow been avoided? It would certainly explain how she was moving around with impunity. She just shifted into whatever form she needed to get her task done.

Keep me updated, the man was saying.

When I hear, you’ll hear, but do not expect miracles.

I do not. Ninkil is another matter.

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