Page 28 of The Faceless Mage

The chamber was dimly lit, with no illumination but the moonlight streaming through the window, but it was enough. She’d made this particular change enough times, she didn’t need to see the details as clearly.

In the mirror, Leisa gazed at Princess Evaraine and held the image in her mind—her slender body, narrow, oval face, thin-lipped mouth, pointed chin, and wide green eyes. And then… well, she had no idea how she did it. She just did. It was as natural as waking and sleeping, as easy as letting cool water slip down her throat.

The face in the mirror simply changed, and suddenly she was Leisa again—shorter than Princess Evaraine, with sinewy muscles and small, calloused hands. Her eyes were blue, her hair red-gold with a hint of a wave, falling to the middle of her back. Unlike Evaraine, she had a few freckles from the sun, a snub nose, and a stubborn, full-lipped mouth.

Leisa thought her own face looked ridiculous with the brocade dressing gown, so she hastily removed it and slipped into her own things—close-fitting pants and a dark shirt, a leather vest to hold her tools, and supple leather gloves. Her hair was quickly braided and tucked under a hood that was attached to her shirt. When she pulled it low over her face, no one would be able to see much above her mouth.

Much like the Raven.

For some reason, when she thought of him, her hand rose to the pendant that still hung around her neck. She should, she thought, take it off, as it would mark her if anyone saw it. But even as she reached for it, she decided against it. Such a valuable item shouldn’t be left unguarded. And if it stayed tucked beneath her shirt, no one would ever know.

So she lifted it by the chain and dropped the gem behind her collar. It felt strange against her thin chemise, but as the hard edges pressed against her breastbone, it proved less cold than she expected. In fact, it felt almost warm, which had to be her imagination.

Most likely, she was trying to distract herself from what came next, which was finding a way out of her room that didn’t involve using the door.

Leisa’s magecraft and sensitive hearing made her an excellent choice for spying, but she had other little quirks that she knew were going to get in the way.

For one thing, she wasn’t terribly fond of heights. But sneaking around in the dark when decent folk were sleeping meant that she would most likely be spending a lot of time climbing, either in or out of windows or finding her way across rooftops. Balconies. Heaven forbid she discover a need to scale a tower. Shecouldclimb, she just hated it.

Her climbing rope was hidden inside the false bottom of one of her trunks, which would have been impossible to disguise if the rope were as bulky as its human-made equivalent. This was spider-weave, a near priceless commodity purchased decades ago from night-elf traders, back when they’d still had occasional contact with humans.

The rope was thin, light, and utterly unbreakable. Leisa carried the entire length of it in a pouch on her vest, yet it was long enough for her to rappel from the tallest tower in King Soren’s castle. She’d asked him once why it was called spider-weave, and when he told her the answer should be obvious, she’d promised herself never to think about it again. Why?

Her second weakness was spiders.

There was only one window in her room, and as she opened it to look out, she resigned herself to a long night. Some quirk of Garimoran design—or perhaps of King Melger’s obsession with security—meant there was no balcony to her room. Nor anywhere else on this side of the palace that she could see. Leisa was going to have to start at the ground, which meant figuring out the guard rotation before she made her first move.

She spent about a half-hour watching, but as there were no paths between the palace and the wall—which was a mere thirty feet from the first-floor window—it appeared that no guards regularly passed this way. More than likely, they patrolled the outside of the wall, or even had posts higher up, where they could see more of the grounds with no need for a patrol.

And wasn’t that a pleasant thought. She could be shot from above the moment she left her room.

Reminding herself that King Melger’s paranoia would most likely result in her being captured and tortured first, Leisa looped the rope around the bedpost and threw both ends out the window. One side of the rope went under each arm, crossed behind her back, then returned to the front, where they passed beneath her legs to form a makeshift harness. It wasn’t her favorite—the rope burns were the very devil if done wrong, but her leather vest and gloves should protect her from the worst of it.

Grumbling at Soren under her breath, she dropped out the window and let the rope out slowly as she made her way to the ground. The party, she guessed, was still going on, as there were few lights from the windows on this side of the palace. She could hear faint sounds of music, bursts of laughter, and occasional shutting doors. If she focused, she could probably hear a lot more than that, but she wasn’t in the mood for random eavesdropping. She needed to know more specifically what was being said of her, and Farhall, in her absence.

After reclaiming the rope and removing her climbing gloves, Leisa kept to the shadows as she made her silent way along the side of the palace, testing each window as she went. She needed a way back in, and she didn’t want to have to change again if she could help it. Windows didn’t make the best mirrors, and though they would work in a pinch, she also didn’t want to have to deal with the issue of clothing afterward.

Technically, she could change her clothes along with her face, but inanimate objects were incredibly difficult, and the energy required to change even something small would leave her exhausted for hours. The one time she’d tried to change her clothing, she’d been forced to remain in bed for half a day.

Luckily, she found a window that hadn’t been properly locked, and was able to disengage the latch with the tip of her dagger. The room within was dark but uncluttered—a salon of some sort she imagined—which permitted her to approach the door and peer out with little fear of apprehension. Outside, the hallway was mercifully quiet, which left her with the question of which way to go. What she needed was stairs.

While lazing about at the reception earlier, she’d noted a second-floor balcony encircling the entire ballroom. The musicians had claimed one end, but the remainder had seemed startlingly empty. A testimony, she supposed, to King Melger’s confidence in his own security. If he didn’t allow anyone suspicious past the guards on the outside, there was little reason to post guards on the inside.

Not that she intended to trust appearances entirely.

A trio of lightly flounced ladies entered the hall from a nearby doorway, conveniently pointing out which way Leisa needed to go to find the party. They seemed in various stages of intoxication, though they were expressing similar degrees of dissatisfaction.

“…how long we’re expected to pretend to believe this farce,” one of them said, followed by a giggle that she’d probably be embarrassed about if she remembered it in the morning.

“…so relieved it’s not Danric,” one of the others added, and sighed so deeply, Leisa was afraid she might collapse right there in the hallway.

“Maybe they’re planning some sort of accident for that poor sad thing from Farhall,” the third one chimed in, perhaps less drunk but rather more vicious than her companions. “They can’t exactly risk the second prince being the first to reproduce.”

The other two girls burst into giggles again.

“Well, I don’t care as long as Prince Danric is still available,” the sighing girl said, pressing a hand to her chest as though contemplating a faint purely for effect. “I know he’s bound for a marital alliance, but I hate the thought of all thatmanbeing wasted on a foreigner who won’t appreciate it.”

“I’m sure you can steal a moment or two behind a curtain if you want a tastethatbadly,” one of the others replied, while her companions tried very hard to gasp and sound shocked.

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