Free The Gathering of the Lost by Helen Lowe

don’t like it,” said Tarathan.
    Jehane Mor knew what he meant: the gate should either be closed, or if heralds were still coming and going, then why were there no lights inside? In either case, the gate lantern should be lit. “If you go around the back,” she said, “I’ll wait until you’re inside, then come in through the front.” She paused. “Then we shall see.”
    “ We shall,” agreed Tarathan grimly, and was up and over the wall of a nearby house before Jehane Mor had taken her first step into deeper shadow, away from the circle of light cast by the nearest gate lantern. Cautiously, she moved along the street, staying out of the light and keeping her psychic shield up, but nothing disturbed its outer edge. She stopped in another pool of shadow ten paces from the Guild House gate, which gaped at her, silent as an unanswered question.
    The minutes lengthened, but Jehane Mor remained motionless until she felt the touch of Tarathan’s mind, letting her know he was inside the Guild House grounds. The moment she broke cover, slipping out of the shadows and toward the unlit entrance, she caught movement from the corner of her eye. Her head whipped around as a dense inky blot, with long tendrils trailing beneath it, detached from an eave diagonally opposite the gate. The tendrils exploded toward her in a jet of black matter, and she sprang back, gathering her power to counterattack—only to drop to the ground for the second time that night as an arrow sang.
    But the unseen archer was not aiming at her and the arrow flew true, piercing the attacker’s ink-black core. The creature shrieked, one long, keening whistle, before folding in on itself and collapsing to the street.
    Jehane Mor rose to her feet, taking in the stain of black matter oozing across the cobblestones as the archer jumped neatly down from a vine-hung balcony, half a block away. He fitted another arrow to the string, quartering the street and surrounding roofs with his eyes before he walked toward her, but it was not until he drew near that she recognized Tirorn of the Derai.
    “Darkspawn,” he said matter-of-factly, as if answering a question, and continued to watch the street. His mouth tightened as his gaze flicked to the ooze on the cobblestones. “A particularly nasty little lurker by nature, and aggressive, too, if it catches you unaware. Smotherer is another name we use, because they wrap their tendrils around a victim’s face and neck and choke them to death. We get infestations of them around my home keep, from time to time.”
    Jehane Mor studied him, seeing no sign of the man who had lounged at his ease beside the Farelle bridge. “Is that why you are here?” she asked. “Hunting this creature?”
    His sidelong glance was, she thought, careful. “In part,” he replied. “We caught some purported Ijiri traders trying to smuggle them out of the Gray Lands, but unfortunately neither the traders nor the lurkers were prepared to be taken alive. Our Earl decided that we had better find out who wanted lurkers that badly and why—and how many they had already obtained. I have been tracking this one for most of today, but there may well be more about.”
    She continued to watch him closely. “Tracking it back to its base, or away from it?”
    “That,” he replied dryly, “was what I was trying to find out.”
    “But now it’s dead,” she said, “so you have lost the trail. I am in your debt.”
    Tirorn shrugged. “Perhaps if you had been a warrior and well armed, I might have let you take your chance. But I know these creatures, and you, Mistress Herald, were at a serious disadvantage with only that toy knife of yours.” He looked down at her, and the dim light could not hide the glint in his eyes. “You could take this as repayment for your help at the bridge, but if you do not see the assistance rendered as being of equal kind—” He shrugged again. “Well, I understand that others among our Alliance owe you a debt of