Taegan circulated through the soiree, gossiping, joking, paying compliments, flirting, drinking in moderation, dancing the occasional dance, and in general, playing to perfection the part of a sophisticated Impilturan blade. That was what he wanted to be, what he’d worked tirelessly to become, and he thoroughly enjoyed the performance. That night, though, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was a performance, an impersonation, and that if he slipped for even a moment, everyone would see him as the interloper he truly was, a barbarian with no proper place in the life of a splendid city.

Well, he wouldn’t slip. However he looked on the outside, and whatever esoteric elven disciplines he’d mastered, he was human in his heart. So he told himself, and as if in affirmation of his conviction, a lackey approached, murmured his name, and discreetly proffered a folded pink slip of paper scented with rosewater.

Written with extravagant flourishes in a feminine hand the brief note invited Taegan to meet its author in the gazebo in the east garden. It was unsigned, perhaps for fear it would fall into the hands of a disapproving father, husband fiancée, or chaperone, or maybe simply to lend a piquant air of mystery.

Taegan decided that whoever had written it, a dalliance might be just the thing to fend off the sour mood that was creeping up on him. He took his leave of his current companions, who, having spotted the missive, offered ribald, good-natured gibes, and exited the gleaming marble ballroom with its orchestra and buffet.

Outside the mansion, the night was cold enough to make him reconsider his amorous inclinations. But perhaps the lady didn’t intend to conduct their entire tryst outdoors, or conceivably she possessed some petty magic to warm her immediate vicinity. He strolled on down a paved walk with banks of shoveled snow heaped to either side, past bare trees, inactive fountains, and statuary. Above the wall encircling the grounds, stars burned in the black sky.

The gazebo proved to be an octagonal structure with a conical roof, its facade shrouded in dead-looking vines that would presumably resurrect themselves in the spring. It had benches inside, but no one was sitting on them, or loitering anywhere in sight, for that matter.

Taegan smiled wryly. Either his correspondent was having difficulty getting away, or else she was one of those females who believed it enhanced her allure to make a male wait. Whatever the reason for the delay, he hoped he wouldn’t freeze to death before she deigned to appear and decided to saunter about in an effort to keep warm. Really, more vigorous exercise would serve him better, but a rake should never look uncomfortable, put out, or inconvenienced.

At first, he was merely impatient, but as the minutes passed, gradually he became uneasy. In the days following the battle in the street, he’d walked warily, but when nothing happened and other matters demanded his attention, he abandoned his precautions. Taegan had come to wonder if he’d lowered his guard too soon. What if Gorstag’s cultists had finally made their move? What if they’d lured him out in the dark to attack him?

Ridiculous. He had no reason to suspect such a thing. Yet the idea nagged at him until he had to do something to appease it. He drew his rapier, murmured an incantation, and dusted the sword with powdered lime and carbon. Power groaned through the air, line of icicles hanging from the gazebo’s eaves shattered, and for a moment, rainbows rippled along the blade. Satisfied that, until morning, it would be about as deadly a weapon as he could make it, he slid it back into the scabbard.

“Interesting,” said a husky feminine voice.

Taegan turned. A woman sat inside the shadowy gazebo. He couldn’t tell much about her. She’d bundled up in a voluminous cloak, pulled up the cowl, and covered her face with a layer of black veil.

He did know one thing. He’d been waiting right in front of the doorway. She couldn’t simply have sneaked past him to appear in her present position. Somehow, magic was involved.

“I can cast that spell, too,” the stranger continued, “but my master taught me to make the passes differently. Evidently avariels have a cruder style of conjuring. But then, everyone’s magic is crude compared to his.”

Taegan wondered if she was talking about Sammaster, or at any rate, the person Gorstag had believed to be the legendary madman, but instinct warned him not to let on he’d ever heard the name.

Instead, he bowed and said, “It’s a delight to make your acquaintance, my lady. May your servant request the privilege of knowing your name?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, “you may not. Not yet, anyway. I will tell you I’m Lyrabar’s Wearer of Purple.” She paused as if to judge his reaction, but Taegan didn’t have to feign ignorance. The peculiar title meant nothing to him. “You may address me as High Lady.”

As one would address a duchess, he thought. She thinks well of herself.

“High Lady it is, then,” he said. “I assume I needn’t introduce myself, since you asked me here.”

“Indeed not, Maestro. Come and sit.”

Why not? If she tried to cast a spell on him, it would be helpful to have her within arm’s reach.

“Nothing could give me greater pleasure,” Taegan said.

He entered the gazebo, bowed again, and seated himself on the bench across from her.

Up close, she smelled of the same floral perfume as the note, but that and her voice were the only details to suggest she was a relatively young, well-educated woman or even alive. Otherwise, her shapeless mantle, hood, and mask of dark lace made her look like a specter lurking in the gloom.

“Did it alarm you,” she asked, “when I appeared out of nowhere?”

“To the contrary,” he said. “It was the fulfillment of my fondest yearnings.”

“I did it to show you how easily we can take you unawares. In which case, your skill with a sword won’t save you.”

“It almost sounds as if you’re threatening me, High Lady, and that truly does surprise me. Ordinarily, I enjoy amiable relations with the fairer sex. It’s specimens of my own gender who more often conceive a desire to poke holes in me. How, pray tell, have I offended?”

“Surely you see such evasions are a waste of time,” the woman said. “A couple of my brothers survived their encounter with you to report your meddling, and you’re the only avariel in Lyrabar. You can’t possibly hope to convince me it was some other winged elf who flew to Gorstag’s aid.”

If the zombies’ living allies were her “brothers,” then that ended any faint hope Taegan had entertained that she might represent the Harpers. Rather, she must belong to the Cult of the Dragon.

He gave her a grin and said, “Fair enough, High Lady, it was I. In my defense, I can only say that if I’d realized that Helder had trespassed against a maiden as captivating as you, I would have left him to his fate. But I didn’t, and he owed me coin—coin I’d never collect in the event of his demise.”

“I’ve thought a good deal about you,” the veiled woman said. “You defended a traitor to the brotherhood and slew our wyvern. The creature wasn’t a true Sacred One, but spilling its blood was a heinous sin nonetheless, and you deserve to die for it.”

“That seems harsh for a first offense.”

“I wouldn’t be flippant if I were you,” the woman threatened. “Your life balances on the edge of a knife. We would have killed you already, except that we want the answers to some questions. What did Gorstag tell you before he died?”

“Nothing,” the avariel lied. “When I returned to him after the fight, he was already dead.”

“What about when you first made contact with him?”

“I had to confront his pursuers,” Taegan replied. “We didn’t have time for conversation.”

“And in the tendays prior to that?”

“Nothing. I had no idea he was in trouble until I chanced to spot him staggering along with your minions on his tail.”

“I ordered him to try to recruit you to our cause,” said the woman. “He claimed he had.”

“But he didn’t. Truly, I know nothing about your necromancers’ coven or whatever it is, except that it seems to take a lot of you just to kill one undernourished novice fencer, and that you yourself are far too charming to squander your nights on such gauche companions.”

“Who did Gorstag work for?” she asked, ignoring his flattery.

“You should have asked him.”

“I would have, if the fool who first suspected him of being a spy had communicated his suspicions instead of trying to deal with the matter by himself.”

“It’s hard to find good help.”

“I already warned you to spare me your japes,” the woman hissed. “Where is the tome?”

That would be the purple book. Didn’t she realize Gorstag had stolen the folio as well? If not, Taegan had no intention of alerting her.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he lied.

“Yes, you do. Gorstag gave you a book written in cipher, or else you found it on his body.”

“No,” he replied. “Either he never took it in the first place, or he disposed of it somewhere before I found him.”

“You’re lying.”

“A gentleman never lies to a lady about anything except his marital status or the depth of his devotion.”

“We want the tome back, and your silence. We’re even willing to buy them.”

It was tempting. Gold always was. But even if he decided he was willing to betray Gorstag, he doubted the cultists would leave him alone once they recovered their text. Still, he might as well play along and see where it led.

“Alas, as I said, I don’t have the volume in question. But just for curiosity’s sake, suppose I could lay my hands on it. How much are you offering?”

“Ten thousand in gold,” she said.

The sum was almost enough to blind him to loyalty and caution alike. Almost.

“Make it twenty,” Taegan said, “and I’ll see what I can do.”

She sat quietly for a moment, then said, “You’re lying.”

He wondered how she knew. More magic, conceivably, or maybe she simply had good instincts.

“That’s the second time you’ve accused me of that,” Taegan retorted. “Let us thank Lady Firehair you’re a woman. Otherwise, a gentleman might feel obliged to call you out.”

“If I can’t appeal to your greed, Maestro, what of your desire to go on breathing? I told you, my comrades and I are quite prepared to kill you.”

“I beg you to forgive me if I don’t blubber in terror, but have you any idea how often I fought when I first came to Lyrabar, simply to build a reputation?”

“I guarantee, you can’t defend yourself against us.”

“Oh, I trust I can make do. I slew your overgrown lizard, your walking dead men, and your live cutthroats, and I know how to suddenly pop up out of nowhere myself. It really isn’t all that awesome a tri—”

Clutching a curve-bladed dagger, a black-gloved hand shot from a vent in the cultist’s mantle. She leaped up and slashed at his throat.

Taegan hadn’t seen her tense, lean forward, or make any other preparatory movement that would have given away her intention to attack. Still, he was on his guard and reacted instantly. He swayed backward, the cut fell short, and he punched her in the stomach. She floundered backward, banging the backs of her calves against the seat she’d just vacated, giving him space to spring to his feet.

They were still so close together that it would be awkward to use a rapier. He snatched out his poniard, poised it to thrust, then decided it might be better to take her alive. He grabbed the wrist of her knife arm, immobilizing it, reversed his own blade, and hammered her shrouded head with the pommel.

For a moment, the gilded knob seemed to meet resistance, and just a yielding softness. At the same time, his grip crushed her wrist into something he couldn’t even feel inside his clenched fingers. With a rustle of fabric, she crumpled into an odd shallow heap like a tangle of dirty laundry. It didn’t look as if anyone was inside.

Taegan crouched over it, tore the veil aside, and discovered that was in fact the case. The cloak and other garments had evidently constituted a sort of puppet, a contrivance that had allowed the Wearer of Purple to quiz him without coming within reach of his weapons.

The real cult mistress was presumably lurking nearby and might not be alone. While Taegan had wasted precious seconds wrestling with the decoy, she and her minions could already have advanced on the gazebo. He drew his rapier, sprang to the doorway, and came face to face with the thing that was hopping in.

It walked on two legs, had dirty white scales, and was half a head shorter than Taegan, though its torso was thicker, and it had to pull its wings in close to fit them through the doorway. Its snarling features, though somewhat manlike, reminded him of the wyvern. Was it a demon with dragon blood or something comparable? It made sense that the Wearer of Purple might conjure such beings to serve her.

It glared into Taegan’s eyes. He felt strange for an instant, but that was all. Evidently it had tried and failed to cripple his mind. He thrust the rapier deep into its chest, and it collapsed, pawing weakly at its wound. It seemed astonished the blade had done it so much harm. Perhaps if he hadn’t thought to enchant the weapon, it would have only have scratched the demon’s hide or glanced off entirely.

Another such creature came scuttling forward, claws poised, its prehensile tail, possessed of a sting like the wyvern’s, arching over its shoulder. Taegan decided to take the battle to the air, where, he suspected, he could outmaneuver the ash-colored spirit as he had its gigantic cousin. He ran right over the demon sprawled on the gazebo’s little ring of porch, spread his wings, then heard the genuine Wearer of Purple chanting words of power.

Taegan’s wing muscles cramped. He gasped at the unexpected stab of pain, then tried to beat his pinions anyway. That was even more excruciating and useless, too. The limbs were essentially paralyzed.

The onrushing demon pounced at him, clawing and biting, pointed tail striking like an adder. Its sting radiated a cold so intense that he could feel it even on such a frigid night. The chill would surely sear whatever the member pierced.

The creature attacked so furiously that it was challenging to find an opportunity to riposte. He pierced its membranous wing and its snout, but neither wound sufficed to put it down. The sting leaped at his chest, and he only just managed to twist out of the way.

The demon simultaneously raked at his head and whirled its sting in a low, cunning jab at his lead foot. He thrust the rapier through one of its misshapen hands, snatched his leg up, and stamped down, pinning the spirit’s tail beneath it. Blessed Sune, the stinger was cold. Despite his boot, the chill nearly made him flinch away.

The two hurts, coming so close together, made the demon falter. He jerked the rapier from its extremity and drove it through its torso. The creature collapsed, and two more came shambling to take its place. The Wearer of Purple’s voice commenced the sibilant rhymes of another spell.

Taegan realized he needed more of his own magic. Otherwise, the chances were good that his foes would overwhelm him. Even as he met the demons’ advance with a sudden leap that he hoped would startle them, he whispered his own incantation.

Meanwhile, he pondered how best to use it. The same spell that had flung him into the wyvern’s path could carry him back inside his host’s mansion or beyond the wall enclosing the grounds to lose himself in the night. That might be the prudent course. But while he no longer found it worthwhile to initiate fights, he wasn’t inclined to run from them, either. Moreover, it occurred to him that if he could only dispose of the Wearer of Purple, her followers might leave him alone thereafter. So he risked taking his eyes off the demons long enough to glance quickly around, whereupon he spotted another cloaked figure, veiled and hooded like the puppet, lurking in the shadow of a chestnut tree.

The world seemed to shatter and recreate itself all in an instant, and he was standing behind her. He drove his rapier at her back.

It should have been a killing stroke, but somehow she sensed him, left off conjuring, and spun around. The sword plunged through her arm and pinned it to her torso. It was a nasty wound. Perhaps he’d even pricked a lung. But not the heart as he’d intended.

Well, a second thrust would finish her. He yanked the rapier from her flesh, and she surprised him. He’d expected the shock of her injury to stun her for at least a moment or two. But she pounced at him, and as she scratched at his face, he realized she didn’t look precisely like the puppet after all. Her white hands with their long, dark-lacquered nails were bare.

He tried to sidestep, and she snagged his cheek anyway. No matter, he thought, she’d missed the eye. As he shoved her away, however, making room for his sword to continue its work, his strength deserted him all at once, his knees buckling and the rapier nearly slipping from his grasp. It was happening more rapidly than even a potent poison could act. Once again, she’d crippled him with magic. Since he’d interrupted her casting, the power had likely come either from a talisman or some strange innate capability, not that it mattered at the moment.

She laughed, snatched out a claw-shaped dagger identical to the one the decoy had carried, and sprang. He gasped a battle cry and strained to raise his rapier. For a split second, he thought he wouldn’t be able to manage it, and his strength surged back. Her own momentum served to drive his point deep into her abdomen. She gasped, and he pulled the sword back for the death stroke. At which point, the demons caught up with him.

Cursing, he had no choice but to wheel and defend himself from their assault. One was still on the ground, and the other was flapping through the air, at the moment higher than his rapier could reach. Taegan had guessed right, the wretched brutes did fly less nimbly than an avariel, for all the good that did him.

He lunged at the demon in front of him. His point drove into its chest, and it fell to its knees. But it wasn’t finished. Snarling, slavering blood, it clutched his blade with both fists while its tail stabbed repeatedly at his forearm.

Taegan understood what it was trying to do: immobilize the rapier, or disarm him altogether, while its comrade dived at him. He could have abandoned the sword and relied on his poniard, but he hadn’t prepared a second enchantment to enhance a blade’s capabilities, and thus he doubted the dagger could do his opponents any significant harm. No, he needed the longer weapon. Frantically parrying the sting with his off hand he hauled on the rapier with all his might, only to discover the creature was about as strong as he was. He carried a charm in his head to augment his natural strength but knew he had no time to cast it.

Fortunately, though a rapier was primarily a thrusting weapon, the edges were sharp, and at last the blade jerked free by slicing so deeply into the demon’s fingers than it could no longer maintain its hold. Succumbing to its wounds at last, the creature collapsed facedown in the snow. Taegan looked up and thrust at the pallid thing plummeting at his head.

The rapier rammed deep into the demon’s body a split second before it slammed down on him and smashed him to the ground. He floundered out from underneath it, distancing himself from its talons, fangs, and sting, only then discerning it was dead.

Good, but what about the Wearer of Purple? He pivoted, surveying the battlefield, and was disappointed to find her gone. The wounds he’d given her would have incapacitated most people, but evidently she had a strong constitution and a will to match. Or perhaps she’d drunk some restorative elixir.

He recovered the rapier and cloaked himself in magic that would make it more difficult for a foe to aim an attack at him, another spell he’d never found a chance to cast while the demons were pressing him hard. Then he followed the Wearer of Purple’s footprints through the snow until they ended at one of the shoveled walks.

He picked a direction at random and continued the chase. But as the seconds passed, no cloaked figure appeared in the darkness ahead, and the path intersected with others, so he had to admit his quarry had eluded him.

Nor was that the end of his frustrations. When he returned to the vicinity of the gazebo, he discovered the demons had disappeared as well. Either their corpses had faded back into the infernal realm from which they’d originated, or—disquieting thought—the creatures had gradually recovered from their seemingly mortal wounds, risen, and limped away.

In any case, even if Taegan decided he wanted to ignore Gorstag’s dying plea for secrecy, he had no proof of what had happened and doubted the authorities would credit his story without it. Other maestros had spun wild tales to enhance their reputations and drum up trade. Moreover, even if the paladins did, in some measure believe, they might find a way to turn the affair around on him somehow. To make it a pretext to denounce him as a threat to the peace, close his school, perhaps even banish or imprison him.

All things considered, he thought he was still on his own. And in considerable danger of catching a cold. His exertions had warmed him, but having stopped to catch his breath, the chill was settling into his bones.

Accordingly, he wiped the gore from his rapier, sheathed it, combed his hair, adjusted his attire, rearranged his features into the proper insouciant expression, and rejoined the ball. In time, his knotted, aching wing muscles relaxed.