Instantly Fenrir released his hold, dropping like a stone towards the ground five stories below. Smming his feet into the wall behind him, he unched himself away at an angle to nd hard on the short-cropped grass of one of the citadel's wns. He rolled forward on impact to help absorb the shock, sparing a bare moment to gnce up at the balcony he had so recently vacated. The familiar shadows of Shroud coalesced around him just in time, the princess' head appearing over the edge of the railing in search of him almost immediately. She shouted an arm, and knowing the grounds would soon be alive with searchers, Fenrir wasted no time in vacating the citadel and its vicinity.

  He finally paused in an alleyway a quarter mile from the citadel. Above and behind him, lights danced to and fro, but he was more concerned with the long term effects of his blunder. 'She only saw me for a moment and it was pretty dark, so maybe she'll end up thinking she imagined it. Wait, no, I definitely hit the ground hard enough to leave a noticeable mark. They'll almost certainly find that, tomorrow if not tonight, so I'd be extremely surprised if they're not on high alert for a while.' He growled internally. 'This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't gotten careless. Thinking back, there was definitely a noticeable difference in the light level on her balcony versus the others; I just wasn't paying attention.'

  With one st gnce up at the citadel, the direwolf started back towards the seedy tavern he had left about an hour ago. 'Let's see what's become of that priest. He's still my best chance of finding a way onto the Cathedral grounds.'

  The priest, as it turned out, had not budged. Others in the room had, however, with only a few tables still occupied. Fenrir settled himself beside the window, ears alert for anything the men inside might say, but for the three-quarters of an hour he waited, the only useful information he was able to gain from their conversation was that the priest usually came here about twice a week.

  Finally, however, the st of the men dispersed, and Fenrir followed Carrow back towards the Cathedral. Several blocks away, the man ducked into an alley behind what appeared to be some sort of offices, and removing a loose brick in the wall of the building, he examined a dark hole beyond it. As before, Fenrir had climbed to the rooftops rather than follow the priest directly, and from his elevated position he could see over the man's shoulder that the hole was empty. Seemingly unbothered by this, Carrow repced the brick and continued towards the Cathedral. Seeing his window of opportunity closing, Fenrir debated attempting to steal the pass emblem, but ultimately decided not to. 'Not yet. I've rocked the boat quite enough in this city tonight, and besides, from what little the priest mentioned of her, it doesn't sound as though they suspect Safara, yet. I'm fairly certain I'll have another chance before long, so I'll wait for now.'

  Once he had watched the priest reenter the Cathedral by the same gate which he had left it, Fenrir decided to leave the city. It was growing te, and he wanted to be beyond the walls before the first early risers were abroad. 'And it's not like this trip was unfruitful, despite my stupidity at the citadel. I've got a lot to think about.' Shroud having by this time worn off, he stuck mostly to the alleys to avoid guard patrols. 'No one mentioned what that smuggling ring is actually moving. It sounded like not even the princess knew, and she's been trying to track them down for several months now, from the sounds of it. I'm no criminologist, but that doesn't sound typical. I'm pretty sure that's usually the first thing you discover about a smuggling ring. And I don't know anyth-'

  He stopped dead. Fifteen feet ahead of him in the center of the alley he had been following stood Princess America, now fully dressed in steel pte armor. And she was again looking directly at him.

  For the barest instant Fenrir debated simply retreating back around the corner he had just turned, but a sound some distance behind warned him of approaching footsteps in that direction. 'Was it a trap? No, she looks just as surprised as me; just rotten luck, then.' Before the princess could recover from her surprise and possibly alert reinforcements, Fenrir leaped forward directly towards her with all the speed he could muster, the result of which made him a dark blur in an already shadowed alley.

  His sudden movement shocked the princess into action, but he closed the distance between them so quickly that her attempt to draw her sword was only partially successful; she got it free of its sheath, but before she had it in a position in which it would be useful Fenrir was upon her. With a swipe of his cws he sent the bde cttering across the alley. He did not slow, however, instead using the weight of his body to sm into the princess and knock her off her feet. She nded on her back, skidding several feet before coming to a halt.

  Fenrir immediately pounced atop her, taking advantage of her ck of helmet to y his cws to the side of her neck as he had done with Katari some days before. He pressed hard enough to make clear to her the threat they posed, while with his other hand he held a finger to his lips in the universal gesture for silence. At first, it seemed as though the princess would call out despite his warning, but as he stared her down she defted slightly, and closed her mouth. Her eyes were full of questions and no small amount of defiant anger, but to Fenrir's surprise there was very little fear.

  His senses now fully roused, he could hear that the footsteps behind him had increased in speed; no doubt their owner had heard the commotion. A short distance ahead of him the alley forked, one passage leading off at a right angle to the main one. Making up his mind, he released the princess, and before she could even rise to a sitting position, he had vanished into the smaller passage.

  As America undressed in preparation for bed, her mind was occupied by the conversation she had just had with Flint. 'Or Ser Brandis,' she amended wryly. 'I miss when I could just call him Flint and no one cared.' Pulling the tie out of her hair, she allowed it to fall in white-gold waves about her, before beginning to run a brush through it. 'He's right, I suppose, but we've made basically no progress in two months. If we could just find a clue... Anything would do, a hint of where they operate from, the identity of a single member, something. We don't even know how many there are.'

  Pcing the brush back on the dresser, she slipped into a nightgown and turned towards her bed, only to freeze. Beyond the open door of her balcony, a dark shape was rising over the balustrade, and her breath caught in her throat as a pair of brilliant golden eyes became visible in the shadowed mass. They locked eyes for only a fraction of a second, then the eyes vanished as the dark shape whipped out of sight below the level of the balcony.

  Her heart hammering in her chest, America ran to the edge of the balcony and looked down, but she could see no sign of the mysterious being. She called an arm to the guards, then rushed to put on some clothes. Ser Brandis met her in the passage outside her rooms, looking concerned.

  "Are you all right, princess? What happened?"

  "I'm fine, but there was something on my balcony just a couple seconds ago. It might still be on the grounds," she replied, hurrying towards the stairs.

  "Some...thing?"

  As they descended to the ground floor America expined what she had seen. "...But then when I looked over the railing, there was no sign of it. It can't have gotten far, so if we hurry we might be able to catch it." Gncing up at her bodyguard, she caught the doubtful expression on his face. "What, you don't believe me?"

  "I believe that you saw something, princess, but if it was on your balcony it had to traverse five stories to reach the ground, and you tell me that it did it in less than ten seconds, or you would have seen it? If it is capable of such a feat, then it is capable of already being long gone. We will search, of course; the grounds and the surrounding city, but I do not expect we will find it."

  America nodded. "Okay, I'll help. -Aht, before you say anything, you'll be right beside me and I'll wear my armor as well, okay?"

  Flint looked conflicted, and America knew that he didn't want her to potentially put herself in the path of danger, but after a moment he nodded. "Very well, princess."

  They reached the base of the castle directly below her balcony, and she looked up at it. It was a daunting drop, no matter how you looked at it, and for a moment she wondered if the thing had been able to fly. But then Flint called her attention to something in the grass. "Princess, look at this. Davis, bring that torch over here."

  The guard did as he was bid, and Flint pointed out two deep impressions in the soft earth of the wn. "Whatever it was, it nded right here. We'll want to have Miss Cree take a look at these ter. She'll be able to discern much more than we can. For now, everyone is to be extremely careful not to blur these tracks. One careless step could obliterate a vital clue."

  America examined the marks closely, being careful to avoid stepping anywhere the thing could have left a trace. "From the looks of it, whatever it was jumped directly from the balcony. How did it not break a leg?"

  "Not only that, but I believe it weighed quite a bit more than the average human," Flint added. "These marks seem too deep to me to be possible otherwise, though I would like Miss Cree to verify that before I would presume to be certain."

  Their limited woodcraft could deduce little more from the prints, so America quickly donned her armor and then they joined the search. Finding nothing on the citadel grounds, they began a sweep of the noble district with the assistance of the city guard.

  It was over an hour ter before they found anything out of the ordinary. America had managed to convince Flint to search the alleys parallel to hers to help the search go more quickly since they would still be in easy shouting distance of one another, so she was alone when she paused in the search to sigh in frustration. 'This is a fool's errand. We're not going to find it like this.' She remembered the eyes of the dark figure, and felt a shiver run up her spine. 'But what was it? There's no way it was human, not with eyes like that. Some kind of monster, maybe? I wish I could see it up close; then maybe-'

  She gasped. In the alley before her, a dark shape had just turned the corner, and those same golden eyes stared down at her. For a long moment she stood spellbound, surprised into inactivity by the sudden appearance of the very one she sought. Then, suddenly, it moved. Almost faster than her gaze could follow it bore down on her, the eyes a bze of yellow in the bck mass. She tried to draw her sword, but the creature was too quick; it knocked the weapon from her grasp and sent her flying backwards to nd on her back on the hard stones of the alley.

  Before she could even begin to recover from the impact it was atop her, and she felt something long and sharp press against her throat. The monster loomed over her and for the first time she was able to see its face clearly. Her first impression was of a wolf, except much rger than any wolf she had ever seen. But the eyes of the monster shone with intelligence and she could see none of the bloodlust or savagery she had expected to find there.

  It pressed a single finger to its lips, enjoining silence. For a moment she thought about shouting anyway, but even more than the pressure against her throat the powerful and dominant gaze of the monster convinced her of her helplessness. For a long moment they stared at each other, and then it was gone.

  America pushed herself to a sitting position, her heart crashing against her ribs. Gncing around revealed no sign of the monster; it was as though it had been nothing more than a phantom, but the bruises forming where the monster had impacted her and where she had struck the ground proved it real enough. Absentmindedly she lifted a shaking hand to her throat where the monster had almost broken the skin. Of the emotions which swirled within her, confusion was predominant. It had had her utterly in its power, so why had it left her unharmed? What did it want, and for that matter, what was it? It was clearly intelligent, but she had never heard of a monster which matched it in appearance. Why had it been here in Mavenia?

  Rapidly approaching footsteps attracted her attention and a moment ter Flint came around the corner. "Princess, are you alright? I heard a crash-" he stopped short as he took in the scene.

  "I'm fine, Flint," America replied, dragging herself back to the present with difficulty. "I found the monster again, that's all."

  "What?!" Dropping all pretense of decorum or etiquette, Flint rushed to her side, dropped to his knees, and took her head in his hands, examining her closely. "Did it hurt you? Where is it now? Are you sure you're alright?"

  Despite the experience she had just been through, America had to ugh at the intensity of his reaction. Pushing his hands aside, she excimed, "I'm fine! Aside from a few bumps and bruises, it didn't hurt me at all."

  "We're going back to the citadel right now. If it's hunting you, I won't feel easy until there's some solid walls and a legion of guards between you and it."

  "Oh, stop overreacting. I don't believe it's hunting me at all, I think I just got lucky."

  "Lucky. Right." Flint pulled her to her feet, checking her over again as he did so. "Either way, you're not spending another moment out on the streets tonight. You can tell me about it back at the castle."

  Knowing from experience that he would not be talked out of it, she simply shrugged and, after retrieving her sword, allowed him to lead her back towards the citadel. 'Well,' she reflected rather wryly as she sheathed the slim bde, 'I got my wish.'

  TheBestofSome