A Game of Mouse and Cat

Seek, locate, evaluate, measure, conclude, act.

— The Six Standards of Measurers

Hildervest
Province of West Angrava
Angvardi Empire
November 5

Deep in Teladia's largest forest, nestled along the banks of the Angravada River, the sprawling city of Hildervest spanned out as far as the eye could see on either end of the street. The buildings, mostly made of wood, were rarely more than three stories, but there were tens of thousands of them all clustered together in a mishmash of winding streets and crowded slums. While the wars had taken many of the young men, there were still plenty of people to fill the streets and contribute to the general clamor of the markets.

The first thing Maleena noticed upon arriving here two weeks ago was that there were a great deal more women loitering in the streets of the slums than men, even in mornings such as this. With hundreds of thousands of soldiers marching in the West and more legions being formed each week, most of those men who didn't have somewhere to be had been sent off to fight the Westerners. The Measurers had been wise to send her as she could travel far easier than a man could, and without risk of being pressed into the legions.

Cities of this size still unnerved her, but she had grown used to their sights. Those in the East must breed like rats to fill cities like this. She had heard that, before the war, Hildervest boasted over four hundred thousand souls—and it wasn't even the largest city in the province! She didn't know how people could stand to live so close to each other for all of their lives. In the rich areas near the river, things weren't so bad, but the farther one got from that roiling river, the worse the living conditions got. Families lived in squalor, sometimes even one on top of each other in buildings that crammed as many people as possible into them. When the wind died down, the stench was enough to sour the back of her throat. She thanked the Stoics that she had learned to endure hardships without yielding because she could have tolerated it here in the summer. The cold at least managed to keep most of the smell and rot at bay.

The city had once possessed a walls and a fortress, but centuries of peace in these regions had resulted in their being dismantled and the stones used for construction of grand mansions for the nobles. The last time war had come to these parts had been during the War of Lost Prophecy six hundred years ago, and it had been Angvardi who had marched on their own kind during the civil war that ravaged the entire empire. The fortress still remained, but it was mostly used to house the two legions that served as this region's garrison and was in no condition to withstand a siege.

Much of the city ran along the river. The southwestern parts of the riverbanks were reserved for the wealthy and nobles. To the northeast and downriver, the docks and fisher's ports fouled the river for miles with the byproducts of their trade and the waste of thousands of people. She went there once when she was scouting the city and had never returned.

This wasn't her first time in the East, though she had never been this far north before. The Easterners always needed to be watched and there were never enough eyes and ears to report on everything that happened in such a vast stretch of land. In her twelve years of service, she had been to every kingdom in the West except Subeleth and most of the Terulan realms. This was only her second time in Angvard and her first alone. There simply weren't enough Measurers to go around these days, not with the wars.

An filthy cripple bumped into her and brought Maleena out of her reverie. A lock of her curly black hair slipped out from under her hood and covered her eyes while tickling her nose. She stifled a curse at the unwanted reminder that her task here forced her to have hair at all as she tossed her head to get the hair out of her eyes. Even that unpleasantness did not distract her from the fact that she was no longer alone in the alleyway she had been standing in. She had not seen him when she first entered it, but apparently he had come up from behind her and jostled her on his way to the street.

"I do beg your forgiveness, miss," he said. "If only the gods had not seen it fit to give me this leg, I might be fighting the heathens with the rest of the men. Instead, I must beg like a pathetic Westerner." When she made no move to offer coin, he gave her a stunted bow and started scurrying down the street with the rest of the flow of citizens.

Maleena rolled her eyes and grabbed the man's arm before he could get two steps. "Being a cripple does not entitle you to what is not yours, nor does it excuse theft." Rather than anger, her voice was calm and controlled. Measurers never acted in anger, they always kept their mind and evaluated the situation.

The cripple's eyes widened in indignation as he stammered, "I-I beg your pardon! How dare you—"

She rolled her eyes and twisted the man's arm behind him while using her free hand to grab the coinpurse that had previously been tied to her belt from beneath the rags of his sleeve. Before he even had time to cry out, his hand was trapped behind his back and she was whispering calmly into his ear from behind him. "Admit your faults and measured."

Instead of admitting his guilt as he should have, the beggar tried to fight. The hand that wasn't firmly within her grasp lashed out and Maleena had time to see the glint of metal before reacting. Foolish mistake, she thought tiredly. She didn't have time for this at all, but her course was clear now.

Rather than pushing the man away from her to draw one of the several knives on her person, she used her leverage with the man's trapped hand to pull him closer and prevent him from being able to stab at her. He waved his knife a few times in the air with wild abandon before she snapped his wrist. With a shriek, he dropped his knife and collapsed to the ground in pain. She released his broken wrist and let him cradle it as he began to sob.

"My arm!" he cried out between gasps of pain. "You filthy whore, you broke my arm!"

With a sigh, Maleena evaluated the situation and came to the only rational conclusion. There was the briefest of movements and the slight rustling of her thick brown robes and the man's sobbing was replaced by wet gasps. A few seconds later, the beggar collapsed into the alley with blood draining from his neck. She stood silently over him, watching him convulse until he moved no more. Then, confident that nobody else had noticed the altercation, she stepped over the man's body and walked into the busy street. In a few seconds, she was lost among the crowd of similarly cloaked citizens.

Thus was her purpose: to measure.

The man had attempted to steal from her. The measurement for that was to have his wrist broken so that he would be reminded of the consequences of his actions while it healed. It didn't matter that the purse he had stolen contained only a few worthless pieces of iron she had hammered into faux coins to serve as a decoy from her real coinpurse, it was the intent that counted. If he had admitted his mistake and begged forgiveness, she might only have broken his thumb and forefinger. The moment he pulled out the knife, his fate had been sealed. The measurement for attempted murder was death, and death was what she specialized in.

Most of the flow in the street went one direction, and Maleena was more than happy to comply because they were all heading where she wanted to go. Everyone seemed to be flocking toward Gazper's Street, the largest in the city. Without even really trying, Maleena found herself heading west toward the thoroughfare that served as the main corridor through the city. The closer they got to that central street, the more difficult it was to continue on. As she heard the excited rumors flying about the crowd, she realized that the day she had been waiting for was finally here.

The Empress and her entourage had arrived along their journey south to Terula. Maleena had been waiting for such an occurrence so that she may fulfill the task that she had been sent for. At last she could do her duty and leave this wretched city.

It soon became too crowded to move forward, so she had to take to another route or she would never get close enough to the procession to fulfill her task. It took a good deal of gentle shoving and maneuvering to go against the flow, but she was soon able to make it out of the thickest of the throng.

She stepped into a crossroad that had few if any people still on it and began looking for a suitable location. When she found one, a brick fence that was collapsing and had many holes in it, she scrambled up. From there, it took only a little work to get to side of the building that the wall had surrounded. Using her arms to pull her up, she swung her legs up onto the ledge of the wooden roof. That building was only two stories tall, but it brushed up next to one that had an additional story. She grabbed a rusting waste pipe and hauled herself up to its roof.

After she dusted herself off, she took stock of her new playing field. She could not actually see the Angvravada River from here, but she could see the gap in the buildings where it was. The river itself held little interest to her now except as a means to get her bearings. Gazper's Street bisected the city crosswise from northwest to southeast perpendicular to the river. The Empress would be coming from the north and was likely heading toward the old fortress garrison or perhaps the mayor's estate along the river. Knowing that the procession was going to be travelling through that street didn't do her much good if she didn't know where exactly the Empress was. It wouldn't do to reach the road only to find that she had already passed, nor would it do to wait too close to the fortress and its added guards.

She closed her brown eyes and listened to the city around her. When she opened them again, a smile formed on her lips. The noise around the Empress' procession was the bound to be greater, so all she had to do was follow her ears. With a deep breath, she launched herself forward, racing toward her target using the rooftops, edges of walls, and whatever else she needed to avoid the crowds in the streets and head toward where the noise was loudest.

It felt good to be using her powerful arms and legs to propel her up and down as she ran from rooftop to rooftop. Few of the buildings were uniform causing her to have to climb and jump down from varying heights. Fortunately, it never took more than a couple of seconds to discover some route that allowed her to go where she wanted. Uneven wallboards, windowsills, and even the occasional stack of boxes provided her with all that she needed to go wherever she wanted. Once, when she needed to cross a street, she grabbed a rather firm looking laundry line, severed it with one of her many knives, and swung across from a four story building to land on a two story building across the street. That had been slightly exhilarating, but had nearly been disastrous when she took a bad roll and nearly fell through a termite infested portion of the roof. A few people saw her, but none raised any alarm. Anyone who had any spare time had already started heading toward Gazper's Street and those left behind had work to do and couldn't spare any to fetch any of the town guard. It didn't matter even if they did because Maleena was moving too fast for any of them to catch up.

At last, she could see the glint of long columns of metal clad men marching down a broad street in front of her. Rumor had it that the Empress left her palace with thousands of guards, as though those would protect her from an assassin. Men in shiny armor were great when it came to fighting battles, but they rarely were any problems for a single person skilled in the arts of infiltration and execution. What army was going to attack the Empress so deep in her own empire? Surely the Easterners weren't so paranoid of the West that they thought one of the fragmented kingdoms could slip an army through the lines and march unseen through hundreds and hundreds of miles to attack their Empress.

The foolishness of that thought stuck with her as she leaped over the last few obstacles separating her from Gazper's Street. She came to a stop on top of a three story wooden building that, judging from the garnished sign that swung from a pole a few feet below her vantage point, was a cloth shop. Stretched out on either side of the street below her were hundreds of soldiers with spears against their shoulders and banners waving proudly before the cheering crowds. Off to her right, she could see the cavalry and even more banners telling her that the Empress had not yet passed through. This would be the perfect place for her because none of the foolish soldiers thought to look at the roofs of the street they were marching their precious Empress down.

Falling to a crouch, she quickly scanned the location, evaluating every window and as many of the crowd as she could see. Satisfied that nobody's attention was directed at her, she allowed herself a brief smile and pulled out the four pieces of her compact bow. The first, a metal riser, had slots at either end for the two flexible wooden limbs fit in. When she slid each limb in, she twisted it a half rotation to lock it into place. The final piece, the bowstring, required little effort for her muscular arms to fit. Once she was finished, she had a compact but nonetheless deadly weapon that could be quickly disassembled if she needed to conceal it.

The next thing she did was place five arrows on the ledge in front of her, each within easy reach. She usually didn't miss at this range, but it was better to be sure than to be forced to scramble for another arrow while her target fled to cover. She would get only one chance at this. If she missed, then she would have to escape the city and attempt to waylay the Empress' procession at a later day, but they would be more wary.

With her weapon ready, she began to scan the buildings and crowd once more. Her head jerked suddenly toward a flurry of motion across the street. There, across the street on a three story building two shops down, another figure was crouched on the roof. Her instincts told her that this not a normal bystander at all. Her fears were confirmed when the figure turned their head and gazed straight across the street and paused. They lowered their hood revealing a man whose skin, like hers, was too dark to be Angvardi. When he was sure she was completely focused on him, he smiled and gave her a mocking salute with two fingers tapping the left side of his nose three times.

Maleena's eyes widened in realization of who this man was even as her body sprang into action. He was probably here for the exact same reason she was, and that was most unfortunate. He couldn't be allowed to complete his mission instead of her because it would invalidate her entire purpose of being here. The Angvardi needed to know that it was her that had taken the shot and not this other man. From her, it was a justified, fully measured, and deserved action in response to unacceptable provocation. From him, it was nothing more than murder.

In a blur, she nocked the first of her arrows, pulled the string back, and released it sending an arrow across the street at where the man was crouched. With a sneer, the man rolled backwards and her throw missed. Something thudded into the ledge in front of her and she dropped to cover even as she grabbed a second arrow and nocked it.

When she peeked her head over the side of the ledge to line up another shot, the man had vanished. All that remained to testify to his presence at all was a single arrow sticking out of the ledge where she had been crouching. With a snarl, she tugged it out and tested it for a few seconds. Seeing that it was well crafted, she added it to her remaining three remaining on the ledge and deposited all four in the small quiver at her side.

With a muttered curse, she scanned the buildings across the street for any sign of the man. Seeing none, she started carefully working her way up the street toward where the Empress was arriving, assuming that was where he was headed. She didn't even manage to cross the cloth shop's roof before something whipped in front of her face and pain shot through her arm. She dropped without hesitation, twisting her body while doing so in the hopes of catching a glance at the man.

Even as she fell, she caught sight of him crouching behind the two story building straight across from her. He hadn't headed toward the Empress at all, but went the other direction. If he had been at an equal height as she, his arrow would have landed in her temple rather than just grazing her arm. He had taken a risky shot in shooting from where he was. Either he was foolishly confident in his skills or he was simply content to taunt her. Judging on his mock salute earlier, she was betting on the latter. Well, she was no mouse to be toyed with, but a cat in her own right. If he wanted to play a game with her, he would find that she had claws of her own.

With a huff of determination, she untangled her arrow from the bow and held both in the same hand so she had one hand free. With only a quick glance back across the street to determine he wasn't aiming at her, she started crawling toward the rear of the roof. When she got to the edge, she took a gamble and jumped down to the two story shop below. As soon as her feet hit the wooden planks, she dashed away from Gazper's Street and into cover. She couldn't leave the man there to do whatever he had come to do, but neither could she present him with herself as a target. He was good enough to hit her if she let him, even at seventy yards.

She ran along the buildings that faced the road parallel to Gazper's Street until she reached another three story building five shops down. Then, she crawled up the exposed windowsill to the third level and checked to make sure her arrow was at the ready. She didn't draw, but her hand was in position to do so.

Slowly, she edged her way to the rear of the building over to where she could look out at the procession still going forward below her. The building facing Gazsper's Street was only two stories, but the extra distance didn't bother her. She was hunting now and hoped that her prey wouldn't expect her to appear on the building facing away from the procession.

Her brown eyes once again scanned the rooftops for any sign of the cloaked man. There was nothing to be seen, though in one window, a family was looking down at the soldiers. They could be a problem, but not at this point. She needed to find this man before he found her, or worse, the purpose for his being up on the roof in the first place.

She had just about convinced herself that he had taken to foot when she saw a twinkle of sunlight off to the side, well above ground level. The morning sun in the east was behind her and somewhere, a piece of metal had caught its rays and reflected them back toward her. She studied the building in the direction it had come from and saw nothing. Then, a bit of movement silhouetted a man's arm peeking out around a corner—a arm holding a bow and aiming at the crowd below.

Without hesitation, Maleena took several steps forward while drawing her arrow back and taking aim. It was a long shot for her to make, but the man was only on the second floor of a building so she had height to her advantage. It wasn't very windy, so she felt that the risky shot was worth it. With a quick, whispered prayer to the Stoics, she released the arrow and quickly drew another from her quiver.

Instead of penetrating flesh and bone, the arrow smacked into the wood mere inches from the man's arm. That arm jerked back into cover. A split second later, the top of a hooded head and two eyes peered around the corner then quickly retreated before she could loose another arrow.

Maleena snarled in frustration at the missed shot and dashed back the way she had come. He would reposition, of course, but she needed to get to a good spot before him so she could have the chance to ambush him again. The Empress' procession was getting closer and time was running out.

He would either have to choose between getting to a high point and keeping watch for her or, knowing she was up high herself, go low and hope that the cover of the buildings on each side would prevent her from getting a clean shot. She was left with the same problem: hunt him down or go for the target.

Faced in that light, there was only one choice. Even if she was captured or killed, as long as she was the one who fired the shot, her mission was complete. She had to be the one to fire, not that man. Instead of looking for another three story building to perch atop, she headed down, closer to the street where her target was getting nearer with each passing second. There was one small, squat building in the area that had only one story. It was two buildings up the street, almost exactly between where she was now and where she had first set up. The best thing about it was that the taller building behind it would block the early sun and provide her with at least a little shadow to hide in.

She was out of breath by the time she got there, but she was not too late. She braced herself in the shadows against the edge of the neighboring building and waited for the Empress' procession to arrive. The cavalry was now marching along in their polished armor, the Empress wouldn't be long at all.

There was no sight of the other man anywhere as the cavalry procession ended and the noble's of the Empress' court began walking beneath her vantage point. Slowly, she nocked an arrow and edged a little closer to the edge. This low, there was a good chance someone would see her if she got too close, so she had to be very careful.

Without showing the bow just yet, she leaned out a little to see the target. Never one to miss an opportunity to show Imperial might and splendor to the masses, the Empress herself was in a topless carriage in all of her finery. She sat erect with a stony face, not acknowledging the wild cheers around her, but all the same, clearly basking in them. Behind her, after a small column of soldiers, a young woman who had to be the princess had a look of excited wonder on her face as she sat in a carriage of her own.

Both were likely warded against attacks, both traditional and magical, but she had come prepared for that. The arrows she had brought were not standard weapons of wood, feathers, and steel. They were enchanted with an extremely rare and valuable substances known only to the Measurers. This enchantment served to negate magic for a split second. Normally, it wasn't enough to do much as fireballs and lightning bolts were only partially diminished by its affects, but she wasn't using it to block either of those. She was using it to allow a single arrow traveling at a high velocity to penetrate a magical ward. She didn't need more than a split second to fulfill her purpose.

It was time.

Maleena drew her arrow back and brought the fletching to her cheek. She was about to fire when she saw a familiar cloak in the back of the crowd. Beneath it, she saw that all too dark face of the man she had been hunting, but there was no bow in hand. She frowned in confusion at this move. What advantage did he get by joining the crowd? There was no way he could fire a bow from among them.

The man started slowly pushing his way forward, careful not to attract too much attention. Something about this didn't make sense. Surely he wasn't planning on rushing the Empress and stabbing her. That was suicide. Even if the guards didn't catch him, the wards would.

Her heart nearly stopped at that thought. If he was going to attack, how did he plan on getting past the Empress' wards? She was confident that he didn't possess any of the enchantments that her weapons did, and he couldn't have anticipated on getting any of hers, even if they hadn't been broken by impact. A mage or wizard wouldn't need a bow, they would attempt to use magic to break the shield instead.

His actions didn't make sense, and where something didn't make sense, there was often a trap. A Measurer didn't act without properly evaluating and measuring everything. Instead of firing, she watched the man on the street as he got closer and closer to the front edge of the crowd. Her hands tightened around the bow and string as the Empress' carriage drew up next to where he was standing, then passed on. He made no move against it, but waited patiently with his eyes fixed on the next one.

Realization dawned upon Maleena and she hesitated. He wasn't after the Empress, he was after the princess! The pieces began to fit into place and she knew what he was doing. He never intended to attack with a bow, only to convince her that he was and to force her into a close range where she would be seen once she fired. Then, after the Empress was dead and everyone was after her, he would slip into the chaos and kill the princess. By then, the wards would be all in chaos and the girl would be left all but unprotected.

Why would he pass up the Empress only to hunt down her daughter? What sort of nefarious purpose would he want from that? She could think of several possible outcomes of having both the Empress and her sole heir killed and few of them seemed pleasant. The undeniable chaos that would result would cause more destruction than was needed.

Now she was torn. She had her mission and it was quickly passing her by. She had come to kill the Empress, a woman who had been measured and found deserving of death. However, the princess, by all accounts, was a gentle, kind young woman who had no part in her mother's war. She had not been measured nor found deserving.

Could she stand by as this man killed an innocent as direct result of her actions? This was not an easy choice, but her training had left her with trustworthy instincts. She had been forced to make decisions in a rush before and in each, she had followed what her gut told her to do.

This time, her gut was telling her that she couldn't let the princess die, even if it meant failing her mission. Another could be sent to fulfill the task, but if both died, nobody could repair the damage it would cause. Worse, she couldn't live with herself and allow the man to kill the girl.

The man finally made it to the edge of the crowd. When the princess' carriage reached him, he did something she didn't expect. Instead of waiting for her to make the shot against the Empress, he pointed up to her and screamed something. Hundreds of heads turned toward her and her cover was entirely blown. Before she could retreat, she saw the man's cloak drop to the ground revealing a set of armor identical to that worn by the guards.

He didn't need her to kill the Empress to get close to the princess. In the space of a heartbeat, Maleena knew what she had to do. Without any further hesitation, she took aim and fired straight at the man's heart.

The arrow caused a brief flicker of energy from the ward surrounding the princess as it passed within inches of her face. The arrow continued true straight into the man's chest leaving the princess unharmed and him decidedly less unharmed. A smile formed on one side of Maleena's mouth as the satisfaction of a clean shot washed over her, then there was pain.

An invisible hand seemed to slam into her and smash her against the wall of the building. She cried out in pain as several ribs were broken from the impact. Angry shouts from below grew dimmer as blood began to pound in her ears. Whatever spell was holding her to the wall, it was powerful enough to prevent her from breathing. Her heart had already been pounding from adrenaline released by the situation and her body was crying out for air. Her vision faded into blackness and she felt no more pain.