The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes Page B

trotted into the small clearing where they waited. The air shimmered around it, and a moment later, it was a small, slender woman with ash-blond hair and the same rainbow-shimmering horn set in her pale forehead.
    She saw Loch and gasped. "Little One!" Her horn shone in delight, and she pulled Loch into a warm hug.
    "It's Loch, for the moment," Loch muttered, hugging Ululenia back.
    "Little One?" Kail asked.
    "She did some work for my father," Loch said. "Helped make the river flow cleanly again."
    "Little One?"
    "We've got a job, Ululenia," Loch cut in. "We could use a shapeshifter, and I thought of you."
    "Whatever you did to Jerl's mind could be helpful, too," Kail added.
    "Does this job benefit the untamed realms of nature?" Ululenia asked.
    "It's going to pay really well," Kail said after a moment. "Well enough to buy a lot of nature for yourself."
    Ululenia frowned. "Is there any chance that young muscular virgins will be involved?"
    Loch's lips quirked into a grin. "I can probably arrange that."
    "Wonderful," Ululenia said with a warm smile, her rainbow horn flaring in the middle of her pale brow. "When do we start?"

    In the town of Ros-Aelafuir, a pair of scruffy men in nondescript clothing looked at the town jail, which had a large hole in one wall. The town's former sheriff was being held in the basement until the jail was repaired.
    "And nobody cleared it with the local contacts?"
    "Nope."
    Riffe exhaled slowly. He hated small towns. "Did you get a description?"
    "Yep." After a short silence, Ketch, the local contact, coughed and said, "Mousy girl and an Imperial fellow. They didn't register."
    A mousy girl and an Imperial. While that might be traceable, it didn't put Riffe in a good mood. "Can you give me anything else to take back to the boss?"
    There was a thoughtful pause. Or, Riffe suspected, simply a pause.
    "Mousy girl and the Imperial met up with a pair of Urujar outside town," Ketch finally added. "And the Urujar did register."
    "Perhaps," Riffe suggested slowly, "you could get me their names."
    "I could look," Ketch said grudgingly.
    "I'd really appreciate it," Rife said with infinite patience. Ketch stalked off, leaving Riffe to look at the hole in the wall.
    Jyelle had passed the word for regional directors to watch for a pair of Urujar right after the news of the Cleaners breakout had come around. She'd been furious. Evidently they'd crossed Jyelle a few years ago. Riffe tried not to think about such things. He prided himself on fast hands, keen eyes, and a complete disregard for matters worth killing people over.
    Riffe's keen eyes noticed something in the shadows near the wall. Dust from the wall's shattered frame skittered and sprayed whenever the wind blew, but in the dull afternoon light, it looked like the dust was billowing around something. Something that wasn't really there. Maybe magic.
    Jyelle didn't pay him enough for this. Rife stepped back, but the wind gusted again, and this time the dust billowed around something closer, a shape moving toward him.
    He turned to run.
    The blade went cleanly across his throat.

Four
    Father Bertrus was surprised when the clergyman's weekly game of suf-gesuf picked up a new addition, but not disappointed. Sister Desidora was a pretty woman whose short-cropped auburn hair framed a cheerful face tanned from travel. Her olive-green robes were unadorned, but that was only prudent in these troubled times.
    Of greater note was the warhammer that rode on her hip, catching the light with a glittering sparkle. Where an ordinary warhammer looked much like a long-handled carpenter's hammer, this great weapon had a thick silver hilt inlaid with rivulets of tiny rubies, and a massive double-hammer head of solid platinum, banded with strips of rune-carved gold just behind the head. Desidora claimed it as a religious artifact of her order, a weapon of the ancients that she was carrying to a border shrine.
    So taken was Father Bertrus by the pretty woman that he neglected