We watched and waited for a long time until the guard who had walked behind the building returned to the front, continuing his patrol down the street. Watching his movements carefully, Sil and I slipped into the crowd, following him from a distance. He turned down another alley—the one at the end of the building that connected with the clinic—and we used that as our moment to strike.

  I pressed my body through the crowd quickly, slipping in behind the man. Moving quietly, half-crouching as I closed the distance, I withdrew one of my daggers from its sheath with a slow, methodical movement.

  The blade didn't make a sound as it slid free.

  The armor these guards wore was similar to the armor used by most of the imperial army, with one crucial difference. The area where the chest plate and the waist of the armor connected was much thinner than in typical armor. It was meant to give the guards more freedom of movement. That also meant it was the perfect place to bypass the protection of their uniform.

  The man came to a stop a few steps away, and I used [Swift Strike] on my feet and then once again on my hands, directing my attack to the weak point just above the guard’s waist. He let out a soft noise as my hand clapped over his mouth; the blade digging into him as I held tight, giving the paralysis of Viper's Bite a chance to start working. After a breath, I felt his body start to relax slightly, and then Sil was next to us, his hands grabbing the man on either side of his face. He twisted, and with one quick motion, the man's neck snapped and his body went limp.

  I pulled the dagger away, and we dragged his body deeper into the alley, behind a pile of garbage that looked to have been building up for weeks. The smell assaulted my nose, but I pushed down the bile rising in my throat, and we began to undress the guard before his clothes could become too soiled with blood. I couldn’t help glancing up at the buildings around us. Would someone see us?

  "It won't be perfect," Sil explained, drawing my attention back down. He was leaning down and dipping his finger in the man's blood. He concentrated on the blood, and it began to seep into his skin. "Okay, now we wait," he told me.

  I watched in both terror and fascination as the bones in his face began to move and shift, slowly taking on the form of the dead man at our feet.

  "We don't need perfect."

  "Speak for yourself," he said, his voice growing slightly deeper before leveling out once more. "But you aren't the one that needs to walk into the lion's den with someone else's face. Let's hope none of the other guards know him personally. You didn't even think to get his name." He rolled his eyes as he spoke.

  "I'll let you deal with the body next time, then." I retorted. "I made sure to stab him in a place where it shouldn't ruin the clothes."

  He held up the man's shirt, which was slightly stained with blood near the bottom.

  "Barely noticeable."

  "Right," he said, clearly unamused. "Either way, the disguise should work, so long as nobody knows him. If they start asking questions, this is going to go downhill quickly."

  "If they start asking questions, then you've probably already been caught." It was mostly a joke, but he didn't seem to get the humor in it.

  It took another several minutes for his body to finish its shift. It took everything I had not to stare at him the entire time. Partly fascinated and partly sickened by the way his skin moved as his bones changed their shape to match the dead man’s appearance.

  Once it was done, he stripped out of his old clothes and pulled on the guard's. I helped him situate the armor, which was a little big on him, as he wasn't nearly as tall as the man had actually been.

  "You’re a little short for a guard, don’t you think? Couldn't give him another hand or two?" I asked in jest.

  "More time," Sil muttered. "You always need more time for the details."

  I gave him a reassuring smile. "I'll be okay. Just walk out there like you know what you're doing."

  He sighed and gave me a look of annoyance—one that looked far too threatening on the face of the man whose form he had taken.

  "Wish me luck?" He asked.

  "You don't need luck. You've got me." Grinning, I saluted him halfheartedly and sent him off. I watched from the shadows as he moved back down the street toward the clinic. I turned my attention back to the guard. His death had been swift, I had at least made sure of that. But part of me did wonder who he had been. I didn’t recognize him—there was no way for me to recognize everyone in my empire. But the questions still rolled to the front of my mind. Had he been one of the ones that would have stood by me to the end? Or would he have turned on me the moment the [Hero] offered him a taste of power.

  Shaking my head, I pushed the thoughts away and left the body of the dead guard stuffed behind the garbage in the alley, where he was less likely to be found anytime soon. I crossed the street, returning to our original alleyway so that I could watch the front of the clinic more easily.

  Sil waited outside the clinic for several minutes, even continuing his patrol. Instead of taking a walk down the side alley, though, he made his way up the stairs and vanished through the door into the clinic. Now, all I had to do was wait.

  Time passed slowly, the sun crawling through the sky. The guards outside the clinic continued to watch the street. Luckily, none of them seemed to notice the missing guard, or that he wasn’t continuing his patrol. If they did, they didn’t seem to care.

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  I couldn't tell exactly how long it had been, but during the time I'd been watching, I'd watched at least four people approach the clinic only to be turned away by one of the guards. That was intriguing. The guards being there in the first place was intriguing, but the fact that they weren't letting people into the clinic was even more evidence that something was off here. What could it be, though?

  I waited another long stretch of time, but Sil never came back out. Something scratched at the back of my mind. Worry, maybe. Guilt? It was hard to say. But an uneasiness twisted my stomach and I knew I couldn't just sit out in that alley waiting to see what happened to him. I needed to get inside.

  Despite Sil's disappearance into the clinic, there were still three guards out in the front, and the fact they'd been turning people away meant I would need something a bit more extreme to get inside. I looked down at my dagger, another idea clicking into place. I grimaced at the thought, but drew the dagger anyway. After making sure it was the blade I hadn’t imbued with [Viper’s Bite], I held it close to my stomach.

  I wasn't sure how I knew—maybe it was the [Basic Medical] skill I'd unlocked previously—but somehow I was confident that if I didn't cut too deep, I would be fine. It would still hurt, though, maybe even more so than a deep cut.

  But I needed it to look real. The best way to accomplish that was to make it real.

  I dragged the edge of the blade across my stomach quickly, careful not to press too deeply, and red blossomed across the skin where the blade parted it. I winced as the pain exploded the tear in my flesh and I dropped the dagger, kicking it off to the side. Holding my gut, I tossed my other dagger away and stumbled out of the alley.

  I waited until I reached the center of the street, my body colliding with someone in the crowd, before I began to scream. "Help, oh gods." My voice rose above the noise of the crowd, hushing many of them as they pulled back away from me, trying to escape the taint of my blood. Nobody in this part of town wanted someone else's blood on them. It would take too much work to get the stains out.

  All of the guards turned their attention to me, drawn by both the noise and the crowd's reaction.

  "Please help," I yelled out, the pain in my voice only slightly exaggerated. Why had I decided to cut myself for this? It hurt far more than I'd expected.

  I caught my foot on one of the cobblestones, sending my body careening forward, and one of the guards rushed to catch me before I hit the ground in front of him. I held tight to him as he pulled me up, smearing blood across the front of his uniform.

  "Please," I repeated. "I need help. Someone attacked me." I clawed my way up his body, forcing him to hold me up as I let my legs fall out from under me.

  "Get her inside," one of the other guards commanded. "We'll check things out."

  The guard holding me nodded quickly and then hauled me up the stairs. "Come on," he said, heaving the door open. He pulled me into the front lobby of the clinic.

  The room inside was all white, the stone a bright color that contrasted heavily against the dark stone of the exterior. Bright magelights sat atop small outcroppings in the wall, casting their glow unevenly along the walls. Three doors lined the back wall, the only sign of any other exits out of the room. The air was heavy with the smell of crushed herbs and other reagents, and the dull hum of the magelights was the only sound that filled the space.

  An elderly man sat at a desk in the center of the room, spectacles resting on the tip of a large, hooked nose that jutted out from his face. He didn’t even look up from his work as we entered the room.

  The guard deposited me on a bench, one of many situated around the room.

  "Try not to bleed everywhere," he said, already walking toward the elderly man.

  The man stopped writing as the guard approached, and they exchanged words I couldn’t quite make out from where I was. The elderly man nodded and then the guard grabbed a bundle of cloth from a cart next to the desk. He crossed back to me, shoved it into my lap, and then left the room, disappearing back out the front door without another word.

  When it was just the two of us, the elderly man pushed his spectacles higher on his nose and took me in. "Gut wound?" he asked, his voice completely devoid of any emotion.

  I nodded.

  "Well, get over here, child. Let me get a good look at you."

  Holding the cloth against my stomach, I pushed myself to my feet with a wince. I worked each step across the room, making sure every one looked like it was complete agony. It didn't feel good, of course, but I had an audience to appease, so I might have embellished it a little.

  "Hmmm," the old man said, watching me walk. "Show me the wound, please."

  I obeyed, lifting the cloth way and showing the cut.

  He eyed it warily. "Yes, yes. Not too deep. Deep enough for healing, I suspect. One of the novices should do. Oh, don't worry, they are perfectly skilled in their trade."

  "Of course," I said, pressing the cloth back to my gut with a nod. "Any help I can get would be appreciated."

  Taking off his spectacles and pushing back from his desk, the man climbed to his feet. Even standing he was at least three hands shorter than me. His back didn't straighten out all the way, and he carried himself with a hunch as he began to walk toward one of the three doors situated along the back of the room.

  "Just wait here," he said. "I'll have someone sent out shortly."

  "Thank you," I called after him. I leaned as far to the right as I could as he opened the door, trying to get a peek inside. I saw several guards in their armor beyond the old man's head, all stood in a circle talking amongst themselves.

  That was quite a few guards for a clinic in this part of the city. There must be something else going on here. That had to be why Sil hadn't come back out yet. I winced as the door closed and I began to move closer to it. I needed to get inside and find the Singing Beans that Henrietta needed. Then, once I'd done that, I could go about finding Sil. Based on the short glimpse I'd been given, it didn't look like the soldiers were doing anything particularly nefarious like beating the sense out of a shape-shifter from another world.

  Still, I carefully opened the door, peeking around the edge of it as I watched the old man hobble further down the hall. When he turned and vanished around a corner, I slipped through the door, the silence of the front lobby giving way to the conversation of the guards as I stepped through a sound ward. I was still too far away to make out the details of their conversation, but I heard something about a camp, and a general who was being treated for burn wounds.

  One thing was certain, though, they were flustered. They didn’t like whatever was happening here. I moved down the hall quietly. The herb smell was stronger here, and I almost jumped out of my skin when someone coughed from beyond an open doorway to my right. I peered inside, spotting a man laying in a bed, his skin wrapped in bandages. He was staring out the window that took up most of the room’s far wall.

  Still moving as quietly as I could, I slipped past the room and spotted another open door on the left with some runic script beside it. Storage. I smiled and eased myself into the room, closing the door with an almost imperceptible click.

  I peered around the room. It was a small room with several racks of clothes situated along one of the walls and shelves for other items like bandages along another. I fumbled through some of the clothing, finding a jacket that looked like it might fit. I also grabbed a shirt from the assortment, too and tied it around my waist, where the red gash was, making sure to keep the other cloth the guard had given me pressed tight against it. Finally, I slipped the jacket around my shoulders. It was a poor disguise, but it would have to do.

  Trying not to wince from the pain, I pressed my hand to the door and went to pull it open as someone else pushed in on it.