CHAPTER SIX
“It’s a test,” Kate whispered to herself as she stalked her victim. “It’s a test.”
She kept saying it to herself, perhaps in the hope that repetition would make it true, perhaps because it was the only way to keep herself following after Gertrude Illiard, keeping to the shadows while she sat on the balcony of her home for breakfast, slipping silently through the crowds of the city while the merchant’s daughter walked with friends through the early morning markets.
Savis Illiard kept dogs and guards to protect his property and his daughter both, but the guards had been at their posts too long and relied on the dogs, while the dogs were easy to quiet with a flicker of power.
Kate watched the woman she was supposed to kill, and the truth was that she could have done it a dozen
