All the Paths of Shadow Read Online Free Page A

her shoulders. Her slippers were mismatched, right foot blue, left foot yellow with tassels.
    Mug regarded the Thaumaturge with a dozen shiny eyes. “Perhaps I should be asking if you slept at all,” said Mug. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
    Meralda shrugged and rubbed her eyes. “It was late,” she said. “You were asleep.” Meralda filled her coffee pot with water from the sink, rummaged in the cupboard for grounds, and sank into her chair with a sigh and a frown when the coffee urn turned up empty.
    “Forgive me, mistress,” said Mug. “I meant to remind you yesterday.”
    Meralda yawned. “I’ll get a cup at Flayne’s,” she said. “But first, a piece of toast.”
    “Out of bread, too,” said Mug. He tilted his eyes toward the ceiling. “I imagine the mages of legend had someone handy to do the shopping,” he said. “‘Fetch me a bag of flour and an onion,’ they’d say, before charging off to topple the Acatean Empire or clash with the Hang.” Mug shook his leaves. “Yes, that’s the life. Power, magic, and all the shopping done. You really should look into conquering the world and making Yvin run all your errands.”
    Meralda peeped out from between her fingers. “Do you sit around at night and think of these things, Mug?”
    Mug tossed his fronds in a shrug. “Last night I thought a lot about towers and thaumaturges,” he said. “Specifically, I wondered what mine was doing about a certain long shadow.”
    Meralda groaned.
    Mug’s eyes clustered together. “Bad news, is it? Going to tell Yvin it can’t be done?”
    “Worse,” said Meralda. “I’m going to tell him it can.”
    Mug wilted. “Oh,” he said.
    “Oh, indeed,” said Meralda. “I think I can change the air around the Tower. Make it bend light differently.”
    Mug’s frown deepened. “Sounds interesting, in a hopelessly implausible way.”
    “Water does the same thing,” said Meralda.
    Mug’s red eyes gathered in a cluster. “Water hides shadows?” he asked, with a furtive red-eyed glance toward the half-full kitchen sink below him.
    Meralda shook her head. “No, Mug,” she said. “Water bends light. It’s called refraction, and different materials refract light to different degrees.”
    “If you say so, mistress,” said Mug. “Will it be difficult?”
    “Extremely,” said Meralda, after another yawn. “I’ll have to divide the air around the Tower into hundreds of different volumes, and assign a unique refractive value to each volume.” She yawned again.
    “Is that before or after you buy coffee and bread?”
    “After,” said Meralda. She rose, rummaged in her icebox, and produced a chunk of cheese and a wax bag of Flayne’s salt crackers.
    A knock sounded softly at the door. Meralda grimaced. “Right on time,” she said. “They’ve probably been standing there listening for the palace bells to sound before they knocked.”
    Indeed, the Brass Bell, five hundred years old and as big as a house, was sounding from the palace.
    Mug divided his eyes between Meralda and the door. “They? They who?”
    “My bodyguards,” said Meralda, rising. “And no, it wasn’t my idea, and no, I can’t get rid of them.”
    The knock sounded again. Mug twisted all of his eyes towards Meralda, and shook his leaves in what the Thaumaturge recognized as Mug’s equivalent of taking a deep breath.
    “Not a word,” said Meralda, her eyes flashing beneath a tangled shock of hair. “Not one.”
    Mug tossed his leaves and sighed.
    “Thaumaturge?” spoke a voice at the door. “You asked us to report for duty at first ring.”
    “Thank you, Kervis,” said Meralda. “I’ll be out in a few moments. There’s a settee just down the hall.”
    They won’t do it, thought Meralda. They won’t sit. They’ll flank my door and lock their knees and stare at my neighbors and if it takes me more than twenty minutes to bathe and dress one or both of them will fall over in a dead faint.
    “We brought you coffee,”