IGMS Issue 22 Read Online Free Page A

things I've seen in my life.
    So we're back in Shadyvale now, enjoying a well-earned rest while Maggie tells a version of our adventures that bears only a passing resemblance to the truth. Did you know she single-handedly slew a slate dragon back in our brief mountain interlude? Or that she's now personal friends with the Premier Satrap of Lunggar? I sure didn't.
    But the vacation won't last long. For one thing, we need to find a priest who can get my soul out of this travesty of a ring and back into my body. For another, it turns out that you have to be a
lot
closer friends with the monks of Osmaitlik than I am to get four resurrections for free, so we're in debt up to our eyeballs, and sadly, there wasn't much loot to be had in Sheshab. In fact, we've seen a terrible lack of shiny things in general, and those few we've had, we've mostly spent and/or lost. Were you always this poor when you were adventuring? I'm beginning to suspect you retired after Fellshadow because you had pots of money to your name, and wanted to quit before some resurrection fee or dimensional fluctuation or pocket-picking leprechaun made it all vanish again.
    (I don't suppose you could spare a bit out of one of those pots of money to pay off the monks? No, I can hear Mom now: "If you're enough of a Mighty Adventurer to go to Lunggar even after your father told you not to, you're mighty enough to pay your own bills." I guess I'd better start calculating the hoard-to-effort ratio of the nearest dragon.)
    But mainly we need to start preparing for a little trip. You see, Saskarezoen had a price for prying the ring off Fellshadow's finger before dragging him down to hell. Prior to our attack on the fortress, it seems the demon formed a bit of an attachment to Sexy Lady Urgoth.
    He's engaged to be married at the end of the year, and we're all in the wedding party.
    So we're off to hell in a little bit, where we'll have to figure out some way to jilt a demon without getting ourselves killed. It's possible Fellshadow's soul will be there, too, and that bastard isn't dead enough for my peace of mind.
    Wish me luck. I'll send you Fellshadow's head when we're done -- or wedding pictures, depending on how things go.
    Still miffed about the ugly ring,
    Cayce



 
We Who Steal Faces
     
    by Tony Pi
     
    Artwork by Jin Han
----
    January 4, 1588
    Mafeo Premarin, my eyes and ears in the shadows of Venice, was dying of poison.
    I knelt by Mafeo's bedside and took his trembling hand. His flesh felt cold, patches of red mottled his skin. He tried to speak but fell into a fit of coughs instead. I looked for blood in the sputum on his beard. None yet, a small relief.
    The assassin had left a trail of bodies: intelligencers in Amsterdam, Paris, and Lisbon. They were good men, all, loyal to England. Whoever killed them was blinding us to the intrigues abroad. In these times when Spain sought to overthrow Elizabeth's reign, we needed the vigilance of every spy. I refused to let the killer take any more of my operatives, least of all my top man.
    "Who did this to you, old friend?"
    The point of a stiletto grazed the side of my throat.
    "The poison's robbed him of his voice," Luca said in his father's stead. "If you are Flea, you know how to earn my trust. Show me his face."
    His caution was wise. In these times of looming war, spies like us had to take every precaution to know friend from foe.
    "I'll need that mirror in the restello frame."
    Luca allowed me to stand. I took the mirror and slid open a secret compartment along its top. Inside lay the handkerchief Mafeo had hidden there when I first taught him how to thieve. I felt the prickle of Lightning magic dancing within the silk threads. Mafeo, last to touch the kerchief decades ago, had left an impression of his younger self trapped in the silk like a fly in a spider's web.
    I willed the Lightning to enter my flesh, letting the magic shape my body into the exact image of my apprentice as he had been in his