Way of Shadows nat-1 Read online

  Durzo’s eyes barely had to shift to go from dangerously amused to simply dangerous. But Azoth didn’t even see them through the tears brimming in his own eyes. He only saw the vacant look that had come into Jarl’s eyes and imagined seeing it in Doll Girl’s. He imagined her screams if Rat came and took her every night. She’d scream wordlessly for the first few weeks, maybe fight—bite and scratch for a while—and then she wouldn’t scream anymore, wouldn’t fight at all. There would just be grunting and the sounds of flesh and Rat’s pleasure. Just like Jarl.

  “Is your life so empty, boy?”

  It will be if you say no. “I want to be like you.”

  “No one wants to be like me.” Blint drew a huge black sword and touched the edge to Azoth’s throat. In that moment, Azoth didn’t care if the blade drank his life’s blood. Death would be kinder than watching Doll Girl disappear before his eyes.

  “You like hurting people?” Blint asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Ever killed anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you wasting my time?”

  What was wrong with him? Did he really mean that? He couldn’t. “I heard you don’t like it. That you don’t have to like it to be good,” Azoth said.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Momma K. She said that’s the difference between you and some of the others.”

  Blint frowned. He pulled a clove of garlic from a pouch and popped it into his mouth. He sheathed his sword, chewing.

  “All right, kid. You want to get rich?” Azoth nodded. “You’re quick. But can you tell what your marks are thinking and remember fifty things at once? Do you have good hands?” Nod. Nod. Nod.

  “Be a gambler.” Durzo laughed.

  Azoth didn’t. He looked at his feet. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”

  “Ja’laliel beats you?”

  “Ja’laliel’s nothing.”

  “Then who is?” Blint asked.

  “Our Fist. Rat.” Why was it so hard to say his name?

  “He beats you?”

  “Unless you’ll …unless you’ll do things with him.” It sounded weak, and Blint didn’t say anything, so Azoth said, “I won’t let anyone beat me again. Not ever.”

  Blint kept looking past Azoth, giving him time to blink away his tears. The full moon bathed the city in golden light. “The old whore can be beautiful,” he said. “Despite everything.”

  Azoth followed Blint’s gaze, but there was no one else in sight. Silver mist rose from the warm manure of the cattle yards and coiled around old broken aqueducts. In the darkness, Azoth couldn’t see the Bleeding Man freshly scrawled over his own guild’s Black Dragon, but he knew it was there. His guild had been losing territory steadily since Ja’laliel got sick.

  “Sir?” Azoth said.

  “This city’s got no culture but street culture. The buildings are brick on one street, daub and wattle the next, and bamboo one over. Titles Alitaeran, clothes Callaean, music all Sethi harps and Lodricari lyres—the damn rice paddies themselves stolen from Ceura. But as long as you don’t touch her or look too close, sometimes she’s beautiful.”

  Azoth thought he understood. You had to be careful what you touched and where you walked in the Warrens. Pools of vomit and other bodily fluids were splattered in the streets, and the dung-fueled fires and fatty steam from the constantly boiling tallow vats covered everything with a greasy, sooty sheen. But he had no reply. He wasn’t even sure Blint was talking to him.

  “You’re close, boy. But I never take apprentices, and I won’t take you.” Blint paused, and idly spun the shiv from finger to finger. “Not unless you do something you can’t.”

  Hope burst into life in Azoth’s breast for the first time in months. “I’ll do anything,” he said.

  “You’d have to do it alone. No one else could know. You’d have to figure out how, when, and where. All by yourself.”

  “What do I have to do?” Azoth asked. He could feel the Night Angels curling their fingers around his stomach. How did he know what Blint was going to say next?

  Blint picked up the dead rat and threw it to Azoth. “Just this. Kill your Rat and bring me proof. You’ve got a week.”

  7

  Solon Tofusin led the nag up Sidlin Way between the gaudy, close-packed manses of the great families of Cenaria. Many of the houses were less than a decade old. Others were older but had been recently remodeled. The buildings along this one street were qualitatively different from all the rest of Cenarian architecture. These had been made by those hoping their money could purchase culture. All were ostentatious, trying to rival their neighbors by their exotic design, whether in builders’ fantasies of Ladeshian spires or Friaki pleasure domes or in more accurately articulated Alitaeran mansions or perfect scale imitations of famous Ceuran summer palaces. There was even what he thought he recognized from a painting as a bulbous Ymmuri temple, complete with prayer flags. Slave money, he thought.

  It wasn’t slavery that appalled him. On his island, slavery was common. But not like it had been here. These manses had been built on pit fighters and baby farms. It had been out of his way, but he’d walked through the Warrens to see what the silent half of his new home city was like. The squalor there made the wealth here obscene.

  He was tired. Though not tall, he was thick. Thick through the stomach and, mercifully, still thicker through the chest and shoulders. The nag was a good horse, but she was no warhorse, and he had to walk her as often as he rode.

  The large estates loomed ahead, differentiated from the others not so much by the size of the buildings as by the amount of land within the walls. Where the manses were packed side by side, the estates sprawled. Guards presided over gates of ironwood rather than intricate grillwork—gates built long ago for defense, not decoration.

  The gate of the first estate bore the Jadwin trout inlaid with gold leaf. Through the sally port, he saw a lavish garden filled with statues, some marble, some covered with beaten gold. No wonder they have a dozen guards. All the guards were professional and a few furlongs short of handsome, which gave credence to the rumors about the duchess, and he was more than happy to pass the Jadwin estate. He was a handsome man with olive skin, black eyes, and hair still black as a night untouched by the gray shadows of dawn. Sharing a house with a voracious duchess whose husband left on frequent and lengthy embassies was trouble he didn’t need.

  Not that I’ll find less where I’m going. Dorian, my friend, I hope this was genius. He didn’t want to consider the other possibility.

  “I am Solon Tofusin. I’m here to see Lord Gyre,” Solon said as he arrived in front of the Gyre estate’s gate.

  “The duke?” the guard asked. He pushed his helm back and scraped a hand across his forehead.

  The man’s a simpleton. “Yes, Duke Gyre.” He spoke slowly and with more emphasis than was necessary, but he was tired.

  “That’s a crying shame,” the guard said.

  Solon waited, but the man didn’t elaborate. Not a simpleton, an ass. “Is Lord Gyre gone?”

  “Nawp.”

  So that’s what this is about. The red hair should have tipped me off. Solon said, “I know that after millennia of being raided, the smarter Ceurans moved inland, leaving your ancestors on the coast, and I realize that when Sethi pirates raided your village they carried off all the presentable women—again leaving your ancestors—so through no fault of your own, you’re both stupid and ugly. But might you attempt to explain how Lord Gyre is both gone and not gone? You can use small words.”

  Perversely, the man looked pleased. “No marks on your skin, no rings through your face, you don’t even talk like a fish. And you’re fat for a fish, too. Let me guess, they offered you to the sea but the sea gods wouldn’t take you and when you washed up on the beach you were nursed by a troll who mistook you for one of her own.”

  “She was blind,” Solon said, and when the man laughed, he decided he liked him.

  “Duke Gyre left
this morning. He won’t be back,” the guard said.

  “He won’t be back? You mean ever?”

  “Not my place to talk about it. But no, not ever, unless I miss my guess. He’s gone to command the garrison at Screaming Winds.”

  “But you said Lord Gyre isn’t gone,” Solon said.

  “The duke named his son the Gyre until he returns.”

  “Which will be never.”

  “You’re quick for a fish. His son Logan is the Gyre.”

  Not good. For the life of him, Solon couldn’t remember if Dorian had said Duke Gyre or Lord Gyre. Solon hadn’t even considered that there might be two heads of House Gyre. If the prophecy was about Duke Gyre, he needed to get riding, now. But if it were about his son, Solon would be leaving his charge at the time he needed him most.

  “May I speak with Lord Gyre?”

  “Can you use that steel?” the guard asked. “If you can’t, I’d suggest you hide it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Come with me.” The guard called to another atop the wall, who came to hold the gate while the Ceuran led Solon into the estate. A stable boy took the nag, and Solon kept his sword.

  He couldn’t help but be impressed. The Gyre estate had a permanence about it, the deliberate gravitas of an old family. Acanthus was planted inside the walls and out, growing from red soil Solon knew must have been brought in especially for the purpose. The thistly plants hadn’t just been chosen to keep beggars or thieves from the walls, they also had long associations with Alitaeran nobility. The manse itself was similarly daunting, all heavy stone and broad arches and thick doors that could withstand a siege engine. The only compromise strength had made with beauty were the climbing blood roses that framed each door and every ground floor window. Against the backdrop of black stone and iron-barred windows, their perfect red hue was striking.

  Solon didn’t pay attention to the ringing of steel until the guard walked past the entry to the manse and around to the back of the building. Here, with a view across the Plith to Castle Cenaria, several guards were watching as two men bundled in practice armor pummeled each other. The smaller man was retreating, going back in circles as the larger man’s blows thudded on his shield. The smaller man stumbled, and his opponent bull-rushed, leveling him with a shield like a ram. The man raised his sword, but the next blow sent it flying and the next rang his helmet like a bell.

  Logan Gyre tore off his helmet and laughed, helping the guard to his feet. Solon’s heart sank. This was Lord Gyre? He was a child in a giant’s body, baby fat still on his face. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen, probably younger. Solon could imagine Dorian laughing. Dorian knew he didn’t like children.

  The Ceuran guard stepped forward and spoke quietly to Lord Gyre.

  “Hello,” the boy lord said, turning to Solon. “Marcus tells me you fancy yourself quite a swordsman. Are you?”

  Solon looked at the Ceuran, who gave him a self- satisfied smile. His name is Marcus? Even the names in this country were a mess. With little regard for people’s origins, Alitaeran names like Marcus or Lucienne mixed freely with Lodricari names like Rodo or Daydra, Ceuran names like Hideo or Shizumi, and normal Cenarian names like Aleine or Felene. About the only names most people wouldn’t name their children were the slaves names common in the Warrens, like Scar or Harelip. “I can hold my own, Lord Gyre. But it is words I wish to exchange with you, not blows.” If I go now, my old mare and I can make it to the garrison in six, maybe seven days.

  “We will speak then—after we spar. Marcus, get him some practice armor.” The men looked pleased, and Solon saw that they loved this young lord like he was their own son. And laughed too easily and spoiled him. He was suddenly the Gyre, and the men were still entranced by the novelty of the idea.

  “I don’t need it,” Solon said.

  The chuckling stopped and the men looked at him.

  “You want to spar without armor?” Logan asked.

  “I don’t want to spar at all, but if it is your will, I shall consent—but I won’t fight with a practice blade.” The men hooted at the prospect of seeing this short Sethi fight their giant, unarmored. Only Marcus and one or two others looked troubled. With the thick armor Logan wore, there was little danger that he would be seriously injured, even with a sharp sword. But the danger was there. In his eyes, Solon saw that Logan knew it too. He was suddenly doubting if he should have been quite so brash with someone who he knew nothing about, someone who might well wish him harm. Logan was looking again at Solon’s stocky build.

  “Milord,” Marcus said, “maybe it would be best if—”

  “Agreed,” Logan said to Solon. He pulled his helmet on and locked the visor. He unlimbered his sword and said, “Ready when you are.”

  Before Logan could react, Solon jabbed his fingers through the boy’s visor and grabbed the nosepiece. He yanked Logan forward and twisted. The boy slammed into the ground with a grunt. Solon drew a knife from Logan’s belt and held it to the boy’s eye, his knee resting on the side of Logan’s helmet, holding it in place.

  “Do you yield?” Solon asked.

  The boy’s breaths were labored. “I yield.”

  Solon released him and stood, brushing the dust from the leg of his breeches. He didn’t offer to help Lord Gyre stand.

  The men were quiet. Several had drawn swords, but none moved forward. It was obvious that if Solon had meant to kill Logan, he would have already done it. No doubt they were thinking about what Duke Gyre would have done to them if such a thing had happened.

  “You’re a fool boy, Lord Gyre,” Solon said. “A buffoon performing for men you may one day have to ask to die for you.” He said Duke Gyre, surely Dorian said Duke Gyre. But he sent me here. Surely he would have sent me to the garrison directly if he meant the duke. The prophecy wasn’t about me. Dorian couldn’t have known that I would be held up, that I would get to the city this late. Could he?

  Logan removed his helmet, and he was red-faced, but he didn’t let his embarrassment flare into anger. He said, “I, I deserved that. And I deserved the manhandling you just gave me. Or worse. I’m sorry. It is a poor host who assaults his guests.”

  “You know they’ve been losing on purpose, don’t you?”

  Logan looked stricken. He glanced at the man he’d been fighting as Solon arrived, then stared at his own feet. Then, as if it took an effort of will, he raised his eyes to Solon’s. “I see that you speak true. Though it shames me to learn it, I thank you.” And now his men looked ashamed. They’d been letting him win because they loved him, and now they had shamed their lord. The men weren’t just pained, they were in misery.

  How does this boy command such loyalty? Is it just loyalty to his father? As he watched Logan look at each of the men in turn—staring until each met his gaze and then looked away—Solon doubted that. Logan let the pained silence sit and grow.

  “In six months’ time,” Logan said, addressing the men, “I will serve at my father’s garrison. I will not sit safely in the castle. I will fight, and so will many of you. But since you seem to think sparring is entertainment, very well. You will entertain yourselves by sparring until midnight. All of you. Tomorrow, we will start training. And I expect all of you to be here an hour before dawn. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Logan turned to Solon. “Sorry about that, Master Tofusin. About all of it. Please call me Logan. You’ll stay for dinner, of course, but can I also have the servants prepare a room for you?”

  “Yes,” Solon said. “I think I’d like that.”

  8

  Every time Vürdmeister Neph Dada met with Rat, it was in a different place. Rooms in inns, cellars of boat shops, bakeries, east side parks, and dead-end alleys in the Warrens. Ever since Neph had figured out that Rat was afraid of the dark, he’d made sure they always met at night.

  Tonight, Neph watched Rat and his bodyguards enter the tiny old overfull graveyard. It wasn’t as dark as Neph would
have hoped; taverns and game halls and whorehouses huddled not thirty paces away. Rat didn’t dismiss his bodyguards immediately. Like most parts of the Warrens, the graveyard was less than a foot above the waterline. The Rabbits, as the natives of the Warrens were called, buried their dead directly in the mud. If they had the money, they erected sarcophagi above ground, but ignorant immigrants had buried their dead in coffins after some riot or another years ago, and the ground had swollen above those graves as the coffins fought to float to the surface. Several had broken open, their contents devoured by feral dogs.

  Rat and his bodyguards looked sick with fright. “Go on,” Rat finally said to his bigs, nonchalantly picking up a skull and tossing it at one of them. The boy stepped back quickly and the skull, weak with age or disease, shattered on a stone.

  “Hello, child,” Neph rasped into Rat’s ear. Rat flinched and Neph smiled his gap-toothed smile, his long, sparse white hair falling in a greasy trickle to his shoulders. Neph stood so close the boy took a step back.

  “What do you want? Why am I here?” Rat asked.

  “Ah, petulance and philosophy all bound up in one.” Neph shuffled closer. He’d grown up in Lodricar, east of Khalidor. The Lodricari thought men who distanced themselves so much that you couldn’t even smell their breath were hiding something. Merchants in Cenaria who dealt with the Lodricari complained bitterly about it, but stood close eagerly enough when Lodricari coins were at stake. But Neph didn’t stand close for cultural reasons. He hadn’t lived in Lodricar for half a century. He stood close because he liked to see Rat’s discomfort.

  “Ha!” Neph said, exhaling a gust of rotten air over Rat’s face.

  “What?” Rat said, trying not to edge back.

  “I haven’t given up on you yet, you great stupid boy. Sometimes you manage to learn despite yourself. But that’s not what I’m here for. Not what you’re here for, either. It’s time to move. Your enemies are arrayed against you but not yet organized.”