“Hey, shut up!” the man nearest Kylar said. “We’ll never get anyone if you idiots keep talking.”
The men quieted. The hood’s eyes passed straight over Kylar. Kylar had to keep himself from gasping aloud—there was something in the man’s eyes. Something dark. It itched at something in the back of Kylar’s mind.
Down the alley, a man stumbled out of an inn. He braced himself against a wall and then turned to walk toward the ambush.
What am I doing? Kylar realized that he didn’t even have a plan. I’m mad. I have to get out of here. He hadn’t broken his word to Elene. Not yet. After all, he’d never promised not to go out at night. He’d sworn not to kill.
He had to go. Now. If they started beating the drunk, he didn’t know what he’d do. Or maybe he knew exactly what he’d do, and he couldn’t do that.
The ka’kari oozed out of his pores like a sheen of iridescent black oil. It covered his skin and his clothes in an instant—covered him, shimmered for the briefest instant, and disappeared.
One of the hoodlums on the other side of the alley frowned and opened his mouth, but changed his mind and shook his head, sure that he’d imagined whatever-it-was he thought he saw.
Kylar leapt five feet in the air and grabbed the edge of the roof. He pulled himself up and started running away. When he heard a shout—and was that the thud of a cudgel hitting flesh?—he didn’t stop. He didn’t look.
He was only four blocks away, still fleeing, heading toward Aunt Mea’s house when he saw a girl being followed by three more hoodlums.
What the hell was she doing out this late? Anyone in this part of town had to know how stupid it was for a girl—a pretty golden-haired girl, of course—to travel alone.
It was none of his business. Golden Hair looked over her shoulder and Kylar could see her tear-streaked face. Wonderful. Some stupid emotional girl being emotional and stupid.
He stopped. Dammit. You can’t save the world, Kylar. You’re not really the Night Angel. You’re only a shadow and shadows can’t touch anything.
Now he swore again, loudly. In the street below, all four characters in the little melodrama looked up to the rooftop, but of course they didn’t see him. They didn’t see him drop into the street and start following them.
If they caught her, he’d have to kill them. He’d have to hurt them to get them off her, and then what was he going to do? Beat them up as an invisible man? Let them spread those stories? Someone would connect him to the Night Angel, sooner or later, and then everything would go to hell. No, if they caught her, and he had to break his promise to Elene, then he’d go all the way. So there was only one thing to do: make sure they didn’t catch her.
Golden Hair did the first sensible thing she’d done all night—she started running. The hoodlums split up and started after her. Kylar drew Retribution off his back, but in its scabbard. He ran behind one of the running hoodlums, timed the man’s steps, and with the sheathed sword he knocked one foot behind the other in the middle of the man’s stride. The hoodlum went down hard, and his partner barely had time to look over his shoulder before he too encountered the ground in a far more intimate fashion than he would have liked.
Both men cursed, but they weren’t too bright. They jumped up and started running after the girl again, once more closing ground rapidly. This time, Kylar tripped one into the other one. The men went down in a tangle of limbs and began cursing and hitting each other. By the time they got up, the girl was gone.
Kylar lost sight of the girl and the last hoodlum. He leapt up to a roof and sprinted after the girl. As he ran, he dropped his invisibility so he could use all of his Talent for speed. After flying across several more rooftops, he caught sight of Golden Hair again. She was a block away from the only house in a dim alley that had a lantern burning in the window. Doubtless it was her home.
Then Kylar saw the last hoodlum, coming down an intersecting alley Golden Hair would have to pass. The man caught sight of her and sank back into the shadows.
There was no time. Kylar was still more than a block behind them. He sprinted to the edge of a building and leapt unseen over Golden Hair, drawing Retribution before he landed in the little alley, right in front of the hoodlum.
The man had drawn a knife and in an instant Kylar saw from the pools of darkness in his eyes a deep, unreasoning hatred spawned from some perceived slight. The man had murdered before, and he planned to murder Golden Hair tonight. Kylar didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. And seeing that darkness that demanded death, it came to him that he’d seen it before. He’d seen it in Prince Ursuul’s eyes. Only afterward had he decided he must have been imagining things.
There was a moment of stunned silence as hoodlum and Night Angel stared at each other.
“Mother? Father?” the girl called out as she passed the alley.
The hoodlum attacked and Retribution darted out, punching through the hoodlum’s solar plexus, driving the air from his lungs and pinning him to the wall.
Around the corner, a door was flung open and Golden Hair was ushered inside in a storm of blubbered apologies and forgiveness and tears. Kylar gathered that she’d fought with her parents about something none of them remembered and had stormed off.
The hoodlum twitched. He was straining to breathe, but he couldn’t because Retribution had crushed his ribs and pushed them hard against his diaphragm. His legs were completely limp. Kylar must have at least partially cut his spine, because the only thing keeping him standing was the sword pinning him to the wall.
The man was already dead, he just hadn’t figured it out yet.
Damn me, what have I done? Kylar pulled Retribution back and the hoodlum fell. Dispassionately, Kylar stabbed the sword into his heart. He was committed now. He couldn’t leave the body here. It was unprofessional, and its discovery would certainly wreck the tenuous happiness he could hear through the open windows. There was a little blood on the wall, so Kylar blotted it up with the hoodlum’s cloak, and then scrubbed dirt over it.
Inside, it was all joy and reconciliation. Mother served a kettle of ootai and clucked about how worried they had been. The girl was telling her story of how she’d been followed and run away and been so terrified and somehow the men kept falling.
Kylar felt a surge of pride, followed by disgust at how sweetly domestic it was.
But that was a lie. He wasn’t disgusted. He was moved. Moved and profoundly lonely. He was left outside, in the streets with the dead, alone. He kicked dirt over the blood on the ground, and stuffed rags into the corpse’s wounds.
“Praise the God,” mother said. “Your father and I have been praying for you the whole time.”
That’s me, Kylar thought as he hefted the body over his shoulder, the answer to everyone’s prayers. Except Elene’s.
“Why would anyone destroy a ka’kari, Neph?” The Godking was pacing in one of his state rooms.
“The southrons are frequently illogical, Your Holiness.”
“But surely these heroes who supposedly destroyed the ka’kari—Garric Shadowbane, Gaelan Starfire, Ferric Fireheart—surely they must have been wytchborn. Not trained as meisters, of course, but Talented. Such warriors could have bonded the ka’kari themselves. And they didn’t? We’re saying that at least three warriors chose to destroy artifacts that could have made them ten times more powerful than they already were? Great men are not so selfless.”
“Your Holiness,” Neph said, “you’re attempting to duplicate the thought processes of a people who embrace the virtues of weakness. These are people who tout compassion over justice, mercy over strength. Theirs is a diseased philosophy, a species of madness. Of course they do the inexplicable. Look at how eagerly Terah Graesin rushes to her doom.”
The Godking waved that away. “Terah Graesin is a fool, but not all southrons are. If they were, my forefathers would have overrun them centuries ago.”
“Surely they would have,” Neph Dada said, “if not for the incursions from the Freeze.”
/> Garoth dismissed that. The average meister had always been stronger than the average mage, often had more companions in his craft, and he and his fellows weren’t split into bickering schools spread halfway across Midcyru. The Khalidoran armies were as good as most and better than many. Despite those advantages, the Godkings’ ambitions had been foiled time and again.
“I feel… opposed,” Garoth said.
“Opposed, Your Holiness?” Neph asked. He coughed and wheezed.
“Maybe these southrons really believe what they claim to about mercy and protecting the weak, though our experience here tells me they don’t. But the call of power is not easily ignored, Neph. Perhaps one saint of their faiths might destroy a ka’kari that he could use. But how could all six ka’kari disappear and stay hidden for so long? You’re talking generations of saints—each new guardian as virtuous as the one before. It doesn’t make sense. One of them would fail.”
“The ka’kari have surfaced from time to time.”
“Yes, but ever more rarely as the centuries have passed. The last time was fifty years ago,” Garoth said. “Someone has been trying to destroy or at least hide the ka’kari. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“So someone out there has been squirreling away ka’kari for seven centuries?” Neph asked, deadpan.
“Of course not someone,” Garoth said. “But some… group. I find a small conspiracy much easier to swallow than a conspiracy of every southron saint who ever lived.” He paused, following the idea. “Think about their very names—Shadowbane, Fireheart, Starfire?—those aren’t surnames. They’re assumed names. If I’m right, it may be that Garric Shadowbane, Ferric Fireheart, and Gaelan Starfire were the champions of this group, their avatars, as it were.”
“And their avatar today…?” Neph asked.
Garoth smiled. “Now has a name. This morning, my Ladeshian bard sang. The man who walked these halls with a ka’kari, who killed my son, was either the legendary Durzo Blint or his apprentice Kylar Stern. Durzo Blint is dead. So if Kylar Stern is this avatar…” Garoth stopped dead. “It would explain why those heroes were willing to destroy a ka’kari. Because they couldn’t use another. Because they’d already bonded one. They were the bearers of the black ka’kari.”
“Your Holiness, is it not possible that rather than destroy those ka’kari they kept them?”
Garoth considered it. “It’s possible. And Kylar might not be allied with them at all.”
“In which case they might be trying to add the black to their collection,” Neph said.
“We can’t know that. We can’t know anything until we get Kylar Stern. My songbird will make the perfect assassin. In the meantime, Neph, contact every meister and agent we have in the southlands and tell them to keep an eye out. I don’t care if it costs me this entire kingdom, get me Kylar Stern. Alive, dead, whichever, just bring me that damned ka’kari.”
14
The first weeks in Hell’s Asshole had been the darkest, before Logan had become a monster. He’d made his bargains with the devil and with his own body. He’d eaten the meat that came to him that awful day, and when Fin had killed Scab, Logan had eaten flesh again. Logan had to kill Long Tom for that meat, and that killing had made him a monster. Being a monster made him safe. But he wasn’t content to be safe. He wasn’t content to merely survive. Logan lived with the feral, primal side of himself, but he wouldn’t let that be all he was.
He shared his meat. He’d given some to Lilly, not for sex as the other Holers did, but for decency. She’d given him the advice that kept him human. He also shared with the other monsters: Tatts and Yimbo and Gnasher. He kept the choicest parts for himself—at least the choicest parts he could bear to eat. Arms and legs were one thing, but eating a man’s heart, his brains, his eyes, cracking his bones to suck the marrow, that Logan wouldn’t do. It was a thin line, and one he knew he would cross if things got much worse, but for now, he’d sunk deep enough, so he shared for squeamishness and he shared for nobility.
It was his first step to reclaiming his humanity. Fin would kill him the first chance he had. The monsters didn’t care, so it was still possible to get them on his side. It wouldn’t be loyalty, but anything might make all the difference.
Gnasher was a different story. Logan stayed close to Gnasher. He figured that the simpleton was the least likely to betray him, although he’d learned early on why Gnasher had been given his name. Every night, Gnasher ground his teeth. It was so loud that Logan was surprised the man had molars left.
The third week in, Logan woke to the sudden silence of Gnasher’s teeth and listened in the darkness. Gnasher was listening, and his ears must have been better than Logan’s, because a moment later, Logan heard footsteps.
Two Khalidoran guards appeared above their grate and looked down with distaste. The first was the one they hated. He opened the grate as he always did, and tossed their bread down the hole as he always did. It didn’t matter that they knew he was going to do it, the monsters and the animals alike, even Logan, got up and stood around the Hole, hoping to get lucky with a bad throw. It only happened once or twice, but that was enough to keep their hope alive.
“Watch this,” the guard said. He tore open the last loaf and pissed all over it, soaking it in urine. Then he tossed it in.
Logan, being the tallest, got most of it. He devoured it instantly, ignoring the stench, ignoring the warm wetness dripping down his chin, ignoring the debasement.
The Khalidoran roared with laughter. The second guard laughed uncertainly.
The next day the second guard came back, alone. He had bread, and it was clean, and he threw it to them, one loaf for each prisoner. With a thick accent and not looking any of them in the eye, he promised that he would bring bread every time he had a shift that he didn’t share with Gorkhy.
That gave them all strength and hope and a name for the man they hated above all others.
Slowly, society returned. That first night, everyone had been so overwhelmed just to have bread that they hadn’t even tried to steal loaves from each other. As they gained strength, they did fight. Within a few days, the mute Yimbo tangled with Fin and got killed. Logan watched, hoping for an opportunity to get Fin, but the fight was over too quickly. Fin’s knife was too much of an advantage.
When the bread came, Logan made sure he got more than most—not only for the status, but to stay strong. He’d already lost every ounce of fat he’d ever had, and now he was losing his muscle. He was all sinews and lean hard muscles, but he was still big and he needed his strength. Still, he shared what he could with Lilly and Gnasher and Tatts.
More than two months in he made a breakthrough. He’d been feeling nervous, getting more and more on edge about Fin, with his damn sinew ropes that kept getting longer. Logan slept and woke to the sound of the demons that he now sometimes imagined made the howling noise—it wasn’t wind, he was sure of that. It was either demons or the spirits of all the poor bastards who’d been thrown into the Hole over the centuries. His head throbbed in time with the howling. His jaw ached. He’d been grinding his teeth all night.
Then he found his humanity.
“Gnash,” he said. “Gnasher, come here.”
The big man looked at him blankly.
Logan scooted over and very slowly put his hands on Gnasher’s jaw. He was afraid that Gnasher might snap at him—and if Gnasher bit him, down here an infection and death were more likely than not—but he reached up anyway. Gnasher looked puzzled, but he let Logan slowly massage his jaw. In moments, the look on the simple man’s face changed. The tension in his face that Logan had assumed was part of his deformity relaxed.
When Logan stopped, the man roared and grabbed Logan. Logan thought that he was going to die, but Gnasher just hugged him. When Gnasher released him, Logan knew he had a friend for life, no matter this Hole life was nasty, brutish, and short. He would have wept—but he had no capacity for tears.
She had to kill Jarl.
Vi stood ou
tside of Hu Gibbet’s safe house and leaned her head against the doorframe. She needed to go inside, face Hu, get ready, and go kill Jarl. As simple as that, and her apprenticeship would be done and she’d never have to face Hu again. The Godking had even promised she could kill Hu if she wanted.
During the year Vi had spent learning the trade at Momma K’s, Jarl had been her only friend. He had gone out of his way to help, especially in her first weeks when she’d been such a disaster. Because of his handsome, exotic Ladeshian features, quick tongue, intelligence, and warmth, everyone had liked Jarl, and not just the men and women who lined up for his services. (Lined up only figuratively, of course. Momma K would never tolerate anything so crass as a queue in the Blue Boar.) But Vi had always felt a kind of special bond between them.
Vi stopped thinking. She had a job to do. She checked the door again for traps. There were none. Hu got careless when he had company. She opened the door slowly, standing to one side and holding her open hands in the gap. Sometimes when Hu was blasted on mushrooms, he attacked first and didn’t ask questions. When no attack came, Vi walked in.
Hu sat bare-chested in the corner of the cluttered front room in a rocking chair, but the chair was still and his eyes were closed. He wasn’t asleep, though. Vi was intimately attuned to her master’s every nuance; she knew how he breathed when he really slept. He held crochet hooks in his hands and a tiny, nearly completed white wool cap. A baby’s bonnet this time, the sick fuck.