Stalking Darkness

by Lynn Flewelling

  Rythel listened with polite interest, saying little until the deal came around to him again.

  “I suggest a change of game,” he said, gathering the pack. “Sword and Coin? There are enough of us to partner two games.”

  The other players were agreeable and when the chairs and tables had been shifted, Seregil was not surprised to find himself sitting across from Rythel. With a silent nod to Illior, he settled down to make his partner a richer man.

  The less circumspect players were soon winnowed out as Seregil, no stranger to creative card shuffling, gently tipped the scales in his and Rythel’s favor. Rythel, too, showed signs of certain talents; in an hour’s time the two of them had exhausted the resources of the other players.

  Seregil gave him a slight bow as they rose to divide their winnings and extended his hand. “Well played. I’m Lord Seregil, as you may have gathered. And you?”

  “Rythel of Porunta, my lord.” His hand was hard in Seregil’s, but not as stained and roughened as he’d expected. The man had obviously taken pains to hide his current occupation.

  “Porunta? That’s down near Stoneport, isn’t it? What brings you so far north this time of year?”

  “I’m in commerce there, my lord, in a modest way.” Rythel paused, giving Seregil a disarmingly open smile. “I must confess, some of the ventures you’ve mentioned tonight interest me.”

  “A man of vision, eh?” Seregil said with a knowing wink. “I’m a great admirer of ambition, and our brief partnership tonight didn’t do my purse any harm. Perhaps you’d like to discuss things further over a bit of supper?”

  “I’d be honored, my lord,” Rythel replied, just a hint too eager.

  “Anyplace in particular?”

  Rythel shrugged. “No, my lord. I’ve no plans for the night.”

  Damn, thought Seregil. Looks like we’ll spend the evening plying each other with drink and fishing for secrets.

  A harsh, clear dawn was breaking when Seregil returned to the Cockerel. Alec was asleep on the couch, legs stretched out toward the ruins of a fire. He awoke with a start when Seregil flopped wearily down beside him.

  “Well, how did it go?”

  Seregil shrugged, running both hands back through his hair. “He’s not the greatest spy in the world, but he knows how to keep his mouth shut. We spent most of the night drinking at the Rose, then he decided he wanted a woman. I hoped maybe he needed to meet someone at a brothel, but instead he was ready to take up with the first pair of clapmongers we passed in the street. I finally managed to steer him into the Black Feather.”

  “The Feather? That’s quite a comedown from Eirual’s.”

  “The same thought occurred to me. Either he was putting on an act for my benefit, or his fortunes fluctuate considerably from week to week. It’s something to keep an eye on. At any rate, we parted company there a few hours ago and I followed him down to Sailmaker Street. He didn’t go out again.”

  “Sounds like a wasted evening.”

  “As far as this sewer business goes it was. Still, you can’t spend a whole evening drinking and whoring with a person and not learn something. He’s passing himself off as some well-heeled merchant and, to tell you the truth, he carries it off so well that I wonder if some of it isn’t true. I’d say he’s Skalan born, and has done a bit of this kind of work before—a small-time noser. The Plenimarans know how to find that type and use them.”

  Alec gave him a wry grin. “So do you.”

  “It’s too soon to tell with this one, though.” Seregil stretched wearily. His night at the Feather had left him feeling gritty and in need of a bath. “Although Lord Seregil clearly made quite an impression on him. I let a few details slip about privateers and suddenly he was my boon companion. I passed on a few rumors; it’ll be interesting to see where they pop up later. How’d you do?”

  Alec pulled a flattened roll of parchment from inside his tunic and waggled it triumphantly. Carrying it to the table, he pinned the corners down with books. As he reached to secure an upper corner, Seregil saw a ragged tear in his left sleeve that appeared to be stained with blood.

  “What happened to you?”

  Alec shrugged, avoiding his eye. “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Grasping his friend’s hand, he pushed the torn sleeve back. A rough bandage was tied around the boy’s forearm and stained through with a circle of dried blood the size of a two-sester piece. “Nothing doesn’t usually bleed like that.”

  “It’s just a scratch,” Alec insisted.

  Ignoring Alec’s objections, Seregil drew his dagger and cut away the dressing. A shallow, jagged cut began at a puncture just below his elbow and ended dangerously close to the delicate tendons just above Alec’s wrist.

  “Illior’s Fingers, you could get blood poisoning with a cut like that!” he gasped, fetching brandy to clean the wound. “What happened?”

  “I just slipped going over the roof to his window,” Alec admitted with a grudging sigh. “I figured that would be the safest route in, but it was a little steeper than I thought, and the slates were really slick—”

  “Ever heard of rope?”

  “By the time I realized I needed one, I was already up there. Anyway, my sleeve caught a nail sticking out of the gutter—”

  “The gutter?” Seregil sputtered, feeling his stomach give a little lurch. “You went over the edge? It’s a forty-foot drop to stone paving! What in the name of Bilairy’s—”

  “Actually, there’s a shed right under his window,” Alec corrected. “It would’ve broken the fall—”

  “Oh, so you had it all carefully planned, then?” Seregil said with heavy sarcasm.

  Alec shrugged again. “Learn and live, right?”

  Illior’s Light, that must be the same look I give Micum or Nysander when they’re berating me for surviving some stupid escapade! Shaking his head, Seregil turned to inspect Alec’s work, a crude, gridlike drawing done in charcoal and smudged here and there with blood.

  “This is a copy of a map I found in a hollowed-out post of Rythel’s bed,” explained Alec, frowning down at it. “It’s not very good, I know, but I knew I’d never remember any of it unless I marked it out somehow.”

  “You didn’t steal this parchment from his room?”

  “Of course not! I remembered what Parin said about drawings in his room and thought I might need to copy something. I took all the materials with me.”

  “Except a rope.”

  At first glance Alec’s map, done in a feverish haste by an unpracticed hand, seemed little more than a meaningless scrawl of lines.

  “I think it’s a map of the sewers,” said Alec. “There wasn’t any writing on it, just marks here and there, but it looked a lot like those plans we found at Kassarie’s, remember?” He pointed to a circle near the bottom of the sheet. “I’d say this represents the outlet where they’re working, and this is probably the top of the channel, where we found the sabotaged grate.”

  Seregil nodded slowly, then tapped a spot just beyond where a number of lines radiated out from a single terminus. “Several large channels come together here. One goes west, toward the Noble Quarter; this one here probably leads under the middle of the city— Is this exactly what you saw, line for line?”

  “I think so, but I didn’t get all of it. It was really complicated and I was jumping at every noise. Finally I did hear someone coming, so I just grabbed what I had and rabbited. Sorry.”

  “No, no, you did well,” Seregil mused, still puzzling over the layout. “This is solid grounds for arresting him, but how in hell did he get this much information?”

  “Could the Plenimarans use it to attack the city through the sewers?”

  “Not a full-scale attack, but they could cause plenty of other mischief—enemy sappers opening gates from inside, assassins popping out of the royal privies, or anywhere else in the city, for that matter.” Straightening up, he thumped Alec proudly on the shoulder. “Good work. This is more than I came up with.”<
br />
  Alec colored, grinning. “The smiths I talked to from his crew expect to be done in a couple of weeks. That means that Rythel has to complete whatever work he has left on this by then.” He paused. “What I want to know is how he learned all this if he never goes out at night and never leaves the work site?”

  “That’s the real question, isn’t it? Exploring and mapping out all these tunnels would take weeks, months even. But what if you find someone who knows already?”

  “Like a Scavenger!”

  “Or a gaterunner. What did that one who jumped me say?”

  “Something about strangers in the sewers, someone she was afraid of.”

  “Right.” Seregil looked down at the smudged parchment, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder what Tym’s up to these days?”

  “Tym?”

  “You must remember him, the thief who cut your purse for me that time?”

  Alec grimaced. “I remember him, all right. He’s not a gaterunner, is he?”

  “No, but he has connections there, and just about everywhere else among the poor and the criminal. That’s what makes him so useful to us.”

  “I didn’t think it was his charm,” Alec remarked sourly.

  19

  TYM

  “How do you know he’ll come?” Alec asked as they climbed to the empty room over the nameless lower city slophouse the following evening.

  “He’ll come.” Seregil eyed the greasy table with distaste, then sat down on one of the stools next to it. “He’s probably already around somewhere.”

  He hadn’t been hard to contact. An informal network permeated the lowest classes of the city like the roots of a tree; a coin and discreet word with the right party was usually sufficient.

  Almost before Seregil had finished speaking, they heard a light step on the stairs behind them. Tym paused in the doorway, scanning the room suspiciously. With a deferential nod to Seregil, he sauntered in.

  Alec eyed the thief with carefully guarded dislike. The last time Alec had seen him was outside the city that day with Micum and Beka. Cocky with his new skills, Alec had surprised him in a crowd, hoping to pay him back for cutting his purse. Instead, Tym had nearly knifed him.

  He was still thin and dirty as ever, and still cloaked in an air of hungry arrogance. Slinging one leg over the bench opposite Seregil, he favored Alec with a long, appraising sneer.

  “Still with ’im, eh? Must be gettin’ something you like.”

  Alec returned the look impassively.

  Tym snorted a brief, humorless laugh and turned his attention to Seregil. “You asked after me?”

  Seregil rested one fist on the table and slowly opened it to display a thick silver half sester.

  “Any queer customers about?” he asked, using the common slang for spy.

  Tym snorted again, a harsh, ugly sound. “What do you think?”

  Seregil snapped his hand closed over the coin, opened it again. A second coin glittered in the hollow of his palm. “Are you working for any of them?”

  Tym eyed the coins, an almost thoughtful look smoothing his narrow face for an instant. “Think I’d tell if I was?”

  Seregil’s hand closed, opened. Four coins.

  Alec studied Tym’s face. The aloof mask stayed firmly in place.

  “Could be,” Tym replied cautiously.

  Close. Open. No coins.

  That got a reaction. Tym sat forward, looking like a man who’d just overplayed his game.

  “Bugger! No, I ain’t working for nobody, but there’s them that might be.”

  Seregil opened his hand again. Five coins.

  “Rat Tom come by a stash real suddenlike, wouldn’t say where from,” Tym confided, all crafty compliance now.

  “Where’s Rat Tom now?”

  Tym shrugged. “Turned up dead in an alley not two weeks ago, throat cut.”

  “Who else?”

  “Fast Mickle claims he did a papers job in Helm Street.”

  “What house?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Where could I find Fast Mickle?”

  Tym shrugged again. “Ain’t seen him for a while.”

  Seregil snatched the coins away with a disgusted sigh and rose, motioning for Alec to follow. “Let’s go. There’s nothing to be learned here.”

  “There’s talk,” Tym added hastily.

  Halfway to the door already, Seregil turned with an exasperated frown. “What talk?”

  “It’s the gaterunners mostly. Some turn up flush all of a sudden, then they turn up dead or not at all.”

  Alec exchanged a quick look with Seregil, thinking of what the woman had told them in the sewers.

  “Madrin, Dinstil, Slim Lily, Wanderin’ Ki, all of ’em dead one way or another just in the last month,” Tym continued. “Tarl’s been lookin’ for Farin the Fish for a week now.”

  “I thought Farin was a breaker?” Seregil returned to the table. Alec remained standing just behind him.

  “He is, but still it’s funny he’s gone. Him and Tarl been together for years.”

  “Any others?”

  “Virella maybe, she’s another runner, but you don’t never know with her. And that young breaker, Shady—they found her floating in the harbor out past the moles. Some are even wondering about the Rhíminee Cat, but he’s another you don’t never know about.”

  Seregil jingled the coins in his fist. “Who’s supposed to be doing all this killing?”

  For the first time Tym looked uneasy. “Don’t know. Don’t nobody know, and that is strange. The snuffers claim ain’t none of them doing it. Folks is gettin’ nervous. You don’t hardly know whether to take a job or not.”

  “I have a job, if you’re interested,” Seregil told him, sliding the silver enticingly closer.

  Tym looked hungrily at the stack of coins. “This wouldn’t be a running job would it?”

  “No, just a snoop. There’s a house near here I want watched. If you see anyone you know go in—breaker, runner, keek, anything—I want to know about it. Or anyone you think doesn’t fit with the neighborhood. Is that clear?”

  “Breakers and runners?” Tym’s eyes narrowed again. “This got to do with the killings?”

  “Maybe he’s scared,” Alec suggested quietly, speaking for the first time.

  Tym lurched up, gripping the hilt of his knife. “Maybe I ought to fix that pretty face of yours!”

  “Sit down!” barked Seregil.

  Alec stiffened, but remained where he was. Tym sullenly obeyed.

  “Now,” Seregil resumed calmly, “do you want the job or not?”

  “Yeah, I want it,” Tym growled. “But it’ll cost you.”

  “Name your price.”

  “Two sesters a week.”

  “Done.” Seregil spat in his palm and clasped hands with the thief. As Tym tried to withdraw his, Seregil gripped it tight.

  “You’ve never turned on me yet. This would be a poor time to start.” Seregil smiled, but that only made the threat implicit in his tone more ominous. The force of it drove the cocky sneer from Tym’s face. “If anyone tumbles and offers you more to turn to them, you smile and you take their money, then you come straight back to me.”

  “I will, sure I will!” Tym stammered, wincing. “I ain’t never turned on you. I ain’t going to.”

  “Of course you aren’t.” Seregil relinquished his hold at last, but the imprint of his long fingers glowed for a moment in white, bloodless stripes across the back of the thief’s hand. “The house is the tenement in Sailmaker Street with the red and white striped lintel. You know the one?”

  Tym nodded curtly, flexing his hand. “Yeah, I know it.”

  “You can start now. Report to me in the usual way.”

  Alec shook his head incredulously as Tym disappeared down the stairs. “You actually trust him?”

  “After a fashion. He just needs the occasional reminder.” Seregil drummed his fingers lightly on the table. “In his own way, Tym trusts me. He tr
usts that I’ll pay. He trusts that I won’t double-cross him, and he trusts that I’ll hunt him to the ends of the earth and slit his throat if he turns on me. You’d do well to watch your step with him, though. That was no idle threat just now.”

  “I was just trying to push him along,” Alec began, but Seregil held up a hand.

  “I know what you were doing, and it worked. But you don’t understand people like him. He respects me because he fears me. I nearly killed him once and he’s the sort that takes to you afterward because of it. But he’d slice you open in a minute and worry about my reaction later. Insulting him the way you did is enough to make him your enemy for life.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Alec said. He’d never quite gotten around to telling Seregil of his last confrontation with Tym. Now didn’t seem to be the right time, either, but he stored away the advice.

  20

  MUCKING ABOUT

  Through the next week the dreary Klesin rains rolled in off the sea in earnest, melting away the last of the filthy snow still lingering in the shelter of alleyways and corners, and insuring that Seregil and his company were perpetually damp.

  Tym kept watch over the Sailmaker Street house, but reported nothing beyond Rythel’s expected movements between there and the sewer site.

  Work for the Rhíminee Cat—a papers job—came in at midweek. This fell to Alec, who spent the next few days scouting the household of a certain lord whose estranged wife wanted certain papers stolen. During the evenings, however, he became a welcome regular at the Hammer and Tongs. Whether Rythel would remain in his uncle’s shop once the work was completed seemed to be a matter of speculation, though it was unclear whether this was grounded in some hint from Rythel or mere wishful thinking on the part of the other smiths.

  Meanwhile, Seregil set to work on the connection between the smith and Lord General Zymanis, but his discreet inquiries yielded little beyond what Nysander had already told them. A young valet had disappeared four months before, but there was no evidence that he’d stolen anything.