by Brent Weeks
“He’s got a knife.”
“If we all take him, it doesn’t matter. Look how much meat there is on him!”
“Quiet,” someone said. Logan knew he should move, should check the knife, should wake up, but he was so tired. He couldn’t stay awake forever. It was too hard.
He thought he heard a woman’s voice, screaming through a hand covering her mouth. There was a slap and the scream stopped. Then there was another slap and another and another.
“Easy, Fin. You kill Lilly, we’ll fuckin’ gut you. She’s the only slit we got.”
Fin cursed Sniffles, then said, “You scream again, bitch, and I’ll rip out your hair and your fingernails. You don’t need those to fuck. Got it?”
Then the voice faded, and the heat faded, and the howling faded, and the stink faded, and Logan was truly dreaming. He was dreaming of his wedding night. He was married to a girl he barely knew, but as he talked in their bedchamber, as nervous as the beautiful fifteen year-old girl across from him, he felt sudden hope blossom in his heart. This girl was a woman he could love, and inexplicably, she was his. Jenine would be his wife and one day, his queen, and he knew he could love her.
Jenine’s dead. Stop this.
He saw in her big eyes that she could love him, too, that their marriage bed would not be a place of duty, but one of joy. Her cheeks colored as he stared at her as his wife. His eyes claimed her—not arrogantly, but confidently, gently, accepting her and rejoicing in her beauty—and when he pulled her close, she folded into him. Her lips were hot.
Then, it seemed like only a second later, they were still kissing, still taking off each other’s clothes, and feet were pounding up the stairs toward their room. Logan was pulling back from her and the door burst open and Khalidoran soldiers poured into the room—
Logan’s eyes snapped open and his fists flew as bodies landed on top of him.
As far as fights went, it was pathetic. Logan hadn’t eaten in two weeks, so he was as weak as a puppy. But the other inmates, aside from the meat they’d gorged on a few weeks ago, had been subsisting on bread and water for months or years. They were gaunt, hollow shadows of the men they had once been, so the fight proceeded slowly and clumsily.
Logan heaved one man off and punched another across the jaw, but two more were there instantly, their flesh made slick and muddy by their filth and their sweat. Fin landed on Logan’s hip while Jake tore at Logan’s face with long nails. Shaking another man off, Logan fought his way to his feet and flung Jake off.
The man fell into the Hole and disappeared.
Just like that, the fight was over.
“What’d you do that for?” Sniffles asked. “We could have used that meat. You fucker, you threw away meat.”
For a moment, their fury crested and Logan thought they would attack him again. He reached to his hip to pull out the knife. It was gone.
On the other side of the Hole, Fin looked at him. He picked his bloody, scurvied gums with the point of the knife. Time was on his side, now.
Logan had thought the Holers had no society, but he’d been wrong. There were camps down here, too. The Holers were split into the animals and the monsters, the weak and the strong. Fin led the animals, who ranked mostly according to their crimes: murderers then rapists then slavers then pedophiles. The monsters were Yimbo, a big-boned red-haired Ceuran whose tongue had been cut out; Tatts, a pale Lodricari covered in tattoos who could speak but never did; and Gnasher, a misshapen simpleton with massive shoulders and a twisted spine and teeth filed to sharp points. The monsters survived only through the others’ fear of them, and their willingness to fight.
Now, as they all starved, the tenuous society was breaking down. Logan had no friends, no knife, no place. Among the animals, he was now a wolf without a pack. Among the monsters, he was a dog without his steel tooth.
He had tried to see the inmates as men. Men debased and humiliated and reviled and evil, but men. He tried to see in them something good, some image within them of the gods or the God who had made them. But in the shadows of the Hole, he saw only animals and monsters.
Logan went and sat by Gnasher. The man gave him a simpleton’s smile made horrible by his filed teeth.
Then there was a sound that made everyone freeze. Footsteps resounded through the corridor above the Ass-hole. Logan slipped into the one narrow overhang that would hide him from view as a torch-illumined face appeared over them. “I’ll be,” the guard said. He was black-haired, pale, and hulking, with a smashed nose, plainly Khalidoran.
The guard opened the grate but kept a close eye on the inmates fifteen feet below him. Fin didn’t even unlimber his ropes.
“Figured a few of you would have died by now,” the guard said. “Thought you’d be real hungry.” He reached into a sack and pulled out a large loaf of bread. Every inmate looked at him with such longing that he laughed. “Well, then, here you go.” The guard tossed them the loaf, but it sailed into the Hole.
The prisoners cried out, thinking it was a mistake. The guard produced another loaf and tossed it into the Hole too. The prisoners crowded around the Hole, even Fin and Lilly. The next loaf bounced off of Sniffles’s fingertips and he almost fell in after it.
The guard laughed. He locked the grate and walked away, whistling a cheery tune. Several of the inmates wept.
He didn’t come back. The days passed in agony. Logan had never known such debilitating weakness.
Four nights later—if the term wasn’t meaningless, Logan thought of it as night because most of the Hole’s inhabitants were asleep and the howling winds shrieked loudest at what the Holers called noon—Fin cut one of his pedophiles’ throats. In moments, everyone was awake and fighting over the body. When Sniffles started beating on Gnasher to try to get the man to let go of some bloody scrap Logan preferred not to identify, Gnasher dropped the scrap and attacked him. Sniffles tried to fight him off, but Gnasher handled him like he was a child. Yanking Sniffles’s arms out of the way, Gnasher sank his filed teeth into the man’s neck.
In the ensuing fight over the body, an entire leg was thrown clear and landed next to Logan. When Scab came after it, Logan snatched it up. To his own horror, he stared Scab down until the man turned and left.
Logan took the leg back to the wall and wept, because no matter how hard he looked at it, he saw only meat.
9
Compared to Cenaria, Caernarvon was paradise. There were no Warrens here, no stark division of have and have-not, no occupying army, no stench of ash and death, no vacant stares of despair. The capital of Waeddryn had flourished under an unbroken line of twenty-two queens.
Twenty-two queens. The thought was strange to Kylar, until he realized that Momma K had ruled the Sa’kagé and the streets of Cenaria for more than twenty years.
“State your business,” the gate guard said, eyeing their wagon. The people here were taller than Cenarians, and Kylar had never seen so many with blue eyes or with such bright hair—every color from almost white to fiery red.
“I buy and sell medicinal herbs. We’ve come here to start an apothecary,” Kylar said.
“Where from?”
“Cenaria.”
The guard looked pensive. “Heard things are real bad there. If you’re setting up shop on the south side, be careful. There’s some tough neighborhoods down…” he trailed off as he caught sight of the scars on Elene’s face.
Faster than he would have thought possible, Kylar was furious. Elene’s scars were all that marred otherwise perfect beauty. A brilliant smile, deep brown eyes that defied the boring plainness of the word brown, eyes that only a poet could adequately describe and only a legion of bards adequately praise, skin that begged to be touched and curves that demanded it. With all that, how can he only see scars? But saying anything would only cause a scene. The guard blinked. “Uh, go on,” he said.
“Thanks.” Kylar wasn’t worried about Caernarvon’s Sa’kagé. They were strictly small time: mugging, picking pockets, street prostitu
tion, and gambling on the dog fights and bull baiting. Some brothels and gambling dens actually stayed in business without being affiliated with them. Kylar’s childhood street gang was more organized than the crime here.
They drove through the city, gawking at the people and the sights like bumpkins. Caernarvon sat at the confluence of the Wy, the Red, and the Blackberry rivers, and its streets were bursting with commerce and the multiplicity of people who flowed with the money. They passed olive-skinned, strong-featured Sethi wearing short loose trousers and white tunics, red-haired Ceurans with their two swords and their odd fashion of braiding multicolored locks of hair into their own, a few Ladeshians, and even an almond-eyed Ymmuri. They made a game of it, surreptitiously pointing and trying to guess who was from where.
“How about him?” Uly asked, pointing at a nondescript man in plain woolens. Kylar scowled.
“Yes, let’s hear it, hotshot,” Elene said, wearing an impish grin. “And don’t point, Uly.” The man had no distinguishing characteristics. No tattoos, standard tunic and trousers for Caernarvon, brown hair cut short, no Modaini patrician nose, nothing distinctive; even his fairly tan skin that could have come from half a dozen countries. “Ah,” Kylar said. “Alitaeran.”
“Prove it,” Elene said.
“Only Alitaerans look that smug.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Ask him,” Kylar said.
Elene shook her head, sinking back, suddenly shy.
“Hey, master!” Uly shouted as their wagon rolled past him. “Where ya from?”
“Uly!” Elene said, mortified.
The man turned and drew himself to his full height. “I hail from Alitaera, by the grace of the God the greatest nation in all Midcyru.”
“The gods, you mean,” the Waeddryner he was bargaining with said.
“No, unlike you Waeddryner dogs, Alitaerans say what they mean,” the merchant said, and in a moment they were arguing about religion and politics and Uly was forgotten.
“I am pretty amazing,” Kylar said.
Elene groaned. “You’re probably Alitaeran yourself.”
Kylar laughed, but that “probably” soured in his mouth. Probably, because he was a guild rat, an orphan, maybe slaveborn. Like that Alitaeran, he couldn’t even guess where his parents had been from. He couldn’t guess why they’d abandoned him. Were they dead? Alive? Important somehow, like every orphan dreams? While Jarl had been busy saving pennies to get out of the guild, Kylar had been dreaming of why his noble parents might have been forced to abandon him. It was useless, foolish, and he thought he’d given it up long ago.
The closest thing he’d had to a father was Durzo—and Kylar had become what all men curse: a patricide. Now here he was, a loose string, tied to nothing before or behind.
No, that wasn’t true. He had Elene and Uly. And he had the freedom to love. That freedom cost something, but it was worth the price.
“Are you all right?” Elene asked him, her brown eyes concerned.
“No,” Kylar said. “As long as we’re together, I’m great.”
In a few minutes, they had left the northern markets and were getting deeper into the shipping district. Even here almost all the buildings were stone—a big change from Cenaria, where stone was so expensive that most of the houses were wood and rice paper. Local punks lounged in the stoops of houses and warehouses and mills, sullenly watching them go past with the universal expression of adolescents with something to prove.
“Are you sure this is the right road?” Kylar asked.
Elene winced. “No?”
Kylar kept the wagon moving, but it didn’t matter. Six of the teens stood and followed a black-toothed man with a mop of greasy black hair toward them. The youths reached under steps or beneath piles of trash to find weapons. They were street weapons, clubs and knives and a length of heavy chain. The man leading them stood in front of the wagon and grabbed the near horse’s bridle.
“Well, honey,” Kylar said, “time to meet our friendly neighborhood Sa’kagé.”
“Kylar, remember what you promised,” Elene said, taking his arm.
“You don’t really expect me to…” He let the question die as he saw the look in her eyes.
“Afternoon,” their leader said, slapping a club into his palm. He smiled broadly, showing off two black front teeth.
“Honey,” Kylar said, ignoring him. “This is different. You have to see that.”
“Other people get through this sort of thing without anybody dying.”
“Nobody will die if we do this my way,” Kylar said.
The black-toothed man cleared his throat. Dirt looked permanently tattooed into his visage and two protruding, crooked, and blackened front teeth dominated his face. “Excuse me, lovers. I don’t mean to interrupt—”
“You can wait,” Kylar said in a tone that brooked no argument. He turned back to Elene. “Honey.”
“Either do what you promised or do what you’ve always done,” Elene said.
“That’s not permission.”
“No. It’s not.”
“Excuse me,” the man said again. “This—”
“Let me guess,” Kylar said, mimicking the man’s swagger and accent. “This here’s a toll road, and we need to pay a toll.”
“Uh. That’s right,” the man allowed.
“How’d I guess?”
“I was gonna ask that—hey, you shut your mouth. I’m Tom Gray and this here—”
“Is your road. Sure. How much?” Kylar asked.
Tom Gray scowled. “Thirteen silvers,” he said.
Kylar counted the seven men aloud. “Wait, doesn’t that screw your bashers? They get one silver each and you get six?” Kylar asked. Tom Gray blanched. The boys looked at him angrily. Kylar was right, of course. Small-time thugs. “I’ll give you seven,” Kylar said.
He pulled out his small coin purse and started tossing silvers to each of the young men. “You get that much with no effort. Why risk a fight? That’s as much as Tom was going to give you anyway.”
“Hold on,” Tom said. “If he gave us that much that easy he’s got to have more. Let’s take him.”
But the young men weren’t buying it. They shrugged, shook their heads, and shuffled back to their stoops.
“What are you doing?” Tom demanded. “Hey!”
Kylar flicked the reins and the horses started forward. Tom had to jump aside to avoid being crushed. He twisted his ankle as he landed. Kylar pulled his front lips back to make himself look as buck-toothed as Tom and raised his hands helplessly. The young men and Uly laughed.
10
They spent the night at an inn, and Aunt Mea found them early in the morning and guided them through a tangle of alleys to her house. She was in her forties, looked a decade older, and had been widowed for almost twenty years, since soon after her son, Braen, was born. Her husband had been a successful rug merchant, so her house was large, and she assured Kylar and Elene that they could stay as long as they liked. Aunt Mea was a midwife and healer with plain features, twinkling eyes, and shoulders like a longshoreman.
“So,” Aunt Mea said, after a breakfast of eggs and ham, “how long have you two been married?”
“About a year,” Kylar said. He figured that if he initiated the lies, Elene might be able to keep them going. Elene was a terrible liar. He looked at her, and sure enough, she was blushing.
Aunt Mea took it to be embarrassment and laughed. “Well, I did figure you were a little young to be this young lady’s natural mother. How’d you find your new mother and father, Uly?”
Kylar sat back, stifling the urge to supply the answer himself. If he answered for everyone, not only would he look like an ass, he’d look suspicious. Sometimes you just had to let the bones roll where they may.
“The war,” Uly said. She swallowed, looked down at her plate, and said nothing more. It wasn’t even a lie, and the emotion on Uly’s face was plainly real. Uly’s nurse had been killed in the fighting. Uly stil
l cried about it sometimes.
“She was at the castle during the coup,” Elene said.
Aunt Mea set down her knife and spoon—they didn’t use forks in Caernarvon, much to Kylar’s irritation. “I tell you what, Uly. We’re going to take good care of you. You’ll be safe and you’ll even have your own room.”
“And toys?” Uly asked.
Something about the open, hopeful expression on Uly’s face made Kylar ache. Little girls should be playing with dolls—why hadn’t he ever given Uly a doll?—not fishing bodies out of rivers.
Aunt Mea laughed. “And toys,” she said.
“Aunt Mea,” Elene said. “We’re already putting you out enough. We have money for toys, and Uly can stay with us. You’ve already—”
“I won’t hear of it,” Aunt Mea said. “Besides, you two are still newlyweds. You need all the privacy you can get, although heaven knows, Gavin and I managed to plow the row quite a few times when we shared a one-room shack with his parents.” Elene blushed crimson, but Aunt Mea kept talking. “But I’d guess an eleven-year-old isn’t quite as good about ignoring noises in the night. Am I right?”
Now Kylar blushed. Aunt Mea looked at him, and then looked at Uly, who looked puzzled.
“Are you telling me you haven’t since you left Cenaria?” Aunt Mea said. “Surely you’d slip away sometimes in the morning when Uly was still asleep? No? That trip has to be what, three weeks? That’s an eternity for you youngsters. Well. This afternoon, Uly and I will go for a good long walk. The bed in your room creaks some, but if you worry too much about that sort of thing, Uly will never have a little brother, eh?”
“Please,” Kylar begged, shaking his head. Elene was mortified.
“Hmmph,” Aunt Mea said, looking at Elene. “Well. If you’re finished with your breakfast, why don’t we go meet my son?”
Braen Smith worked in a shop attached to the house. He had his mother’s broad, plain features and wide shoulders. As they approached, he threw a barrel hoop he was shaping onto a stack of similar ones and removed his gloves. “Morning,” he said.
