Shadow's Witness

by Paul S. Kemp

  Still, Thamalon obviously realized that Cale was more than a butler with a knowledgeable criminal cousin. Butlers didn’t drive off demons. His lord had suspected—no, not suspected, known—him to be a former criminal and yet had trusted him enough to allow him to continue on as Stormweather’s butler. Thamalon had even respected his privacy and asked no questions. His trust had gone that deep. Cale could never repay that debt, not fully.

  For the first time in his life, Cale had gotten a taste of legitimate work. Work that did not require him to mistrust everyone. Work that did not require him to keep his eyes on the exits and his hands on his blades. Work that had allowed him to put his darker side to rest, at least for a time. But most importantly, he had done work that had resulted in the love and trust of a family. Though the lie laid heavy on his soul, now more than ever he could not reveal that he originally had been sent to Stormweather to spy. He would not pollute their memory of him, though he knew it meant polluting himself by keeping it secret. Still, he wanted them to remember him the way he would remember them—with love. He was determined to leave with their trust. The trust he had earned from years of loyal service.

  Look where their trust has gotten them, he thought bitterly. Thazienne near death. His lord and lady shamed, plus a multitude of murdered guests and guards. His presence here had put them all in danger. Previously, he had always told himself that by being here he actually decreased the risk they faced in Selgaunt’s backstabbing world of secret plots and scheming nobles, not increased it. “I can handle the Righteous Man,” he had told himself again and again, as he had struggled to quell the pangs of conscience that tore at him. He now realized that he had been lying to himself, just as he had lied to everyone else.

  No more, he vowed. No more. Abruptly, he came to a decision.

  Everything changed, starting now. He would no longer put the Uskevren at risk. Either he got out of the life altogether or tonight was his last night in Stormweather; his last night as Erevis the butler. Resolved, he looked across the chessboard at Thamalon. If his lord wanted to know who he was, he would tell him.

  “Let’s play,” he said.

  Over the next hour they played and talked.

  Thamalon opened with a standard cleric gambit. Cale countered it in three moves.

  “You play well, Erevis,” observed Thamalon with raised brows. “I find myself unsurprised.”

  Cale smiled.

  “I was taught by the best players in Westgate two decades ago. My instructors did not forgive mistakes, so I learned well.”

  Thamalon nodded sagely.

  “I understand Westgate to have been that way. Still is, most say.”

  A city comparable in size to Selgaunt and likewise on the coast of the Inner Sea, Westgate had a long history of being run by powerful thieves’ guilds. Though no longer dominated by guilds, the city still harbored more thieves than a brothel did whores.

  Move. Countermove. Cale felt lighter for having finally revealed some of his past to his lord. He had kept too many secrets for far too long. Once started, he found it hard to stop. With his face turned down to look upon the board, he revealed still more.

  “Of course, my instructors as such no longer exist in Westgate. Other players allied and forced them out of business.”

  At that, Thamalon gave a barely perceptible start. His lord knew the history of the region. Years ago, an alliance of smaller guilds and the Westgate city authorities had allied to destroy the powerful guild known as the Night Masks. The guild that had formerly run the city. The guild to which Cale had formerly belonged.

  So now you know, Cale thought. Your butler was a Night Mask operative. “I found chess to be a very cutthroat game, then,” he added. “Fine for me as a younger man, but not a life I wanted to live forever.”

  Thamalon cleared his throat as though to speak but said nothing. Instead, he moved a vicar into position to threaten one of Cale’s clerics. Cale countered and attacked with his second cleric.

  “I understand,” Thamalon managed at last, but he looked upon Cale with different eyes now. A mixture of surprise, respect, and fear. Cale didn’t much care for the change. “That answers many of my questions.”

  While they had existed, the Night Masks had earned a reputation for violence and assassination. Even Thamalon apparently had heard of it. When Cale had fled Westgate and the guild, he had tried to leave that life far behind, but he had never seemed fully able to escape it. Soon after arriving in Selgaunt, he had fallen in with the Night Knives, another guild of thieves. That fact he could not reveal to Thamalon. It was enough that his lord now knew him to be a former thief and assassin. Cale would not add spy to the list.

  Move. Countermove. Cale had the advantage in the chess match.

  “Your schoolmaster,” Thamalon asked while trying to counter Cale’s attack, “what did he look like?”

  Cale smiled grimly but did not look up. Thamalon wanted confirmation.

  When Cale had been in the Night Masks, the guild had been headed by a secretive guildmaster who called himself The Faceless—a man whose identity had been and remained to this day a mystery—to most everyone but Cale.

  He looked up from the board and into Thamalon’s eyes and said meaningfully, “I never saw his face.”

  Thamalon nodded slowly, his brow furrowed. Move. Countermove.

  They played in silence for the next quarter of an hour. Cale knew Thamalon to be working through the implications of everything he had learned. His chess suffered for the inattention. Cale’s attack soon had Thamalon’s high monarch in retreat.

  “You play aggressively, Erevis,” Thamalon remarked, and removed his high monarch from immediate danger. Cale followed up with his archer and threatened anew.

  “That is the only way I learned to play, Lord. Check.”

  Thamalon interposed a cleric, but both knew the game to be soon over.

  “Unbridled aggression can sometimes be an enemy.”

  Cale halted in midmove to offer Thamalon a nod. “My Lord speaks truly. But the demands of the game frequently require it. When that is so, only the most cutthroat of players can win.” He moved his low monarch into position and looked up into Thamalon’s face. “Checkmate.”

  Thamalon smiled thoughtfully. He lay down his high monarch and sat back in his rocking chair. “A most enlightening game, old friend. Thank you, for everything.”

  It warmed Cale to hear Thamalon still call him old friend. Cale downed his wine in a single gulp, stood, and bowed.

  “May I take my leave, Lord? I have …” he smiled without mirth, “I have another game yet to play tonight.”

  Thamalon raised his bushy brows and gave Cale a piercing stare. “Do you already suspect the name of your next opponent?” He sat forward in the rocker and his eyes blazed beneath his fatigue. “Tell me if so, Erevis.”

  Cale’s lie came easy to him; too easy. “No Lord, not yet. But I will learn it.”

  Thamalon eased back into the chair but his eyes never left Cale’s face. “Everything I have is at your disposal—coin, men, magic. You don’t need to play alone, Cale.”

  Cale raised his eyebrows at that. Thamalon had never before called him Cale. This conversation had changed their relationship. “Chess is not a team game, Lord.”

  Thamalon smiled softly and nodded in acceptance. “No, I suppose it’s not.”

  Cale prepared to leave but Thamalon stood and seized Cale’s arm. “If the circumstances of the game change, and you require something, anything, you need only ask.”

  “I know, Lord.” Cale smiled. He wanted to embrace Thamalon, the man who had been friend and father for ten years, but could not bring himself to do it. He cleared his throat and stepped away from his lord.

  “I keep my chessboard and pieces in my room. That’s all I’ll need for now. I’ll leave immediately. When I learn something certain, I’ll send word.” He wanted to tell Thamalon that he likely would not be coming back, but feared the inevitable questions that would follow. Cale k
new leaving without saying goodbye would be something he would regret forever, but he also knew that if he told Thamalon the truth, his lord’s pained expression would also haunt him forever. If Thazienne learned of his past, she would despise him. He could not endure that. Better they thought him dead or vanished. Better they remembered him as Erevis the butler.

  “My lord should retire,” he said, still playing the role of butler. “I will give this matter my full attention.”

  Thamalon seemed to notice his exhaustion for the first time. He nodded and gave Cale a tired smile. “I will, soon. I need some time yet to think. And I still want to wait for Talbot.” He patted Cale on the shoulder. “You should rest too, old friend. Dawn is only hours away.”

  Cale returned his lord’s smile with a hard smile of his own. “My Lord,” he said, “I play chess best by night.”

  CHAPTER 6

  CALE

  Cale left Thamalon alone with his thoughts and strode purposefully out of the library. The household still bustled as the house guard and staff finalized the cleanup. Some quietly hailed him but he ignored their greetings. His mind was focused on only one thing—making the Righteous Man pay for hurting his family.

  He took the steps of the spiral staircase two at a time. When he reached his room, he gently closed and locked the door behind him. For the briefest instant, doubt reared its head and caused him to hesitate. The realization that he would likely never again see his home and family, and that he would probably be dead before tomorrow, hit him like a fist. Cale stubbornly blinked away the tears beginning to well in his eyes.

  I’ll do it because I have to, he told himself. Ten years of my selfishness nearly killed Thazienne tonight. One way or another, it had to end. The lies, the schemes, the cover up—all of it had to end, tonight.

  Resolved once again, he glanced around the safest room in which he had ever lived and tried to fix its image in his memory. The extra-long, wrought iron bed Shamur had thoughtfully acquired especially for him. The leather bound chair in which he so often fell asleep while reading. The worn oak night table with its tarnished oil lamp. In contrast to the rich but tasteful decor of the rest of Stormweather, his room looked like the spartan cell of an Ilmaterite monk.

  Thazienne always tells me I live like a cloistered priest, he thought, smiling. His smile dissolved into a frown when he realized that after tonight, he would probably be dead and she wouldn’t tell him anything again.

  Unconsciously, he had kept his belongings to a minimum. So he could easily run away, he supposed. His room contained nothing personal.

  Except for one thing: the locked pine trunk that stood at the foot of his bed. That trunk was personal. The lone link to his past in Westgate, it held his blades, enchanted leather armor, and his prized necklace of missiles—the gear of Cale the assassin. The gear that had saved them when thirty Zhents had ambushed Cale and Jak a month ago. That escape had been close and had cost him all but one of the explosive globes on the magical necklace. He had told himself afterward that it didn’t matter because he would not need it again, even while a part of him secretly had hoped for the opportunity.

  And now I’ve got it.

  He realized now the self-deluding nature of the fiction he had maintained. He had told himself that he would not wear his equipment again, yet he had kept it and lovingly tended it through the course of ten years. Why?

  Because I’m a killer playing at a butler, he realized. A killer trained by the best killers the cities of the Inner Sea have ever seen. He smiled, glad now for his Night Mask training. Cale was thankful to the gods for the character that allowed him to kill a man without remorse. Tonight, he was laying the fiction of Erevis the butler to rest. Tonight and forever after, he was Cale.

  He walked to the night table, pulled out the drawer, and removed a small iron key from an ingeniously hidden recess he had carved into the wood backing. He carried the key across the room gingerly, as though it was hot, and knelt before the trunk. There he stopped—

  His hand shook uncontrollably. He understood that opening the trunk and donning his gear inside Stormweather—something he had never before done—signified the end. The end of his life as the Uskevren butler. The end of his life as a member of a family. The end of the happiest period he had ever known. He hesitated—it also meant the end of a ten-year lie, he harshly reminded himself. And the end of putting the people I love in danger.

  With a snarl, he shoved in the key and turned it. The click of the lock sounded the death knell of Erevis the butler. Cale was back, this time for good. He threw back the lid and removed his gear.

  Like a viper shedding its skin, he stood and peeled off his butler’s attire. Out of long habit, he neatly folded his doublet, pants, and hose before placing them on top of the bed. Surprised at himself, he smiled.

  Perhaps the butler isn’t altogether gone out of me, he thought, and hoped.

  He pulled on his leather armor—still strong and supple despite the passage of years due to its powerful enchantment. It was the first thing he had worn in a month that fit him correctly. The smell of it reminded him of Westgate and of all the corpses he had left in the wake of his escape from the Night Masks.

  Grimly, he strapped on his weapons belt. The weight of his long sword and daggers hanging from his hips felt right. He welcomed the feel of steel at his belt, easily adjusted his stance and movements to the familiar burden. Carefully, as though unveiling a jewel, he drew forth from a velvet bag the necklace of missiles. He thoughtfully rolled the delicate links and final explosive globe between his fingers before clasping it about his throat. He threw on a lightweight, midnight blue, hooded cloak, loaded his pockets with some fivestars, a tinderbox, and three wax candles, then made ready to leave. He walked to the door, turned to take one last glance around the room, smiled sadly, and strode into the hall.

  He made a line straight for Thazienne’s room. He knew that Thamalon, Shamur, and the two boys would no doubt miss him when he was gone—Tamlin perhaps less than the others, he supposed with a wry smile—but they would move on easily with their lives. He and Thazienne, however, shared a special relationship. Not having him around would be hardest for her.

  Though he knew it would be difficult, he would not leave without seeing her one final time and telling her goodbye.

  Darven stood guard outside her door, no doubt ensuring the undisturbed rest Cale had ordered. The big guard took in Cale’s attire and his eyes went wide with questions.

  “Mister Cale?”

  Cale patted him reassuringly on his bulky shoulder. “Everything is all right, Darven. I need to see Thazienne. I’ll only be a moment.”

  “Of course.” Still wearing an expression full of unspoken questions, Darven pushed the door open for him and closed it behind.

  Cale stood just inside the door, suddenly shaking, wary of approaching Thazienne’s bed for fear that his resolve would falter. He realized now that she had been the primary reason he had stayed for so long at Stormweather, and now she was the reason he had to leave. So long as the Righteous Man wanted him, his presence here made her unsafe.

  Because Thazienne disdained Selgaunt’s fashion trends, much to her mother’s dismay, her room exuded a unique kind of strong but still vulnerable femininity. Delicate lace doilies and silks decorated her otherwise sturdy dressing table and wardrobe. Pastel paints covered an unadorned, but rough textured wall. A stalwart yet graceful wooden sleigh bed stood in the center of the room. In it, she lay, still unconscious.

  Cale saw that she had thrown off her heavy wool blanket—it had landed in a crumpled heap of purple on the floor beside the bed. Thazienne lay covered only in white sheets. Outlined by the thin linen, he could see the slight rise and fall of her breast. Her breathing seemed stronger now than it had been earlier in the evening.

  She’s too strong to lose, he thought, and smiled. It was the fire of her spirit that had drawn him to her in the first place. No demon’s touch could quench its flames.

  He steeled
himself and crossed the room.

  Remembering the unearthly cold that accompanied the shadow demon’s touch, he retrieved the wool blanket and gently covered Thazienne’s slim body. Some color had returned to her face and she felt warmer to the touch. He pulled a sitting chair close to the bed, covered her small hand with one of his own, and softly caressed her smooth cheek with the back of his other hand. He had never before touched her in that way.

  I’ll miss you if I don’t come back, he thought, and brushed a few stray strands of dark hair from her smooth forehead. Of everything, I’ll miss you the most.

  He tried to fight back the tears but they came anyway. For a long while, he simply sat there, held her hand, and wept. As usual when it came to his feelings for her, he could bring himself to say nothing.

  Struck with an idea, he wiped away his tears and walked to her small writing desk. He pulled a piece of parchment, a vial of ink, and a writing quill from a sliding drawer. Scribing in his light, precise script, he wrote, Whatever good is in me exists because of you. He thought for a moment, then wrote a verse from one of his favorite elven poems—Ai armiel telere maenen hir. You hold my heart forever. He signed it, stood, and stopped—

  What would it do to her to learn his feelings if he never returned? Equally important, what would it do to their relationship if he did?

  Doesn’t matter, he resolved. She has to know. I can’t die and not have told her.

  He turned and walked for the door. When he reached it, he again stopped.

  After a brief inner struggle, he turned again and walked back to the bed.

  Though he knew her to be unconscious, his stomach still fluttered and his knees felt weak. Shaking with pent up emotion, he bent over her and gently brushed her lips with his own—the only kiss they had ever shared. Likely the only kiss they ever would share.