Way of Shadows nat-1

by Brent Weeks

  “In case you’re wondering,” Nose said. “These are the nicest suites in the place. Real sweet places. For nobles. Not for you, though.” He chuckled.

  Logan looked at the man flatly.

  “Ramp up there goes to the surface. Not for you, either.”

  The weasel-faced guard looked at Nose, “You always taunt dead men?”

  “Always,” Nose said, stuffing a finger up his nose. “What?” he said as Weasel looked at him. “I was scratching.”

  “Shut up,” Weasel said. “We down on three?”

  “Yeah, all the way to the Howlers. Let’s make it quick.” Nose tapped on the fourth door as he passed it. “I’ll be right back for ya, sweetheart!”

  There was a little cry from the cell, but the woman inside didn’t look up.

  “That bitch makes me hot,” Nose said. “You seen her?”

  Weasel shook his head, so Nose continued, “Got more scars on her face than a highlander’s got fleas, but who needs to look at her face, huh?”

  “The prince will rip your throat out if you touch her,” Weasel said.

  “Ah, how’s he gonna know?”

  “He’s coming down tonight. Wants to free our Sa’kagé boys and check on that wench and some little kid they dragged in,” Weasel said.

  “Tonight? Hell, she won’t take me five minutes,” Nose said. He laughed.

  They wended their way through two levels of manmade tunnels, the smells of massed humanity thickening and mingling with potent brimstone, sewage, and other smells Logan couldn’t identify. He tested his bonds periodically, but there was no change. He was barely mobile. Nonetheless, he kept his eyes open for his chance. Simple escape wouldn’t be good enough. He had to kill both guards, get the keys, and remember the way out.

  The Howlers were on the third floor, but as they came into the natural caves, merely widened with tools, Logan heard no howling.

  “We don’t want to go no further,” Nose said, pausing in front of a double-banded iron door. “These bastards here will do all we need. I’m not gonna even try to get him out of the Hole. I don’t go near those animals.”

  “The Hole?” Logan asked.

  Nose leered, but seemed eager to terrify him. “Hell’s Asshole. For the rapists, killers, and twists so bad that hangin’s too good for ’em. They drop ’em in there and let ’em devour each other. They hafta get their water off the rocks, and the guards never throw in enough bread. Sometimes they piss on it first.”

  “So who’s going to …you know?” Weasel asked, drawing his blade awkwardly. “Those bonds won’t hold forever.”

  “Who’s going to what?” Nose asked.

  “You know. Cut ’em off.”

  Logan tested the bonds, but they were still strong. His arms were locked at his sides, his torso held ramrod straight, and his feet could only move a few inches at a time—and the guards knew it. Oh gods. He was running out of time.

  “I’ll do it,” Nose said with a snarl. He grabbed a catchpole and draped the noose over Logan’s neck, then handed the pole to Weasel. “You hold him. We can’t take any chances. Gimme that.”

  Weasel handed his knife to Nose. It was just an ordinary knife, but Logan’s eyes fixed on it. Fear began to mix with rage, and he felt that ice thawing. Melting. They’re going to do it. Gods, no. He thrashed, thrashed his arms and legs like an animal. But no matter how he shook or twisted or turned, he barely moved an inch.

  Nose laughed, and Weasel just tightened the rope on his throat until Logan was turning purple. He didn’t care. Let them kill me now. Oh, gods! Nose said, “It’s too bad you haven’t worked with me longer.”

  “Why’s that?” Weasel asked, nervously holding the catchpole with both hands.

  Nose rammed the knife into Weasel’s eye. The man stood up on his tiptoes and twitched violently, then fell.

  “Because I would have tried to cut you in, instead of cutting you off,” Nose said. He laughed to himself and cut the noose off Logan’s neck. Logan stared at him, stunned to silence, his rage and fear slow to fade.

  Nose didn’t pay him any attention. “When you can move, put these on. Sorry they didn’t send someone more your size,” Nose said, stripping the clothes off Weasel’s corpse.

  “Who the hell are you?” Logan asked.

  “Don’t matter,” Nose said, throwing Weasel’s breeches at Logan. “What matters is who I work for.” He lowered his voice so the prisoners wouldn’t overhear him. “I work for Jarl. A friend of a friend of yours.”

  “Who?”

  “Jarl said to say he’s the friend of a friend.” Nose cut away Weasel’s underclothes with the knife. “I’m just telling you what I was told to—”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Logan interrupted.

  “Cutting his sack off.”

  “Oh, shit!” Logan shut his eyes, and would have turned away if the magical bonds had allowed it.

  Nose ignored him and cut. “Damn! Well, it ain’t pretty, but it’ll do. Good for us his hair’s the same color as yourn, eh?” He stood and shook a piece of flesh at Logan. “Look, pretty boy, this wasn’t my idea. But if Roth finds this sack after you and I are conveniently ‘killed during the uprising,’ we might both stay alive. Understand?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. We don’t have time. That shite I was talking about on our way down here was true. There’s a woman and a little girl up in the first set of cells. Jarl wants us to get ’em out. He wants to know why Roth wants ’em. Looks like those bonds are weakening. Grab a leg.”

  Logan found he could move his arms if he pushed hard enough, and his feet were almost loose. He grabbed one of Weasel’s feet—avoiding looking at his crotch—and started dragging him with Nose.

  “So you said all that just so I’d know it?” Logan asked.

  Nose scowled at the long iron bars set over a dark gap in the floor. The Hole was deep enough that in the meager torchlight Logan couldn’t see the bottom of it. Nose grabbed a key and unlocked a small grate at the near side of the bars. Snuffling noises and grunts that Logan would barely call human drifted up from the Hole.

  “And to see if he knew anything I didn’t before I killed him,” Nose said. “Help me dump him in. Don’t worry, it’s plenty deep and the sides are sheer.”

  Logan moved forward reluctantly to help. He still couldn’t move enough to squat to grab the grate, so Nose dragged it open and Logan shoved Weasel into the Hole.

  Demonic cries of glee pierced the air and a fight promptly broke out below.

  Shivering, Logan stepped away from the Hole. “What’s the plan now?”

  “The plan?” Nose looked down into the darkness and shook his head. “We get the hell out. If Roth wins tonight, he’ll be hot to find you. Jarl will have several men report seeing your body. Someone else will have seen me dead and will finally admit to having looted my body. He’ll show your ‘coin purse’ to Roth.”

  “That’s pretty thin,” Logan said. “Will you shut that damn grate?”

  “There’s hundreds of men dying upstairs. Trying to find out what happened to any one of them will be impossible. Roth knows that. Anyway, it’s the best we can do and keep your head on your shoulders at the same time. Jarl will have to decide if the ‘coin purse’ bit is too much.”

  Nose stared back into the Hole, where the unmistakable sounds of feeding could be heard. He turned to Logan and smirked. “Kinda makes ya wonder, don’t it?”

  Logan shook his head, sickened. He looked back at Nose in time to see a thin lasso sail out of the Hole. It dropped neatly over Nose’s shoulders.

  In a blink, Logan saw that the rope was braided of sinews and he had an inane thought: What animal down here is big enough that they could make a rope of its sinews?

  Nose’s eyes filled with terror, then the lasso jerked tight and yanked him off his feet. He smacked full-length across the open grate and spread his arms and legs to keep from falling in. But raising his arms brought the noose off his shoulders and around his neck.
A wild cackle sounded from the Hole. Logan staggered forward, moving faster than he had for half an hour, but he was too slow.

  Nose’s eyes bulged as pressure mounted on the rope around his neck. There must have been five men pulling it. His arms weakened as he blinked at Logan, eyes bulging grotesquely.

  Then his arms folded and he slid into the Hole.

  Logan tried to grab for the man. Instead, he stumbled, tripped against the last vestiges of his bonds and found himself rolling toward the Hole himself.

  He gripped the bars and found himself staring down. He could vaguely make out the forms of men in a knot, limbs rising and falling, screeching and tearing at each other and Nose, who was flailing and screaming.

  For a full minute, Logan was stuck there, unable to move his arms and legs far enough to push himself away. Nose gradually stopped shrieking and the dark forms retreated from each other to feed.

  Then one of the men saw Logan and shouted.

  Logan flung himself to the side as hard as he could. He felt the weakened magic strain and snap. He flopped on his back on the jagged stones, then sat and flipped the grate closed.

  The key had fallen out of Nose’s hand when the rope had jerked him from his feet, but Logan was shaking too badly to lock the grate. Unsteadily, he got to his feet and walked up the hall.

  Logan pulled on Weasel’s clothes, stretching them over his taller, more muscular body. He was lucky that the man’s clothing had been baggy or it wouldn’t have fit him at all. After pulling on boots that pinched his feet terribly, Logan stood.

  He tried to find the strength to go back and lock the grate. If he never saw a prison again, he knew he would still have nightmares of this day for the rest of his life. The last thing he wanted was to go back down the long hallway to the Hole.

  But he couldn’t let animals like that have even the slimmest chance of escape.

  He walked down the long hall carefully, slowly, even though he knew he should hurry. Several paces from the grate, he stopped. It was undisturbed, but he could still hear the sounds of men tearing meat. He wanted to vomit.

  The sound of approaching voices came to Logan from above. The long rock halls carried their words.

  “Hey, you!” a voice with a Khalidoran accent demanded.

  One of the men in the last set of cells before the Hole answered, but Logan couldn’t distinguish his words.

  “Did a couple of soldiers and a prisoner come this way?”

  Logan froze as the prisoner murmured something.

  “See?” the voice said. “They didn’t come this way. And believe me, you don’t want to go down to the Hole.”

  Logan silently blessed the prisoner who’d lied probably more out of the habit of lying to authorities than to save him.

  “And you think a prisoner is going to tell you the truth?” a man with a cultured Khalidoran accent asked. “The prince demanded confirmation that Logan Gyre is dead. All your men are cooperating and searching the rest of this dungeon. Are you trying to hinder us?”

  “No, sir!”

  An unnatural, unflickering red light illuminated the long hallway.

  A wytch! Oh shit, where can I go?

  In the feeble torchlight, Logan examined the hallway again. But there were no niches, no crawl spaces. It was a dead end.

  Have I been spared from death so many times just for this?

  Logan considered a mad rush at the men. With only a knife, it would be tight, but if he could kill the wytch first he might have a chance.

  “This is a place of power; I feel dizzy with it,” a different voice said.

  “Indeed,” the first wytch answered, “I’ve not felt so much evil in one space since—well, since I last met with our liege.”

  For some reason, they found that humorous. Logan’s heart broke as he heard at least six men laughing.

  Six men. Maybe five wytches. At least two. Even if it were two wytches and four soldiers, Logan was lost. And the red light was growing brighter; they were only steps away.

  With dread, Logan looked down at the grate. It was the only way. Count Drake had told him that life was precious, that suicide was a coward’s way out, a sin against the God by flinging his gift back in his holy face.

  What was it Kylar had told him once? They had been propositioned by black-black market prostitutes, girls who operated outside of the Sa’kagé’s control and protection. The girls, neither more than twelve, had offered themselves specifically for degrading practices Logan hadn’t even heard of. Kylar had just said, “You’d be surprised at what you’d do to stay alive.”

  You’d be surprised at what you’d do to stay alive.

  Logan opened the grate and slipped inside. He hung on the iron bars by one hand while he locked it. Then he tucked the key back into a pocket, drew his knife, and dropped into hell.

  58

  It wasn’t until Kylar was flying through the air that he realized just exactly how far down it was to the river. He had no excuse, really. He’d been dangling out of this very window, looking at this very view, not five minutes ago. Except now the view was enlarging. Rapidly. He was going to clear the rocks. That was good. He was also going to hit the river at incredible speed, face first. Maybe a trained diver could have taken such a plunge without harm, but Kylar wasn’t a diver.

  The river filled all his vision and he flung his hands out. A thin wedge of Talent wrapped around him.

  Then he plunged into the river. His outstretched hands did nothing, but the wedge of Talent protected him and drove him under the river’s skin like a splinter.

  The wedge collapsed an instant after he hit and the water slapped him as brutally as if a giant had clapped his hands together over the whole of Kylar’s body.

  He was dreaming again, if it was called a dream when…. When what? The thought dribbled through Kylar’s fingers and he lost it.

  It was the dream he dreamt whenever he’d seen death for the last ten years. Like always, for a brief moment, he knew it was a dream. He knew it was a dream, but by the time he realized what dream it was, he couldn’t pull away. It swelled around him, and he was eleven again.

  The boat repair shop is dark, abandoned, cold in the silver moonlight. Azoth is terrified beyond terror even though he planned this. Now he turns and Rat is behind him, naked.

  Azoth edges toward the hole where boats once were lifted from the filthy waters of the Plith, edges toward rope and the rock tied to it and the noose he knotted on the end.

  “Kiss me again,” Rat says, and he’s right in front of Azoth, hands grabbing at him lustfully. “Kiss me again.”

  Where’s the noose? He’d put it here, hadn’t he? He sees the rock that was supposed to drag Rat to a watery death but where’s the—Rat pulls him close and his breath is hot on Azoth’s face, and his hands are pulling at Azoth’s clothes—

  Kylar hit the bottom of the river with a bump. His eyes flicked open and he saw Retribution inches away from his face. In the shock of hitting the water, it had been torn from his grasp. He was lucky he hadn’t cut himself to pieces with it. He was lucky that the silver blade had plunged straight to the bottom with him.

  Suddenly aware of the burning in his lungs, Kylar grabbed Retribution and pulled for the surface.

  How long have I been down here? It couldn’t have been more than a moment, or he would have drifted away and drowned. Seconds later, Kylar was surprised to find himself breathing air again and uninjured, at least from the fall. His nose and fingers were still bleeding, though, briefly staining the waters around him. The current jostled him up against a rock and he pulled himself up.

  He’d washed up on the rocks on the Vos Island side under East Kingsbridge, directly across the river from the Jadwin estate. The bank of the river where he stood was also the foundation of the castle wall, so to go upstream, he had to half climb and half swim. It took him ten exhausting minutes to get to a point where he could climb out of the water again.

  The docks where he’d seen Roth were at the north
ern tip of the island. To get there, he’d have to either continue through the water and the boulders along the river, or he’d have to go through the squat, stinking building that covered the Vos Island Crack.

  Kylar didn’t think he could make it over the rocks for another ten or twenty minutes. Even if Roth were still there when he arrived, Kylar was too weak to go that way. His nose had finally stopped bleeding, and he’d wrapped his hand so it wasn’t bleeding too badly, but if he tried to swim, it would bleed again. His hand throbbed and his whole body felt weak from the blood he’d lost.

  If it were any other night, Kylar would have left. He was in no shape to attempt an assassination. But logic didn’t mean much. Not tonight. Not after what Roth had done.

  The building on the Vos Island Crack was built of stone in a square, thirty paces on a side and only a single story above ground. It was supposed to be a marvel of engineering, but Kylar knew little about it. He supposed nobles weren’t impressed by a marvel that smelled like rotten eggs.

  It was stupidity to go on. Kylar was so exhausted he could barely even think of using his Talent. It took a certain kind of strength of its own to do that. He propped himself against the heavy door, gathering his strength. He was still holding Retribution. Looking down at the blade, he stared at the word etched into the blade. JUSTICE. Except it didn’t say “justice” now. He blinked.

  MERCY, it said in the same silver script, exactly where it used to say JUSTICE in black. On the hilt, perpendicular to that, now also silver where it had been ka’kari-black, it said VENGEANCE.

  The ka’kari was gone. Kylar was so tired-stupid that for a moment he despaired. Then he remembered where it had gone. It went into my skin? Just how tired was he? Surely that must have been his imagination. A hallucination.

  He turned his hand over and black sweat suddenly poured from his palm like oil, fluid for an instant, then suddenly congealing into a warm metal sphere. It was midnight black now, utterly featureless. A black ka’kari. Logan’s stories had mentioned only six: white, green, brown, silver, red, and blue. Emperor Jorsin Alkestes and his archmagus Ezra had given them to six champions, slighting one of Jorsin’s best friends, who then betrayed him. After the war, the six ka’kari had been objects of great lust, and those who carried them died quickly.