by Jon Sprunk
Caim released the breath, and with it all his reservations. The sorcerer stood like a statue of some forgotten demigod of the night. But Kit had said he could bleed. If he could bleed, he could die.
Caim saluted with the sword. His sword now. Levictus nodded as if they had come to some agreement, and then advanced across the rainsplattered tiles. Again the shadows darted at Caim. He could see them better now, not as amorphous blobs, but as small, sleek creatures with sharp teeth and glittering black eyes. But before they could reach him, a black shape erupted from the darkness. The tiny shadows scurried out of the beast's path. It was huge. Striding on four big paws, it resembled a great sable mastiff.
Caim leveled his sword at the creature. But instead of attacking him, the thing turned to pursue the shadows, scooping them up in its massive jaws and tearing them to bits. Then he realized this was the same shadow creature he had seen before, at the Vine and in the cellar under Josey's manor. It had never threatened him, only his enemies, and by the vibration thrumming in his head as the beast tore through the sorcerer's pets, this thing was somehow bound to him.
A violent hiss was the only warning Caim got. He lifted the sword in time to deflect a black knife aimed at his throat. Phosphoric sparks flew as the weapons connected, recoiled, and clashed again. The shadows had fled into the darkness, and the beast with them. Caim almost felt like his old self. On the next pass, he beat the sorcerer's counterattack by a fraction of a heartbeat. He feinted high and slashed. The sword tore through black fabric and found flesh underneath.
Levictus vanished, leaving behind a few spots of blood. But this time, Caim witnessed something he hadn't before. As the sorcerer disappeared, he stepped into a hole in the air, like a window into nothingness. It slammed shut behind him, but tendrils of dark luminescence remained. Caim turned, following them with his eyes. He was ready when Levictus reappeared on the other side of the roof. He struck. The sorcerer nearly fell on his back evading the lunge. His knives deflected the sword's path enough to avoid being spitted. Then, like a cat he righted himself and kept coming.
Around and around they circled while Kit danced above their heads. Her laughter rivaled the thunder. Caim took a scratch on his left hand, a shallow wound, but Levictus followed up with a series of stabs that put him on the defensive. Yet the sorcerer was slowing with every step, while Caim felt his stamina improving. The sword twitched in his hand like a living thing. He pressed with a riposte, but Levictus parried and leapt at him. Caim tried to reverse his momentum as the tip of a black knife raced toward his unprotected chest. He didn't have time to think as he twisted to avoid the deadly strike. The edge of the roof reared up toward him. Off balance, he would have fallen, should have fallen, except that the darkness billowed around him, cradling him in its grasp. His feet left the tiles, and came down a moment later behind the sorcerer. Somehow, he had been transported a dozen feet through thin air. Levictus turned, his knives moving. Even as his brain boggled at what had just happened, Caim lunged.
Levictus made no sound, but the tendons of his neck stood out like taut cables. His eyes stabbed at Caim with the hatred of the damned for one interminable moment. Then, he slumped to his knees.
Caim shoved the blade deeper and stepped back. The sword's hilt quivered in the sorcerer's chest like the masthead of a floundering ship. In his mind, Caim saw his father, kneeling in the blood-drenched yard of their family estate.
Justice. At last.
Sibilant whispers echoed in the darkness. Caim balled his hands into fists as the shadows returned, but they ignored him. Skittering like tiny spiders, they adhered themselves to the sorcerer's body until they encased it in a black cocoon. The corpse dissolved before Calm's eyes, melted away with the rain and ran down the cracks between the roof tiles. A minute later, nothing was left but his father's sword and an empty, sodden cloak.
Caim watched the black garment flap in the wind. The presence was gone, the beast and the little shadows with it, and something else as well. His fear. A weight had been lifted from his mind. He was different-he accepted that-but he wasn't a monster.
A faint wail rode the storm's howl. Josey!
He limped toward the roof's edge, but froze as a barrage of lightning strokes illuminated the night. Ral blocked his path, face streaked with pink lines of blood, sword drawn back. Caim recoiled, but there was nowhere to go. Even an old woman couldn't miss from so close. Ral grinned through his gory mask as the sword shot forth like a bolt from an arbalest. Caim grabbed at the blade with his naked hands, but it slid between his fingers and plunged into his stomach. Warm blood bubbled over Calm's hands as he braced himself for the disemboweling twist, but the sword dropped from the killer's hand to clatter on the tiles. Ral gaped with a stunned expression as he collapsed at Calm's feet for the second time.
Caim lifted his gaze to the slight figure in drenched rags standing behind the dead assassin, one of his suetes clutched in her shaking, bloodstained hands.
"Jo-" Caim tried to say, but the roof jumped up to smash his face.
Then, he was on his back. Josey and Kit knelt on either side of him. Their hands tugged his jacket in different directions, each trying to pull him upright, but the darkness held him in its embrace. His thoughts were slow to come. Water coursed down Josey's face. Overhead, the heavens roiled in their wrath, but an expanding sense of peace filled the hollow spaces of his soul. She was safe.
"It's all right," he whispered with a smile that took all of his dwindling strength.
"Don't leave!" Josey and Kit shouted in his ears. "Stay with me!"
He wanted to stay, but he had to disappoint them both as the night pulled him down into its unfathomable depths.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
orning brought a fresh glow to the city. Breezes laden with the sea's cleansing tang blew across the cemetery grounds and banished the lingering stenches of smoke and death. Low strains from a six-piece orchestra filled the grassy strips between long rows of tombs while people gathered around the freshly dug plot.
An imposing marble gravestone stood in the midst of the assembly, the beveled edges of the words engraved upon it glinting in the pale sunlight. Caim Du'Vartha
1218-1242
Dear Friend and Loyal Subject. It is Not the Night We Fear, But the Gathering Shadows Beyond Our Ken.
From his vantage in a thicket of aged brushwood Caim read those words, their letters seared into his brain like harbingers from the next world. Although the faux funeral had been his idea, Josey had come up with the epitaph. He wasn't keen on the "loyal subject" part.
It was an odd thing to observe his own funeral. He supposed this was how ghosts, recently evicted from their corporeal bodies, must feel as they watched their friends and loved ones gather to pay final tribute. In all, he found it rather dreary
Then again, the world had taken on a different shade since the events on the palace roof. The trees, the grass underfoot, even the people attending his memorial-none of them seemed completely real. A new presence flitted in and out of his awareness, always on the periphery. Every so often he would catch a glimpse of a shadow-low to the ground, moving swiftly-and then it would be gone. It was as if he had stepped through a doorway into another world, one deeper and more profound than the one he had known all his life, and there was no going back.
Kit hadn't changed, of course. Or rather, she had returned to the same waif she had always been, ever youthful and bubbling with effervescence. Whatever transformation happened to her that night, it had reversed back by the time he regained consciousness. She refused to discuss the beastly presence, refused even to admit she'd seen it, which shouldn't have surprised him. Same old Kit.
But everything else was different, much of it oddly so. For a known assassin to enter the palace was unnerving enough. To awaken in the imperial bedchamber, attended by dozens of physicians and nurses and servants, had almost been too much for him. But then Josey had appeared and everything seemed right again. Even now the sight of her, dolled up in
full regalia as she officiated over the ceremony, made his pulse race. She looked every bit an empress. Her hair had been dyed back to something close to its natural color. A gown of crushed velvet in somber purple lined with snow leopard fur accented her complexion and set off the jewels dripping from her neck, ears, and wrists. She was every man's fantasy: young, beautiful, kind-hearted, yet tough enough to stand on her own. And as far beyond your reach as the moon and stars.
A graceful young woman stood beside Josey. Anastasia, a friend from some important family. Fetching enough for a blonde, but she was outshone by the empress. A stooped, elderly man in a plain gray suit perched at Josey's elbow. Earl Frenig's manservant had been squirreled away in the palace dungeons after his master's murder. Besides being a bit undernourished, the old codger was little worse for wear.
Hubert stood in the front row amid several palace ministers. Head bowed, his left arm in a sling, the new Duke Vassili was a hero. In Low Town they were calling him "Lord of the Gutters." Not the most charming title, but he had taken to it like a kitten to cream. Just days after taking over his father's affairs, Hubert had spearheaded an effort to revive the Thurim. Their first item of business was a salvo of bold reforms aimed at relieving the plight of Othir's poorest citizens, including a plan to rebuild the parts of the city destroyed in the fire. Together, Hubert and Josey were going to accomplish magnificent things.
Another initiative coming out of the palace was the disbanding of the Sacred Brotherhood and the stripping of lands from wealthy priests. In the aftermath of the People's Revolt, as it was being called, the remaining hierarchs of the True Church had convened to elect a new prelate, one favorably disposed toward the restored imperium. Fresh proclamations of friendship and mutual assistance flowed from Castle DiVecci daily. To all appearances, it was the beginning of a new era in Nimea. For the first time in a long time, the future on the horizon looked brighter than the fading glories of the past.
Kit leaned on Calm's shoulder while he watched the proceedings.
"Isn't this all a bit much?" she asked. "I mean, it's not like most of these people actually gave two figs about you when you were alive."
"Yes. Well, people have to have their pretenses." Caim snapped off a twig from a tree branch and dropped it to the ground. A leather pack sat at his feet, beside a pair of wrapped bundles the length of his arm. Some victuals and a couple bottles liberated from the palace wine cellars, his bow, and his father's sword. Along with the clothes on his back and his knives, they were everything he owned in the world. The thought was oddly liberating.
"You think anyone will fall for this?" Kit asked.
"Why not? After the murders and the riots, everyone just wants to get back to some semblance of normalcy. If the burial of one poor thug is enough to satisfy them, isn't that a small price to pay?"
As the last notes of the dirge died away, the guests began to file away from the gravesite. Hubert offered his good arm to Josey, but she declined with a shake of her head. Caim couldn't suppress a chuckle, appreciating this new side to the girl he had risked his life to protect. Her performance was flawless as well-wishers offered their condolences. By now the story was known throughout the city, how a lowborn man had saved the longlost princess from traitors in the True Church and made the ultimate sacrifice in her service. If whispers arose of how attached the young empress had become to her rescuer during their escapades, none could reproach her. Indeed, they served to make her more accessible to her new subjects. After all, weren't such romantic notions the stuff of bard's songs?
With a gesture for her attendants to remain behind, Josey wandered among the headstones, head bent in quiet contemplation. As if by chance, she entered the grove and stopped a few paces away from him.
He took her in and attempted to penetrate the layers of pomp and regalia to find the young woman he had come to know. It wasn't easy. She had already become the symbol of her office, the mother of a nation.
Then, her mouth contorted into a frown. The Josey he knew was back.
"You shouldn't be out of bed so soon. The doctors said it would be weeks before you'd be well enough to move about."
Caim pressed a hand against his stomach. A dull ache pulled at his muscles there, but something stronger pulled at his spirit. "I'm just here to say good-bye."
Her bottom lip disappeared into her mouth. "You don't have to leave. Hubert has an idea to change your identity. We could put you into some better clothes, change your hair, and not even your grandmother would recognize you."
"That would be curious, as I've never met either of my grandmothers."
Josey twisted her fingers, heedless of the fortune in sapphires festooning them. Her gaze had dropped to his chest, as if she couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye anymore.
"I would be dead, if not for you."
"As I remember it, you were the one who saved me."
She shook her head. "When I was hanging in the dark, I couldn't see anything. My hands were numb. My heart was numb. I started to give up. Then I remembered the way you fought, how you never gave up-no matter the odds. That gave me the strength to pull myself up."
She looked up with a new light shining in her eyes, a glorious flame of pride. "Whatever comes now, I know I can face it. You did more than save my life, Caim. What I'm saying is you could have a family here. You and I… we could be… "
He shook his head. She started to reach out, and he caught her hand in a gentle grasp. Her nails had been cleaned of gutter filth and polished with a bright indigo lacquer. Her perfume filled his head, weakening his resistance.
"I can't stay. I've made a lot of enemies in this town. Anyway, it wouldn't be proper for an empress to be seen in the company of assassins, even if they're wearing silks and pomades."
He took her chin in his other hand. She moved closer until the hem of her wide skirt brushed his boots. Their lips came together in a kiss. The sweetness of her taste lingered in his mouth for a long time after he pulled away.
"I could come with you." Her eyes were cloudy with emotion. "Wherever you're going. I don't care."
Pulling away from her was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Only the knowledge of what he was sparing her kept him from toppling back into her arms.
"You have a lot of work to do here, Josey. Othir needs her empress. Our paths lead in different directions. For now."
Her hands started to rise, but then dropped back to her sides. Moisture glistened in her eyes. He smiled with care, afraid even the smallest gesture would crack the armor he had erected around his heart. He wanted her badly, wanted to stay and protect her, serve her, whatever she desired just for the chance to be with her. But they were as different as the sun and moon. Forever bound together, forever apart.
"Where will you go?" she asked.
He turned his gaze northward. Somewhere beyond the trees of the grove and the city walls lay the land of his birth. He didn't know what he would find once he got there, but the need to know about his past throbbed in him like a second heartbeat.
"I have questions that need answering and a long road to travel before I reach my destination."
"What if the answers you want aren't there?"
"Then I'll keep searching."
Josey reached into a fur muff dangling from her sleeve and pulled out a bundle of papers wrapped in black cord. "Take this. There's a writ of safe passage inside, although I don't know how far that will extend. There's been no news out of the northern provinces for weeks. I intend to send a military detachment up there as soon as I can find the resources."
"You're starting to sound like an empress already." He accepted the package. Nestled among the documents was a thin book, like a diary. He started to pull it out. "And this?"
She put her hands over his. "Read it later, after you've left the city environs. There might be information in there you can use. And, Caim, if you don't find what you're looking for, promise me you'll come back."
Caim pressed his lips to her fingers. "I promi
se, my lady."
Then he turned and left before the trembling in his legs could betray him. A breeze swirled through the trees and ruffled his hair as he trod across the carpet of fallen leaves. The sky was deepening to purple twilight. Kit danced before him in the failing light, her hair flowing free like a silver banner. He touched the golden talisman hung by a simple leather cord around his neck. He wanted to look back and catch one last glimpse of the woman he loved, of Othir's gleaming towers, of the life he was leaving behind.
But he kept walking, through the gates and into the gathering shadows beyond.
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