Shadow's Son

by Jon Sprunk

  She stole down the steps like the daring thief Jangar Bey, her favorite storybook hero. Her fingers followed the curve of the stone wall as the cool steps wended beneath her feet. The lower she descended, the louder grew the sounds. The light got stronger, too. At the bottom of the steps a wide chamber opened before her, cut from the foundation beneath the house. Flaming torches lit the cavernous room and threw deep shadows across its painted walls. People in funny costumes stood in a circle and swayed in rhythm with the rising chant. Deep-blue hoods covered their faces except for dark eyeholes. Fanciful designs were sewn onto their clothes, shaggy birds with rearing claws depicted in golden thread.

  There was so much to see, Josey didn't notice the song had ended until the rustle of clothing caught her attention. The hoods came off and faces emerged into the torchlight, men and women smiling and nodding as they finished their play, or whatever it was. A head turned and Josey's breath caught in her throat as familiar eyes cast their gaze across the chamber. With a startled gasp, she ran back up the steps, not sure why she fled, but only knowing she had seen something she wasn't meant to witness. When she reached the niche, she slammed shut the paneled door and darted down the hallway, but the eyes followed her like a bad dream.

  The cool eyes of her father.

  The hallway stretched into darkness before her. Her breathing thundered in her ears. A haunting dread pursued her through the gloom. She grasped for something to hold on to, but there was nothing there as she tumbled down a well of endless night.

  With infinite slowness the darkness resolved itself into shapes. At first indistinct, they loomed large and frightening over Josey's head, until their edges came together into long shadows across the ceiling. Her body didn't seem to want to work. She tried to turn her neck and waited for what seemed like hours before anything came into view. She remembered her dream and shivered. She had forgotten about that day in the old wing of the house and the secret door in the wall. She had gone back to the niche days later only to find a bare wall and tight panels that refused to budge no matter how hard she pried at them. She left the wing convinced it had all been a bad dream.

  The musty smell of the secret cavern lingered in her head.

  She sat up. She was lying on a crude bed, little more than a length of coarse fabric stretched over a wooden frame. The room was unfamiliar, with walls and ceiling of cracked plaster, devoid of color or décor.

  Her head felt strange, like it was wrapped in wet towels. She lifted a hand to her forehead and groaned as a sliver of agony slid across her temple. The skin wasn't broken, but she could feel a bruise rising beneath the skin. What had happened? Fighting back a wave of nausea, she moved to get up. She was still wearing her nightdress. All of a sudden, the events in her father's room marched through her mind. She saw Father sitting in his favorite chair, his chest ripped open in a bloody gash, and the hulking specter in black standing over him. She remembered the rough hands that had bound her tight. The authorities had arrived to save her, but the man in black had killed them all. Was that right? Her thoughts were all jumbled. But one thing she remembered with crystal clarity: her poor father was dead.

  And now she was a captive, likely held for ransom. But who would pay for her release? She had no other family. The terror of her situation crept over her like an army of biting ants. She shivered on the cot, unable to move. Heavy tears slid down her face as the image of her dead father played over in her head. Poor, poor Father and poor her. She was truly alone in the world.

  The sound of talking silenced her sobs. She wiped her face with a silken sleeve and tried to stand up. The pain wasn't so bad now. She listened. A man's voice filtered through the room's only door.

  “—must've been killed right before I arrived,” the speaker said. A moment later, he added. “No, this was a real slick job. No broken windows. No blood trail.”

  Josey couldn't make out any other speakers. As quietly as she could, she stole up to the door and pressed her ear to the peeling wooden panels. She heard a little better, but still only the one voice.

  “I can't yet, Kit,” he said. “Mat was a friend.”

  Who was Mat? Or Kit? Josey tried to follow the conversation.

  “I don't know,” the voice continued. “She's part of this somehow, or the old man was. Either way, she knows something and I intend to find out what.”

  Josey stepped away from the door with her heart pounding in her throat. It had to be the man in black. He was crazy, talking to himself. From the sound of his ramblings, he meant to interrogate her. Imaginings of torture popped into her head. She wrapped her arms around her body, shivering. I have to get away!

  She took another look around the room. At the foot of the cot sat a heavy locker bound in bands of old bronze. A full-length mirror, actually a very nice piece she wouldn't have minded owning herself, stood beside a wooden cabinet opposite a narrow window. She hurried to the window and threw back the shade. There was no glass in the casement, just two heavy shutters secured with a slide-lock. She pulled the lock's handle, but it refused to open. The darkness seemed to deepen around her. There was something in the room.

  She yanked harder, biting her bottom lip as the shutters rattled. Her fingers encountered something wrapped around the lock, a piece of wire tied around the slide to keep it from opening. A shadow moved in her peripheral vision. She clawed at the wire with her fingernails as a tide of fear swelled inside her. She had to get out.

  She screamed as a brutal grip seized her from behind.

  The sun had begun to set as Caim turned onto the street of his apartment building. All day he had scoured Othir's backstreets and alleyways for information about Mat's murder. Nothing happened in the Gutters without someone hearing about it. For the right price, or faced with the proper motivation, the denizens of Low Town could be very forthcoming. Caim had plied both coin and intimidation with every street hood and gossipmonger he could find, but no one knew anything. He hadn't believed it, not until he'd bared his knives and seen the truth in the stark eyes staring back at him.

  About the only thing he'd learned were vague whispers about a new player in town, but nothing solid. It was all just rumors and gossip. People had turned up missing, not an unusual thing in the Gutters, but some were people who knew how to survive, like Molag Flat-Nose, an exmercenary and one of the prime suspects on Caim's list. Now that list was shorter and he was out of leads.

  As he entered the front door, Caim considered his situation. He could always cut and run. Kit would be thrilled. But it didn't sit right with him. This had gone far beyond a botched hit. Somewhere along the line it had become personal for him. He'd never had many friends, not besides Kit. Mathias had treated him well, better than he'd expected when they first met at a dingy tavern on the west side. The tavern was gone, replaced by a newer establishment that catered to a better clientele, and now Mathias was gone, too.

  Caim took a taper from the pot in the foyer, lit it from a tiny lamp set aside for late-night arrivals, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. A small shape huddled in the unlit hall. Caim started for a knife with his free hand until he recognized the shape and let it fall back by his side.

  The child sat on her haunches against the wall across from his door. Her large eyes watched him while her spindle-thin fingers traced the wall's discolored plaster. He paused at his door for a moment. A woman's soft crying issued from across the hall, punctuated by loud, angry shouts. Suddenly uncomfortable, he fumbled with his locks and ducked inside, closing the door to the sounds and the little girl's eyes.

  He lit a lamp and went over to the coldbox, trying to push the child's gaze out of his thoughts. Everyone had problems. Whether or not she learned to cope with life wasn't his concern. He grabbed a wine jar and drained it in several deep swallows. He looked at the last dregs of wine gathered at the bottom of the jar. Something tugged at the back of his mind. An unquantifiable urge to action tickled his nerves, like some nameless doom poised over his head, waiting to strike. I'm just
tired, he told himself, but he almost jumped when Kit appeared behind him and threw her arms around his neck.

  “I missed you,” she said. “What did you find out?”

  Caim put the jar down. He wanted to drink more, to get completely wrecked and forget these past couple days, but he needed all his wits about him.

  “Mathias is dead.”

  Kit rushed around to face him. Her fingers brushed across his hands like faint cobwebs. “What happened?”

  “Someone cut his heart out while he slept.”

  “Oh, Caim!”

  He poured out the whole story. Once he started talking, it all gushed out of him, like pus from an infected wound. Afterward, he felt a little better. The wine helped too.

  “So are you going to listen to me now?” Kit sat cross-legged on the kitchen table. “Will you leave Othir? Tonight?”

  Caim let out a long sigh. He didn't feel like fighting, but he couldn't walk away from this problem. It was too big, cut too close to the bone.

  “I can't yet, Kit. Mat was a friend.”

  “What's the girl got to do with this?”

  He tried to explain it to her, but he could tell by her rigid expression that he might as well be talking to the table. Why, why, why, she asked, until finally he collapsed in a chair, exhausted.

  “I give up, Kit. Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just chasing my tail, but for as long as I can remember I've been running from something. I'm tired of looking over my shoulder.”

  Kit set her hands on her tiny hips. “That's what I'm saying. A new start, someplace where nobody knows—”

  Before she could finish, a scream came from the bedroom, followed by muffled pounding. Caim leapt across the room and swung open the door. The old man's daughter was pulling frantically on the bindings that secured the window. The feeling of dread returned as Caim stepped into the room, so intense that he ducked his head between his shoulders. He crossed the narrow room and pulled the girl away from the window. Her screams sliced away the last remnants of his euphoria.

  He dragged her out into the kitchen and wrestled her into the chair. She started to rise again until he stood over her. Sucking in deep breaths, she stared up at him with a sullen expression. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her hands were clenched into tight fists. For a moment, he thought she might try to attack him. The image in his head made him smile. The girl glared with a hard set to her mouth. At least she had stopped screaming.

  Caim turned away and filled a kettle with tepid water from a jug. He had thought the girl was pretty before, but unconscious she had been only a distant presence, like the moon on a frigid winter night. Now, awake and animate, she was even more breathtaking. He squeezed his right hand into a fist until the fingernails cut into his palm. He had to keep his head on straight. He was a hunted man. He had to play this smart.

  With one eye on the girl, he lit the stove and put the kettle on to boil. He had a feeling he was in for a long night. Maybe Kit was right. Maybe he should have dumped this problem in an alley and left for greener pastures. He shook his head. No, he was too stubborn, or too stupid, to give up that easily. One thing he knew for sure. He wasn't letting this girl out of his sight until he found out what was going on. He owed Mathias that much.

  His hands tightened around the lid of the tea tin.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Josey concentrated on her hands, clutched together in her lap. She had always liked her hands. They were small-boned, with long, tapering fingers. Her nails needed painting; the pink lacquer was flaking off at the tips, but besides that, they were very nice hands.

  The killer's hands, however, the hands that had murdered her father, were wrapped in hard sinew. Tiny scars dotted his knuckles. One long cicatrix started on the back of his left hand and ran up into the cuff of his shirtsleeve. She stared at it as he held out a cup to her.

  “Take it,” he said.

  She grasped the round porcelain cup with both hands. It was deliciously warm. A pleasant green tea smell rose from the rim, but her stomach quailed at the idea of ingesting anything given to her by this beast. She let the cup rest in her lap.

  He glanced at her temple. “Does that hurt?”

  She shook her head to prove it didn't. His voice sounded different than she expected, more normal. He's not normal. He's a cold-blooded murderer.

  Her teeth clenched together so hard her jaws ached, but she knew if she didn't keep them clenched she would start screaming again. Everything about him repulsed her. His shoulders were too broad for his frame; his wrists were thick and ropy with muscle. His face wasn't uncomely, but it had a stoniness that made her think of the statues that decorated the walls of the new cathedral. Although she considered herself a good, pious woman, the sight of the immense edifice disturbed her, especially the stern faces of the statuary, which didn't resemble the kindly saints of her imagination. The killer had the same hard look about him. His chin was too sharp to be handsome. It made him look sinister, like a fox out to pilfer unattended chicks. And his eyes. They were chips of granite, cold and impervious. She looked away and tried not to think of his gaze upon her.

  The apartment was modest, barely larger than her bathing chamber. A shoddy table and the single chair in which she sat comprised the only furniture. The boards were bare wood, but clean-swept. A thick mat sat in the far corner. Leather bags hung on long cords from hooks set into the ceiling. Were they some sort of crude torture device? Metal bars of various lengths leaned against the wall. The kitchen area was likewise spare, with its antique coldbox and simple oven, some cupboards. Something unexpected rested on the countertop, a book. She couldn't make out the subject, but its illuminated pages were held open by the blade of a dagger.

  A thought struck her from out of the blue. He lives alone. Strangely, she wondered if he was lonely. Then, he turned to fetch a cup for himself and she saw the huge knives strapped to his back. One of them had stolen her father's life. In her imagination, she ripped the knives from their harness and plunged them into his neck.

  “What's your name, girl?” he asked, startling her with his brusqueness.

  “Who were you talking to before you grabbed me?” Josey congratulated herself on how steady her voice sounded. She started to lift the cup to her lips, but then set it back in her lap.

  “I was talking to no one.”

  “I heard you through the door. You were talking, but I didn't hear anyone else.”

  “You and I are the only ones here.”

  She nodded to herself. So he's either lying to me, or he's a madman who talks to himself and kills defenseless old men. Her fear was receding. In its place rose a gush of burning anger from the pit of her belly.

  “What do you want with me? If you're after a ransom, you ruined your chances when you killed my father.”

  He watched her with his stony eyes. “The only people I killed were the men intent on doing away with you.”

  “I saw you standing over him!” She couldn't stop shaking. The cup trembled in her hands. “I saw the blood and…his chest. I saw everything!”

  “Yes.” He was remarkably calm in the face of her rage. “There was blood and the old man was dead, but I didn't kill him. He was already dead—”

  “Liar!”

  She threw the cup at him. He dodged faster than she had ever seen anyone move. The cup shattered against a cabinet door, spattering hot tea and pottery shards across the wall. She steeled herself for his rebuke, but he stood there and sipped his tea.

  “I had the contract on his life,” he said. “And I would have killed him. It was under false pretenses, but I suppose that matters little to you. Still, I'm telling you the truth. Someone else had been there before me.”

  “Am I supposed to believe you?” The scorn in her voice made her feel invincible. He could hurt her, even kill her, but he couldn't stop her from speaking her mind. “Was there a whole legion of assassins waiting to kill my father? He was a harmless old man, well loved and respected by everyone.”


  “Not by the person who killed him, nor the client who hired me. That's two fairly serious enemies. A bit much for a man loved by everyone.”

  The dryness in his voice made her want to claw his eyes out. She crossed her arms across her breasts. She didn't have to listen to this. Her father was a good man. A great man! He had connections to the palace and all the best families. Now he was gone. Moistness crept into her eyes when she thought of how she wouldn't be able to attend his funeral. Who will attend mine?

  “You killed Markus, too,” she blurted.

  “Your servant? I never touched him. He's still alive for all I know.”

  “Second Prefect Markus, one of the Sacred Brothers you murdered when you were abducting me. He was the betrothed of my dearest friend.”

  “Those tinmen were after you, not me. I saved your life by stopping them.”

  “Markus would never hurt me. He was my friend, and you killed him like he was nothing.”

  He regarded her for a long moment. Her stomach quavered. Was this it? Was he going to kill her now?

  Instead, he asked, “What's your name?”

  “What does that matter?”

  “I'd like to know.”

  She straightened her posture. “I am Josephine Frenig, daughter of Artur Frenig, seventeenth earl of Highavon. Now, what of you? What are you called?”

  “It makes no difference.”

  “What's fair for one is fair for both. Since you surely mean to murder me, it should be of no consequence to you.”

  “Caim.”

  “Caim.” She had to choose her words carefully. “If you have any shred of decency, you will release me immediately, or at least allow me to write a letter to my father's friends.”

  “And if I intend to murder you?”

  Josey's tongue dried up in her mouth, but she forced her lips to work. “Then be done with it, craven.”

  He shook his head. “I didn't take you just to kill you here.”

  “Then why? Why did you do it?”