by Paul S. Kemp
He moved rapidly but stayed alert to his surroundings.
To Cale, the chill air seemed unnaturally still, the silence of the street ominous. He knew that the attackers must have watched Stormweather Towers for days before they attacked, possibly with magic, possibly with spies on roofs. Conceivably, operatives might still be lurking nearby in the darkness, waiting for someone to leave the manse. Though his spells protected him from magical scrying, he had only his wits and skills to guard against ordinary spies. They could have been watching him even then.
Nothing for it, he thought, gazing up at the dark rooftops. In for a dram, in for a drink. If they were out there, he would face them—alone. He loosened his blade in its scabbard.
Out of professional habit, he avoided the dim light cast by the nearly exhausted street torches. A man backlit by torchlight at night presented a perfect target for crossbowmen. Instead, Cale darted through the darkness on one side of the street. Run, stop in shadow, listen, and watch. Even while sprinting his footfalls only whispered over the flagstones. And when he wished, shadows cloaked him like a shroud. Not even the stray dogs sleeping in the shop doorways and alleys stirred at his passing.
As he moved, his gaze went from likely ambush point to likely ambush point—the shadows of doorways, the darkness of alleys, rooftops. He struggled to find the calmness that usually came over him when he was working, but it remained elusive. Despite his precautions and his better sense, he perceived potential ambushers in every shadow. He realized the feeling was likely the result of too little sleep and too much stress. Nevertheless, the feeling remained. Knowing it to be irrational did nothing to obviate its hold on him. It had been a night of irrational experiences, after all—a man with a shattered face and a gut wound had grinned, had thought it “wundafa,” and illusionary disguises had perfectly imitated house guards down to their voices. A half-drow with mismatched eyes had invaded his mind and become irate over ruined trousers, and an incorporeal Cyricist mage surrounded by shadows had actually managed to frighten Riven.
Cale could only imagine Ren’s state of mind. The boy was not yet twenty and was caught up in something that he likely couldn’t understand. When Cale was twenty, he’d been embezzling from the Night Masks and killing men for coin. Ren had made the right decisions, taken legitimate work, and still Beshaba, the goddess of ill-luck, had cursed him.
Fate is a fickle bitch, Cale thought, and he grinned without mirth.
As he moved, he considered his opponents. He knew that he had not yet taken the measure of the mage, the half-drow, and the rest. They were an unknown, and that worried him. He didn’t like fighting unknowns. As an assassin, Cale had always preferred to study his targets for days before making his move. He didn’t have that luxury though, not if he wanted to get Ren back alive. He wondered again about the half-sphere wrapped in burlap in his pack. It had to be more than it seemed. It—
A high-pitched wail from up ahead, inordinately loud in the night’s heavy silence, brought Cale up short and set the dogs in the street to barking. In two hammering heartbeats, Cale had his long sword and holy symbol in hand. The weapon felt lighter than usual in his grip. Darkness seemed to flow along the blade—a trick of the flickering street torches, he supposed. He sunk deeper into the shadows.
Nothing for a moment, then the wail repeated. He tensed.
A dagger toss ahead of him, a gray alley cat sprinted across Sarn Street, screeching. Another darted after it.
Cats. Only cats.
He realized that he was holding his breath. He blew it out in a sigh.
I’m too on edge, he thought. I need to get off the street.
He decided to take to the rooftops. It would be harder work, especially for a tired man, but safer. He would take the heights for as far as Selgaunt’s architecture allowed—a long way usually. In all but the Temple and Noble Districts, the city was amazingly uniform. Two story brick and wood buildings with gently pitched, tiled roofs predominated. A skilled man could cover a lot of ground in Selgaunt without ever putting his feet on the street.
Cale turned off the main avenue and jogged down an alley, startling a handful of cats. The damned things seemed everywhere. There, he melded into the darkness, blade ready. He waited a few moments to ensure that he was not being trailed. Nothing. He whispered a prayer to Mask and a globe of the darkness through which only he could see formed around him. A spy, even one with magically augmented vision, would not be able to penetrate it.
Casting the spell brought him the calm that working had not. He held the mask in his hand and remembered that he was not truly alone, even if his god generally was a bastard.
He ran his hands over the brick and wood walls behind him, found his grip, and climbed to the roof of the nearest building. The exertion further cleared his mind.
As he crested the top of the wall and slid onto the roof, he disrupted a roost of eave-doves. They cooed in aggravation, flapped angrily, and paced about, but did not fly away. He avoided stepping on any of them, crossed the roof and surveyed the street below. Still nothing and no one.
Feeling more comfortable, Cale headed uptown at speed. Sometimes he leaped across alleys, sometimes he was forced to descend to street level for a time before re-ascending another building. The process brought him back to himself. Anyone attempting to follow him would have had to have been very good or very airborne.
In less than half an hour, he reached the border of the Foreign District. Below him, an ancient stone wall, only thigh-high, separated the district from the rest of the city. From the rooftops it looked exactly like what it was: a granite line that symbolically divided the “inferior” foreigners from the native Selgauntans. Despite their thirst for commerce, most Sembians still regarded foreigners as backward and uncultured. Cale thought the Sembians had it exactly wrong. While Sembians, especially “noble” Sembians, worked hard to maintain a veneer of cultural sophistication, at their core they were little better than orcs. Cale had experienced firsthand the cutthroat politics of the “civilized” Selgauntan elite. At least orcs were forthright enough to put an axe in an enemy’s chest. The Sembians smiled and stuck a punch dagger in a kidney.
Uskevren excepted, of course, he thought with a hard grin.
The streets in the Foreign District were wide enough to accommodate the larger ox wagons necessary to move shipboard goods from the wharves into the city. The alleys too were wider. Though even there Cale could have stuck to the rooftops, the longer jumps across the alleys would have been riskier. Instead, he descended from the roofs, hopped over the short, symbolic dividing wall, and took to the stone paved streets.
Unattended carts dotted the roads. Painted signs, designed to attract the attention of newcomers to the city, hung from shop fronts, the words barely distinguishable in the light of guttering street torches. Periodic reminders of the recently deceased Hulorn’s strange artistic tastes loomed out of the darkness like malformed ghosts—here a bronze statue of a rampant chimera on a raised pedestal, there a stone fountain of a hydra spitting dyed water from the mouths of its many heads.
As Cale walked onward, the sky began to gray. Dawn. The dung sweepers would be about their business soon, collecting dried dung from the street and reselling it in the outlying villages for fuel and fertilizer. Lights started to peek through the slats of shop shutters. Sunrise was only a couple of hours away and the city’s merchants were preparing for a new day.
Within a quarter hour, the smell of baking bread started to fill the still air—a wholesome smell. Cale savored it. In a few hours, the stink of horses, crowds, and fresh fish would overwhelm the tantalizing aroma of the city’s bakeries.
Cale had always enjoyed the pre-dawn hours, both back in Westgate and in Selgaunt. Cities felt different at that hour. With night still hiding the filth, the quiet streets seemed almost pristine. For the few hours before dawn, the whole of the city belonged to the bakers, the fishermen, and the dung sweepers.
And the assassins, Cale thought.
&
nbsp; He had killed more than a handful of sleeping men in those quiet hours. More than a handful. …
With a shake of his head, he put the past out of his mind and headed for the flat that he and Jak rented.
Jak didn’t maintain a permanent residence in the city and was notoriously difficult to find from day to day—a necessary trait in an independent thief operating in a guild-dominated city. After their encounter with the demon lord Yrsillar, Cale and Jak had established a system by which they could easily and quietly contact one another, in case the need arose. The device was a simple one. They had rented a small room in a two-story, wood-framed boarding house in the Foreign District and paid the landlord, a retired sailor from the Dragon Coast as old as the Netherese Empire and as scarred as a butcher’s block, a bit extra to leave it and them undisturbed. He never asked questions as long as they paid. Neither Cale nor Jak ever actually stayed in the room, of course—it wasn’t a residence or a safehouse. Instead, it was what professionals termed a “lighthouse.” It provided a signal, nothing more.
In this case, Cale and Jak kept the shutters closed at all times unless they wanted a meet, in which case, they opened the shutters on at least two windows. Both were to pass by the flat at least once every two or three days. If the shutters were open, the other wanted to meet at the designated time in one of the three designated locations. The time was always sunset. The locations, in order of preference, were a quiet alehall and inn in the Foreign District called the Gilt Lizard; the Scarlet Knave, a gambling den on the wharves; or a dry well a bowshot outside the north gate of the city.
Currently, the shutters were closed, just as they had been two days before when Cale had walked past. He had not seen Jak in over two tendays.
From the street, the boarding house stood dark. Cale wasn’t sure if the other six rooms were even rented. Even if they were, the type of tenants who took rooms there were not likely to rise with the dawn.
He crossed the street and trekked silently up the rickety exterior stair that led to their rented room. He stopped at the door, kneeled, and listened. Nothing. He examined the lock to see if it showed signs of tampering. It didn’t. He took out his key, drew his blade—it still carried that odd, dark cast in the steel—and he opened the door.
The room was empty, just as he and Jak had left it. It smelled musty from the recent rains, like an old root cellar. Cale struck a tindertwig on the wood-planked wall and the room took shape in the light. It was a small square without furnishings or even a hearth. Had he actually stayed in the room, a hotpot would have been necessary to heat it in the winter.
Cale moved to the windows, opened the shutters, and secured them against the outer wall. When Jak saw them open, he would come in, close them, and head for the Gilt Lizard.
Being there reminded Cale of the room he’d kept as a young letters man and assassin back in Westgate. He’d had a different name then, been a different man. That room had been in a converted storehouse behind the Black Boot Inn, he remembered, near the stables and the inn’s kitchen. The place had always smelled of stew or manure, he thought with a smile, depending on the time of day. He had kept his stash of skimmed coin beneath the floorboards. No one had ever found it, though the Night Masks had eventually deduced that he was embezzling guild proceeds and forced him to flee the city.
The thought of hiding the half-sphere there, beneath the floorboards maybe, tempted him. He really felt the thing to be an invitation to an attack. But he resisted. The half-sphere would be safest on his person. Besides, once he met up with Jak, he wanted it to attract the half-drow and his crew. That was the only way Cale could negotiate for Ren’s return. He didn’t know how to find the half-drow, so he needed the half-drow and wizard to find him. He just wanted it to occur on a timetable that allowed him to learn first what in the Nine Hells the sphere was.
Thinking of the half-sphere reminded him again of his sword—the sword that had sheared the sphere neatly in two, the sword that had shadows dancing along its length. Had its contact with the sphere changed the blade? More importantly, had contact with the sphere changed him? He didn’t feel different … did he?
Cale shook his head. He didn’t have time to worry about it. He snuffed the tindertwig and headed out.
He would take a room at the Gilt Lizard and await word from Jak. There was nothing else for it. He hoped the halfling checked the flat later that day and saw the open shutters.
Cale headed down the stairs, hit the street, and headed east for the Lizard, which sat deep in the Foreign District.
On the way, his growling stomach reminded him that he needed to eat. Within three blocks, he found a small bakery with an open door and a staff busy at work. It took only the flash of two silver ravens to get Cale a loaf of day-old meatbread—mincemeat and various slaughterhouse leftovers pre-boiled, salted, and baked into wheat bread, a cheap Foreign District staple that he hadn’t eaten in years. Afterward, he took a seat in a public plaza, in the shadow of one of the late Hulorn’s gorgon-statue fountains. He needed to pass an hour or so. The innkeeper at the Lizard didn’t answer knocks until the sixth hour.
The sixth hour … the time was ominous. Soon after that, Cale figured his ward on the sphere would expire. At that point, he would be carrying a magical beacon in his pack. He had no illusions about what would happen then.
Unfortunately, he could not cast the ward again until he refreshed his spells with meditation, and that he could not do for over eighteen hours. Mask answered Cale’s prayers for spells only at midnight. He hoped he could pair up with Jak before the ward expired. If the half-drow and wizard showed, he would like to have the halfling at his side.
Of course, they might not show. Divination spells were not exact, and had limits, even when cast by a wizard of power. In truth, Cale didn’t even know if the sphere could be magically scried. Tamlin’s divinations had revealed no magic of substance and that was obviously wrong. Perhaps—
Cale shook his head, put all of that out of his mind, and focused on the meatbread. First things first.
With dawn approaching, the birds began to sing. A few starlings alit near the fountain, chirping and fluttering in the water. Cale watched them while he chewed. The meatbread tasted as poorly as he remembered—he had grown spoiled by Brilla’s cooking, he thought with a smile—but it did fill his stomach.
After he finished Cale wished he’d bought two loaves. He stretched out his legs and allowed himself to relax for a moment. Resting on a full stomach reminded him of how exhausted he felt. The drone of the fountain’s magically driven flow relaxed him, the birds’ songs lulled him. He had not slept in well over a day. His eyes felt heavy. He blew out a sigh, crossed his hands behind his head, leaned back, and closed his eyes for just an instant—
—and he awoke with a jolt. Instinctively, his hand went for his sword hilt. His heart thumped. He looked around and …
Nothing. Just the birds and the fountain. He cursed under his breath and let his heartbeat slow.
How long had he been asleep?
Not long, he figured. Probably less than a quarter hour. Dawn still had not broken. He shook his head and rebuked himself for his carelessness. He had been lucky, nothing more. Falling asleep on the street! Dark and empty! A child could have put him down while he dreamed away.
He bent over the fountain, scattering the birds, and splashed water on his face. The cool water shocked him awake. He shook his arms, stretched the stiffness from his legs, and headed out. He would take his chances that the Lizard’s innkeeper was up a bit early. He needed a defensible place to rest, at least for a few hours.
The sky lightened further as he walked, but his spirit did not. He knew he could be attacked at any moment. He also knew that he could not stay sharp every hour of every day. Sooner or later he would make a mistake.
Like falling asleep on the street, he thought angrily.
He needed help and he knew it. For an instant, he wondered if he had done the right thing by leaving Stormweather. Perhaps
he should have accepted Tamlin’s offer of aid.
He shook his head. No. He’d had to leave. The presence of the sphere put the Uskevren at risk. Besides, he could no longer stay in the same home as Thazienne. Also, he saw Mask’s hand behind recent events. He didn’t think it a coincidence that the wizard who had accompanied the half-drow had worn a holy symbol of Cyric—a rival deity hated by Mask. The Lord of Shadows had used Cale before to thwart the Cyricists. Cale accepted that as one of the duties of his Calling. While he didn’t always do exactly what his god dictated, in general their interests were aligned. After all, Cale had no love for the followers of the Dark Sun. But to return to Stormweather might involve the Uskevren in one of the many battles in the divine war between Mask and Cyric. Cale alone had chosen to heed Mask’s Calling. He could be a soldier in that war, but he would not conscript the Uskevren.
He reached into his pocket and ran his fingers over the velvet mask that served as his holy symbol.
This fight is ours alone, he thought to Mask.
As though in response, a low whistle sounded from a side street to his right. Cale lowered into a fighting crouch and sought the source.
Riven stepped from the shadows of a covered porch. He had eschewed his scarlet cloak for a more practical gray. That gave Cale pause. Riven rarely discarded his cloak. Was this another illusionary imposter? Cale hesitated.
Riven’s mouth twisted in impatience. He waved Cale toward him.
Cale kept his hand near his blade hilt as he walked toward the assassin. He called to mind the prayer that allowed him to see magical dweomers and whispered it under his breath. If the spell showed a dweomer on Riven, Cale would cut him down and determine its accuracy after the fact.
Riven’s sabers glowed blue with magic, as did his armor, a ring on his left hand, and something in one of his belt pouches, but not Riven himself. Cale breathed a bit easier. Riven was Riven. Cale should have known. Even the most sophisticated illusion would be hard pressed to mimic the arrogance of Riven’s sneer.
