Shadowbane: Eye of Justice

by De Bie, Erik Scott

  Caught in the last traces of the dream, Myrin stretched her hand languidly toward the other half of the bed, but her heart sank. The spot was cold and fully made—no one had slept there. Of course she wouldn’t find Kalen beside her. She’d made the first move back in Luskan—kissing him the way she had—and he hadn’t so much as mentioned it in all the time since. She had no reason to think he had the slightest feelings about her whatsoever.

  Except, of course, that she wanted it so.

  There came a discreet knock at the door—one, two, three taps of flesh on wood. The room was dark, but she flicked her fingers and conjured a heatless golden torch flame to float in the middle of the room. With its illumination, the chamber revealed itself as well-appointed, if faded with age. A summer breeze crept through the cracked window and rustled the crimson drapes. A desk with a mirror stood in one corner, remarkably clear of dust considering its age.

  The knock came again—the same precise three taps. Myrin wiped her nose. “Yes?”

  At her word, the door swung open and Elevar carried a steaming tray into the room. The smells of morningfeast filled Myrin with an altogether different sort of longing.

  “Oh, many thanks,” she said.

  Elevar inclined his head as though the service were a matter of course. Although the old dwarf could neither see nor speak, his ears seemed to work perfectly. With careful precision that belied his blindness, he set the legs of the tray on either side of her lap.

  It was damned inconvenient, however, that his lack of words meant he couldn’t answer any of her thousand questions. During the hours they’d stayed up trying to communicate the previous night, she’d managed to learn that he’d been her family’s steward and seneschal since the last Darkdance family had left the manor, caring for the scores of rooms and dusty chambers. When Elevar touched her lips with his gnarled hand, then traced the shape of her face, she realized that he’d recognized her by her voice.

  As near as she could determine, her family had left the manor house some years earlier, although Elevar didn’t know exactly how many. He hadn’t left the manor house since, and in his sightless world, Myrin imagined time meant a very different thing to Elevar than it did to her. When she asked after the events that had seen the family’s departure, he had shaken his head and offered no direct answer. The expression that came across his withered face was one of deep unease, as if he were faintly remembering the traces of a long-forgotten nightmare.

  His response only served to increase Myrin’s desperate curiosity.

  The memories she’d absorbed from him hadn’t been much help. As she’d suspected, he hadn’t provided anything she could see—only impressions that lacked any detail: the laughter of a little girl. Myrin bumping into things. Myrin tracking mud through the manor. The memories never had visions, and yet she clung to them like treasures.

  After their late night, Myrin ate greedily of the fruit and seared vegetables he had brought, as well as the toasted bread with gravy, although she gave the rashers of ham a miss. An egg stood atop a silver stand in the center of the tray. When Myrin poked it experimentally with her spoon, it cracked and oozed red-yellow yoke. She passed on that, too. Over the last year, she’d taken to not eating meat or eggs.

  Elevar stood patiently at attention. Much as she was starting to like the old dwarf, Myrin felt self-conscious about having her own personal servant.

  “Have you seen Kalen?” she asked, wiping her mouth. “Er, I mean, not seen—”

  Elevar nodded his understanding.

  “The man with me yestereve,” Myrin said. “Did he sleep here last night? In the house?”

  The dwarf shook his head. He wore a patient, nonjudgmental expression that suggested he was accustomed to failing to understand the relations between his employers and their visitors. Myrin, who hardly understood her relationship with Kalen herself, was glad.

  Elevar took away her tray, bending his nose to sniff at the remains of the meal. She could almost see him making a mental note of which things she had eaten and which she had avoided, so he could bring the right food next time.

  “I’ll need some clothes. The ones I wore should do—”

  Elevar drew up tall and a derisive shadow crossed his features. Looking vaguely ill at her suggestion, he indicated instead her favorite scarlet dress, which hung on the back of the door. The dwarf gestured to his eyes, then made a wide gesture as if to encompass the entire manor. By this, Myrin understood that he was going to search for more suitable attire elsewhere. Then he nodded and took his leave.

  Alone again, Myrin threw off the blankets and crossed to the bright red dress. It was worn in places, but Elevar must have stitched and cleaned it during the night. It looked as lovely as the day she had first donned it, a year ago in Waterdeep.

  “Well,” she said, considering the color and cut. “It should make quite a statement.”

  Between the blue hair, the tattoos, and the sharp lines of her sleek red dress, Myrin attracted quite a few speculative eyes as she strolled up Silverpiece Way toward the market.

  It didn’t hurt that the dress had been fitted for her a year past when she’d been a half-starved waif. By contrast, now it clung tighter to her womanly frame than she thought was entirely proper. It had a slit high up the leg and left her arms and entirely too much of her chest bare. She attracted interested glances from a number of men and, indeed, more than a few women who winked and whispered to one another behind their hands.

  “So much for keeping a low cloak,” she murmured.

  Elevar, drafted into accompanying her, trailed in her wake. He’d mutely indicated his desire to carry a parasol for her, but she’d rejected the offer out of hand. A mistake—at least that would have blocked some of the stares. And, all things considered, conjuring a magic shield would probably be worse.

  “Walk easy,” she told herself, feigning Kalen’s gruff voice. “You’re Lady Darkdance. Act like it.”

  That helped a bit, as did Elevar’s dour presence and the heavy purse he carried. Apparently, the last Lord Darkdance—her father, perhaps, or her grandfather?—had left quite a bit of gold for the maintenance of the house and the eventual disposal of a miraculously returned heir such as herself. She wasn’t sure how much, but from what Elevar had indicated with his fingers, she could no doubt buy anything she wanted.

  Westgate’s market stood at the heart of the city where the major roads met and diverged. Paved with stones worn smooth by nigh-constant use, the triangular quarter played host to a sea of folk shopping at tents of every color and pattern. The rain from the night before kept down a good deal of the dust. Her exotic looks drew less attention at the market, and the merchants seemed equally indifferent to her as to anyone else.

  Myrin reminded herself that it would not do to lower her guard. Kalen had warned her that this city was not like Luskan, where everyone who approached you was a thief, and even less like Waterdeep, where a pickpocket might take your gold but do you the courtesy of not cutting you open. Westgate, he had said, was far more dangerous than either. The folk in the market that morning seemed rather sunnier than his warnings had led her to expect, but she kept her eyes open as he had taught her during their dagger lessons.

  Also, even though she knew Kalen would disapprove, she kept her hand near the belt pouch where she kept the orb Lilten had given her.

  “Only as a last resort,” she promised him silently.

  At an armorer’s stand, she saw a woman dressed in leather breeches and a white silk tunic that looked very comfortable against the rising summer sun. Her expressionless, inhuman face drew Myrin’s attention, with its rectangular purple-and-white patterns. Myrin spent a breath or two trying to figure out which color had been painted across which. The mottled woman noted Myrin’s gaze and appraised her with an otherworldly sort of majesty. When Myrin smiled at her, the woman turned back to her business.

  “Did you hear?” Myrin overheard a man ask at a nearby stand that sold leather goods. “Shadowbane’s ba
ck in town.”

  “Him with the flaming sword?” came the reply.

  “The same,” the first man said. “He done pushed a Golden Swords meeting, busted some Fire Knife heads, and kicked off a gang war. All in the same night!”

  Myrin beheld two men dressed in black leathers who looked as though they’d neither shaved nor washed for a tenday. One of them caught her looking and smiled, but she turned away with a smile and walked on. Kalen certainly did make himself known, and quickly.

  Mindful of her experience with the orange, she avoided the fruit stand and instead followed her nose toward the aroma of steaming bread. The merchant baker—a stout dwarf with a beard shaped like a fresh-baked loaf—greeted her with a forced smile. He pitched his goods to her with a canned speech. “We have fresh oats and wheat from Dragon Coast fields, as well as Cormyrean barley and rye. Or maybe you’d like more exotic grains, imported from as far away as the Chultan peninsula. Tell me, young lady, have you ever tried quinoa—?”

  To Myrin, his voice and the noises around her suddenly fell away, and a chill settled around the base of her neck. It was the feeling of being watched, she thought, and she suddenly remembered a year ago, when a clean-shaven dwarf assassin named Rath had held her prisoner. Abruptly, her hands started to shake, and try as she might, she couldn’t hear the bread merchant’s words. Neither could she speak nor do anything more than nod weakly, then stagger away from the stand while she tried to still her racing heart. In the square surrounded by strangers, she realized she’d outdistanced Elevar, and now she was alone—alone and afraid.

  She recognized the two men she’d seen before, one of them pointing to her and whispering to the other. She felt itchy and uncomfortable.

  And that strange purple-and-white woman was staring at her.

  She had never felt like this before, and with no prompting but a look at the merchant’s face. He looked only vaguely like Rath, and yet all of a sudden he had been the dwarf, and she’d relived the fear of that night all over again. Rath had broken into her room while she slept, and her friend—Kalen’s adopted sister, Cellica—had come in to comfort her. Then Fayne, in the guise of a sun elf, had distracted the halfling while Rath had hurled his knife into Cellica’s gut. The blood and the sour smell of bile …

  “My lady?” A gentle hand touched her wrist, which she jerked away. “Apologies. You looked unwell.”

  A gnome stood beside her, dressed in dandy attire with colors so bright they set her off-balance. He wore a rapier sheathed at his belt, although his white-gloved hand was nowhere near its hilt. He boasted an incredibly large nose and the most impressive set of ears she’d ever seen: like serrated daggers, studded with a dozen rings each. His face seemed both trustworthy and a touch mischievous.

  “Did you need some aid, lovely lady?” he asked. “I am—”

  “No, but thank you.” She backed away, her hand shaking on the hilt of her dagger.

  The two knaves with bad hygiene seemed to have followed her. They stood at the bread stand, eyeing her thoughtfully. One of them flashed her a wink and a toothy grin that made her vaguely ill. Myrin had the sudden and powerful urge to draw her orb and blast the smarmy look right off those knaves’ faces, but her unprovoked magical aggression might prove difficult to explain to the Guard. And, secondarily, it would be wrong.

  Not watching where she was going, she ran straight into a woman at a jewelry stand, and nearly fell over. “Sorry!” she said.

  She caught at the woman’s bare shoulder for balance. At her touch, runes lit on her hand.

  The woman at her feet screamed, her voice loud and resonant in the shuddering halls. Black stone shook from thunderous explosions around her. The shock threw Myrin—or whoever she was—from her feet and she caught herself on the stone floor.

  “Mistress,” Myrin said, her pale hands pawing at the woman’s thighs. She didn’t know what to do, but she had to try. “It—it’s well. Just—”

  The dark-skinned woman with the huge belly opened her iridescent blue eyes wide. “This is all your fault, little fox,” she cried. “All that’s happening to my husband, and to you—” Her words cut off in a cry of pain.

  The woman moaned and thrust her head back against the stone, either to dull the pain or awaken herself to it. Her babe was coming, its blue-fringed head crowning …

  The contact lasted only an instant, but it was long enough for Myrin to see into the woman’s memories. Weakness seized her, and she sank down on legs that would no longer support her body. She had just seen …

  Had she just seen herself being born?

  The woman from whom she’d taken the memory—a slim moon elf dressed in an elegant black gown—looked down at her through bright gold eyes. She was clutching at her side as though at a pain, where Myrin had slammed into her.

  “Wait,” Myrin said as the gold-eyed elf turned to go. “I—”

  Abruptly, Myrin’s hand burned as though she’d grasped an iron pot by the cherry-hot base. Her flesh swelled and pain pulsed up and down her arm. It brought tears to her eyes, but she would not cry—not in front of all these people. The skin near her left eye itched—she could feel a new tattoo burning there. A new memory.

  “Lady?” The gnome stood before her again, meeting her at eye level now that she had fallen. “Lady, I must insist you allow me to aid you in your distress.”

  “Who—?”

  “I am called Brace, Lady Blue,” he said as he helped her rise. “But I shall conduct formal introductions shortly. Pardon me half a moment.” He stepped past her and drew his rapier. “Come, dogs spawned of Cyric’s worst shit!” he shouted. “Draw your steel if you dare!”

  Startled, Myrin looked over her shoulder at the two ragged men who’d been following her. The gnome’s sudden vehemence took them by surprise and they froze midstep.

  “Poxy, stlarning whoresons!” Brace continued, fairly frothing at the mouth. There wasn’t a trace of fear or hesitation on his face. His rapier split into two identical swords, one for each of his would-be foes. “I shall wash your filthy guts from my blades with your blood! Which of you will face me first? Which?”

  Startled at the sudden breach of calm, everyone in the square stood dumbfounded. Myrin noticed the purple-and-white faced woman she’d seen before. She still wore no expression, but she stared hard at the muggers, her hand on the hilt of her rapier. Deciding whether to intervene?

  Confronted with the short madman and also by the purple-and-white woman, the two would-be thieves exchanged a look, then took their leave. They shoved away through the watching crowd, which grew with every word that spilled from the gnome’s mouth.

  “Run, you curs!” Brace shouted after them. “Run back to your mother’s teats! And tell her Brace the Bold enjoyed last night, which he spent tupping her every way to Uktar!”

  When they were good and gone he sheathed his swords and turned back to Myrin.

  “My sincerest apologies you had to hear that filth, Lady Blue.” Brace seemed quite polite outside of battle. “Proper banter is but the first weapon a swordsman must wield. With it, he crushes his foe’s will to fight even before steel is drawn.”

  That struck her as something Kalen might say, although he would surely disapprove of Brace’s peculiar practice of the principle. “You seem to excel at it,” she said.

  “My father, the imminent genius Merle the Maker, said I had the voice and bravado to make a fine bard,” Brace replied. “But I rather like swordplay more.”

  “Eminent,” Myrin corrected absently. She looked past him for the purple-and-white woman, but she seemed to have disappeared in the confusion.

  “Pardon?” Brace asked.

  “Your father. I think you meant eminent genius.”

  “If I had meant that,” he replied, “no doubt I would have said it.”

  Myrin couldn’t dispute that logic. “You are an odd little man.”

  Brace got a sly look in his eye. “Not so little, truth be told, but enough about such common matters. Y
ou are a well-born lady and hardly have the ear for such talk.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Would I?” Brace considered. “I’m difficult to surprise, other than by the radiance of your beauty.” He inspected her gown. “That color upon you is simply dazzling—although I suspect it would be positively stunning on my floor. And not as a rug, I mean.”

  “Oh?” Myrin raised one eyebrow. “Are you flirting with me?”

  “That depends,” he said. “Are such attentions welcome?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  “That’s a relief.” Brace blew out a thick sigh. “Unrepentant flirtation is a character flaw of mine, I’m afraid. Please, Lady Blue, take no offense.”

  “Indeed not. And call me Myrin, as that’s my name—Lady Myrin Darkdance.”

  “And I am Brace, as I mentioned.” He bowed dramatically. “A penniless swordsman, tragically impoverished by fate, without a coin to my name, seeking a patron such as yourself to aid me in rectifying those circumstances.” He looked up at her speculatively. “What say you?”

  Myrin looked up at the sun high overhead and thought about it. Kalen was the only swordsman she needed, but had she not been thinking just this morn about whether he really wanted to stay with her? Perhaps she should stop relying upon him.

  She’d also tried to get a sense of the gnome from his face and the language of his body, as Kalen had taught her, and he seemed genuine.

  “I think that your speech is three times redundant,” she said, “and you’re henceforth a man-at-arms in my service. So long as you stop the flowery speech. And continue the flirting.”

  “As you wish, my lady.” He grinned. “Myrin.”

  Hiding just around the corner behind Baker’s Knots, the woman in the shadows watched the odd exchange between the gnome and the blue-haired girl with no small annoyance.

  “This was not part of the plan, Hessar,” she said.

  “Oh, I know,” her contact said behind her. “This Myrin Darkdance is a willful girl.”