Cooperated with— That was not what he had been taught at all. The very idea was laughable, Light and Dark working together, so he shook it off and moved on. “The Imperial Light freed us from the Long Darkness,” he said, sitting forward to match her. Beside the tenets of the Light, this was one of the few things he remembered from his time with the priest in Kerrindryr, and something no one, cultist or otherwise, could deny. “The first Phoenix Emperor rose with the newborn sun to banish the accursed reign of the Dark—“
“Oh, six months, what a horrible lengthy reign,” Lark said acidly. “That’s propaganda. The Long Darkness happened almost two hundred years ago, and I’m sure it was a terrible time, but the world recovered—even the parts of it without your Imperial Light. No one knows why the sun vanished, and it’s entirely a coincidence that it returned when your first Emperor said it would.”
“Coincidence? The ritual of the Risen Light—“
“Two hundred years ago, and I’m not here to argue with you!” She smacked her hands on the table, then visibly forced herself to sit back. “If it weren’t this late, I’d have you kicked out, but you’re young and stupid and you know Jasper, so I’ll let you have a chance.”
Scowling, Cob said, “You’re no older than me. Don’t pretend you know better.”
“I’m twenty-one, idiot.”
“…oh. Really?”
That surprised a laugh from Lark, then she sighed. “Look, you need to stop the Imperialistic talk, all right? The boys are already riled what with the necromancy rumors. They won’t tolerate your crap on top of it.”
Cob wanted to keep arguing, to press the point about the Imperial Light’s importance, but good sense told him he had already put his foot in his mouth enough. Still, he could not resist a last jab. “You big tough cultists, afraid?”
She gave him a look, half amused, half pitying. “Keep pushing your luck, Cob. And you should be afraid too. You know about necromancers, right? Supposed to have been killed off by the Silent Circle and that lot centuries ago? But killings like this still crop up—people found dead, all dried and shriveled like the life, the very soul, got sucked out of them. People who had been fine just marks before. My boys found three mercenaries like that this afternoon, so you’re lucky we’re here to keep you off the street.”
Cob digested that slowly, his ire cooling. He had heard of necromancers in camp tales, but like Lark had said, they were all supposed to have been exterminated before even the Long Darkness. To think that such things could have survived into the age of the Risen Light…
All the more need for it, he decided.
“Well, fine,” he mumbled, “guess I didn’t need t’be wanderin’ around at night with necromancers and hounds about. So…thanks.”
Her brows rose slightly, then something in her expression relaxed and she said, “How did you end up here anyway? You were looking for Whitemane’s?”
“Got spotted by recruiters. Chased around a bit.”
“I’d think an Imperialist would be happy to get recruited.”
Cob looked down at his hands.
An awkward moment passed, then she said, “Look. We’ll help you. We can’t get you to Daecia City; our influence doesn’t extend that far. But we can put you up for the night, then get you back to Jasper free of charge. We owe him more than the life of one stray Imperial.”
Cob exhaled, then nodded. “So I’m safe here? I can rest?”
“In a booth like the rest of the moochers. We don’t keep rooms for outsiders.”
“That’s fine.” He closed his eyes, trying to will himself to relax. The argument had awoken his nerves, but beneath them he was bone-tired, and the cushions were comfy. Maybe this Shadow woman was being honest and no one would pull him out of the booth in the middle of the night to beat him senseless. Maybe this had just been an uncomfortable detour.
He could almost believe it. After all, the big burly men had sat back down rather than come after him; the shadow-marked old fellow hadn’t screamed bloody murder and brought out the Dark monsters that undoubtedly lurked; and Lark seemed nice enough, for a cultist. Deluded, but professional about it.
Just one night, then he would return to Jasper—who was some different kind of cultist—and get back on the road.
Apparently this is my life now.
He opened his eyes just in time to see a skinny grey-black hand reaching up from under the table to feel for the cherry bowl.
His heart leapt into his throat, and he scrambled up onto the bench instinctively, hefting the stick. Below the table, the shadows seemed to shift, and the skinny arm retracted with a sound like a startled squeak.
“Crazy boy, what are you doing?” said Lark, straightening warily. “Sit down.”
“Somethin’ under the table,” Cob snapped. “Some shadow…thing…”
“It’s not a shadow thing, it’s a goblin.”
Cob shot her a horrified look, incapable of understanding why she seemed so calm. In Kerrindryr, goblins lived wild in the many unreachable caverns and crevices, where they stole crops and livestock and sometimes babies and were impossible to fully eradicate; like winter ice and the storms of freezing sleet, their depredations were simply endured. He remembered Jasper talking about how some had been spotted near the Rift, but he had not imagined he would find one here.
On the flatland. Under a tavern table.
Lark sighed in exasperation. “Sit down, you idiot. He’s not dangerous. Rian, come out.”
Cob stayed on his feet as the goblin swung itself cautiously onto the table Crouched, it appeared childlike, with thin limbs and big eyes in a large bald head. A mazework of red paint covered its scalp and fletched its pointed ears, and more finger-paintings trailed down its neck to vanish into the dark wrappings that swaddled its torso. Beneath the markings, its skin was ash-grey, shading to black on its long, narrow hands and feet and along its nervously flicking tail. It bared needle-like teeth at him.
“Rian, stop it,” Lark scolded.
For a moment, Cob just stared, trying to reconcile this creature with his mother’s stories. The teeth were certainly right, but goblins were supposed to be covered in hair and otherwise naked. The huge dark eyes should have been crazed, the fingers and toes ending in sickle claws. Instead it looked a bit like someone had shaved, painted and dressed a cat, if cats had people-faces.
“What is that, really?” he said.
“I told you. He’s a goblin.”
“If that’s a goblin, I’m a pikin’ Dark-lover.”
At her side of the table, Lark rolled her eyes. “He’s a goblin from the city under Bahlaer. He’s been—“
“They have pikin’ cities?”
“Of course they do. Why—“
“What about the hairy ones?”
“You mean the wild goblins?” She laughed shortly and shook her head. “Those don’t live here. Wild goblins for wild places, civilized goblins for civilized places.”
The goblin shifted on its feet as if preparing to spring, and Cob leveled his stick at it. It showed its teeth again, but Lark grabbed the end of the stick and glared at Cob. “Sit down and put that away or I’ll have you tossed out, hounds or not,” she said sharply. “Rian and his people are our allies. Without their aid, Bah-kai wouldn’t exist.”
“Aid? They’re Dark monsters, barely more than animals.”
She yanked on the stick, and Cob dug his heels into the bench cushions, trying to keep his balance. “Enough of your ‘Dark’ talk. We’re all creatures of shade and balance; we have solid bodies, we cast shadows, we burn if we stand too long in the sun. You’re not ‘of the Light’ any more than the rest of us, so if you can’t hold your tongue—“
“That’s not what it means!”
“Are you so sure?”
“I’m talkin’ about the pikin’ goblin!”
“They aren’t ‘Dark’ either! Gods, you’d think a Light-follower could tell the difference between normal creatures and the likes of the Voidseekers or the Hungering Ones.�
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“The what?”
She covered her face with her free hand, took an audibly deep breath, then said, “I see. You have no idea what we’re talking about.”
Cob yanked the stick away and stood uneasy on the bench, staring down at her and the cringing goblin. Lark planted her hands on her hips and returned his gaze with disdain. “What do they actually teach you? Those Imperial Light folk. Do they just say ‘we’re right and everyone else is evil’, and forget to point out the actual specific dangers?”
“Dangers like goblins?” Cob snapped, not wanting to hear what she was saying. He knew what he knew.
“Sit down or I’ll have you thrown out, Jasper or no Jasper. Last chance.”
With great reluctance, Cob lowered himself to the bench seat. The goblin ducked below the edge of the table again, just its eyes and painted scalp showing over the ridges of its knuckles. After a moment, Lark sat as well, still glowering.
“Rian is my friend,” she said tightly. “He’s been with me for years. His people are more civilized than we are—they’ve been here since before the rise of the piking Rift--and between them and the allies they’ve connected us with, they might be the only reason Bahlaer hasn’t fallen into complete disarray. We were trying to make something better here, then your people had to come and stomp on it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Cob said.
“Right, fine. I’ll use small words.” She pointed at the goblin, which blinked its big black eyes. “Friend.” Then she pointed at Cob, her tinted nail a few inches from his nose. “Jackass.”
For a long moment, escaped slave and goblin-wrangling smuggler glared at each other in silence. Then Cob sat back and released a sigh through his teeth. His head hurt worse with each passing moment. The little lamp-flame was now too dazzling to look at properly. All of the pressure seemed to be collecting at two points, one above each eye.
“Whatever you say,” he mumbled.
Lark ran a hand over her mass of braids, visibly collecting herself. “Don’t take this wrong, but we don’t like your kind. We’re sheltering you as a favor. So try to behave.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. His body felt heavy, the air around him thick and slow. The vise clamped harder; he reached up to touch his nostrils, expecting blood, but his fingers came away dry.
Distantly he heard her say, “Hoi. Hoi, Cob? Are you all right?”
Something moved out there in the red shadows beyond his eyelids. A familiar shape, drawing closer. His mouth filled with the taste of metal, and the vise in his skull sent bars of light across the pulsing depths. For a moment he saw the shape of a white bird circling far above in the bloody sky.
Then he heard the curtain yank aside, and his eyes flew open.
No. Can’t be him.
But it was. Less than an arm-span away stood Darilan Trevere, mouth curved in that crooked little smile, murkwater eyes so narrowed that they seemed like slits in his smooth face. His hair had been artfully mussed and he wore Illanic clothes instead of a uniform, but Cob could never mistake him for someone else.
“You can’t just come in here,” Lark barked from across the table. Cob heard the slap of her hands on the wood but could not tear his gaze from Darilan’s. “If you have business, take it to the bartender. We’re occupied right now.”
“My business is with him,” said Darilan. His voice was low and sleek and even, and as he leaned forward, it took Cob an effort to recoil. His head buzzed with the memories—
—the two-tone moonlight—
—the shouts from above—
—the trailing red afterimages as the long dagger came free of its sheath—
“Wait your turn,” Lark snapped. Peripherally Cob saw her come around the edge of the table and shrug the curtain fully open. His gut clenched. She was standing at just the angle Fendil had, the unlucky third party. “You’re obviously not Jasper, so—“
“It’s fine,” Cob croaked through the tight reed of his throat. She shot him a look he barely registered. He could not turn away from Darilan but managed to push himself backward on the bench, trying to gain some distance.
For a moment Darilan just stood there, one hand on the alcove wall and the other tucked behind his back in a pose that could have been mistaken for formality if Cob had not known where he kept that dagger. Then he jerked his head dismissively at the girl and slid onto the bench seat, as Cob had hoped and feared.
“Give us a moment, will you?” Darilan said smoothly, his serpent’s voice steeped with command.
Behind him, Lark stared like they had gone mad, but finally withdrew and yanked the curtain shut. A moment later, it rippled from the bottom as the faint skitter of goblin-digits fled the alcove.
“Smarter than expected,” Darilan said, and eased closer along the bench. The lamp-light caught on a thin silver pin in his coat lapel.
With his back to the alcove wall, Cob pulled his legs up like a barricade, ready to kick at any moment but knowing he would not do it. Could not. All the enervating horror of that night had returned, sapping his will, leaving him helpless before the man who had been his best friend.
His only friend.
“Stay away from me,” he mumbled, unable to muster a snarl.
“That would not be in your best interest,” said Darilan. He propped one arm against the alcove side-wall and let his other rest on the table, both hands hanging empty, but under his ragged coat Cob glimpsed the hilt of the wicked dagger. “Neither of us should be here. Just come with me now and we can avoid a great deal of unpleasantness.”
Cob wanted to. Despite the fear and the flight, some part of him was desperate to trust this man, the same way he had felt five years ago when Darilan had entered his life. Darilan had been just a quarry guard then, one of the endless succession of cruel and cold-intolerant Imperials sent to watch over the toiling Kerrindrixi slaves.
But Darilan had not been cruel—no more than necessary. And he had watched out for Cob, who desperately needed it. The other slaves were largely felons, and a twelve-year-old boy, no matter how angry, was at best a nuisance and at worst prey to them.
Cob had seen him bring down men twice his height and five times his weight. He was fast and thorough and deadly with the small blades he carried. But that seething red dagger…
Outside the gate was the first time Cob had seen him draw it, the first time he had felt its malevolent presence. It was alive, and his friend and protector was not at all what he had seemed.
“You sent me here,” Cob hissed, the bitterness welling up in his chest. “You said ‘run’ and I ran. And this is where I ended up. Don’t try to take it back, because you can’t. You killed Fen and Wes for this.”
The muscles under Darilan’s eyes twitched, then eased, the rest of his face a mask. “I lied about Weshker. He’s fine. And you never liked Fendil.”
Cob flinched and raised a hand reflexively toward the bandana around his neck, taken aback. One weight fell from his shoulders, but the other grew heavier. If Weshker was alive, then Darilan had tried to bluff him. And he had called that bluff. And Fendil had died for it.
“Doesn’t matter if I liked him,” he said roughly. “You killed him to chase me off. Now they send you to bring me back? I saw you on the road with a troop. Where’s the rest of ‘em?”
“Waiting,” said Darilan. “When did you see me on the road?”
“Doesn’t matter. Who sent you this way?”
“A little girl. Izelina Cray.”
In his mind’s eye Cob saw the Cray homestead burning, the bodies strung from the trees.
“They’re fine too,” said Darilan, forestalling the vision. “We have no need to injure civilians, Cob. Even Dark-following ones. As long as you cooperate.”
Cob bristled at the threat. He tried to draw up the memory of the passing troop: Darilan in black, a mage in red, another garish robe, then a blur of soldiers. “You’re here to bring me out quietly?”
“Yes.”
; “Why? Why send me off, then come to drag me back?”
Darilan’s thin mouth flattened further. Tonelessly, he said, “A momentary lapse in judgment.”
“That’s a pikin’ huge lapse—“
“Are you coming or not?”
Twenty Imperial soldiers, maybe more. Plus two mages. They would storm the tavern and meet instant resistance. All he knew of the Shadow Cult was rumors, but those included shadowpaths: direct connections to the realms of the Dark spirits, where those steeped in wickedness awaited the chance to take their revenge on the folk of the Light. If the Shadow Cultists could open those paths, then any assault would become a bloodbath.
On both sides. He had seen the power of Imperial mages before.
He cared nothing for these people. Not even the kids on the street—the boys with their rocks and their stiff, proud shoulders. But he did not want anyone else to die because of him.
“I’m goin’ on the pilgrimage,” he said curtly, fingers tightening on his stick. “Y’can send my crimes on to the Palace. I’ll yield to punishment there.”
“This is not about punishment,” Darilan said, leaning closer, his voice gaining urgency. The murky rings of his irises captured the light like tarnished silver. There was something in the depths of his pupils, a white flash that Cob recognized…
Then something heaved inside him, and a sound like stone claws clambering up a mineshaft filled his ears with reverberating squeals. Twin lances of migraine pain drove into his head, blinding him. He jerked and felt the wall smack against his skull, heard his teeth squeak as his jaw clamped tight--yet those sensations shrank away swiftly, as if they were happening to another man in a small, bright room in his chest.
He stood in sudden darkness, poised at the edge of a black ocean that hissed and roiled like water on porous rock, like scales intertwining. The waves lapped at the very edges of the world. He could not move; he felt mesmerized.
“White Herald, acknowledge,” said a thin, distant voice from the steely sky. “Lerien, do you hear me?”
The man in the little bright room said, Protocol One breach.
“Pike me. White Herald, override and take control. Acknowledge.”
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 17
