City of Night (2 page)

But it was not these men, in various poses of irritation, boredom, or exhaustion, that demanded Terrick’s attention; it was the boy.

 

Three days,
Terrick thought, as he caught sight of the boy’s hair; the rest of the boy, who was not yet of any notable size, could be lost in the crowd, but his hair, its pale locks rising in a spiral, could not. He was perhaps fourteen, if Terrick judged correctly, perhaps younger, and it was clear that the worn pack he carried upon his shoulders—at all times—contained the whole of his previous life, whatever that had been.

But he was quiet, this one, and when he had chosen to address the first clerk he could see, he had spoken in Rendish. The clerk—Barriston—was barely up to the task of identifying the language, but had he been unable to distinguish it at all, he would have been employed elsewhere, which would have been a blessing.

Instead, with his small scrap of knowledge a bandage over the gaping wound of his ignorance, he had bid the boy remain, and he had come to the area in which the Port Authority’s employees took a moment of rest. “Terrick,” he’d said, tapping the man smartly on the shoulder, “I have one of your barbarians outside.”

Terrick, prevented from strangling Barriston by the necessity of both eating and breathing—the Authority guards frowned on what the Empire would have considered murder—had merely nodded. In any other circumstance he would have taken his time, but whoever the visitor was, he’d spoken to Barriston for long enough.

“He’s young,” Barriston felt the need to add, “and if he were Imperial, I’d give him the lecture on running away to join the merchant ships.” Meaning, of course, that it was up to Terrick to deliver that lecture—in the appropriate language.

But when Terrick emerged from the relative privacy of the back offices to the wide and open crowd that comprised the Authority in its busiest season, he stopped walking, and received, as a reward for this moment of surprise, a back full of Barriston, scurrying head down to his wicket. Terrick mumbled something which Barriston heard as an apology; the large man didn’t bother to correct this. Instead, he looked at the boy, his wide, gray eyes unblinking. Almost self-consciously, he straightened his back, lifting his shoulders and assuming every single inch of the height so many Imperial citizens found so interesting.

Barriston regained his place behind his own wicket. The boy was then directed to Terrick, who pulled a stool up to one of the wickets that had been closed—for the half hour—for lunch. It had taken the boy five minutes to reach Terrick, and during that time, Terrick had watched in silence, evaluating.

The boy wore an old cloak that trailed a few inches off the ground; it was sturdy, the color faded to a serviceable gray. His boots were a shade of brown that suggested both age and dust, but they were whole, although the laces were knotted in places, suggesting wear. He also wore a short sword, which he never touched; it hung on his left side, implying that he was right-handed. He was young for its weight, by Imperial standards—Terrick thought him fourteen, with a margin for error of two years on either side. There was nothing about the boy to suggest affluence, and indeed his weight suggested its opposite—but all of these things paled into insignificance beside the fact of his hair.

It was so pale a platinum as to be white, and it had been pulled from face and neck, greased, and twined around hidden wire. A spiral. It was dusty, yes, as the boy was—but it was unmistakable.

The boy was not injured; he didn’t limp; nor did he cringe when people attempted to cut ahead of him in their impatience. He chose merely to turn sideways and slip out of their way, ignoring their glares or their angry words; he never chose to confront.

And when he stopped, at last, in front of Terrick’s wicket, the gray circles under his eyes seemed to occupy half of his face. Terrick nodded at the boy, and the boy grunted back.

“I’ve come,” the boy said in Rendish, “for the
Ice Wolf
. I was told you would know when it was due in port.” He paused, and then added, “Or if.”

Terrick nodded, and reached for the paper beside his elbow, as if it contained information that he didn’t readily have. He leafed through the paper, the Essalieyanese words blurring until they were odd scratches, as they had once been in his youth. “It’s due in three days, but those are sailing days; it may be delayed by a day or two.”

“Which dock?”

“Seven,” he replied.

“Three days.”

Terrick nodded. He felt, rather than saw, Barriston’s harried glare. He even opened his mouth to begin the lecture one generally offered the young, but his jaw snapped shut before the words escaped. The boy wasn’t running. “Three days,” he said quietly. He did not ask the boy where he was staying. It didn’t matter. He would be back, and Terrick guessed that he would wait by the docks, or as close as was safe, until the
Ice Wolf
made port, cast rope, and laid down gangplank.

 

Nor was he wrong. For each of two days, the boy had come; he was on the docks before the sun touched the horizon, and he lingered until the moon could be seen, bright and clear, in the humidity of the Averalaan summer.

On the third day, seeing him in the crowd, Terrick lifted his head; when the horns lowed the start of lunch, Terrick left his wicket, but instead of retreating to the relative quiet of the desks that lined the back wall, he braved the crowd. Not that the crowd was ever that thick when he chose to risk it; like the sea over which the Port Authority played Baron, it parted when he dove in.

The boy looked up as he approached.

“Come eat with me,” he said, surprising them both. “I’ve food, and there’s not as many of these damn people in the back. I’d be glad of the company.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed slightly; he had some pride left in him. But he was not suspicious, and in the end, he nodded and followed where Terrick led.

Terrick did, in fact, have extra food. A whole loaf, thick smoked meat, a round, soft cheese in the thin cotton cloth that gave it shape, and cherries. He had wine, but offered the boy water instead. He nodded at a chair, which the boy pulled toward the desk.

“Boy,” he said, while he tore the loaf in two roughly equal halves, “why are you looking for the
Ice Wolf
? You’re far from home, if you think you belong on its decks.” He paused, ripping the two halves in half, and added, “I’m called Terrick in these parts.”

“I’m called Angel,” the boy replied.

Not a Rendish name. Not even close. Terrick recognized it as an Imperial word, although he couldn’t recall what it meant. “Angel?”

“My mother chose it; my father accepted it. I was born in the Empire,” he added. It wasn’t a precise description, because the Empire was very, very large. But Terrick understood that it meant the boy was not born in the North, and nodded.

“A wise man doesn’t stand between a mother and her son,” Terrick replied.

A glimmer of a smile touched the boy’s lips. It was there and gone again, and Terrick, with decades of life and observation behind him, knew that the boy’s father was dead. And likely the mother as well.

But the boy surprised him. “My father used to say that.”

“Wise man,” Terrick replied, with a wry smile. His glance strayed to the boy’s hair. And away. Years of working at the Port Authority had taught him how to talk, how to listen, and how to ask questions in a variety of tones—but there was no easy way to ask the question that hovered behind his lips. No way of knowing whether or not it would give offense. In the North, it would. But the boy was not born to the snow and the brief, brief summer.

“Do you speak Weston?”

Angel nodded. His mouth was dusted with bread crumbs, and he chewed slowly and methodically. When he spoke again, he abandoned Rendish, and instead adopted the informal and slightly accented Common that came from the West. “I heard what the other man said,” he told Terrick softly. “Barbarian.”

“Why did you not ask your question in the Imperial tongue?”

Angel shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, swallowing. “Someone told me the Port Authority would have men who could speak my father’s tongue, and I wanted to see if it was true.” He took a long drink of water, and then said, “And it was. Are you from the North?”

“I was born there,” Terrick replied casually. As if being born in the North was not significant. As if living in a city with more people in its sprawling walls than were contained in some small nations was, as it seemed to be for so many who lived here, a matter of accidental choice, a simple whim.

But the boy looked up at Terrick. “And you live here?” As if he understood the significance. As if he could.

“Your father did,” Terrick pointed out.

“You were born in Arrend?” The boy pressed.

Terrick chose to take a long drink of wine; he drained the cup. Filled it again, noting the boy’s serious expression, his dark eyes so at odds with his hair and the paleness of his skin.
Winter skin,
Terrick thought. Terrick’s was as ruddy as an Imperial.

“Aye,” he said heavily. He considered filling his glass again and managed—barely—to think better of it. Drink on an empty stomach, even at his obvious size, was ill advised, and he had lost the appetite for food.

The boy, this Angel, had not, but ate slowly.

“Do you know why your father left?”

Angel shrugged, but it was not a casual motion; it was forced. “He didn’t like to talk about it,” he said at last, after an audible swallow. He lifted his water glass, and took his time drinking, as if to hide behind it.

“He wouldn’t,” Terrick replied. “No more do I.”

“I didn’t ask,” the boy began.

“No,” Terrick said, lifting a hand. “It’s why you’re still alive. But if you’ve sense enough not to ask, you’ve got the wits you were born with. Why are you here, boy?”

“For the
Ice Wolf
.”

“Yes, I understand that much. But your father—” He hesitated, and then seeing the hair that the glass couldn’t obscure, surrendered. Surrendering with grace was not a skill that Terrick had seen a need for in his youth, and he had mastered it in his later years with difficulty and reluctance. “Your hair, boy,” he said, keeping his tone even and quiet. “It marks you. It’s a statement.”

Angel nodded, but he grimaced.

It took Terrick a moment to understand what it meant, and surprise kept him from comment. “There are men who would kill to be allowed that style,” he said instead. “Even if it sets them apart. The inconvenience would not be an issue.” He spoke stiffly, and more significantly, in Weston.

“They probably didn’t grow up in the Free Towns,” Angel replied. But after a pause, he added, “I didn’t wear my hair like this when I was growing up.”

“No, you wouldn’t. It’s not for children.”

“That’s what he said,” the boy replied. “My father,” he added, as if his meaning were not plain.

“Did he style his hair that way?” Terrick asked, striving for casual.

“No.” The boy looked up as he answered, his eyes the color that steel would be if it were blue. They saw everything in a moment, those winter eyes; they saw the surprise that Terrick could not keep from his face, if only for a second. “You knew him.” It wasn’t a question.

“Aye,” Terrick replied. “I knew him. And if I had to guess, this fool errand was undertaken on his behalf. He’s dead,” Terrick added quietly. “Don’t look so surprised, boy—if he were alive, you wouldn’t be here.

“But he didn’t send you to kin. He didn’t send you to keep you from starving. If he asked you to make this journey, he wanted—”

“He sent me,” Angel said, his soft voice breaking the flow of Terrick’s accented Weston, “to speak with Weyrdon.”

Smoothing the accent out of his voice, and freeing it, in the process, of any signs of agitation, Terrick said quietly, “Think on it, boy. Think again. Reconsider.”

“Why? Do you think he’ll try to kill me?”

“There is every possibility he will do just that.”

“Why?”

“Does it matter? The
Ice Wolf
is his ship, and if you’re on it, you’re his.”

The boy’s face, carefully neutral, gave little away, but he didn’t seem surprised. Nor did he seem afraid. He was set on this course of action, and while it was admirable—after all, the death of kin was at the foundation of many great men—Terrick found that he was not yet ready to acquiesce.

He should have been, of course. Perhaps the Empire did, in the end, change more than just complexion.

“Take your hair down,” Terrick told Angel. “If you’re determined to do this, take your hair down.”

Angel refused without opening his mouth. Or rather, without speaking; he had continued to eat while Terrick spoke. Only when he had finished did he speak again.

“If you knew my father,” he said, with a dignity beyond his years, “you would understand why I can’t.”

“The man I knew would have cut off his own hand before he let his hair down. You said he did just that. Clearly, time makes its changes.” He did not attempt to tell the boy that he might be mistaken, that the boy’s father and the man that he knew might not be the same. Had he believed it—had there been the possibility of belief—he would have.

“The right to bear a sword,” Angel replied, “isn’t an obligation to use it; it isn’t even an obligation to carry it all the time.”

“It depends,” Terrick replied, “on your duties and your responsibilities. Boy—”

“He was asked to leave,” Angel said.

Silence. Terrick was not a man who was uncomfortable with silence, and he often privately despised those men and women who were—they filled it with useless noise and inane babble simply because they were afraid of what might be noticed if the words ran dry. But some silences were merely a lid over words. This, he now removed.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that you do not understand Weyrdon—or any of the clans—if you can say that. It’s possible your father chose, for your mother’s sake, not to explain too much. But Weyrdon does not ask men to leave. If he feels that there is reason for them to do so, he kills them.