The Return of Nightfall (49 page)

“Who wouldn’t?” With those words, Eldour turned Nightfall’s admission from cowardice to simple logic. “And the trade in Alyndar? How did that go?”

Nightfall gave a gloomy shrug. “What little I had left sold for a fair price, and I found a side mission that gained me a few more silvers.” He took another swig of cider. “Unfortunately, all of that went to paying the sailors. The pirates and the chase added combat wages, and that left me with only a few coppers.” He tried a wan smile. “Know anyone who needs some silks?” He tugged at the emerald-green fabric of his merchanting outfit. “Because I don’t know where else to get the money I need to restart my business.”

Eldour winced. “Sad.” His face screwed into a knot of compassion that made it seem as if he had never heard a more depressing story. “Always hard to see anyone fall this far. Why don’t I bring you some food? No man has ever hit rock bottom with his belly full.”

Nightfall did not protest as the proprietor whisked behind the counter. He glanced around at the other men in the common room. None appeared to be looking at him; and yet, he knew they all were. They had begun assessing him the moment he crossed the threshold, seeking weaknesses to exploit. They smelled money in the look of him, and they all contemplated a means to make any wealth he carried their own. At least one, a tall and wiry fellow at the farthest table, would not hesitate to insert a knife through his rib cage before bothering to see what he carried.

Bound by his promises to Kelryn and Edward, Nightfall suffered a growing rush of irritation. He felt hobbled and shackled, forced to perform high-air acrobatics without the benefit of hands or feet. Balshaz would and could request information, but only in a clumsy fashion. He needed the freedom only Nightfall possessed to hold blades at bay and loosen tongues. He needed the influence of the demon. Nightfall gulped down more of the cider. It felt warm in his stomach, soothing the nausea that bubbled up at the thought of what circumstance had forced him to do. He would have to take another enormous leap of faith.

Shortly, Eldour returned with a plate of chopped fall fruit, a lump of mashed tubers, a small piece of heavily salted pork, and a bit of moldy cheese. He placed them in front of Nightfall with a flourish, as if presenting a feast to a king.

Nightfall flopped his nearly empty purse to the tabletop and eased out two coppers. He passed them to Eldour. “I’d better pay you now. Who knows if I’ll have anything left when I awaken.”

The coins disappeared into Eldour’s hand. “I’d take that as an insult to my establishment, if it weren’t true.” He again seated himself in the chair at Nightfall’s table while his daytime regulars pretended not to watch. He glanced at the purse, which clearly contained only three or four more coppers, barely worth stealing. “So, where are you going from here?”

“Depends . . .” Nightfall flipped a bit of fruit into his mouth, trying to look competent without demonstrating too much dexterity. He continued as he chewed, “. . . on what kind of information I get.”

“Information?” Eldour withheld tone from the word, clearly uncertain how to play his next gambit. His gaze went back to the near-empty purse. “That’s not going to buy you much.”

Nightfall wiped his hands on his shirt, then dipped beneath it and dropped the sapphire brooch to the table. “How about this?”

Eldour’s eyes went enormous. Nightfall could feel the gazes of the patrons jerk toward him as well. “I thought . . . you said . . . but . . .”

Nightfall anticipated the question the proprietor seemed incapable of speaking. “It’s not mine.”

“Who . . . ?” Eldour started, unable to tear his attention from the jewel.

“It belongs to whoever brings information that leads me directly to King Edward Nargol of Alyndar.”

That brought Eldour’s head up. “But he’s—”

“Don’t say ‘dead.’ ” Though it might be true, Nightfall could not bear to hear it now.

Eldour went silent.

Nightfall suppressed his personal stake in the matter. “Or whoever leads me to . . . his . . . body.” His mind refused to accept the possibility his friend had been murdered, at least not until he saw the remains with his own eyes. “And this . . .” He tossed down the second, loose gem. “. . . goes to whoever gives me valuable, useful information about the Bloodshadow Brotherhood.”

A shiver racked Eldour. He glanced surreptitiously over his shoulder, but Nightfall already knew he had gained the attention of every man in the inn, whether they stared openly or not. “It’s dangerous,” the proprietor finally whispered, “to speak that name aloud.”

Nightfall tried to look distressed by the revelation, though he suffered nothing but a deep flush of anger. The worthless group of bandits had stolen not only his name, but also his reputation, and used them as weapons of terror.
Arisen from the drops of demon blood shed at my execution, were they?
He released that line of thought. He could do nothing about it, and dwelling on it only placed his current disguise in jeopardy. “Then, I will leave these treasures with you, and you can let me know if anyone earns them.”

Clearly awed by the fortune Nightfall had so blithely placed in his care, Eldour made no request for middle-man’s pay. Though Nightfall knew it would rightly come from whoever passed along enough information to win the gems, Balshaz would not. Eldour could have collected from both sides of the gambit.

The proprietor took the sapphires, then disappeared through the kitchen curtain to hide them.

Ignoring the stares of the other patrons, Nightfall turned his attention to his meal.

 

Nightfall spent the remainder of the evening in Eldour’s common room, watching customers leave, replaced by more. As the night wore on, the coming far outpaced the going, so the room became nearly full by the time the moon and stars ruled the heavens. Though quiet in his corner, Nightfall did not go unnoticed. He saw many familiar faces: stalkers and assassins, cut-purses and squealers, rogues of every variety in groups that seldom surprised him. Every person who came in studied him at least once, though whether out of curiosity or professional interest, he did not know. Eldour became very popular as men asked about the merchant’s presence and word of his wishes grew. At length, Nightfall thought it better to leave the others free to discuss him and his offer without worrying about him overhearing. He retired to the sleeping room early, shortly after a light evening meal.

Tattered, filthy blankets lay, rumpled or spread, across the floor. Rolled or crumpled piles of clothing, backpacks, and parcels created a scattered maze that Nightfall navigated with ease. All four corners were already claimed by belongings, forcing Nightfall to the center of the room or beneath the single window, devoid of curtains or covering. He chose the latter position. Though the coldest spot, and the least safe if someone chose to scale the building and sneak into the room, Nightfall liked having the option of a fast escape. With his natal gift, he could handle the two-story drop with ease.

Nightfall curled up on the floor and drifted into a sleep that lasted only until the first of his roommates arrived. The drunken pair made no attempt at quiet, tripping over bedrolls and laughing hysterically when blankets skittered and tangled. Nightfall feigned sleep as he watched them. Regulars, he knew, men who slept at the inn whenever they had the money. He waited for them to settle into position. Moments later, their heavy snores permeated the room, and Nightfall settled back into a doze. He always slept on a knife’s edge of awakening, his senses trained to distinguish safe background noise from danger. Now, those instincts failed him. Every new sleep mate brought him to jarring awareness, and he found himself measuring the breathing of too many men to allow him any rest. At length, he slipped through the window while the others slept, lowered his weight, and plummeted lightly to the ground. From there, he crawled into a nearby bolt-hole that had kept him safe in the past.

There, deeply chilled and pressed by stone on nearly every side, he found the comfort that had eluded him on the floor of the inn’s sleeping room. Childhood emotions enveloped him: the joy of finding a haven among the predators, a place that could keep a boy alive one more night. Soothed by remembrance, surrounded by the customary sounds of alley night, Nightfall slept.

 

A change in the pattern of movement outside his hiding space awakened Nightfall to the first rays of the sun. Measuring the area by instinct as much as sight and sound, he determined that no one hovered nearby. He slipped from his crevice into the threadway and touched up his costume using his reflection in various puddles. His copper locks lay in disarray, and he carried more dirt than Balshaz normally would allow; yet it seemed appropriate for the situation. Making certain no one watched him climb, he clambered to the sleeping room window and peeked inside. The others slept in random poses around the room, legs flopped over meager belongings, arms akimbo. Nightfall dropped noiselessly into the room, picked his careful way around them, then pressed through the door and down the stairs to the common room. He took the same chair he had used the night before, now cracked from some disagreement that must have occurred after he left the previous night.

Nightfall sat alone with his thoughts for several moments before a serving girl emerged from behind the kitchen hanging and noticed him. She appeared nearly thirty, though she was probably several years younger. She wore her dark hair cut short with bangs, and her face looked drawn down toward her chin. Ruffles at the top of her linen shirt nearly hid the scars around her neck, which had surely come from a slave collar. She had red, irritated hands covered with ashy scratch lines and a scaly rash that clearly itched. She studied him in the dull light leaking through the remaining chinks in the inn’s construction. “Oh, good morning, sir. Can I get you anything?”

“Anything would be just fine, miss,” Nightfall returned genially. He had hoped to see Eldour but knew the proprietor had remained awake late into the night serving customers. He would be surprised to see the man, or any of his own roommates, before the midday meal.

Leftovers from the previous night, the food tasted bland and congealed, but it broke the fast and filled Nightfall’s belly. Though he had already paid for his stay, Nightfall tipped the woman one of his last precious coppers. He doubted he could keep hold of them long in his current guise anyway, and he had become wise to the goodwill that came of making the lowborn and servants happy. She thanked him with an exuberance he found embarrassing, and he slipped out the door as much to escape her as to clear his head. He had nowhere in particular to go, but he had already grown tired of Eldour’s place. He doubted random street wandering would yield significant information, but it seemed better than spending hours waiting for Eldour in the common room.

Clouds swathed the sun, shading the alleys into an ethereal gray. He made no attempt to move quietly, though it came naturally to him; and his senses followed the movement of others without conscious need to do so. He headed northwest, toward the more normal parts of the city, with no destination in mind. He needed a change, to see a piece of the world that reminded him more of Balshaz and less of his dark, ugly childhood and the demon it had turned him into.

As Nightfall headed down one of the last muddy alleys of the southeast quarter, his senses jarred him to full vigilance. His cloth-covered shoes were still mired in the same tarry filth that seemed to define the lower quarter. He knew his route. The alley mouth would open on a small thoroughfare leading to a series of smaller shops that sold stale bread, garden overflow, and secondhand clothing. The backs of cruder dwellings, storage houses, and crumbling ruins lined the alley itself, and Cronar, who sold turning meat, sometimes threw scraps of the unsalvageably rancid into this alley for the strays. Nightfall wondered how many orphans and escaped slaves stole what he tossed there from the scrounging cats, dogs, and wild doves. Uncertain what troubled him, Nightfall paused casually just past the mouth of the alley and took a full survey.

A moment after he stopped, others did also. Nightfall was immediately certain he was being followed. To confirm his suspicions, he took two confident strides forward, then came to an immediate halt. Again, the light footfalls and almost inaudible swish of cloth disappeared a spare instant afterward. Two men, his ears told him, accustomed to stalking. Not wanting to give away his knowledge of their presence, Nightfall bent down and pretended to adjust a shoe already mud-crusted past saving. Then, he continued onward at the same casual pace, without the sudden quickening that might cue them.

A voice crashed through the alleyway in front of Nightfall, not loud but full of command and menace. “Stop there, merchant.”

Nightfall froze, looking for the source of the voice, pretending not to notice the two men stalking nearer behind him. “Who’s there?” he finally said, not bothering to control the quaver in his reply.

Three men stepped from the shadows. Nightfall recognized only one, a scarred veteran mugger who rarely bothered with subtlety. He would rather knife a man for his purse than steal or finesse it. The other two looked hardened, though only in their teens, a short blond and a willowy brunet. They swept toward him without answer, covering the width of the alley.

Nightfall realized they expected him to turn and run in terror directly into the two men behind him. Instead, he took a careful back step, keeping stock of each man’s position as he measured every detail of the alley. The poorly designed buildings gave him numerous opportunities to climb, though doing so seemed worrisomely out of character. He tried something more appropriate to Balshaz first. His nimble fingers untied his purse and tossed it toward the three approaching men. “Here. That’s all I have.” He did not expect them to believe him. His silks hinted at far more wealth than he currently carried. “If I had money, I wouldn’t have to stay in this scummy part of town.”