The Return of Nightfall (53 page)

Roach’s tongue flicked over his lips again.

“I know your so-called Brotherhood slaughtered a mass of guards and innocents. I know you were there.” Nightfall forced his stare upon the boy, adding distinctly, “Roach.”

The young man gasped. “How . . . ?” he started. “How did—?”

Nightfall did not let him finish. He avoided explaining his knowledge whenever possible. The mystery unnerved people more than grandiose claims, and it obviated the need to justify why a demon with supernatural knowledge needed to bully out information. “Do you really want to chat while the floor grows hotter beneath our boots?”

Clearly, Roach had not considered that. He shifted his feet nervously, as if the planking had already risen to an unbearable temperature.

“Now.” Nightfall released Roach but did not step backward, neatly trapping the younger man against the wall. “What have you done with King Edward?”

Roach’s features lapsed into terrified crinkles. He continued to clutch the sapphires, as if uncertain what to do with them. “Do you know,” he said, barely above a whisper, “what the Brotherhood does . . . to traitors?”

“No,” Nightfall admitted, hardening his scarred features. “But I know what I do to those who don’t tell me what I want to know.” He moved a step closer, placing himself nearly on top of the frightened youngster. “After I’m done tearing their bodies apart slowly with my own teeth and nails, consuming their still-beating hearts . . .” He smacked his lips as if savoring the thought of a favorite meal. “I drag them to the darkest, dirtiest corner of hell and gleefully rend their souls for eternity. Then, I start in on the family. For example, the mother who works as one of Duchess Hermollie’s handmaidens. The brothers and, most especially, the sisters.” He met the boy’s gaze again, all innocence. “Is it worse than that?”

Roach swallowed hard. “They sold the king to the House of Xevar.”

A slaver?
The answer confused Nightfall. It made no sense for a gang of thugs to risk their lives slaughtering royal guardsmen to capture a king, only to sell him for a handful of silver. “I want the truth!”

Roach shrank against the wall, a wet stain spreading across his hose. “I swear it.”

Nightfall studied the young man, reading panic and desperation but no deceit. He had always known when his mother’s tears were giving way to rage at her lot, because she usually vented on him. He knew which of her clients he could rob with impunity and which would take vengeance on him, or on her. He knew when to approach for a proffered bite of food and when it served only as bait for a man as eager to find vicious pleasure in a small boy as in his prostitute mother. Alone on the streets at eight, he had learned to notice the tiniest details that inadvertently broadcast a person’s every hidden intention. His survival had depended on it. Now, Nightfall realized, Roach spoke the truth. “Why?” he asked. “Why would the Brotherhood sell a king into slavery?”

A light flickered through Roach’s eyes as he considered the question. “I just do as I’m told. No one tells me the reasons.”

Nightfall believed that, too, trying to make sense where none existed. Someone had paid a phenomenal sum for Edward’s capture, engineering wholesale slaughter to do so. To do nothing more than sell him into slavery seemed a madness so far beyond logic that only a lunatic could devise it. He raised a hand in sheer frustration.

As if it were a signal, the barrel over the trapdoor blasted into flames with eye-searing suddenness. Apparently, it held spirits, not water.

Roach shrieked, head jerking wildly, eyes measuring the walls for an escape.

Nightfall knew he had to get them out. And fast. “Go! Go!” Grabbing the youngster’s arm, he shoved him toward the only exit, the one into the common room. Even then, he could not overcome his thieving instincts. As Roach stumbled blindly forward, the sapphires went from his clenched fingers to a secret pouch sewn into Nightfall’s skirt tabs. Nightfall steered Roach around the conflagration, ignoring the heat as easily as he had the blood dripping along his left wrist and hand. Focused on Edward, he had not spared a moment for the wound.

Tearing through the curtain, both men burst into the common room to find the patrons on their feet. The fire had not yet reached them, and they knew only that someone in the storage area had screamed in raw terror. Just the barest hint of smoke funneled out here, lost in the haze of the storm and amid the warm, acrid odors of the hearth.

“Fire!” Roach screamed. “Fire!” He raced for the exit.

The response was immediate. Men lurched, ran, and staggered toward the door in a leg-tangling mass. Nightfall did not join them. Instead, he took the more dangerous route, up the stairs to the sleeping rooms and out the familiar window. Doing so eliminated the need to shove his way past flustered men wild for escape and ultimately got him out of harm’s way faster. It also allowed him to maintain the illusion.

To the drunkards in Eldour’s inn that night, it would seem as if the demon, Nightfall, had simply disappeared.

Chapter 20

—Dyfrin of Keevain, the demon’s friend

 

T
HE STORIES OF NIGHTFALL’S RETURN were immediate and explosive.

Disguised as a nondescript traveler, Nightfall heard them as the primary topic of conversation in every tavern in Hartrin and even on the street. Not only had the demon destroyed Eldour’s inn in a violent conflagration arising directly from his fingertips, he had also, apparently, murdered several innocents, including Balshaz the merchant. The rumors now suggested Nightfall, not Sudian, had slaughtered the king of Alyndar in retribution for his own execution. Demons, it appeared, never actually died. They just re-formed their bodies in some foul pit in the deepest confines of the Father’s hell.

Though his ability to menace relied on this infamy, Nightfall took no satisfaction from the stories. As usual, they far overestimated his activities, in Balshaz’ case to the point of paradox; but the populace needed that exaggeration. Better to believe all evil the work of a demon than of human beings like themselves.

After washing and bandaging his wound, which turned out to be deeper than he expected, Nightfall found a dark corner in which to doze. He knew better than to seek out the House of Xevar with his temper at its height and many hours shy on sleep. Those things might make him desperate or careless.

Once rested, Nightfall had donned his traveler’s disguise, relieved a wealthy shopkeeper of a handful of silver and copper, and scanned the local taverns for food and gossip. With daylight, the embellished tales of his return brought the guilty pleasure that had eluded him earlier. The citizenry, from lumbering thugs to glib minstrels, from commoners to kings, had missed Nightfall. He shared the sentiment. He felt as if invisible chains had fallen from him, leaving him as light and free as air. The pall of ignorance had lifted; the world’s secrets could no longer hide from him. He did not have to suffer surly nobles who dismissed him as a servant or shoved him into roles that fit him like child’s clothing: wrong, tight, suffocating. No one dared to ridicule or dismiss Nightfall, and those who attacked him would die. Unencumbered by duties or relationships, he ruled the continent’s nations with terror and intimidation.

The sensation of ultimate power lasted seconds, and realization returned to dispel the illusion. The burdens society placed upon him may have disappeared, but not those he had willingly taken onto himself. Nightfall had a job to do, a duty to fulfill. King Edward could never forgive Nightfall for taking up a role he had sworn never to revisit, and the pardon the young man’s father had granted Nightfall lasted only as long as he shunned the demon character. By becoming Nightfall again, he had willingly taken the liability not only for every crime he had ever committed, but for the many more wrongfully attributed to him. He had broken the most sacred of promises, to those he loved. He could not lose sight of why he had sacrificed all of those things.

Ned sold into slavery?
It still made no sense.
Why?
Only after Nightfall had rested, his belly now full of tavern chicken, bread, and boiled leaves did he finally discover a plausible explanation. He recalled a story he had only heard secondhand, the one that had forced King Rikard’s hand against his dangerously idealistic youngest son. As Nightfall understood the story, an emissary from Hartrin had visited Alyndar’s court bringing a host, including several slaves. High-minded Edward had, at first, interrupted the proceedings, trying to get his father to break off relations so long as Hartrin continued to sanction slavery.

When that approach inevitably failed, Prince Edward had called on the Hartrinian camp to preach understanding and tolerance. He had attempted to free the slaves by simply removing their collars, only to find himself in a confrontation with their master. Ultimately, Edward had killed the slaver, and only the whip mark the man left scarred across the prince’s face saved Alyndar from paying blood price. Diplomacy between the two countries, never good, had seriously suffered.

Now, Nightfall guessed, someone’s need for revenge had gotten the better of his purse and common sense. Perhaps a relative of the dead slaver, or a well-connected friend, enraged a man he considered a murderer sat upon the throne of Alyndar, had hired the Bloodshadow Brotherhood to kidnap the king. Because the slaughter of the elite guards satisfied his bloodlust, or because he had made a promise to his informant in Alyndar, or because he stopped short of regicide, he had chosen to take King Edward alive.

Nightfall glanced around the tavern at its few occupants. No one seemed to notice him or pose him any danger. Certain he was in a safe place, a new thought struck him.
Maybe, the kidnapper preferred torturing the target of his anger to killing it.
Nightfall could think of nothing more heinous to Edward than slavery, no punishment more cruel and ironic than forcing him into it. The image of the king beaten into tossing boulders from some dank mine, the icy sodden air chilling his lungs to sickness, sent a bolt of heat through Nightfall. He could hear the rattle of the shackles, feel the sting of the lash gleefully cutting again and again across Edward’s back.
No!
It was an evil even the demon could not contemplate committing. Despite his bold words to Roach in Eldour’s inn, he had never found pleasure in another’s misfortune. Nevertheless, Nightfall discovered a bright spot in his own imagery. At least, if he was right, King Edward still lived.

Nightfall threw down a copper, leaving his drink half finished. Now that he had a reasonable idea of what had happened, he felt ready to face Xevar and his House. As Nightfall.

 

Nightfall had chosen a deliberately plain appearance, and his study of the slaver’s home and business in broad daylight did not take long. Xevar’s house had previously belonged to one of the richest families in Hartrin, a two-story stone-and-brick monstrosity curling around a central courtyard that had once served as a magnificent, fenced garden. Nightfall remembered it as an attraction for every tourist, its heavy wrought-iron fence painted black and bent into pretty flourishes. Some passerby was always peering through the struts at patterned flower beds and healthy vegetable stalks weaving hyp notically in every breeze.

Now, a wall nearly as tall as the main building blocked any examination of the garden from the main road, turning the building and grounds together into a bleak oval. The House of Xevar took up an entire block, bounded only by roads and alleys. Slaves performed the lesser jobs, dressed in poor but well mended clothing. They wore the requisite collars and appeared thinner than the citizens but, for the most part, unscarred and reasonably comfortable. The paid help seemed to consist mostly of burly, well muscled men with coiled whips and or swords at their belts.

It did not take Nightfall long to identify Xevar ushering the occasional patron through the front door. The grown version of a youthful con man, he had worked a few scams with Nightfall early in both of their careers, before Nightfall had merged reputations with the centuries-old demon from a children’s nursery rhyme. In his youth, Xevar had proved hard to fathom, his lies more believable than most people’s truths, his features malleable and well schooled. Likely, he had honed that talent as a salesman, becoming whatever his customers needed at the moment. Bullying information from Xevar might not prove difficult; knowing whether or not to trust what he received just might.

Nightfall examined the exterior of the House of Xevar, from the shape, construction, and neighbors to the presence of handholds in the stonework and the strength of the roof joists and tiles. He turned his attention to the interior, which he could handle in one of two ways. He could make an excuse to enter the building, perhaps posing as a client; or, he could force the information from one of Xevar’s various slaves. Though the former would glean him firsthand knowledge and details others might not think to provide, it would require him to play a role he knew little about. He lacked Edward’s zeal for the subject, but he still disliked the whole concept of slavery. A prospective buyer who knew nothing of the trade would look suspicious, and it would gain him access only to the most superficial areas of the House.

Nightfall waited until dusk to don his demon gear. Self-tailored for intimidation, it required padding and coordination, meticulous detail, and the proper demeanor. The demon rarely appeared before his namesake time, waiting until darkness stole the colors from the world. He cursed Roach’s wild sword stroke; it had left a large and irregular tear in his sleeve that revealed the bandage wrapped just above his left wrist. He wore woolens beneath his outfit, allowing for a quick change should he require a disguise to help him escape. To blend into the corridors, he had found himself a collar as well and hoped he never needed to use it.