The Return of Nightfall (54 page)

Nightfall hid amid the alleyway barrels, some placed to catch rainwater and others filled with food scraps for some farmers’ dogs, poultry, and pigs. Memories descended upon him of his childhood on the streets, when a swiped handful of greasy peelings, seeds, half chewed leftovers, and hard, withered fruit served as a meal. Often, the slop left him with vomiting and bellyaches, but even those seemed preferable to the dull, empty ache of hunger most times.

Hunkered down in the alley, Nightfall watched the normal internal workings of the slave house from an alley overlooking the back door. He could not study the comings and goings of the traders, buyers, and sellers; but those did not interest him at the moment. He took his cues from the slaves, mostly women of widely varying ages who came nearest to his vantage point. Some scooped water into pots and buckets, careful not to spill or waste a drop. Others scraped plates into the barrels of leavings. Most did their jobs without supervision, trusted slaves secure in their lots; but a few warranted burly overseers who watched their every move.

Nightfall let all of them pass unbothered. Though women usually made better squealers than men, for the most part easier to frighten and better observers, their absences tended to be more noticeable and alarming. They also proved harder to silence. Admitting to having caved under duress came harder to men, trained to defend self and hearth, while women seemed eager to discuss their ordeal. Some even embellished their trials, claiming rapes that never happened or bearing an infant from some indiscretion they later bragged was demonsired.

Nightfall’s opportunity came later, when the male slaves arrived to empty bathwater used first by the clients, then the paid staff, before the slaves put it, and any remaining warmth, to their own uses. By the time it reached them, it would have turned gray or brown from the previous bathers, but it still stripped off some of the filth and stench or relieved their itching. After a few weeks, Nightfall knew from experience, a mud puddle seemed better than another day of stewing in one’s own dirt, scales, and sweat.

The first two slaves eluded him by coming out together. The third and fourth were closely guarded. By then, the steady stream of women had ended as well, and it seemed as if Nightfall might have to give his scrutiny one more day. The idea raised a flash of anger. Edward had already suffered this long; even a few more weeks did not seem critical. Yet, the thought of the king spending one more day as a slave boiled Nightfall’s blood. The urge to slaughter every man who had had a hand in the kidnapping almost overwhelmed him. He had destroyed a big part of the Bloodshadow Brotherhood, but certainly not all of it. He might spend the rest of the year tracking down every individual who had dared to join or support them, reaping all of them until he found the last, cowering man. And cower, they would, he felt certain, once they saw what he inflicted on the other members.

Then, Nightfall saw him, the lowliest of the low, a boy not yet in his teens emptying chamber pots. He seemed unbothered by the inherent ghastliness of his job, humming tunelessly as he dumped their contents into the manufactured gutter that carried waste away from the House of Xevar and toward the southeastern part of town. His hair hung in a sandy fringe of tangles, dirt showed on his neck above and below the collar, and he reeked of urine, which he had probably grown accustomed to spilling over his clothes as he walked. Glancing around to be sure no one traveled the nearby roadways, no neighbor chanced to look in his direction, Nightfall caught the boy. He wrapped one arm around the small face, hand pressed against his mouth to silence any screams. He snaked his other arm across the boy’s abdomen and dragged him into the shadows behind the barrels.

The boy never struggled. Apparently accustomed to manhandling, he went limp in Nightfall’s grip, dropping the chamber pot with a muffled clang, and allowed his back to be pulled tight against his captor.

Nightfall poked the potboy’s side with a fingernail to simulate a menacing blade. “Don’t yell,” he whispered.

The boy nodded as well as he could in Nightfall’s grasp.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I just need some information about your . . . master.”

The boy nodded more briskly, clearly eager to assist.

Trusting his assessment, Nightfall eased his hand from the other’s mouth. He spun the boy toward him. “Do you know who I am?”

As he came face-to-face with the demon, the boy bit a scream into a sharp squeak. Lips tightened to a white line, he nodded. He apparently did not trust himself to speak.

“Who is your master?”

The slave trembled. “Are you gonta kill me?”

Nightfall did not have time to waste. “Horribly.”

The boy turned white as bleached linen.

“But only if you continue to dodge my questions. If you give me the truth, and tell no one of our meeting, I won’t harm you.”

Suddenly, the boy could not speak fast enough. “My master’s Xevar. Xe-var.” Apparently worried to leave anything out, he added, “Unless’n he sells me. Or trades me. Then, I belongsta whoever he sells or trades me to, and—.”

Nightfall put a stop to the worthless and unnecessary flow of words. “Where does Xevar sleep?”

“In—in his bedroom, my lord.”

Nightfall kept his attention on the boy but did not use the stare; that might terrify the slave into silence. He could not, however, keep a growl from entering his voice. “Which is where?”

“Jus’ ou’side the forbidded courtyard, my lord.”

“Forbidden courtyard.” Nightfall mulled his first piece of useful information. “Forbidden to whom?”

“Ta everone, lord.” The boy wiped his hands repeatedly on his britches. “Everone ’ceptin’ Master Xevar an’ his sister, Mistress Jacquellette.” He dropped his voice still further, so Nightfall had to strain to hear. “No one else what go in ever come out. Alive.”

Now, the boy had Nightfall’s full attention. “What happens to them?”

The boy shrugged. “Nobody knows, my lord. Any slave what so much as claimsta catch a glimpse a wha’s there gits taked in there by the master or mistress.”

“And?”

The potboy stopped his hand rubbing to swipe his fingers across his nose. “Never come back, my lord. Not ever.” His eyes turned liquid. “Word’s they winds up in nex’ night’s stew pot, but I doesn’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause the master ain’t mean otherwise, my lord. Can’t believe he’d make us eat people, ’specially ones we knowed.”

“And the mistress?”

The boy hung his head. “She ain’t so nice, lord. She might kick or slap someone what gets in her way, but she mostly jus’ ignores us so long’s we stay ’way from her.”

“So what happens in the courtyard?”

Small shoulders heaved upward, then fell again. “Can’t say, my lord. Like I tole you, no one who goed in ever comed out.”

Nightfall had not forgotten. “Surely someone has seen something. Through the windows, maybe?”

The boy shook his head vigorously, dislodging bits of twig and leaves from his sandy hair. “No windas, my lord. Master had ’em all bricked up ’ceptin’ the ones from his own quarters and the mistress’. No one sees in, and I don’t know as anyone would look even if they could. That might get ’em taked into the courtyard.”

The information about the courtyard seemed more like a strange curiosity, unless Xevar hid Edward there. More importantly, Nightfall had learned the master’s quarters sat on the inner part of the ground floor. Most merchants lived in rooms atop their businesses. Xevar, apparently, had arranged his shop opposite the norm. On a hunch, he asked. “Does Xevar use a guard at night?”

“Three, my lord. They stand ou’side his door, ’lert and ready. I hear he’s got dogs insi’e with him, too.” The boy returned to the nervous ritual of rubbing his hands against his pants, though whether to clean his filthy hands on the fabric or the grimy, urine-soaked homespun onto his palms, Nightfall could not guess. “If they’s the same an’mals what begs bones and scraps from the kitchen staff durin’ the day, they’s big and toothy.”

Nightfall frowned. He had learned long ago that the cover of darkness was not always the most important consideration. People tended to take more precautions at night, when they felt most vulnerable, placing guards and locks on things readily available during the daylight hours. Some of Nightfall’s most spectacular heists had occurred the day before the theft got noticed, enhancing the stunned belief that Nightfall could confound the most sophisticated security. Surely no one human could steal a gem from a chained iron box with thirty keys and twice as many guards. As often as not, they never realized the item had left the box before the safeguards were applied.

“Is there any other time when your master tends to be alone?”

“Other times?” The boy glanced around the barrels, then shivered, as if suddenly aware he was chatting amicably with a demon. “He’s not always ’lone at nighttime, my lord. He’s like to take one of the girl-slaves with him to bed. Likes the new ones best, ’specially if they’s young.”

Nightfall’s opinion of Xevar plummeted still further. “Alone times?” he reminded.

“He ’bout always takes midday meal in his room, my lord. By hisself.” The boy started trembling with the uncontrollable intensity usually attributable to cold. He spoke his fear aloud. “Now you gots what you wants, my lord, could you kill me nicely ’stead of horribly?”

Nightfall did not allow himself to smile, which might ruin an image he had cultivated for decades. “I keep my promises. I said I wouldn’t harm you, and I won’t. Not so long as you tell no one about our conversation, at least for the next week.”

The potboy looked nervous. He clearly wanted to believe the demon’s words yet worried for his back. “No one, my lord.” He bowed deferentially several times. “Never even happened.”

Nightfall reinforced the superstition. People claimed they merely had to whisper their needs upon the wind for Nightfall to hear them, that he would take those jobs he considered worthy of his effort and demand payment afterward. Few dared make such requests, however, since they also believed he exacted high payment and brutally murdered those who frivolously wasted his time. “I’ll know if you break that promise.”

The boy nodded in zealous and obvious faith. “Yes, my lord. Of course.”

Nightfall dismissed the other with a flick of his fingers. “You may go.”

The potboy did not wait for a second invitation. Grabbing up the dropped chamber pot, he scurried back toward the mansion.

An evening breeze twined through the alley, carrying the odors of woodsmoke and grease, of urine and damp. It riffled through Nightfall’s hair like a brother’s hand, and the smell seemed right, the very definition of city night. Alone and free, he had gained in a single day what he had not managed in weeks in other guise. The darkened streets and alleys belonged to him, and the citizenry of every class bowed before the demon lord who had survived the wiles of courtiers and kings, of assassins and thugs, of death itself. Borders came and went, illness struck down the good and the wicked, feuds and diplomacy ran their fiery courses. Only one thing remained constant, terrifying and unpredictable, yet always real. The demon of centuries of legend.

He was Nightfall. The power inherent in that persona, the pure and absolute freedom in that name, was at once staggeringly awesome and hideously vile.

Nightfall moved silently, fusing like liquid with the shadows, and became the depths of city darkness. Finding a quiet corner, he slipped into it and fell asleep to the natural fragrance and harmony of Hartrin’s alleys.

 

Nightfall awakened with the sun and donned his traveler’s disguise long enough to buy a satisfying breakfast with his stolen money. He spent the rest of the morning as the demon, though no one saw him. He remained high above the city, crawling among the beamed and tiled rooftops with the quiet ease of long practice, rarely scaring up the roosting doves. He carried a hook better suited to fishing on a long thin line, all he needed for the most difficult climbs. His weight-shifting ability obviated the need for heavy ropes and grapples. Below him, guards crisscrossed the city in packs, apparently seeking him. They carried obvious weaponry, loosened in their scabbards, and the same folk who had treated Balshaz so kindly would sell out the demon at a single glance if they thought they could get away with it.

A mansion on the next block afforded him the best overview of the House of Xevar. Four stories tall, it sported spectacular stonework in the form of gargoyles, crenelations, and spires. Pressed against the cold stone, Nightfall gained a bird’s-eye view of the richest quarter of the city. Massive homes with the capacity to house a hundred commoners sprang up in every direction, all dwarfed by the castle, yet palatial in their own right. From above, Xevar’s building was a half circle of bulky brick and granite wrapped around what was once a delicate and fertile garden. A huge stone wall blocked any view of the courtyard from the street, and the house served the same purpose from every other angle. A wooden barrier bordered the entire garden, taller than a man, to prevent anyone who was repairing tiles or scraping muck from atop the slave house from catching a peek inside it.

The rooftop of Nightfall’s chosen perch did not afford him a reasonable view either, because of distance. Only when he clambered down the ornate levels to a ledge slick with decaying leaves and fungi did he get a good look inside that mysterious place, surprised to find nothing of interest. No flowers or herbs grew within those walls, though the deep brown dirt appeared to have been turned over multiple times, as if in preparation for a planting. A few scraggly trees rose from within, their boughs haggard and broken; it looked like children had spent hours swinging from them. Even the trunks appeared beaten down; and one had a split, perhaps from a direct strike of lightning. A pile of shattered crockery and wood filled one corner, and bits of debris littered much of the remaining space. The only nod to wealth was a bench carved from a single piece of white stone that sat, positioned at a fashionable diagonal, at the opposite end from the bulk of the mess.