The Return of Nightfall (55 page)

Nightfall could only guess at the purpose for the courtyard. With no slaves or servants to tend it, it had withered into disrepair; and the master clearly would not lower himself to the chore of rendering his sanctuary comfortable. He supposed it made sense for a man who trafficked in humans to need a place of solitude. Unlike a smith or a craftsman, Xevar’s wares could report and gossip on his every utterance, location, or mistake. They had needs that crops, crafts, and clothing did not. He had to deal with food, illnesses, and injuries, with fights and escapes, with guards as well as clients. Once, Nightfall suspected, Xevar had used the courtyard as a fragrant and beautiful getaway from the stresses of his day. As the flowers and fruit withered, Xevar had not bothered to replace them; and his personal refuge became more symbolic than real.

Realizing he had put the most pleasant perspective on the matter, Nightfall considered other uses for a devastated garden. The potboy had mentioned Xevar’s appetite for young slave girls. Perhaps he preferred them outside or in groups his quarters could not accommodate. He might host orgies, hidden from the eyes, though probably not the ears, of his neighbors. That did not fit the boy’s claim that no one other than Xevar and his sister emerged alive from the courtyard, but it still might happen. Since the only entrances into the garden apparently came from the rooms of the master and mistress, who could know for certain whether Xevar took the women into his bedroom or the courtyard? Fearing for their lives, the female slaves might vehemently deny having gone there. Or, perhaps, the disturbances in the ground represented the unmarked graves of those who squealed.

Another idea crinkled Nightfall’s nose in disgust. Most adult unmarried brothers and sisters did not live in the same house. It seemed possible Xevar and Jacquellette did something together that required privacy, since the laws of most countries forbade incest. Even in Trillium, where any object or act allowed by any kingdom was legal, most people hid such liaisons. In fact, no matter its legitimacy, any behavior that disgusted at least a significant minority of citizens tended to occur behind closed doors, especially sexual acts beyond the conventional norm.

The appearance of Xevar in the courtyard, just before midday, interrupted a chain of thought growing wickeder by the moment. The slaver entered alone, a bundle dangling from one hand. Sunlight sparked gold highlights through a receding crop of oiled brown hair. The face was lined and angular, having lost the fullness of youth, but not yet etched. Nightfall could not assess height from his angle, but he already knew Xevar stood nearly a head taller than he did and weighed easily twice his natural weight. Unlike Edward, Xevar’s extra bulk was not all muscle. Though he clearly performed enough menial work to pack some sinew onto his frame, he also carried the soft overlap that accompanied a life of luxury.

Nightfall waited until Xevar settled onto the bench, setting the parcel beside him. He unwrapped it to reveal cut fruit and cheese, chunks of roasted meat, and a covered bowl. Then, Nightfall tossed his hook. It looped in a neat downward arc, landing against the wall of the courtyard. He tugged gently, measuring each movement, feeling the metal scrape over irregularities until it caught unsteadily. It would not hold long, but it would take more than a stiff breeze to dislodge it. He wound his end of the line around the nearest gargoyle, then dropped his weight to its lowest. Seizing the light line, more thread than rope, he glided soundlessly to the top of the wall. Relying more on friction than handholds, he slid into the courtyard with Xevar.

Apparently taking no notice, Xevar stretched luxuriously, then tipped his head back to catch the warm rays of the sun. A breeze ruffled the plain pale-blue cloak he wore over silks of rich design, deftly patterned with gold stitching wound and flourished into animal shapes. He sat enjoying the weather for several moments, while Nightfall crept silently nearer. The chill in the air clearly did not bother Xevar.

It was over in an instant: a leap, a swirl of cloth, a shift of weight, and a flash of steel. A bewildered and terrified Xevar lay in the dirt, gagged by his own cloak and pinned by the enhanced bulk of the demon, a dagger at his meaty throat.

“You scream, you’re dead,” Nightfall said.

Xevar nodded, eyes wide and broadcasting his fear.

Nightfall flicked the cloak from Xevar’s face with one deft movement. “Where’s the king?”

“W-what?”

Heat rose to Nightfall’s face, but he stifled the anger that accompanied it. No matter how liberating it might feel, he could not afford to carve Xevar into steaks. Yet. “Where is King Edward of Alyndar?”

“King Edward of . . . ?” Xevar was stalling, trying to regather wits the unexpected attack had scattered.

Nightfall pressed the dagger more firmly against Xevar’s throat, not caring that he drew blood. “What have you done with him, you obnoxious, lying bastard? Tell me, or I’ll free your shoulders from the burden of your ugly head.”

Xevar closed his eyes, mumbling incoherently.

Nightfall allowed the man several moments of what seemed like prayer. No gods would come to his aid; they never did. And, despite his methods, Nightfall actually held the moral high ground.

Finally, Xevar stopped muttering. “I don’t have him.”

The rage Nightfall had endured moments earlier drained away. Suddenly, he looked upon his old memories of Xevar fondly and felt compelled to give the slaver the benefit of his doubts. He seemed like a decent man, the kind he might have befriended under other circumstances. “You had him.” It was not a question, and it left no room for a denial. “The Bloodshadow Brotherhood sold him to you.”

Presented with Nightfall’s knowledge, Xevar could hardly deny it. “I did.”

Though many questions plagued him, Nightfall jumped to the only one that mattered. “What did you do with him?”

“I sold him.” Xevar met Nightfall’s eyes, apparently attempting to read any emotion betrayed there, but he soon glanced away. “To another slaver. A man named Cherokint.”

Nightfall examined every aspect of Xevar’s face, searching for truth. He usually had no difficulty reading men, but Xevar puzzled him. He found himself liking the slaver, wanting to believe every word he uttered, though his expression revealed nothing but understandable dread. The inconsistencies of his appraisal bothered Nightfall; but, as always, he went with his instinct. “And?”

“I warned him.” Xevar’s features screwed tight against remembrance. “I told Cherokint a man like that one never makes a decent slave—too accustomed to giving orders to obey them. But Cherokint saw only the potential uses: the youth, the strength, the virility.” Xevar shook his head. “Cherokint is not a patient man.”

Though impatient himself, Nightfall listened. He somehow knew Xevar meant well, was trying to help. “What happened?” He did not lessen the weight restraining Xevar, but he did withdraw the dagger. He noticed now what his higher vantage had not allowed him to see. Three windows overlooked the courtyard, and two doors opened onto it, apparently those of Xevar and Jacquellette. “What happened to King Edward?”

“I’m sorry to inform you . . .”

Nightfall felt his entire insides clutch.

“ . . . he . . . was killed.”

“Killed,” Nightfall repeated dully. Though he had known the possibility existed from the start, he could barely believe it. He had come too far, given up too much, to hit such a severe and final dead end.

“Cherokint has a wicked temper, though he doesn’t display it often. As I understand it, he had the slave chained to a pole by his collar: half starved, regularly beaten with poles and whips.”

Nightfall found himself incapable of movement or speech. A flush crept up his face, warming every part of him.

Apparently encouraged by Nightfall’s silence, Xevar continued, “Once he became weak enough for Cherokint to safely handle himself, he personally took an ax to the fallen king.” His voice became syrupy with a sympathy that seemed raw and genuine to Nightfall. “I heard it took twenty chops before he died, and his screams could be heard all the way to the docks.”

No.
Strength drained fully from Nightfall. It was all he could do not to collapse onto Xevar. The flush that had suffused him grew into a bonfire.
No.
He felt alternately cold as ice and hot as hellfire, his thoughts bounding off in a thousand useless directions. Then, abruptly, it all came together into a single encompassing emotion. Hatred seared through him, burning deeply and desperately, hatred directed against Edward’s slayer. He could deal with the details later. Xevar’s hands were not clean, yet Nightfall found himself incapable of laying blame on the slaver held fast beneath him. Cherokint had slaughtered Edward, his methods incalculably brutal and utterly merciless.
No!
He wanted to shout it to the very bowels of hell.
No. No. No! Not Ned. Not sweet innocent Ned.
He had long ago stopped believing the world had any gods, any justice, any logic to its chaos; yet he still found it difficult to contemplate how a man like Edward could die in such a fashion.

Caught in an internal conflagration, Nightfall realized his hatred bore a name. And that name was Cherokint.

Chapter 21

—Dyfrin of Keevain, the demon’s friend

 

A
TOP THE TALLEST MANSION in Hartrin, Nightfall crouched amid gargoyles ravaged by mildew and time, staring at the heavens but seeing nothing. The world could have collapsed around him, and he would never have known it. Nothing seemed real but the staggering, unbearable dread clutching his heart and soul. He had no idea where to go, what to do next. He could not even find the strength to cry, to howl his grief at the heavens, to curse the gods and men and demons that steeped the world in such insufferable evil.

The force that had driven Nightfall for months had disappeared, leaving nothing in its wake. His emotions cycled like a windmill caught in a summer gale until hatred regained its fiery hold, filling all the empty places. Slaughtering Cherokint might soothe some of the vast loathing threatening to consume him, just as killing his mother’s murderer had eased the pain. Stabbing the man who had tried to rape him as a child had aroused a pure and innocent joy, a vengeance that had satisfied not only his need for payback but brought the realization the depraved thug would never inflict his evil on another helpless child. What held Nightfall back now was not doubt or conscience but the realization of what such an act would mean to the man he avenged. No matter what evil someone inflicted upon him, Edward would never approve of returning it in kind. In an irony almost too bitter to contemplate, it would sully the king’s memory to kill the man who had murdered him.

Nightfall knew his own life was over the moment he slipped back into demon guise. He had destroyed the trust of those he loved. He had betrayed Kelryn and Edward in the name of speed and gleaning information that, in the end, had gained him nothing but more sorrow. His mind conjured images of Edward, still trusting in the decency of every human being, an arm raised to rescue his vitals even as the ax blade slammed into him again and again. Nightfall could not help seeing the handsome features ravaged by the blade, the blood and gore thrown by each enraged hack, the absolute and excruciating agony that must have consumed the king in his last living moments. And those would have stretched to an eternity. Twenty strokes, Xevar had claimed. Half an hour or more of unmitigated pain.

Nightfall bit off a howl of rage and grief.
Not Ned. By all the world holds good, not Ned.
The thought did not fit in the demon’s repertoire. He had known from childhood the world held nothing good, only a vast and unconquerable torment that scarred every man until it weakened him enough to kill him outright. Vulnerability was the ultimate weakness. A man could only be predator or prey; and Edward was the very definition of prey. In the world’s alleyways, Edward would not have survived a day.

Guilt assailed Nightfall, too. If only he had not gone off to assist the Magebane in Schiz. If he had taken up demon guise the moment he discovered the carnage at the He-Ain’t-Here Tavern, he might have found Edward in time to save him from death, if not from capture and humiliation.
I failed him. I failed Kelryn. I failed everyone and everything that matters.
The self-loathing Nightfall had cast off in childhood returned to haunt him now, every bit as ugly and bitter. He was not sure how he knew his mother had named him Sudian. She had never called him that, only “boy” or a litany of insults and swear words depending on her mood. For his first eight years, he had served as everything from her pimp to her pillow, from a supplier of food to a punching bag, with only brief glimpses of any love she might have felt for him. Only Dyfrin’s friendship had allowed him to find the humanity within himself, had shown him comfort and caring and the way a parent should feel for a child.

Now, Nightfall cursed Dyfrin. It was the fault of his childhood friend that Nightfall was suffering now. Left to his own devices, he would have discarded his conscience in youth, and Edward’s death would mean nothing to him. He would still see his feelings for Kelryn as an insupportable liability and jettison her without a care for her heart or his own. By reviving Nightfall, he had willingly placed himself back into an endless game of hide and attack and hide some more. Soon, the guards of every country, town, and city would begin their deadly hunts for him again. He would rule the underground by terror while the rest of the world feared and despised him. He could never return to Alyndar, not without King Edward to vouch for him, not with his only useful aliases killed or exposed.

Nightfall no longer cared who he betrayed: Edward was dead, and he had already lost Kelryn. Sudian could not resurface, forever linked to Edward’s murder, though he had had no hand in it. Balshaz was drowned. Marak had been executed by Edward’s father. Telwinar had given up his farm. Nothing remained but the demon and a scant handful of petty guises: a polio-stricken storyteller, an illiterate laborer, an itinerate drunkard. And one man was responsible. One man who had taken his best friend and ally away from him and left him fatally exposed and choiceless.