The Return of Nightfall (57 page)

“What?” Cherokint fairly shouted the word. “I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

By lowering his weight, Nightfall managed to climb the nearly smooth wall without hand-or toeholds. Even slight and invisible irregularities held him in place when he had almost no mass to press against them. He had to keep Cherokint outraged. Otherwise, the slaver might accidentally give away the oddities of Nightfall’s actions, the clear incongruity with his words. “You butchered King Edward in cold blood! Admit it, you bastard!”

“What!” Cherokint watched Nightfall from over his shoulder, not daring to struggle against the embedded knives. Though light, the silk would prove strong, and his efforts would certainly gain him more of Nightfall’s wrath. “I did no such. . . ! I never. . . ! I don’t even know. . . !” He sputtered, clearly uncertain in which direction to go first to proclaim his innocence.

Nightfall watched the window. As he expected, the spy had become uncomfortable with Nightfall’s position, invisible and directly beneath him. A small head poked through the opening, eyes focused on the ground where Nightfall should have been.

The instant it appeared, Nightfall caught a handful of sandy hair and drove up his weight. They both fell, the boy screaming, Nightfall clinging to his prey and dropping lightly to the ground. He clutched the boy around the chest, pinning long, skinny arms against a wiry body.

Stunned by the unexpected fall, the boy barely struggled, and that lasted only until Nightfall hissed a threat into his ear. The boy went still, and Nightfall turned his attention back to Cherokint. “Are you, indeed, the master of this house?”

Sweat beaded on the man’s upper lip. He clearly weighed his options.

“I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“I haven’t been lying.” Cherokint trembled, though he seemed unable to decide whether he was outraged or terrified. His expression wavered, and his lip quivered, beyond control.

“I know that, too,” Nightfall finally admitted, rage diminishing to make room for irritation and confusion. Xevar had clearly manipulated him, a near-impossible feat in the best of circumstances; and he needed to know why and how. “I still want an answer to my question.”

The boy’s breath heaved, but he did not fight or speak.

“I am Cherokint,” the reader said. “But I don’t know any Edward.” He amended, as if afraid any tiny misstep might read as a lie to the demon. “Well, I’ve heard of the missing king, same as everyone. But I don’t personally know—”

Nightfall ignored the rest. Usually, he appreciated that fear made people talkative, but now he was more concerned about keeping to the issue at hand. “Who is this?” He tipped his head toward the boy in his arms.

“That’s Delmar.” Cherokint’s gaze went from the boy to the window through which he had unceremoniously entered. “A servant. He fetches things from the market and performs other odd jobs.”

Nightfall did not understand. “Isn’t that what your slaves are for?”

Cherokint clearly appreciated the change in Nightfall’s manner. “Are you still going to kill me, Nightfall?”

The boy tensed, and Nightfall readied himself for a new round of struggling that never came. Clearly, Delmar had an interest in the answer to that question.

“It depends.”

Cherokint asked, “Depends on what?”

Delmar held his breath.

“Depends,” Nightfall said, still feeling the vestiges of an anger currently lacking a target. “On how quickly and honestly you answer my questions.” He added pointedly, “And how much time you waste questioning me.”

Cherokint paled. Apparently realizing Nightfall still had an unanswered question, he rushed to put it to rest. “Usually, the slaves do all the servant jobs; but it’s hard to find real loyal ones, since all of them are ultimately for sale. Neither they nor I can afford to become too attached. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of not having the right slave around when I need him. Or I can’t get them dirty because someone’s coming to look. So, I keep a few servants around to fill in the gaps. You know a servant’s coming back if you wait to pay him till he’s done the job.”

Delmar nodded.

Nightfall tightened his grip. “Do you pay them to spy on you?”

Cherokint squirmed a bit, clearly uncomfortable with his atypical bonds. “Not on
me
.”

It was not the answer Nightfall expected. “But you do pay them to spy?”

Cherokint sighed, as if loath to admit a vice to the prince of darkness and evil. “Our rivalry with the House of Xevar has gotten dangerously intense. We both hire spies to keep tabs on one another. I’m guessing Delmar, here, might claim his pay from both houses. Now that I think of it, it’s possible others do, too. Don’t know why I never considered it before.”

Delmar drooped.

Nightfall looked at the boy in his arms who now appeared thoroughly defeated. If Nightfall did not kill him, Cherokint surely would.

Nightfall caught Delmar by an arm and spun him. Studying the features, he realized that what he had mistaken for a boy was actually a young man, lean and lanky but every hand’s breath as tall as Nightfall. Seizing the other arm, he pressed them both against Delmar, again locking him in position.

Delmar dodged his stare.

“Why did Xevar send me here on a vicious lie?”

Delmar swallowed hard. “He said . . . he said . . . it didn’t matter whether you killed Cherokint or he killed you.” He cringed, clearly worried the messenger would suffer for the master’s words. “Either way rid him of a nuisance.”

Cherokint pursed his lips, features hardening. “Ah, so Xevar’s taking this to a new level, is . . . ?” He choked off the last syllable, apparently remembering Nightfall’s admonishment. Though he had directed the question at Delmar, not Nightfall, he still feared the demon’s threat.

Nightfall paid no mind to Cherokint’s slip. “So, slaver. It would appear we have a common enemy.” He wondered why he could not muster the same rage against Xevar as he had for Cherokint and guessed it had to do with a mind-bending natal talent. He still wanted the other man dead, but the intense and overpowering emotion did not overcome reason this time.

Nightfall put his face directly into Delmar’s, not allowing the boy to avoid his killer stare. “Where is King Edward, Delmar? Do you know?”

“I’m not . . . no.”

The answer did not reveal everything. Nightfall forced the young man to meet his eyes directly, though it incited a yelp of pure terror.

Now, the words poured out. “A bunch of ruffians brought him in the middle of the night about a month or two ago. Xevar told us he sold him, but no one saw him go. Since then he’s had someone or something in his private quarters that eats a whole lot. I don’t know, but maybe . . .” He trailed off suddenly, eyes closed, shivering.

Edward might still be alive.
Joy blasted through Nightfall so it took sheer force of will not to cry out in excitement, not to grin like a drunkard. There was no telling what Xevar might have done to the king; but, if he lived, there was still hope for a rescue. When he trusted himself to speak without revealing his emotions, he simply said, “Why?”

“I-I don’t know.” Delmar clarified, apparently worried Nightfall would not believe him. “Really. Honestly. I truly don’t know.”

Nightfall did not press. Even if the youngster knew something, it would as likely prove innuendo as truth. “What does Xevar do in that courtyard of his?”

“I don’t know,” Delmar said again. He whimpered, clearly afraid he had used up his quota of that particular reply. “No one knows. Only him and his sister . . .”

“
I
know,” Cherokint said quietly.

Delmar whipped his head over his shoulder to look at the slaver, and it was all Nightfall could do not to look equally eager.

“Years ago, when Xevar first opened his shop, I tried to help him.” Cherokint snorted at the idiocy of the statement, at reliving the realization he had created a rival who now wanted him dead. “He promised me an insane sum for any slave, no matter how weak or ill or homely: elders too old to work, suckling infants, anyone who did anything creepy.”

“Creepy,” Nightfall repeated, a sick feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.

“Inexplicable.” Cherokint openly measured the effect each word had on Nightfall. “Anything that seemed dangerous or impossible; anything that made me uneasy.”

“You mean,” Nightfall forced out the last words, “the talented.”

“Yes.” Cherokint lowered his head. “I got wealthy on the three I sold him, more gold than twenty years of hard work brought me.”

Nightfall winced.

“Then I figured out what Xevar and Jacquellette were doing.”

Nightfall already knew the answer, but he let Cherokint speak it.

“He was selling them to sorcerers.” Cherokint shook his head, clearly repentant. “I’m a moral man, and I’ve heard all the arguments for and against slavery. To continue in this business, I have to believe slaves are better off in servitude than immersed in squalor, poverty, and ignorance. Regular meals and a warm place to live, security and safety are worth the price of labor and even an occasional whip stroke.” He sighed, changing tack. “I’m not naive enough to think every master treats his property with the care I do, but the same is true of parents and a man doesn’t choose those either.”

A chill suffused Nightfall at the analogy. He would have no choice but to put his mother in the same category as the cruelest masters.

“If we did not keep and care for them, nearly all of these slaves would die on the mean, cold streets.” It was a rationalization, yet not wholly untrue, and it clearly appeased Cherokint. “But I couldn’t get past the fact that Xevar and his sister sold those slaves’ very souls to . . .” He spat the word, “. . . sorcerers.”

Nightfall found the association particularly shocking given that Xevar himself apparently harbored a secret ability. He supposed the slaver might be feeding a sorcerer in exchange for his own life. Or, perhaps, selling souls kept a dangerous enemy at hand, closely watched, and in his favor. A sorcerer would never expect one of the natally gifted to shower him with favors, even well paid ones.

“A baby who dragged storms from sky to ground. A man with a knack for talking the others out of their fair share of food. A sweet child who foolishly confessed her talent to a servant who sold it.” Clear, gut-wrenching anguish entered Cherokint’s tone. “Their sales haunted me as no others ever had. I couldn’t sleep for the nightmares, couldn’t eat for the guilt. It was only after I talked things through with my wife, with a priest of the Holy Father, and gave all the tainted money to the church that I finally found peace.”

When Delmar showed no reaction to Cherokint’s confession, Nightfall pressed. “Do you know what sorcerers do to their victims?”

Cherokint’s eyes blurred.

“They cut their eyes out with blunt knives, beat them with salt-drenched chains, stab them with red-hot sticks cut to jagged forks.”

“Stop,” Cherokint sobbed.

“All through the desperate, searing agony which seems beyond bearing, the sorcerer laughs and taunts them.” Nightfall needed to speak his mind, needed Delmar to understand the abject evil of what Xevar had done and was probably still doing. Nightfall’s only small comfort came from the realization that King Edward had no natal talent to steal. “The means of the torture doesn’t matter, so long as it causes the worst possible physical and emotional pain. For only then does the soul draw to the surface for the sorcerer to claim.”

Delmar’s eyes widened with realization.

“Please,” Cherokint wept. “Please.”

“It’s never quick. The sorcerer has to keep his victim at that excruciating level of agony while he performs the foulest of rituals.” Nightfall gazed at his captive audience, his face displaying the memory of his own encounters. Pain had filled his life, yet it had all seemed to come together and intensify beyond the worst agony he could imagine in the moments before the Iceman attempted to tear his body and soul apart. “Once you’ve seen it, you will never forget it; and the peace you found through talk and tithing becomes unattainable. This world contains nothing of more consummate and absolute evil than its sorcerers.” Though it might diminish him, he had to say it, “Even me.”

The silence that fell after his speech seemed more complete than death. No one even appeared to breath.

Then, a shuddering sob ripped from Cherokint’s throat, followed by accusation. “Why did you do that? Why?”

Nightfall saw no reason to admit he had to. His righteous hatred for sorcerers could not have let him leave without Delmar understanding the brutality of one of the men he served, without Cherokint fully realizing the depths of his own mistake. Nightfall had not quite finished, either. “Even then, it doesn’t end. The soul remains bound to the sorcerer for all eternity, and the owner of the soul suffers a repeat of the inflicted pain every time it gets tapped for the sorcerer’s use.”

From anyone else, the words would have seemed like pure speculation. The men Nightfall confronted believed him because a demon might actually know what happened to a soul bound by evil, even after death. Dyfrin had seemed so certain of the fate of those gifted who became linked to sorcerers that Nightfall had accepted his description without question, and it had become internalized as truth before he ever thought to wonder how Dyfrin could possibly know. Now, he understood. Dyfrin’s mind reading ability had granted him an insight into sorcerers no one else could fathom. It was a talent as dangerous as the one Byroth had stolen from another child. With it, a sorcerer could scan minds until he found one belonging to one of the natally gifted. Irritated at himself for opening a raw wound of his own, he added in a harsh whisper, “Until, finally, the soul gets fully tapped out, snuffed forever.”

“Forever?” Delmar asked, whispering himself. “Can’t the soul ever reside for eternity in the paradise of the pantheon?” He quoted a common line of scripture.