The Way Of Shadows (34 page)

There was no denying it. Not with a Vürdmeister here. Vürdmeisters were supposed to be able to read minds. It wasn’t true, but it was close enough. Most of them couldn’t do it, Durzo knew. Even those who could didn’t actually read minds. The way Durzo had heard it explained, longer ago than he liked to remember, was that they could see hints of images that their subject had seen. The best Vürdmeisters could intuit a lot of truth from a few images, though. It was almost the same thing at this point. How can I take advantage of the differences between what I’ve seen and what I know?

“It was my apprentice,” Durzo said.

Roth Ursuul—by the Night Angels, Ursuul?—raised an eyebrow.

“He doesn’t know what it is,” Durzo said. “I don’t know who sent him. He never does jobs without telling me.”

“Perhaps you should not be so sure of this?” Neph said.

“I’ll get the ka’kari for you. I just need some time.”

“Ka’kari?” Roth asked.

Roth had never used the word. It was a stupid mistake. Totally uncharacteristic. Durzo was falling apart.

“The Globe of Edges,” Durzo said.

“I’ve given you a chance to be honest with me, Durzo. So what I’m going to do is your own fault.” Roth motioned to one of the guards at the entrance to the hovel. “The girl.”

Several moments later, a little girl was carried in. She was drugged, whether chemically or magically, and the guard had some trouble carrying her limp body. She was maybe eleven years old, skinny and dirty, but not the skinny and dirty of a street rat—healthy skinny, healthy dirty. Her black hair was long and curly, and her face had the same angelic-demonic cast that her mother’s had had. She would be even prettier than Vonda, some day. She took her height from Durzo, but thank the gods, everything else from her mother. Uly was a damn fine-looking kid. It was the first time Durzo had seen his daughter.

It made him ache somewhere that was already sore.

“You’ve already chosen not to cooperate enthusiastically, Durzo,” Roth said. “So usually, I’d make an example of you. We both know I can’t do that. I need you too much, at least for the next few days. So maybe I should, say, cut off her hand as a warning, and let the little girl know that it’s because you won’t stop it. That you are choosing to hurt her. Perhaps something like that would help gain your cooperation?”

Durzo was frozen, just looking at his daughter. His daughter! How had he put her in the hands of this man? She had been the king’s leverage, and Roth had taken her right out from under the man’s nose.

“How about this?” Roth said. “We’ll cut off a hand or you cut off a finger.”

There was a way out. Even now, there was a way. One of his knives was poisoned. He’d put the asp poison it. For Kylar. It would be painless, especially for such a small person. She’d be dead in seconds. Maybe Roth would be surprised enough that Durzo could get away. Maybe.

He could kill his daughter and probably be killed himself, and Kylar would live. Or this Roth Ursuul would demand he kill Kylar and get the ka’kari. That would have been easy enough to fake, if Roth didn’t have a Vürdmeister.

Could he kill his own daughter? He’d be letting them kill Kylar if he didn’t.

“She didn’t do anything,” Durzo said.

“Spare me,” Roth said. “You’ve got too much blood on your hands to cry about the suffering of innocents.”

“Hurting her isn’t necessary.”

Roth smiled. “You know, from anyone else, I’d laugh. Do you remember what happened the last time you called an Ursuul’s bluff?” Durzo couldn’t keep his expression blank; grief flashed through him. “Who’d have thought,” Roth said. “My father takes the mother and I take the daughter. Have you learned your lesson, Durzo Blint? I think you have. My father will be pleased that I’m closing the circle. He tried to blackmail you for a false ka’kari and failed. I’ll blackmail you for a true ka’kari and succeed.” Neph’s eyes flashed when Roth said that. It was clear he didn’t appreciate the prince’s presumption, but Durzo was still reeling. He couldn’t see any way to take advantage of that tiny split between the men.

“Here’s how blackmail is going to work for you, Durzo Blint: if I think you’re resisting me, your daughter will die. And there are other, shall we say indignities, that she will suffer first. Let your imagination work on what those might be—I know I’ll let mine. She’ll be a husk by the time we’re finished. I will spend months eking out every drop of suffering from her mind and body before we kill her, and I enjoy such work. I am one of Khali’s most dedicated disciples. Do you understand me, Blint? Am I being clear?”

“Perfectly.” His jaw was tense. He couldn’t kill her. By the Night Angels. He just couldn’t do it. He’d think of something. He always had before. There was some way out of this. He would find it, and he would kill both of these men.

Roth smiled. “Now tell me everything about this apprentice of yours. And I mean everything.”

Kylar stepped out of the shadows of the Blue Boar’s office and grabbed Jarl around the throat with his arm, putting a hand over his mouth.

“Mmm mmmph!” Jarl protested against Kylar’s hand.

“Quiet, it’s me,” Kylar whispered in his ear. Wary of Jarl shouting, he released his friend slowly.

Jarl rubbed his throat. “Damn, Kylar. Take it easy. How did you get in here?”

“I need your help.”

“I’ll say. I was just going to come looking for you.”

“What?”

“Look in the top drawer. You can read it as fast as I could tell you,” Jarl said.

Kylar opened the drawer and read the note. Roth was Roth Ursuul, a Khalidoran prince. He’d just been elected Shinga. Kylar was a suspect in the prince’s murder. The king’s men were looking for him. Kylar tossed the note aside.

“I need your help, just one more time, Jarl.”

“Are you telling me you knew all that?”

“It doesn’t change anything. I need your help.”

“Is this going to get me killed?”

“I need to know where Momma K is hiding.”

Jarl’s eyes narrowed. “Do I need to ask why?”

“I’m going to kill her.”

“After all she’s done for you? You—”

“She betrayed me, Jarl, and you know it. She manipulated me into trying to kill Durzo Blint. She’s so good, I thought it was my own idea.”

“Maybe you should get her story before you kill her. Maybe murder shouldn’t be your first resort against the people who’ve helped you,” Jarl said.

“She convinced me that to save a friend, I had to kill Hu Gibbet, except that it wasn’t Hu. It was Durzo. She betrayed us. She made me ruin a friend and take away everything he loves.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

“I’m not asking,” Kylar said.

“Are you going to beat it out of me?” Jarl asked.

“I’ll do what I have to.”

“She’s hiding out,” Jarl said, unafraid. “She had a terrible fight with Blint not long ago. I don’t know what it was about. But she’s helped me, and I won’t betray her.”

“You know she’d give you up in a second, Jarl.”

“I know,” Jarl said. “I might sell my body, Kylar, but I do what I can to keep the rest of me. I’ve only got a few shreds of dignity left. If you take those, you won’t just be killing Momma K.”

“It’s one thing to say you’ll keep a secret to the death. It’s quite another to go through with it,” Kylar said. “I’ve never tortured anyone, Jarl, but I know how.”

“If you were going to torture me, you’d already have started, my friend.”

They stared at each other until Kylar looked away, defeated.

“If you need help with anything else, I’ll do it, Kylar. I hope you know that.”

“I do.” Kylar sighed. “Just be ready, Jarl. Things are going to happen faster than anyone expects.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Yes?” Jarl asked.

A bodyguard poked his bald head in. “D—Durzo Blint to see you, sir.” He looked terrified.

Kylar tried to draw on his Talent to cloak himself in shadows the way he had done when he came into the Blue Boar.

Nothing happened. Oh, shit. He practically dived behind Jarl’s desk.

“Sir?” the bodyguard asked Jarl, not seeing Kylar through the crack of the door he had opened.

“Uh, show him in,” Jarl said.

The door closed and soon opened once more. Kylar didn’t dare to look. If he exposed enough of his face to be able to see Durzo, Durzo would see him.

“I won’t waste your time or mine,” Kylar heard Durzo say. Steps whisked softly across the floor and the desk groaned as someone sat on it. “I know you’re Kylar’s friend,” Durzo said, only inches above Kylar.

Jarl made a sound of acknowledgment.

“I want you to get a message to him as soon as possible. I already sent him the message, but I need to make sure he gets it. Tell him I must speak with him. I’ll be at the Tipsy Tart. I’ll be there for the next two hours. Tell him it’s arutayro.”

“Spell that,” Jarl said, moving to his desk and grabbing a quill from the inkpot.

Durzo spelled it, and then Jarl made a strangled sound of protest as Durzo must have grabbed him.

“Get it to him fast, rent boy. It’s important. I’ll hold you responsible if he doesn’t get it.” The desk protested again as Durzo got off it and walked out.

After the door closed, Kylar crawled out from under the desk.

Jarl’s eyes widened. “You were under the desk?”

“Can’t always be fancy.”

Jarl shook his head. “You’re unbelievable.” As he wadded up the paper that had his note on it, he said, “What does arutayro mean?”

“Bloodless. It means we don’t kill each other while we’re meeting.”

“And you trust him? After you tried to kill him last night?”

“Blint will kill me, but he’ll do it professionally. He thinks I deserve that much. Mind if I use your window? I have a lot to do before I see him.”

“Help yourself.”

Kylar threw open the window, then turned to his friend. “I’m sorry. I had to try. I have to kill her and you were the fastest way to find her.”

“Sorry I couldn’t help.”

Crawling out the window, Kylar moved out of Jarl’s line of sight, then tried to draw the shadows again. This time it worked easily. Perfect. He couldn’t even tell what he had done differently from what he did in the office.

By the Night Angels. Kylar figured that learning to control his Talent would have been hard enough if he had Durzo to explain it to him. Figuring it out on his own would be well-nigh impossible.

He moved back to the window. After a minute, Jarl checked the window, then walked to his desk and scrawled a quick note. He summoned a boy to his office and handed him the note.

Kylar circled around the building, and followed the boy after he came out a side door. He’d known Jarl wouldn’t tell him—and he hoped his friend never figured out that Kylar had used him anyway.

The messenger boys were of uneven quality. Some of them made their passes so well that Kylar could barely follow them. Others simply held the letter out to the next boy.

It took a half hour for them to get to a small house on the east side. Kylar recognized the guard who took the message from the last boy. He was a Ymmuri with almond-shaped eyes and straight black hair. Kylar had seen the man at Momma K’s house before. It was good enough. Momma K was here. Kylar would deal with her later.

He headed to the Tipsy Tart.

Durzo Blint was seated against a wall, with a wrapped bundle on the table. Kylar joined him, removed the sash from his waist, and set each of his weapons in it: the dagger and wakizashi that had been tucked into the sash, the Ceuran hand-and-a-half sword across his back, two daggers from his sleeves, throwing knives and darts from his waistband, and a tanto from one boot.

“That all?” Blint asked sardonically.

Kylar rolled up the sash and set it beside Blint’s, which was just as large. “Looks like we’ll both be working soon.”

Blint nodded and set down mug of a foul Ladeshian stout exactly in the center of a board so that it didn’t cross any of the cracks.

“You wanted to speak with me?” Kylar said, wondering why Blint was drinking. Blint never drank when he had to work.

“They have my daughter. They made threats. Credible threats. This Roth is a real twist.”

“They’ll kill her if you don’t give them the ka’kari,” Kylar guessed.

Blint only drank in response.

“So you have to kill me,” Kylar said.

Blint stared him in the eye. It was a yes.

“Is it just the job, or did I fail?” Kylar asked, butterflies roaring in his stomach.

“Fail?” Blint looked up from the stout, snorted. “A lot of wetboys go through what we call the Crucible. Sometimes it’s designed deliberately for journeymen wetboys who have some serious problem—anything that hinders a gifted apprentice from becoming a gifted wetboy. Sometimes, it happens to a wetboy after he’s a master. It’s one of the reasons there are so few old wetboys.

“My Crucible was Vonda, Gwinvere’s little sister. We thought we were in love. We thought certain realities didn’t apply to us. I became a wetboy with an obvious weakness and Garoth Ursuul kidnapped her. He was looking for a ka’kari, as he still is. So was I.”

“I don’t know what-all it does. I can’t even use my Talent all the time. Can I use the ka’kari when I don’t even have it in my possession?”

“Stop interrupting. This story has a point, and you should know better than to expect me to give you a tutorial on the very day I’m going to have to kill you,” Durzo said. “Suffice it to say that the power of a ka’kari is vast. I’d been working for years to get one. Garoth Ursuul had been doing the same. He thought a ka’kari would give him an edge over the princes and the Vürdmeisters so he could become Godking. So he took Vonda and told me where he was holding her, and told me that if I went for the ka’kari, he’d kill her.”

“You’ve never done well with threats,” Kylar said.

“I think I’ve always done well with them,” Durzo said. “The thing was, there was going to be a limited time to get the ka’kari. The man who’d allegedly bonded the ka’kari was on his death bed, so the time to get it would be immediately after he died. Naturally, Garoth had Vonda held way outside of town. I knew that the Sa’kagé was going to poison the man that night. I guessed that Garoth knew it too. I couldn’t be two places at once, so I had to make a choice.

“I knew Garoth Ursuul. He’s a master of traps. He’s smarter than I am. More devious. So I guessed that if I went for Vonda, either the traps or meisters of his would kill me. I knew of one trap he’d used before that would use my entrance as a trap’s trigger that would kill her. That was like him, turning my attempt to save Vonda into the very thing that killed her. Getting the ka’kari would just make a sweet deal sweeter for him. That was my Crucible, Kylar. Would I fling myself into a trap in an attempt to be a hero, or would I use my mind, give up Vonda for lost, and get the ka’kari?”

“You chose the ka’kari.”

“It was a fake.” Durzo studied the tabletop, and his voice shook. “Afterward, I sprinted, stole a horse, ran it to death, but it was half an hour after dawn when I got to the house where Vonda was. She was dead. I checked all the windows, but couldn’t find any sign of traps. I’ll never know if it’s because he had someone remove them, or if they were purely magical, or if they were never trapped at all. The bastard. He did it on purpose.” Blint took a long pull from his stout. “I’m a wetboy, and love is a noose. The only way to redeem my choice was to become the best wetboy ever.”

Kylar felt a lump in his throat.

“That’s why we can’t have love, Kylar. That’s why I did everything I could to keep you out of it. I made one mistake, let myself be weak one time, and now after all these years, it’s come back to haunt me. You’re not going to die because you failed, Kylar. You’ll die because I did. That’s the way things work. Others always pay for my failures. I failed, Kylar, because I thought you only go through the Crucible once. I was wrong. Life is the crucible.”

From what Kylar could see, Durzo’s choice had never stopped haunting him. The man was a shell. He was a legendary wetboy, but he’d sacrificed everything to that god. Kylar had always wanted to be Durzo, had always held his skills in awe. Durzo was the best, but where was the man beneath the legend?

“So my Crucible was Elene.” Kylar chuckled on the hollowness inside him. “There’s no way you’ll fight with me, against them?”

“And let Roth torture and kill my daughter? Here’s my choices, kid: You die or my daughter dies.” Durzo pulled a gold gunder from a pouch. “Crowns Roth wins, castles I lose.”

He flipped the coin. It bounced on the table and, impossibly, landed on edge.

“There’s always another choice,” Kylar said, slowly releasing his Talent. Damn, it actually worked.

Blint centered and re-centered his empty mug on the table. “I worked for almost fifteen years to get the Globe of Edges, Kylar. I didn’t know where it was. I didn’t know if it was bonded to someone. I didn’t know what kind of magical defenses protected it. I knew people like you were supposed to call the ka’kari, and that your need for it would make the call stronger. That’s why I took you on jobs in every corner of the city. How could I have known King Gunder had it and thought it was just jewelry? No one talked about it because no one knew it was special. No one cared. And I thought maybe I was wrong, that you just had a block. That if I pushed you enough, you’d use your Talent. After working for fifteen years, you think it’d be easy to just hand it over? You think it’s easy to give away fifteen years of your life?”

“But you were going to.” Kylar was amazed.

“Hell no. Once I had it, I’d never have given it away,” Durzo said. But Kylar didn’t believe him. Blint had been planning to give him the ka’kari all along—until Roth.

“Master, work with me. Together we can take Roth.”

Durzo was silent for a few moments. “You know, I used to be like you, kid. For a long time. You should have known me back then. You would’ve liked me. We might have been friends.”

I do like you, master. I’d like to be your friend, Kylar said, but only in his mind. Somehow those words wouldn’t force their way past his lips. Maybe it didn’t matter. Durzo wouldn’t believe him anyway.

“Roth’s a Khalidoran prince, kid. He’s got a Vürdmeister. Soon he’ll have more wytches than all the southlands have mages and an army to boot. He owns the Sa’kagé. There’s no hope. There’s no way to oppose him now. The Night Angels themselves wouldn’t try it.”

Kylar threw up his hands, fed up with Blint’s fatalism and his superstitions. “Here I thought they were invincible.”

“They’re immortal. It’s not the same thing.” Blint popped a garlic clove. “You can take what you need from my place. I wouldn’t want you to die just because I’ve got better gear.”

“I won’t fight you, master.”

“You’ll fight. You’ll die. And I’ll miss you.”

“Master Blint?” he said, remembering something Dorian had said. “What does my name mean?”

“‘Kylar’? You know the word cleave?”

“To cut, right?” Kylar asked. “Like a meat cleaver.”

“Yes, but it has another meaning, too. In old wedding ceremonies, a husband and wife were commanded to cleave together.”