Thy Father's Shadow (Book 4.5) (2 page)

Alaric turned away, letting his steps echo through the room as he made his way to the windows that lay to either side of the balcony doors. “Perhaps it was not you of whom I spoke.” He gave a faint look, over his shoulder. “Power is a corrupting influence, Terian. You might use it from a desire to bring about the best results for Sanctuary, but your moral compass is not some indefatigable thing, unswayed by emotion or your judgment. It is not a fixed constant that will hold you on the same course for all your days. We all need a true north, something to help guide us so we do not lose our way on the darkest of nights.”

Sanctimonious bastard
. “That’s you, I suppose?” Terian let the bitterness run out in his words. “Are you the all-knowing guide? Are you our compass, Alaric? The one who will light our steps and tell us the right way to go when all is shadow and blackness? Will you set our course, always? Tell us when we err, gently take us by the hand and lead us back onto the path, like children who’ve lost their way?” He drew in a deep breath, and it seared his nostrils as if he were inhaling brimstone. “Is that what we are to you? Do you call us brothers but really mean ‘children’?”

Alaric’s steady gaze wore on him. The look was jaded, calm, placid, but Terian could see a little of the fury buried deep.
Because I know him
. “You are no child, and you should not look to me as your example. Our bylaws are our guide, etched in place to restrain the darker voices in all our souls, to light the path to good conduct for all of us.”

“You say of all of us,” Terian said with a little more hostility, “but I kind of get this feeling you wouldn’t be having this conversation with Vara.”
As though he doesn’t play favorites already.
“I don’t need a father, Alaric. I’ve already got one more of those than I care for. I don’t need a compass, because I know my way around the world.”

“And what about a purpose?” Alaric said quietly and let his head turn to look back out the window to the darkened plains.

“Look at me!” Terian said and watched the old knight’s head make a slow turn to see him. “Don’t ignore me; don’t look away when I’m talking to you, like I’m some matter of unconcern to you! I have seen darkness, I have seen death, I have seen horror and evil, all on a scale so massive and inordinate as to be immeasurable. You think I don’t know which path is right and which is wrong? I’ve known since long before I darkened the doors of Sanctuary what the right damned path was, what the right intention is, because I’ve seen the application of it in the wrong ways.” He let his voice settle. “I don’t need a guide. I don’t need your path, or your purpose, or your laws.” Terian looked down at Alaric’s helm on the floor and gave it a gentle nudge with his foot. “I know what’s right.”

He felt the weight of the one eye on him, even as his mouth felt dry. “Do you?” Alaric asked.

“Damned right I do.” Hot fury boiled in Terian.
I can’t believe I’m saying this
. It was as though he had crossed a forbidden line, airing all this, and yet the reckless fury and pride would not allow him to turn back, not now. There was one more thing yet to be said. “And I don’t need you to tell me any of it, to show me any of it.” The last of the fury slipped out. “In fact, I don’t need you. Or Sanctuary.” He gave one last encompassing wave of his hand, waited for a reaction, and when none was forthcoming, he turned and went for the door, not pausing as he opened it.

“Then I wish you the best of luck in your path … brother.”

“Don’t call me that,” Terian said, holding the door, feeling the weight of it in his hand, like it was a hundred tons of regret. “I’m not your brother, not your son, not your anything anymore. And I damned sure don’t need your luck.” He let the door slam shut behind him.

Chapter 2

One Month Later

It was a rowdy crowd in the Brutal Hole, a longshoreman’s bar in Reikonos, the capital of the Human Confederation.
Rowdy is good
, Terian thought.
I like being surrounded by troublemakers, laborers, men who think they’re strong
. The low winter daylight barely shone down through the front windows, reflecting off the darkened mirror that lay behind the bar. Rosalla was behind the bar, as usual, and she was a good one. He liked her, which was rare.
I don’t like much of anyone. But she’s okay. More than okay
. He didn’t want to think it, but outside of some of the girls down at the Silken Robe, the local brothel that catered to dark elves, he hadn’t spoken to anyone but Rosalla in more than a week.

The crowd crashed around the bar like waves breaking on docks. There was laughter, cursing, angry shoving—sometimes from the same person all in the span of seconds. Terian watched it all with a careful eye. It wouldn’t do to have the place degenerate into a melee, after all, not with him still nursing his drink. He’d feel obligated to get involved, and that would most likely end with him walking down the snowy streets of Reikonos rather than warming his arse by the hearth. He took another long pull of his ale and pondered that thought. He didn’t care for it.

It took a few minutes, but he finished another. He had barely set it upon his table before Rosalla appeared, another already filled for him, green ale not even sloshing over the sides as she put it down in front of him. She didn’t bother with a tray, just brought it right to him, careful as anything, her yellow eyes looking down at him from beneath her frizzed white hair. “Is this going to be another night where I have a cart man wheel you home?”

Terian studied the green ale as though it held the great mysteries of Lake Magnus’s depths somewhere within it while he fished into the coin purse at his belt and came back with three bronze pieces only slightly smaller than his littlest finger’s first knuckle. “It is beginning to turn that way, isn’t it?”

She looked at him, bereft of any amusement as he laid the bronze on the table. She waited, expectantly, and after a moment he put two more down. She scooped them up then finally graced him with another look. “Shall I have him standing by, then? I know a good one, wheels a corpse cart around the slums most days, but at night he’s quite discreet about delivering drunken souls to their beds. And quite cheap, too—”

“The last ride,” Terian said, letting his fingers play over the smooth surface of the glass, “didn’t cost me a thing.”

She gave him a look that was all fire and attitude. It filtered past him and came to rest on his helm, which was hiding in shadow on the bench next to him. “Can’t imagine why someone would hesitate to run afoul of you by haggling over price of service when you’re drunk.”

“Especially when I’m so sweet and pleasant of disposition, right?” Terian took another sip, long and measured. The ale was room temperature at best. Other establishments might have taken advantage of Reikonos’s snowfalls to cool their beverages. The Brutal Hole never even bothered. Terian suspected that was a management decision, though he didn’t rule out Rosalla simply not caring.

“You’re not a mean drunk, that’s certain,” Rosalla said with a cool indifference. “Many’s here that are. So … will I be having the cart man pick you up later?”

“Sure,” Terian said, watching the bubbles drift up to the top of the glass. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Rosalla asked. “Are you looking for a legitimate reason?” Her voice carried a rough, guttural accent. She was plainly used to speaking dark elvish, but she spoke the human tongue here. He looked behind the bar at the jars filled with pickled meats and wondered idly if they served human tongues, real ones.

“Can you give me a reason not to?” Terian wondered if he’d care if she could.

“Perhaps you have work tomorrow?” She cast an impatient gaze at him. He didn’t care. She turned a nervous eye to the bar, as though she could sense a riot impending, the longer she was away from pouring drinks. “An early morning? Or plans for later tonight?” She gave him a mirthless, though wicked, smile. “A visit to the Silken Robe, mayhaps? Need to keep your sword rigid for the work that might entail?”

“Sword rigidity is not a problem for me,” Terian said with only a little irony, “since I carry an axe.”

“Is there some semblance of meaning to be found in that?” Rosalla asked, and he could see the genuine amusement in her face. “That you carry an axe, inflict bloody wounds with it, and spend your nights chasing—”

“I wouldn’t delve too deep into that thought,” Terian said and drank again. The brew was foul, fouler than anything Larana would dare to put out back at Sanctuary.
I only miss the beer,
he told himself.
And possibly the companionship.

“Hrm.” With a last sound of amusement, Rosalla turned away from him, heading back to the bar.

He wasn’t too shameless to watch her as she walked away, either.
More genuinely interesting than anything I’d find at the Silken Robe, I’d wager
. His view was suddenly blocked by a dark cloak and he felt a flash of annoyance. He looked up to see who might be approaching him and had to suppress the desire to grasp the axe hanging behind his back. He let his hand relax after a moment’s thought, and it found the familiar ale in front of him again as he tossed it back in one good drink. “My first temptation was to split your godsdamned head from your body. Then I realized that it probably wouldn’t do a bit of good.”

“Forbearance never was one of your top qualities, dear boy,” came the slick, oily voice of the figure that stood before him. He wore a deep blue cloak with a cowl up, and in the dim light it looked almost black. His mouth was just visible, an underwhelming, bony chin peeking out from under the cowl.

“Malpravus,” Terian said, setting his empty glass back on the small table, “what the hell do you want?”

“I want what anyone wants,” Malpravus said, drawing a skeletal hand to his chest, letting it run over the exterior of his cloak. “Power, and all the trappings that come with it.”

Terian let himself chortle, but it was a dry noise, free of any amusement. “Well, at least you’re honest about that much.”

The necromancer’s eyes weren’t visible under the darkness of his cowl. “The way you say that would imply that I am dishonest about other things.”

Terian didn’t flinch, even as the darkness under the cowl seemed to deepen as if by magic. “As you said, you want power. Might just be that power doesn’t come as easily to those who always speak the truth.”

Malpravus’s skeletal grin widened. “You are such a rarity among your former brood. I do so enjoy my time among your brethren of Sanctuary, but their naïve honesty and virtuousness leaves me a bit tired. It is as though the realities of life have never settled hard upon their bones, and they remain comfortably cocooned in that guildhall of yours, ensconced from the harshness of outside forces.” He gestured toward the chair opposite Terian. “Do you have a few moments to parlay? To discuss possibilities?”

Terian paused before answering, but only briefly. “Well, I’m supposed to be catching a ride with a guy who runs a corpse cart here in another hour or so.” He picked up the glass and stared forlornly at the last hints of foam at the bottom of it. “It won’t kill me to listen to you until then, though I warn you—if you begin to annoy me, I’m going to drink faster, so I can get to passing out more quickly.”

Malpravus seemed to ponder this for a moment while Terian stared at him. “Quite a state you’ve worked yourself into. If the voices I hear are to be believed, you’ve taken work with a mercenary company, watching warehouses during the day to keep marauders, the impoverished and street urchins at bay? And at night you rotate between this … place,” Malpravus gestured to the dingy interior of the Brutal Hole with a skeletal hand, “and another establishment not far from here, rather less prestigious—if such a thing is possible.”

Terian let his tongue run over his front teeth and felt the glaze over them from the meals of the day. The aftertaste of the ale was still strong on his palate. “I do what I have to for money so I can do what I want to in my off hours. It’s called working for a living.” He sat forward. “You’re probably not familiar with the concept.”

“It’s … sliding by on the minimums,” Malpravus said, with an air of distaste. “Shooing orphans away in the cold because they’re in front of a warehouse you’re guarding is hardly work befitting a dark knight of your station and power, dear boy.” He stiffened and smiled slightly. “Perhaps I might offer you … a path.”

Terian’s eyes fell to his empty glass, regarding it with a thought as Malpravus’s words echoed in his head.
It doesn’t usually stay empty this long
…

As if in response to his thought, there was a grunt followed by a cry from the bar, and Terian’s head wheeled to see Rosalla trapped, a wide longshoreman gripping her tightly from behind and lifting her off the ground. Her feet dangled just beneath her.

“The Silken Robe …” Rosalla said, struggling for breath from inside the muscled arms that had hers pinned to her sides, “… is just down the road!”

“Don’t want no whore,” the beast of a dark elf who was gripping her said. He was bigger than any of the others in the establishment, Terian realized as the big longshoreman dragged Rosalla from behind the bar. Most of the faces in the place were down, focused intently on their drinks, and an air of discomfort was palpable from the regular patrons. There was suddenly a wide, open space in front of the bar as the crowd dispersed to give them wide berth.

“Excuse me,” Terian said, cutting across the near silence, and punctuating it by smacking the bottom of his glass on his table, drawing the startled attention of everyone at the bar. “I need another ale.”

The beast who had Rosalla in his grasp wore an expression even uglier than his actual face. “She’ll be with you in a few minutes.” His smile grew wide and malicious; Terian noticed there were teeth missing from beneath the navy lips. “Maybe. If she can walk afterward.”

“It’d take more than you’ve got to put me bowlegged,” Rosalla said and brought her head back with a smash into the big dark elf’s nose that caused him to cry out and drop her. She dropped and spun, kicking him solidly in the groin before disappearing behind the bar.

“I like her attitude,” Terian said, watching the big dark elf hit his knees. Terian waved his hand at him once in a leisurely fashion, as if he were simply fluttering his fingers. The big dark elf was too busy clutching at his groin and took no notice of it.