《Frame of Mind (Fae Mythos: Gar Darron 1)》


 Chapter 1: The Professor, Home.

    <h1>1 The Professor</h1>


    I leaned my head back and watched the smoke from my pipe rise to the arched beams above. Orange sunlight streamed through the glass window and set the wisps on fire. From outside, I heard the clatter of feet and the drawl of young confident voices punctuated by girlish laughter.


    Footsteps fell softly on the carpet then the chair on the other side of the desk squeaked as the professor sat down. I moved my head to face him while the rest of me stayed put. He was already glaring which took some of the softness out of his apology.


    ¡°Sorry to keep you waiting. My last class was freshmen and they all feel their questions are of lethal importance.¡± I knew the feeling.


    ¡°That¡¯s all right. I was admiring the architecture.¡±


    ¡°Yes, so what can I do for you?¡±


    He was hunched over his hands with his fingers wound together. His doughy face had been clean-shaven a few days ago and his eyes were pushed into it like nuts on a Dellon cookie. If he had chosen any work besides school teaching people would have called him professor anyway.


    ¡°As I said in the hallway I¡¯m looking for a student of yours.¡± I said.


    ¡°And under what authority are you asking about her?¡± I hadn¡¯t said it was a girl, but I let it slide.


    ¡°No authority. This is a personal matter.¡± I said.


    He sighed. ¡°I can''t get in the middle of lovers quarrels. I must ask you to leave.¡±


    ¡°Nothing like that either. I''ve been hired¡­¡±


    ¡°I thought you said it was a personal matter?¡±


    ¡°Personal to someone.¡± I said. He wasn¡¯t amused.


    ¡°Sir, this Institution is funded from the public grant. Thus, we keep strict records of all known relatives of our students. If any information is to be given out regarding a student it must be given directly to the families or their authorized representatives noted in the tables.¡±


    ¡°This person hasn¡¯t got any family.¡± That stopped him. Now that we were sure who we were talking about he quit playing apathetic.


    ¡°If this student has no family then who hired you?¡± He said.


    ¡°An interested party, someone who has been in their life for a while, a kind of adoptive parent if you like.¡± He didn¡¯t.


    ¡°If they are the guardian of this student they would be on the books and you would need¡­¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re not. I said a kind of adoptive parent, nothing official.¡±


    He blew air out of his nose sharply and straightened up, or I should say he lifted his head to look down on me.


    ¡°This won¡¯t do. I can¡¯t discuss students with outside parties.¡±


    ¡°Not even if there¡¯s a life at stake?¡±


    He paused a bit.


    ¡°If you think this student¡¯s in trouble then go to the police.¡±


    ¡°I want her found safe, not entered into the table of missing persons and forgotten.¡±


    ¡°You want her found?¡± He lay on the first word like it might get away.


    ¡°Or else I don¡¯t get paid.¡± I said.


    ¡°Ah, and what about me? Do I get some kind of compensation for risking my job?¡± His disgust poured out with the question.


    ¡°You don¡¯t want anything.¡±


    ¡°Ha, No?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°So I''d just risk my job for nothing?¡±


    ¡°And your life too, I¡¯d wager.¡±


    ¡°And why is that?¡±


    ¡°Because she¡¯s in trouble and you¡¯re the type of person that won¡¯t let it stay that way if you can help it.¡± I said.


    It was a lie, but he leaned back and looked out the window like I had just let out a secret truth. I did a very good job of not smiling.


    ¡°Let''s say that I am. Then what?¡± He said.


    ¡°I need the names of any students who were close to Liana.¡± The name struck him harder than I thought it would. Maybe he did care, or maybe he was afraid someone else would be coming to question him soon, someone with eyes stitched on their shoulders.


    ¡°I can''t do that.¡± He said.


    ¡°Can''t help me find her?¡±


    ¡°I can''t give you the names of any other students. I can tell you where she lived, at least the dormitory.¡±


    ¡°I know that already, the number too.¡± He didn¡¯t like that.


    ¡°Then why come to me? What else could I give you? I''m just her Professor.¡±


    ¡°I heard you two were close and I¡¯d rather not rely on the testimonies of students if I don¡¯t have to.¡± I said.


    ¡°Heard we were close? Close how? Who said that?¡±


    ¡°I just heard it around.¡± I said.


    He stared at me a bit then he sighed again.


    ¡°I think this is a waste of time. I think you¡¯re not who you say you are and tomorrow I¡¯m going to the Police and I¡¯ll report her missing myself. I think they¡¯ll do more than just put her name on the tables and I think you know that.¡±Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    ¡°Who do you think I am?¡± I said.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°You said I¡¯m not who I claim to be so who am I?¡± I said.


    ¡°A thug! Or worse! Someone she got mixed up with and now that she¡¯s not around you¡¯re worried about the police getting involved. Maybe it¡¯s you she¡¯s running from and that¡¯s why she ran off!¡± He was standing up now and playing the part real well.


    ¡°Well, if that was the case why meet you here? Why not just wait till you¡¯re outside your apartment? I could find it easy. Plenty of street urchins sell that kind of info for a copper button.¡±


    ¡°Get out.¡± He said.


    I stood up and reached in my coat. He backed up and the chair dragged on the floor loudly.


    ¡°I¡¯m gonna leave you my info.¡± I said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t want it. Leave.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll leave it just the same. If you know of any friends of hers have them come see me.¡±


    ¡°Are you out of your mind? Why would I do that?¡±


    I set the square of stiff letter paper on his desk and gathered my coat around me, then looked him in the eye.


    ¡°Because you know what it means when they put a name on the table of missing persons.¡±


    I turned and left. I didn¡¯t hear him move to take my card but I knew he did, and I knew why. Same reason he hadn¡¯t just sent me away the moment I approached him, or the five times after that when it would have been called for. He had to know why she hadn¡¯t run to him when things went bad, had to know who I was to her. I¡¯d let enough spill out my face when I talked about her to raise that question in him and he¡¯d risk a lot to know. Someone else might call it love, but I¡¯d call it pride. Pride, or whatever you call the feeling of owning someone.


    <h1>2 Heading Home</h1>


    Outside the college grounds were drowning in the orange sunlight. Students skipped across the pale pebbled paths like puppies while locals lounged in the shade, often in pairs joined at the head and waist. The young laughter cracked harder in the open air and the feminine chirps stung my ears like wasps. I stood on the stone porch of the college building just long enough to take a dipped paper stick out of my pocket, light it on a smoker¡¯s lamp nearby and hold it to my pipe. I took off down the path before the ember had started.


    The Garden City is home to the best universities in the Empire. The grounds had been river floodplain a thousand years ago till the first emperor built his sprawling pleasure gardens and canals. Successive rulers, from king to republican to feudal lord had carved their own terraces and ponds and built their own manors and bathhouses. The second and current Empire built the universities in the same way it did everything else, massive and final.


    I made my way to the broad tree-lined avenue between the Civic College behind me and the Masons University to the north. As I followed it at an even pace I finished my pipe and moved onto the flask. By the time I reached the canal I had drank half the brandy and felt about as warm and orange as the sky.


    I paid a ferryman and had the rest of the flask as the small craft took me and a handful of clamoring students towards the Sauban river. I watched the gardens and schoolhouses pass on the land, saw the water carrying little razors of light the same gold and pink as the sky, heard the voices of the students, though not the words, and felt the dull soreness of my feet and the hum of the liquor in my chest. It all sang together distractingly but my memory had to ruin it.


    The last time I had seen Liana was in some dingy inn room. I left her there on the bed in a mess of blankets and bottles with the dull sunlight coming through the paper shutters and lighting up the smoke from the cheap fat candles. She smiled at me as I walked out the door and said something I didn¡¯t hear. I can''t remember the night before beyond a few flashes and I can''t remember the previous months of our relationship beyond the fact that it happened and we enjoyed it. There were none of those fights I had had with so many others, the ones that feel like a part of you is stuck on a part of them, like gears moving in opposite directions, and the only way to move forward is to cut off a piece of yourself and expose what¡¯s underneath. Or else just give up and move their direction until next time.


    With her, the few disagreements had been about when and where to meet or caused by those brief moments of panic where one of us wondered if the other was just as possessed as we were. It had all been so simple, which made it impossible to remember. Now as I tried to drag my mind across those months to find some clue to where she would have gone and why, I found nothing to hold on to, just a solid clean line of bliss, as if those months had dissolved out of memory and melted cleanly into my soul.


    I brought the flask to my mouth habitually and its emptiness jolted me out of my thoughts. We were halfway across the Sauban river with hundreds of yards of water on all sides. I spent the rest of the trip across counting boats and looking at the clouds. A squad of draconians flew overhead. Their winged humanoid shapes glided towards the great tower on the peninsula of the Imperial City to the south.


    I had lived in Throne for three years and like anyone else in the city I had stopped noticing the tower, but today it seemed freshly made. A massive obelisk of singular white stone unblemished in the centuries since it was built. The only marks were the great shapes of solid shadow near the top, where the Dragons of the first empire had roosted, where the draconians flew in now like flies into a doorway. It had terrified me when I had first seen it and it terrified me again now. Dragon towers always did, even those I had seen in the sea, but where those had been jagged and marked forever in the method of their making this one seemed summoned whole from hell. It reminded me painfully of my ignorance. An ignorance that I was especially regretting recently.


    The tower stopped moving and I got out of the boat. Its power seemed to fall away as I moved of my own effort across the pier. The north city sprawled before me and the sky behind it was darkening with the evening. I weaved through the docks and warehouses till I found the main road and an hour after that I was walking up to the apartment. It was near dark now and the noodle shop in the front of the building was already closed down with the last diners long gone.


    I went down the side alley where a few idlers stood out talking and smoking and turned into the entryway. I greeted Sid the door guard and made it halfway to the stairwell before I remembered and turned back. I took out the pearlfruit I had picked in the gardens on my way to the college and handed them to him. They were wrapped in a newspaper and he thanked me smiling and invited me to a drink with the shake of a brown bottle but I declined and went upstairs. I took the stairs slowly keeping one eye closed to get it used to the dark. When I turned off the landing to my hall, which was almost black despite the slim grimy window at the end of it, I unbuttoned my knife and rested my right hand on it. I got to my doorway and inside without seeing any signs of anyone else.


    The dim light of the room was almost blinding after the dark of the hall. The windows were larger inside and I kept them clean. The main room had a sofa, an old chair, and a low thin table in the middle. The walls were covered with shelves filled with books, bottles, papers, and drawers. In the counter on the right wall that served as the kitchen was a wood stove, a basin, and a bread board. The left wall was more shelves and a cloth curtain that served as a door to the other room.


    I hung my coat on a hook in a shelf and put my boots up against the door. I went in the bedroom with knife in hand and pulled back the curtain. Inside was a faucet and basin stand, a mirror, a cloth wardrobe, and a mattress. The only window was next to the basin and with the curtain closed it was almost cave dark.


    No one was there waiting for me so I set the knife in the belt and hung it on the wall, stripped down to my cottons, and ran some water into the basin out of the faucet. As the water ran in the wall I heard the click of the counter. The first water out was cold from sitting in the pipes and I saved that in a small cup, then used the warmer water from the sun baked roof tower to wash myself. I shut the faucet and finished with the colder water. After that I shut the curtain and got into bed, making sure the long knife, bare and leaning against the wall, was in quick reach.


    I slept dreamlessly until past midnight then I got up and drank some water from the basin and had a few swallows of brandy from the bottle near the bed. I sat in the dark and drank some more while the wind rattled some unknown loose part of the building and voices from all ranges of human emotion smacked against the walls. When I slept again I dreamed.


    Liana was in a house out in the woods. I ran through it trying to find her. I knew she was there but I never saw her.


    In the morning I woke up by habit before dawn, stretched and threw a few kicks and punches in the dark until I felt the start of a sweat. I lit the lamp next to the basin and shaved, washed, and went into the main room. I opened the curtains and let in a dull pre-dawn glow. When I opened the window I smelled a touch of rain.


    I took a few handfuls of the black berries off the vine that I had trained from a pot up the window grate and tested the soil under the tea leaves. It was still damp a few fingers width down so I left it. I got dressed and put on my old oilskin sleeved cloak. It was patched and stitched. I know a lot of veterans that threw them away because they always spoke to the violence of Novera or some other battlefield wherever you wore it, and I know others that keep them and wear them everywhere for the same reason. I preferred to wear it only as needed, and because some old fool part of me refused to buy another raincoat.

 Chapter 2: The Letter

    When the smell of pork fat and re-heated bread came up to the window I left and locked the door. I went through the hall and down the square central staircase. The noise of the common room echoed up from below and the air rising to the skylight above was hazy from the smoke of dozens of pipes clutched like small prayer beads in the hands of the gnarled forms that stood on the landings. There were always ones like that in buildings like this. Some old, some crippled, some mad or slow, always looking out and watching whoever comes and goes. Some do it out of having nothing to do, but a few are tiny yet essential parts of a machine that takes any kind of base desire and turns it into greasy coin. As I descended the stairs the last wisps of my pipe joined with the rest of them and rose to the sky through an old iron grate above.


    In the common room, the tables were already half full. I got in line and thought about the day ahead. I would go down to the college again, track the students out of the class and find out where they went for lunch, for dinner, at dark. I would find one that looked like they wouldn¡¯t be too scared of me and chat them up or buy them a drink. Maybe chat up the servers at the cafes. It was nothing. I had nothing. Last night I had felt sure as sin that the professor was going to dance to my song but now in the dull sludge of morning, I felt alone and unsure. I cursed myself and became certain the brandy had given me a rosy frame of mind. Thinking about it made me reach for my flask but I had made a point to leave it at home. I cursed that too.


    Breakfast was re-steamed bread, pickled eggs, a spoon of butter, a spoon of pork fat, and a plain porridge. There were also great jugs of tea, and some ale if you paid for it. I didn¡¯t.


    I sat in a back corner on a bench and set the tray in my lap. I took some of the berries out of my coat pocket and dropped them in the porridge and used the spoon to crush them against the bottom of the bowl. I stirred the dark juice into the porridge until it turned a bright pink, then I went to work on the bread and eggs.


    When my plate was bare on the bench next to me and I was leaning back finishing the tea I felt a changed man. I was gonna dig something out of that college if I had to walk the whole peninsula. If I still found nothing I¡¯d go to work in the slums putting light in all the dark places, checking all the faces of the worked girls.


    Then what? What would I be doing in a month if I still had nothing? What would my mind be like? What would my life be like? I broke the thought off and got up and put the plate back. I went out the door and left that thought drying out on the bench.


    As I walked out the door, Dal, the morning doorman, gave me a gift.


    ¡°Alany, right?¡± He said.


    ¡°That¡¯s right, Dal¡±


    He smiled big.


    ¡°Just makin¡¯ sure. Got a message for you.¡±


    ¡°Yea, what is it?¡±


    He reached in his pocket. That surprised me.


    ¡°Courier brought it by early. Sent out last night on the signals. Was gonna run it into the office in your slot, but then I seen you.¡±


    It was a sealed red envelope. I had never gotten anything off the signals before. The House of the Emperor himself subsidized that strange system of flags and mirrors, and made Throne its testing ground. No doubt they wanted most of the kinks worked out before fielding it in war.


    ¡°Thanks Dal. There a fee?¡±


    ¡°Yea, a half-jack. Dawn added it to your tab.¡±


    ¡°Swell of her. See ya¡¯ around.¡±


    I went halfway down the alley and opened it. It was a simple message on letter paper.


    ¡°Mr. Alany


    I would like to discuss a friend of mine. You seem interested. Idala Caf¨¦. 1 AN. I¡¯ll wear green.¡±


    It wasn¡¯t signed. I heard the signals charged by the word, which might explain the brevity, but discretion could too. I had never been called Mr. Alany before.


    One in the afternoon. I had never heard of the Idala Caf¨¦. By the name I guessed it was near the college. All the Anasian fare was either in Garden city or tucked away on the northside, and I doubted any signal message came from the northside.


    So now I had a lead, or the start of one, and a few hours to kill. When I got out to the street I tore the letter and envelope into small pieces and threw them down the gutter. I stood there a moment to put it all in place with what else I knew. The message was sent late yesterday, or it would have been there when I got home. It didn¡¯t seem like enough time unless the professor talked to whoever sent it right after I left.


    I felt eyes on me. A man standing still on that street at that hour always draws eyes. The Noodle place in the front of my apartment was roaring and the shops on either side weren¡¯t doing too bad either. The air smelled of smoking oil and browning fat and the broad street was packed with buggies, carts, and rickshaws interwoven with pedestrians that hopped and dodged at angles across the street. All was noise and motion as I stood quiet, so I walked and smoked.


    I thought it over and figured if this mystery person had anything for me to work on I would have to work on it fast. And if they didn¡¯t, I¡¯d have to get working on trying everything else just as quick. Every day, every hour I didn¡¯t find her, it was that much more likely that¡­


    I cut that off. It was probably a student that sent the letter so it would be best to look like an authority or at least like some kind of thug. I probably already had that down. I would also need to have a bit of money to work with. Going on foot was a luxury in these things.


    I took a cab across the river to the Imperial City peninsula where I had a box at a veteran lockhouse. It rained lightly as I went over the river on the soaring bridge. Looking  out across the steaming city at the horizon I couldn¡¯t tell if it was going to start pouring or clear up.


    When I got to the war district I looked out at the soldiers sitting outside the old army kitchens and shelters, some without even a full set of limbs between them. I wondered if I would be there with them If I had lost the arm and scratched the scar on my right elbow.


    The Lockhouse was an old stone fortress and guarded by some purple boys with the newest rachets they made. The handles and clip housings on them looked strange to me and I felt that stung pride I always felt upon realizing that things had changed since I got out. I paid the cabby my fare so far and told him to hang around.


    I climbed out and started up the stairs. When I was halfway up, two young Armsmen came out the double doors with slips in hand. They were talking jovially until they saw me, and together as if of one brain they scanned me up and down, saw my cloak with its stitches and patches, looked me dead in the eye, and no doubt seeing something just as telling there, gave me a nod which is useless to try and describe but anyone who has been on either side of one knows what it is. I nodded back and went up the rest of the stairs. I remembered now why I avoided this place and all other gatherings and allocations for veterans. Seeing someone else read your past in your eyes, your walk, on your jacket, raises old ghosts like nothing else. I passed through the doors at a jog.


    I showed the desk girl my tag and she led me to the back. We both put our keys in the box and opened it. She stepped out without a word.


    I took out four ships and eight jacks and put them in the pouch inside my shirt. I put five spears and twenty stars in my coin purse. I grabbed an old blackjack, one of the six knives, and a pack of lock-rakes.


    In the chest was my breastplate with a single hole above where the right hip would be. The hole seemed frozen in time. I ran my finger over it and remembered the heat. In the back of the locker was a thick rectangular leather satchel folded closed. I took it out and looked it over. Inside was my old rachet bow, broken down. All the pieces were still well oiled. Looking at it after seeing those new ones out front was like waking up from a dream where your house had been moved or you didn¡¯t recognize your wife. I put it up and gathered my things together and called for the girl. We locked up and she led me out.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    I had the cabby take me to the post office. It was a squat square of brick at the top of a hill with other buildings pressing in on it. A signaling tower, a frame of metal and wood topped with the distinctive flags and mirror boxes, rose off the top of it. As I walked up the front steps, a carrier bird swooped down onto the roof and I heard the low soothing voice of the birdmaster.


    Inside sunlight streamed in through the high windows and lit up the dust. There was a long row of clerk windows with lines of tightly dressed people waiting, smoking, reading. Along the edges were closely packed booths where others sat writing or picking over masses of papers spread out across the low tables like dinner plates. I took my place in line and looked up at the large clock set in the half wall above the clerk windows. It was just after nine. Having nothing else to do, I smoked a pipe and let my mind wander as the line moved.


    I remembered the sound of her voice and the shudder of her breathing. Her skin had a distinct scent I had never smelled on any other woman and just the memory of it made me dig my heels into the tile and bite my pipe. I could see her floating before me. Her copper hair and pale skin dotted with cinnamon had carved their colors into my memory so thoroughly that I¡¯m sure even if the suns exploded in my eyes I could call them to mind.


    I felt wrong summoning her to a place packed with dusty clerks and old stationary, so I focused on the ticks of the big clock and watched smoke and dust dance in the sunbeam until it was my turn at the window.


    The clerk was a girl fresh from school with a smile that made me wish I had gone to another window or walked up backwards. Her brown hair floated in thick waves and she was short enough that her doe eyes looked up at me as if she was on her knees. She purred a good morning and I spoke to her with a low rumble that I hadn¡¯t planned.


    ¡°I need to same-day a local letter.¡±


    Her smile curved as If I had just guessed what color her underclothes were. When she spoke her tone didn¡¯t fit the words, to say the least.


    ¡°Residential or Business?¡±


    ¡°Residential¡±


    ¡°We sell scented envelopes. Some girls go for that.¡± She winked.


    ¡°This guy¡¯s taller than you on my shoulders and weighs as much as both of us soaking wet.¡±


    ¡°Just imagine that.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to give him the wrong idea.¡±


    ¡°So he¡¯s a scary guy.¡±


    ¡°I just wouldn¡¯t want to lead him on.¡±


    She smiled and brought out a plain envelope, stamped it, and handed it to me. I didn¡¯t take it and handed her a card with one of his addresses on it.


    ¡°Write that on the front for me.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re supposed to do that yourself.¡±


    ¡°Post guys don¡¯t like my scrawl.¡±


    ¡°Mines pretty messy too.¡±


    ¡°Clean it up best you can.¡±


    She took it from me with the same smile. I pulled a piece of paper off the stack and inked the pen


    ¡°You don¡¯t even have it written yet?!¡± she said.


    The guy behind me cleared his throat


    ¡°I''ll be finished just when you are.¡± I said without looking up.


    I could almost feel her smile in the pause before I heard her pen start again. I wrote:


    ¡°Dear Jack,


    I won''t be able to watch the kids for you any time in the next two weeks. Tell them I still love them and haven¡¯t forgotten them.


    Love, Jack D¡±


    She finished a bit before I did and stood there smiling. I handed her the letter.


    ¡°That¡¯ll be five marks.¡± She said.


    I put a spear in her upturned little palm and her fingers brushed mine as she took it. She put it in the drawer and put the letter in the envelope. She took up the sealing brush and brought it to the envelope, stopped, then dabbed it on her tongue while looking me dead in the eye. I¡¯m proud to say I didn¡¯t jump out of my jacket.


    ¡°Careful doll. I hear that stuffs addictive¡±


    ¡°I know my limits.¡± She finished sealing the envelope.


    ¡°Is there anything else I can do for you?¡±


    She batted her eyes and all but gyrated. I let the first few answers that came to mind lie and gave her the fourth.


    ¡°No, thank you.¡±


    I turned to leave then stopped myself and came back. I could be dead tomorrow, anyway, and the month alone must have gotten to me. I leaned in to the window and the guy behind cleared his throat again.


    ¡°If you were to get a scented envelope, what scent would you prefer?¡± She blushed, leaned forward, and whispered.


    ¡°Whiskey and sweat.¡±


    I smiled like a schoolboy. ¡°Enjoy your morning¡±


    ¡°Wait! You didn¡¯t put any return information on it. What if some silly thing loses it?¡± She called after me. I was out of time for this sort of thing so I just smiled at her and walked towards the door. The guy behind me in line gave me a dark look.


    I told the cabby to take me to within a block of the Idala Caf¨¦. He knew where it was.


    ¡°I can take you right up to it, mister¡±


    ¡°No thanks. I wanna sneak up on it.¡±


    He frowned and opened the door. I climbed in and wrenched my mind from thoughts of smiling brunettes to the possibilities of this meeting. It was almost certainly a student and I was hoping like hell they meant business. There was a good chance it was just some kid who had been indulging in all the usual youthful vices with Liana and wanted to know how much they¡¯d be in for if it came out that she was tied up in something messy. There was a small but more concerning chance it was someone hooked up with whoever had taken her and once they saw my face and put a name to it I''d be marked as a dead man within the week.


    That was the thing. Did she leave or was she taken? I had gone back and forth on it since our missed meeting, shifting between worlds like a lost spirit. In some worlds, she was laughing in the arms of some rich student, and in others, she was being carted away to some den of sin hidden in the hills where senators and brokers paid hard coin to break her. Or, she was lying dead in a back alley or roadside ditch. Even then I wouldn¡¯t stay long in those worlds. I would have enough of that if it ever came to it.


    Up until I found her absent from class, the most likely scenario was that she had simply gotten tired of me. I hadn¡¯t enjoyed that possibility enough while it still seemed likely and now I was stuck with the others.


    I hadn¡¯t tracked anyone since the war and in those cases, I had the backing of the most powerful military on the planet. Now I had no one and no ideas. All I had was the knowledge that I was the only one looking. If I were in her shoes I damn sure would want someone better than a half jobless ex-soldier looking for me if my life depended on it. If she had been making love to some general¡¯s son, like someone of her wit and beauty ought to have been, then maybe she¡¯d have half the boys with the golden patches looking for her right now.


    Maybe she didn¡¯t need anyone looking for her. Maybe she just got sick of me and her studies all at once and ran off. It was a nice thought. I wished it still worked worth a damn.


    The cab rolled up the bridge towards the Garden City and the Ea river glittered below me. Great barges and smaller crescent hulled traders sped away from me while ferries cut across sideways. The great river tangled around the eleven isles, reflecting their towering white stone faces in the dark fractured water.


    As the cab moved over the bridge the imperial complex, with its rising levels of solid stone angles topped by the great tower, slid into view. I closed the window and shifted in my seat to look out the left towards the sprawling green of Garden city. Little stars of glittering light filtered through the trees here and there where sunlight struck the ponds, lakes, and canals. The suns were nearing the top of the sky and we had been driving for over half an hour.


    The cab moved faster now that we were outside the old city but after a while, we slowed up again and I knew we were near the heart of Garden City, and most likely the caf¨¦ as well. Out the window, the buildings pressed in on the street and there were far more people on foot than in carriages. Shop faces and outside seating packed with students and tourists flowed by at a slow pace. The sound of affectatious speaking and forced laughter filled the air and I remembered I was old. The cab slowed to a pointless pace and I leaned forward to the flap.


    ¡°How much farther to the caf¨¦?¡±


    ¡°You said get within a block of it.¡±


    ¡°Yea I know. How long till that?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re about two blocks away. Three blocks from the caf¨¦.¡±


    ¡°Thanks, I¡¯ll get out here.¡± I said and opened the door.


    ¡°You sure?¡± He asked from the driver¡¯s seat.


    ¡°Yea, I¡¯ll pay for the extra blocks anyhow.¡± I got the coins out in a hurry.


    ¡°Thanks, mister!¡±


    The wind brought the smell of more rain as I stood out on the street, but the suns still seemed to reign above. I turned back to the cabby still waiting.


    ¡°It''s just three blocks down that way, right?¡± I nodded in the direction he was heading.


    ¡°Oh, yea, it¡¯s on the left up here. It¡¯s a two-story with vines all over it.¡±


    ¡°Thanks again.¡±


    I moved down the sidewalk and left the cabby standing still in the traffic. Half a block up at the end of the street a Trooper held up the line of carriages and carts to let by a stream of bouncing students. The day I see something like that on the northside is the day I¡¯ll be able to avoid traffic altogether and just fly home.


    The street was packed with bookstores, cafes, tailors, rice houses, and a few dance hall kitchens that sputtered out low lunch hour string music with the hum of conversation. Every establishment seemed to have tables out front behind low fences, even the tailors and cobblers, and they were filling up fast.


    The sidewalk was a mass of people and I gave up walking tactically and took up a battering ram march with my chin out like a cavalry lance. Those who didn¡¯t step away instinctively hopped to the side when they saw my jacket, probably used to seeing it¡¯s like on vagrants. Others seemed to clock my step from yards away and were well to the side when I passed them.


    The average age on the street was about 20 and the few outliers all had the same look. Cleaned up salarymen sitting like counts taking in an opera, flashing smiles and coins at girls who sat staring like kittens watching a mouse dance. It was embarrassing. At least I had had the decency to meet my kitten out of eyesight of her school.


    I found the caf¨¦ and walked past it. It was covered in vines like the driver had said and the inside was well lit with sunlight. The aroma of roasted coffee rushed out of the front door and trampled over a few other more subtle smells I couldn¡¯t place. Winding through them like a snake was the distinctive sharp scent of Anasian spiced tea. It was more subdued than the ones I had drunk on the isles but all the pieces were there. A tall kid with a military cut pushed his chair back suddenly and it sounded like a door being broken down. I controlled my breathing until the memories faded and focused on the sounds around me as I walked.


    After I circled the block and had a good picture of everything nearby I came back to the street and looked at the caf¨¦ from a few doors down. The suns weren¡¯t quite in the noon position yet. I hadn¡¯t seen anyone in green on my first pass and didn¡¯t now. I lit my pipe and sat down at one of the single tables outside the caf¨¦ with my back to the door.

 Chapter 3: Ethelyn

    I had finished the pipe and was sitting tapping softly on the table with it when I caught a flash of green to my left, down the street in the direction of the student housing.


    She was tall and thin with straight dull blonde hair coming down from a dark green knit cap. Her light coat was bright green cotton and her brown leather boots clacked on the ground as she walked. She was almost staring at the ground but as she got to the front fence she looked up and her blue grey eyes, set in a soft round face with a wide flat jaw, locked with mine and she stuttered in her step. She got a look of surprise on her face that was more endearing that I was prepared for. I smiled at her without meaning to and she smiled back at me as if we already knew each other. I remember thinking that she seemed the type that Liana would be friends with, straightforward and kind, a welcome comfort in a world of complex cruelty.


    She came around the low fence and floated up to me.


    ¡°Are you Alany?¡± she said.


    ¡°Yes Mam, and you are?¡±


    I had stood up swiftly, removed my hat, bowed my head, and outstretched my hand palm up in one swift motion. She smiled at me and took my hand.


    ¡°I¡¯m Ethelyn. Liana¡¯s friend. The professor said-¡°


    I cut her off.


    ¡°Let''s find a more private seat inside.¡± The outside seating had been crammed together out of necessity.


    ¡°Oh, alright¡±


    I opened the door and we went in. The ceiling was two stories tall and the inside was well lit from a double row of windows. There was a second story loft looking down at the seating area and I saw an empty table below it next to a support pillar, near a corner. Ethelyn had stopped in front of me with a confused expression that struck my heart again.


    ¡°Where?¡± she said.


    I put a hand on her back and pointed.


    ¡°This back corner, if you don¡¯t mind.¡± I said.


    ¡°Oh, no, that¡¯s fine!¡± She said. I could hear the fear in her voice. I could see it in her posture. A part of me in another land woke up and growled. A scared woman was always a red flag over there. The smell of that fucking tea didn¡¯t help the sensation.


    She sat facing the back corner and I sat with my back to the wall.


    ¡°Sorry to cut you off earlier but this is sensitive. I¡¯m sure you know by now I consider Liana to be missing.¡± I said, as soft as I could, given the noise.


    She frowned. ¡°Well, I know you can''t find her, or whoever you work for can¡¯t find her, but don¡¯t you think she might have just left town or something?¡±


    ¡°Did she say anything to you about leaving town?¡±


    ¡°No, but-¡±


    ¡°How close were you two?¡±


    ¡°Fairly close. We¡¯ve been friends since first year, we¡¯re both in our third.¡±


    ¡°Would she tell you if she was going to skip town?¡±


    ¡°Yes, I mean I thought she would, but you never know.¡±


    ¡°Do you know where she would go if she did leave?¡±


    A slim dark waiter with Gespian features stepped up to the table.


    ¡°Good afternoon, what can I get for you?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll have a Hinse tea, and some soft biscuits.¡± She said


    ¡°I''ll have a Coffee.¡± I said.


    ¡°What style?¡±


    ¡°What styles have you got?¡±


    We have Sviathic, Gespian, Noveran, Rynochi,¡±


    ¡°I''ll have Noveran.¡± I thought of some of the sailors back over who would have given me an earful for calling it Noveran and not Anasian. That reminded me.


    ¡°Do you have any Elka pods?¡±


    ¡°Yes sir.¡±


    ¡°I''ll take a few of those.¡±


    He nodded and left


    ¡°What are Elka pods?¡± Ethelyn said. She spoke to me again in a soft voice, which made it seem like a secret. I smiled.


    ¡°Tiny green seed pods. You crack them open and eat them with strong coffee. Sometimes they brew it with them too.¡± I glanced around. No one seemed to be paying us any attention.


    ¡°You were in the war?¡± She said.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sorry.¡± She looked down at the table and seemed to be trying to think of what else to say about that, so I started up again.


    ¡°If you had to guess, where would you say Liana is right now?¡± She stared at me for a bit.


    ¡°I would think she¡¯s with some man.¡± She said. It was my turn to stare.


    ¡°She that kind of girl?¡±


    ¡°What kind of girl?¡±


    ¡°To run off with a guy like that.¡±


    ¡°Any girl is that kind of girl for the right guy, I suppose.¡± She looked around the room as if she was waiting for something to pass.


    ¡°Alright, did you know of any guys like that? Any that she had mentioned?¡±


    ¡°No, I guess I didn¡¯t, but there might¡¯ve been someone she didn¡¯t tell me about.¡±


    ¡°What makes you say that?¡±


    ¡°Well, you for one.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°Well, whoever hired you is surely interested in her, or has some kind of an attachment, but I thought she didn¡¯t have any family.¡±


    ¡°She doesn¡¯t. This person¡¯s more of an old paternal figure from back home.¡±


    ¡°Oh¡±. She watched me as if she was expecting me to move in a way that would tell her whether or not she should believe me. It was such an innocent stare that it took me a moment to find my words.


    ¡°So If she was to go with a man-¡°


    ¡°Do you think she went with one?¡± She said.


    ¡°You said you thought she did.¡±


    ¡°I thought she might, I mean, I don¡¯t know why else she would just disappear and not tell anyone.¡± She bit her lip, crossed her arms and looked towards the kitchen. A waiter came out carrying a tray with a crock of soup, a chunk of bread and a steaming teapot on it. He stopped at a table and the kids sitting at it lit up like he was passing out puppies.


    ¡°Had anything changed with her recently?¡± I said.


    ¡°Like what?¡± She looked back at me.


    ¡°Any new interests, friends, lovers?¡±


    ¡°I told you she didn¡¯t mention anybody.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s right, but did anything change? Anything you can think of?¡±


    She bit her lip some more and stared at the table again.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±


    I could feel her about to say something, so I waited for it.


    ¡°What do you know about her?¡± she said finally.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t know her. I was hired to find her. I told you that.¡±The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Your employer must have told you something, to help you find her.¡± She raised her arched blonde eyebrows and her storm colored eyes seemed to float in the air.


    ¡°It¡¯s best to go into this kind of thing without any bias or prepared ideas.¡± I said.


    ¡°He didn¡¯t tell you anything about her?¡± Her lips came open in a pout and she wrinkled her soft brow. I was finding her very hard to lie to.


    ¡°He said she was kind, but not trusting. She was studying sciences. And he told me what school she was going to. That¡¯s about it.¡±


    She was quiet for a bit as we stared at each other. In a table near us an immigrant from Daeleah spoke in porcelain accents to northern girls with flowing curls and thighs like oak limbs covered in pastry dough. I looked at them a bit until she spoke.


    ¡°Professor Semblin didn¡¯t think you were working for anyone.¡±


    ¡°No, he thought I was her boyfriend.¡± I said.


    ¡°Are you?¡± She said.


    ¡°No, but I think the professor wishes he was. Did he ask you to come here, or did you come here of your own wishes?¡±


    She was as still as a statue and her face got red. The server came up with our drinks and we exchanged pleasantries, both of us trying to seem relaxed until he left. I noted the girl wasn¡¯t a very good actor. I liked that.


    ¡°Why did you come to see me?¡± I took a sip from the small cup. The crema was thinner than the cups I had been served in the Anasian coffee huts that had crowded the docks like barnacles. She looked confused again.


    ¡°I came to help you find Liana. I¡¯m worried about her. I haven''t seen her in weeks and we haven¡¯t gone this long without talking in two years.¡± She moved the earthen teacup by its handle and tapped her finger on the small plate of round biscuits.


    ¡°If you came to help me why aren¡¯t you telling me everything you know?¡± I said.


    ¡°What makes you think I¡¯m not?¡±


    ¡°Because I¡¯m no closer to finding her now than when we sat down, and you wouldn¡¯t have come if you didn¡¯t know something.¡± I said. I cracked one of the small pods and the floral scent cut upwards through all the other smells.


    She tried her tea but it was too hot. She pressed her lips together and set the cup down.


    ¡°It¡¯s just you¡¯re not what I was expecting.¡±


    I laughed. ¡°I¡¯m a professional snoop, did you expect plate armor and flowing hair?¡±


    She smiled softly at me.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I just, it¡¯s all so terrifying.¡± She was suddenly almost whispering and seemed about to cry.


    ¡°I meant to talk to you when the professor told me, but then I got here and you looked so different, and the professor had said you might be a thug, maybe Liana owed somebody money or something I don¡¯t know.¡±


    I thought about the Professor sending this frightened girl off to meet with someone he thought might be dangerous just to see if Liana had run off to a lover. I cracked another pod in my fingers.


    ¡°You are looking for her, really?¡± she said.


    ¡°That¡¯s what I''ve been hired for.¡±


    ¡°By who? The professor said you wouldn¡¯t tell him.¡±


    ¡°And I can''t tell you either, it¡¯s a rule of this business.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Well, If I have to go poking around places people don¡¯t want me looking, trying to find this girl, Liana, I might make some enemies, and if they know who I¡¯m working for they can just look him up and get rough with him.¡±


    ¡°I won''t tell anyone.¡± She almost whispered.


    ¡°I trust you won''t, but it¡¯s a rule nonetheless, and it''s no use telling you something you can''t do anything with and will only make you a target.¡± I drank some more coffee and she began absently dipping one of her biscuits in her tea.


    ¡°Do you think she got messed up with anyone who might do something like that?¡± she said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. What do you think?¡± I stared at her hard.


    She looked down and took a breath.


    ¡°Alright, give me a moment.¡±


    I had some more of the seeds and waited.


    ¡°Liana was talking to some people. She was being very secretive about it, but she told me a few things when she was drunk, or maybe she was scared.¡± She whispered as much as the volume of the room allowed.


    ¡°What kinds of people?¡± I said.


    She looked around. The place was loud, but not loud enough for comfort. I lifted my chair and moved closer to the table quietly. I leaned over the plate of pods and cracked another one open without looking at her. I felt her lean forward.


    ¡°She said they had information. I think she said she had to buy her way in.¡±


    I could taste the adrenaline in my mouth and Liana¡¯s eyes floated in front of me.


    ¡°What kind of information?¡± I said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. She didn¡¯t say anything too specific.¡±


    ¡°What did she say?¡± I looked her right in the eye.


    There was another pause and I was preparing some soothing words when she whispered.


    ¡°She was trying to find out about the Complex¡±


    I stopped cracking open the pod. I stopped blinking, breathing or thinking for a good long moment. Then I thought a great deal all at once.


    ¡°What in the world of God would make her try and do that?¡± I said.


    She shook her head and looked around.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I thought she was joking at first, but then she asked about my cousin who got marked when we were kids, wanted me to get in contact with him, but I hadn''t seen him in years.¡± She hugged herself with one arm and put the almost dissolved biscuit in her mouth.


    A marked man would be killed on the spot if it was found out he was selling his gift. Liana would know that. I wondered what the hell she could have been doing, but then I thought this girl might be mistaken, or just plain lying.


    ¡°What did she want with them?¡± I said.


    She didn¡¯t say anything, didn¡¯t even blink. It was just half a moment of silence but what it meant was unmistakable and it made me want to run out into the street and scream.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± She said, but she seemed to have known I had guessed what Liana wanted with the Complex. Liana was a magi. An unregistered, undetected magi, and she wanted training from the only people who could give it to her without making her a ward of the state for two and a half decades. The kind of price she would have to pay wasn¡¯t something I was prepared to think about, so I tried to find the silver lining.


    She hadn''t told me. I hadn''t even suspected. She was careful. So then what had made her run?


    I remembered I didn¡¯t really believe this girl. The feeling didn¡¯t last. The look in her eyes said it all, and no one would lie about someone they knew being a rouge magi unless they had some fetish for being interrogated by the eyes for days on end.


    ¡°Was she able to?¡± I said.


    ¡°She talked to some people, she told me about them, said she didn¡¯t trust them, but they weren¡¯t, I mean they were just people, you know?¡± We had leaned so close to each other that I could count her eyelashes.


    I looked around and took another drink. No one was looking our way.


    ¡°Do you have any names?¡± I said.


    ¡°No, maybe, I don¡¯t remember, I think one was named Jack.¡±


    It was hard not to laugh, even at a time like this. Good god, this girl must have been raised in a gilded tower.


    ¡°Do you know where they lived, where she met them?¡± I said.


    ¡°No, they were-¡° She leaned in so close I could have kissed her. I stopped myself from looking around. I wanted to tell her to sit up, but that might have drawn more attention so I just listened.


    ¡°They were Wrath.¡± She said.


    I held back another laugh. Every punk kid with a desire to scare old ladies and impress young girls was Wrath. Every unsolved murder, every break down in civic order was Wrath. It was a symbol of the tarnish of the present age to those who longed for better times. There was also, unfortunately, some truth to it.


    The lowest Wrath member, and I mean an actual cut member not some student pretender, was a common thug, but the highest ones were just as feared as the Syndicate. There was one glaring difference between Wrath and the Syndicate, though they did work together often, one thing that made Wrath membership alone grounds for imprisonment or execution while the Syndicate was often tolerated by the state; Wrath harbored runaway magi.


    So, either Liana got caught up on a faerie hunt with some dropouts who claimed Wrath but just picked pockets, or she had met with the real deal and something had happened.


    ¡°Did you believe her?¡± I said.


    ¡°I believe, she believed them. She seemed scared about it.¡± She was dunking another biscuit and half of it fell off in the tea.


    ¡°When did she start talking to them?¡± I said.


    ¡°A few months ago.¡±


    ¡°How many months?¡±


    ¡°I guess, four.¡±


    ¡°Where did she go to meet them?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±


    ¡°What do you know? I need names or something to go on.¡± I had gotten too firm with her, but I knew somewhere in her head was what I needed to know and it was hell being so close to it just to watch it hop about.


    She stared up at me like a puppy and I looked around. A few people cut their glances as I looked their way and I realized we had been leaning in across the table for a while. I wasn¡¯t used to being bothered by the stares so I hadn¡¯t noticed. She didn¡¯t seem to notice either and kept leaning over and almost whispering.


    ¡°If I tell you any names they¡¯ll know I told you.¡±


    I leaned back in.


    ¡°How would they know that? And these aren¡¯t the Caps, they don¡¯t need proof to come after you if that¡¯s what they¡¯re going to do. Your best move is to give me everything so I can look out for them.¡±


    She hid her face in her hands. People were really looking now. I hoped I didn¡¯t have to follow any other leads in the area later. She uncovered her face and looked me in the eye.


    ¡°Marston. That¡¯s the only one I know.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s he look like? Where is he?¡± I said.


    She shook her head at the second question


    ¡°He''s short, brown hair down to here,¡± she touched her shoulder ¡°black eyes, looks old but he dropped out the year before we got here.¡±


    I ran the features through my mind repeatedly to memorize them.


    ¡°He was a student here?¡±


    ¡°Yes. He said they accused him of attacking a girl, but he said he didn¡¯t do it. I only saw him once.¡± The Daeleahn and the northern girls got up to leave and one of them laughed loudly.


    ¡°What did he do for Liana?¡± I said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know, I think she said he was a messenger. When I saw him she gave him a letter. That¡¯s all I know.¡± She took a long drink from her tea.


    ¡°You don¡¯t know anyone else? Any other names?¡± I said.


    There was a pause, a telling pause.


    ¡°No.¡± she said to the table.


    I left it at that. I had enough to get started on anyway, and she seemed about to cry. I put my hand on her¡¯s and her eyes got soft. I spoke to her in the voice I would use on my little sister when she was scared her cats would be eaten by the wolves.


    ¡°I''ll find her. You¡¯ve done a lot.¡±


    She pursed her lips and nodded. I stood up and gathered my coat around me. I laid three stars on the table to cover the two of us.


    ¡°You have my address. Come to me anytime.¡± I said in the same voice and she smiled at me like a dying lamp flaring up one last time. I left her like that and walked out the door. I could feel the eyes on me.


    On the street, the rain had started again and caused the foot traffic to move with more urgency. I walked in the direction Ethelyn had come from and stopped at the first door I came to. It was an older building on a stone and mortar foundation built when the land was still mostly floodplain. I climbed up the thin steep front staircase to reach the door five feet off the ground.


    Inside the warm gravewood scented room a few students sat reading or talking over books and papers. There were doorways to two adjacent parlors and through one I heard the metal sound of someone taking the pot off a selbelya and then the gentle gurgling of tea being poured, as well as the low murmur of conversation. Like all places near the college, the shop was a meeting area first and whatever else second.


    I walked up to a small case of pamphlets and took one. It was one of those excerpts of works recently reprinted by the Imperial Librarians, this one the third part of a book on the War of Angels. I paid for it at the counter and sat down on a bench seat near the window. It was up against the wall and anyone coming from the caf¨¦ wouldn¡¯t see me until they passed. I had been sitting there less than half an hour when I saw a flash of green go bouncing by. I went out the door and silently down the steps. I came on to the sidewalk a good twenty paces and about twenty people behind her.


    She walked down a block and took a right. I hid behind a group of cackling students as she turned so she wouldn¡¯t catch me in her peripherals then I turned the corner myself. I was just in time to see her go through the gate of a group of student housing. I sped up and at the gate, I saw there were four buildings around a central garden square. The red door of the building across and to the left closed as I came up. I kept walking down the street for a few more blocks until I came to a main road and hailed a cab.

 Chapter 4: The Visitor

    It was three in the afternoon when I got back to my side of town. It had rained and stopped a few times since I had left the caf¨¦. I went to the baths on Pearl court a few blocks down from my apartment. If a pearl had ever so much as passed through I¡¯d bite my blade. It was a rough place and I kept my things wrapped up in my jacket on the bench near me while I lifted weights and hit the skin. It was enough to wash the mind out but nothing that would have me feeling stiff the next day. I let what Ethelyn had told me roll around in my mind and slide into place wherever it could. All the while Liana floated somewhere nearby in fragments.


    The bath was hot for once and I tried not to fall asleep. Some guy asked me about the scars and the war and when he found out I had been in Novera he went off about the Jolan wars and what a real war was like. Normally I might have told him some things, before and after adjusting his vertical position, but today I just sat there until the water had done its work and left.


    The suns were hovering at the tops of the buildings to the east as I walked back and the street traffic had died to a trickle. Most people in my neighborhood work in the factories and don¡¯t stop till near dark. There were a few pedestrians on my street and not many carriages. The one parked out front drew my eye, despite being a fairly common make, because I recognized the driver. He was a squat northerner with keen eyes like blued steel and a wooden club on his hip. I went in the gate to the alley and halfway down at the door Sid stood leaning over some slim kid. He had a spike dagger on his hip and about eight tons of attitude in his ten-pound frame. The kid saw me and nodded with a big smile. Sid looked over and I could see I had gotten there just as the kid was wearing out his welcome, or maybe he had worn it out an hour ago. I''d be hard-pressed to tell you just how much patience Sid had tucked away but I would swear on the family grave when it ran out I would too.


    ¡°Apartment eight, fourth floor.¡± I said to the kid. He just smiled and ran off. I turned back to Sid.


    ¡°I''ll be having company come up. You''ll like him better than the kid, I promise.¡±


    ¡°That won¡¯t take much.¡± He said.


    I went inside. What the hell Rodgar was doing hiring that kid I had no idea. Usually, his guys are as square and tight as an arrow slit.


    When I got in the room I opened the curtains, cracked the windows and tried to clean up. I pulled a bottle out of the hole in the wall behind one of my shelves and got some glasses out of the kitchen corner. I picked a handful of berries from the vine and put them in a saucer on the low table. I took another handful of nuts from the cupboard and did the same with them. Now that tradition was taken care of, I took off my jacket and was just putting away my knife when the knock came, two strong raps that reminded me that the door wasn¡¯t hollow but the walls sure were. I opened it and invited Rodgar in.


    He stood six foot and a half and had to lean down to come in through the doorway. It was just as controlled as the rest of his movements. He took off his hat and set his dark silver-headed walking stick against the buffet shelf for a moment while I took off his jacket. I placed his coat and his hat on the wooden pegs on the wall. We grabbed hands and hugged. As I was bowing and inviting him to the seat he took a paper-wrapped bottle out of his pants pocket like it was a toy and tore the paper from it in one motion. He offered it to me with an honest smile. It was a bottle of wine and I could see the shine on the seal even in the dim room.


    ¡°Excuse my coming into your home, Alany. Here¡¯s my amends.¡± I refused it twice and he offered it two more times before I took it and set it on the table next to the other one. With all the traditional Eaman customs satisfied, we sat down.


    ¡°I sent you a letter today.¡± I said. I poured us some drinks.


    ¡°I know, I got it.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t think it should have reached you till tonight.¡±


    ¡°All my post is expedited; I have made arrangements with all the routes in the city.¡± He said it without a hint of pride, as if he was explaining how he put on his boots and not how he tampered with imperial infrastructure.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t think it warranted a response, certainly not in person.¡± I said.


    ¡°I was concerned and wanted to make sure you were in good health. There are always people trying to compromise the work I do.¡± Rodgar twirled his cane slowly in his hand, the silver heron¡¯s head moving as if scanning the room. His work was heavy work. He supplied bodyguards to those who needed them the most and who could count the least on the state for protection. They weren¡¯t necessarily all the same type of people, but close enough that each job was similar. I had worked for him for a bit over a year now. Before I had worked the same kind of work but with less assurance of my safety or even my pay, and I ran into a lot of trouble from guys who expected me to move into other activities I hadn¡¯t signed on for. Rodgar ended all that and took me in when my life was on the line. He was the first to streamline his game, the first to get the main men of the syndicate and other organizations to agree on hard limits for the work they were paying for and to guarantee the status of his employees as neutral parties. This was almost completely done by the strength of his character. On top of that from what I had seen, he was a straight dealer and the only ones I¡¯d ever heard say a harsh word about him had been those on the wrong end of his business, and even some of them spoke highly of him. In this kind of work, it¡¯s a bad spot to be in to get attached to your employer, but dammit, I liked Rodgar.


    ¡°Well, no one¡¯s gotten to me if that¡¯s what you¡¯re thinking. I''m gonna be handling something for the foreseeable future and felt I should let you know.¡± I said.


    ¡°I appreciate it. You¡¯re under no obligation to, as you know.¡± He said. Rodgar made a point to not know the exact whereabouts of most of his men most of the time.


    ¡°Yes, and you¡¯re not under any obligation to see about my safety.¡± I said.


    He smiled and took a drink.


    ¡°You¡¯ve given me a year of good work. It''s hard to find men like you. Consider my visit protecting my investment.¡±


    ¡°Consider your investment safe for the time being.¡± I said. I took a drink and he started again.


    ¡°Is this business of yours personal, or is it something I can help with?¡± I hadn¡¯t expected that and I took a moment to decide what to make of it. I couldn¡¯t make anything out of it and he sat there waiting.


    ¡°Something you could help with? I''m not sure. I¡¯d say I don¡¯t know the extent of your pull.¡±


    ¡°Does it involve beings of flesh and blood?¡± He said.


    ¡°It does, but I haven¡¯t quite tied down which ones yet.¡±


    Like I said, I like Rodgar, but the idea of being indebted to someone in his business, even to someone I liked, rubbed me the wrong way. However, I wasn¡¯t in a position to turn down help. I thought of Liana somewhere cold and dark.


    ¡°What do you know about the Complex?¡± I said. He finished his drink and set the cup down, then leaned back and looked at me as if I had just made a strange sound.


    ¡°As much as I need to for the work I do, which is to say only generalities.¡± He said.


    ¡°Have you ever used it?¡±


    He paused a moment.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    ¡°I have made use of its information indirectly.¡±


    ¡°Was the information accurate?¡±


    ¡°Frighteningly so. Do you need an introduction?¡±


    ¡°Are we talking about the same thing?¡±


    ¡°The Complex, the information network operated by magi supposedly outside the realm of the state, correct?¡±


    ¡°Supposedly?¡±


    ¡°Yes, it¡¯s a bit of an open secret that they have operatives inside. Possibly, they allow it¡¯s existence because it provides them with good intel. Some go so far as to say they created it.¡±


    ¡°Right. So, how would one use it without getting hanged for treason.¡± I said.


    He smiled.


    ¡°If they hung everyone who tried to use it, it wouldn¡¯t be worth much, would it? However, they do hang some of those who use it for crimes and most of those who use it to attack the state.¡±


    ¡°Any safe way to use it?¡±


    ¡°You''re not a magi, are you?¡±


    ¡°Not that I¡¯m aware of.¡±


    ¡°Then you¡¯d have to use a door. I happen to know one who I can trust.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean ¡®door¡¯?¡±


    He laughed


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry lad, you really don¡¯t know a thing about the Complex?¡±


    ¡°Next to nothing besides what it¡¯s supposed to be.¡± I said.


    ¡°Well, then a door is someone who gives non magi access to the complex. They also give magi access to the complex but not in the same way and in that case it''s usually to let them into a specific area, so to speak.¡±


    ¡°How does a door give me access?¡±


    ¡°They go inside your mind, and then they go inside the complex, or I should say they speak to it.¡±


    I suddenly didn¡¯t like the turn of this conversation, though I don¡¯t know what I expected. I guess I thought there¡¯d be magi hiding in secret rooms I could put my hands on and rough up.


    ¡°Is there any way to get information on it without actually talking to it, or them?¡± I said.


    He looked at me like he just realized something.


    ¡°Have you ever had a magi enter your mind?¡±


    ¡°Once. In Novera.¡± I thought of the sensation on that boat and tried not to shudder.


    ¡°How was it for you?¡±


    ¡°It was one of the worst things I¡¯ve ever felt in my life.¡± I said.


    ¡°Did they show you things?¡± He said.


    ¡°No, just told us to head east.¡±


    ¡°Hm, it¡¯s often awful the first time, and some people never get used to it, but I think you will.¡± He smiled at me like he was sending me off to college and took a drink before he continued.


    ¡°And, no, there¡¯s no good way to get into the thing without having one go in your head.¡±


    I poured another drink at that. All the time he was talking I was trying not to think of what it felt like to have someone else in my head, but now the memory kicked down the door.


    It had felt like being stabbed. All of a sudden someone else''s anger, fear, and whatever else was knocking about in your head, except it wasn¡¯t just in your head, it took over your entire world. All of creation was invaded by something foreign and wrong, and the emotions seemed to cut and tear because they weren¡¯t shaped the same way as the anger and fear your mind was used to, if that means anything. This all happened in a second, and on top of everything it was loud, somehow those words, ¡°head east¡±, had been louder than anything I¡¯d ever heard, probably because I wasn¡¯t really hearing them. Rodgar must have seen my thoughts on my face.


    ¡°What are you hoping to get out of the complex, I could give you better advice if I knew more.¡±


    I looked him in the eye and took another drink. I wasn¡¯t green enough to think this would come without a debt, but at this point, it didn¡¯t matter. If he could help me find Liana I¡¯d brand his family name on my forehead.


    ¡°I¡¯m looking for someone. Someone young who was trying to contact the Complex and disappeared.¡±


    ¡°What were they trying to get out of the complex?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Might have been just youthful curiosity.¡±


    ¡°If it was just that they wouldn¡¯t have gotten far. The complex only lets in those who have something to offer it.¡±


    ¡°What does it want?¡±


    ¡°Information.¡± He said before taking another drink.


    ¡°I¡¯m running short on that lately, but this person might have had enough of it to get somewhere.¡±


    Rodgar leaned back and took out his pipe and a polished copper leaf case. He opened the leaf case and packed the bowl.


    ¡°I can get you in. I have a man who¡¯s tapped into it and has good credit with it.¡±


    ¡°What will I owe you?¡±


    He held his pipe out. ¡°You can start with a light.¡±


    I got up and walked over to the slow fuse in the box on the counter and lit a spill from the jar. I took it back to Rodgar and lit his pipe with it then lit the short oil lamp on the table and tamped the spill out on the plate. Rodgar blew out a smoke ring and I sat down


    ¡°What¡¯s my balance now?¡± I said.


    Rodgar Smiled. ¡°I''ll have to think about it. What will you do with this person if you find them?¡±


    ¡°I won''t hurt them, if that¡¯s what you¡¯re asking. I¡¯m looking for them for their own good.¡±


    ¡°And how do you plan on using the Complex to find them?¡±


    ¡°I hadn¡¯t gotten that far. I didn¡¯t even know I could find it.¡±


    ¡°I''ll give you my advice then. You believe this person has been in contact with the Complex recently, correct?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s right. they might even be in contact with them right now.¡±


    ¡°And this person does not want to be found by you?¡±


    I bit my lip a bit. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say that for sure. My gut tells me they¡¯re just hiding from everyone because they¡¯re in danger.¡±


    ¡°Hmm.¡± He let out another cloud of smoke and poured himself a third or fourth drink, I hadn¡¯t been counting but in my experience liquor of any quality tended to evaporate around him without much effect.


    ¡°Then my advice is to use a memory the two of you share, one that is unique, to draw them out. Do you have such a memory?¡± he said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t follow.¡±


    He looked at me a bit and sucked enough air through his pipe to lift a sail then blew a ring I could have hopped through at the ceiling.


    ¡°Do you know how the complex communicates?¡± He said.


    ¡°With magic, I¡¯d imagine.¡±


    ¡°And by that you mean the way the telepath did when they told you to go east?¡±


    ¡°Is there another way?¡± I said. I wasn¡¯t familiar with the word telepath.


    ¡°Yes. Many magi can send not only words and speech, but images, sounds, memories. Anything the mind can perceive a magi with mental ability can make another mind perceive as well. If you are imagining the Complex as just people talking to one another you would be misguided. All kinds of information go through it.¡±


    I had heard of magic all my life like anyone else, but it was usually stories of waves of fire or someone turning invisible and all that. People talked of magi getting in your head, which seemed a skill so common they all could do it, but I had never had to think about the specifics. Now that I was speaking in detail about it a cold fear was crawling over me, as if a lifetime of folk tales and rumors were coalescing into a real, solid terror.


    ¡°So you advise I send a memory. How?¡± I said.


    ¡°The door will explain it to you, but what¡¯s important is that you don¡¯t use names or anything that can let the other people on the hunt find you or determine the identity of the one you are trying to contact. There are more complicated ways to send a secure message but a simple visual memory of a place where the two of you met might work, anything that would allow them to know it¡¯s you trying to contact them, which will hopefully cause them to come find you.¡±


    I had become more and more convinced as the conversation progressed that I had no grasp on what the hell the complex was or how to use it safely. I wanted to believe that If Liana knew I was looking for her she would reach out to me, but I couldn¡¯t be sure.


    ¡°You don¡¯t know of any place any of these guys hang out? Is it just the usual dens?¡± I said.


    Rodgar smiled. ¡°If you are asking if you can beat information out of the complex than I regret to tell you that you cant. It''s been tried and the very nature of the complex prevents it in almost all cases. It¡¯s standard practice for all members to not disclose their location or any personal details. That¡¯s why I hope for your sake this person has the sense to contact you.¡±


    I finished my drink. Rodgar poured me another.


    ¡°You said you can get me in.¡±


    ¡°Yes, I know a door. All your communication with the complex will go through him, and for your safety, he will screen your conversation and make sure you don¡¯t endanger yourself with anything you disclose.¡±


    ¡°When can I meet him?¡±


    ¡°Tonight. After midnight.¡± He held his pipe in the corner of his mouth and took a leather book out of his vest. He opened it and removed a charcoal pencil from the spine. He took a square of card paper from a stack stashed in the back and placed it on top of the hardcover inside and wrote something down.


    ¡°Be at this tavern before midnight, but not too much before.¡± He handed me the paper and it had an address written on it in squarescript.


    ¡°When you come in the door look to your left and sit in the corner seat just past the window nook, against the wall. Order a spiced ale. Be prepared to wait. When the rest have cleared out he¡¯ll help you.¡±


    ¡°What will I owe you, assuming my overflowing gratitude won''t be enough?¡±


    Rodgar¡¯s face got still and his body relaxed into an almost regal posture. Up till now he¡¯d been so friendly I could have forgotten he made his living breaking men down to nothing and calling bluffs on killers.


    ¡°Sometime I will need your loyalty. I will call on you and I will have it. Agreed?¡± he said.


    I opened my mouth to remind him of my limits, but just then Liana swirled up to the dark doorway behind him. She was wearing the silk gown she had packed in her book bag that hot night. She smiled and floated away into the bedroom, pretending to be carried off by some phantom. The vision faded and I closed my mouth.


    ¡°Whatever you need.¡± I said.


    ¡°Then I''ll go and let my man know you¡¯re coming.¡± He got up and moved to the door with his cane in hand. I grabbed his things off the hooks and he let me put his coat on him.


    ¡°Good night and safe travels, and thanks again for the help.¡± I said.


    He smiled warmly at me.


    ¡°You should have talked to me from the start, but I can understand your hesitance. An old thug like me may not seem like the helpful type. Good night, lad. I¡¯ll see myself down.¡±


    If I hadn¡¯t known better I would have thought I heard hurt in Rodgar¡¯s voice.

 Chapter 5: The Door

    The Sun had gone down before Rodgar left so I knew I had about four hours to kill. I thought about taking a nap but I felt I might sleep through till morning. Instead, I went over every blade in the house with a stone and oil. Then I checked the other contingency plans. The iron capped club next to the door, the three bucklers stored near the other blades (I oiled their straps and rivets whether they needed it or not) and finally my brother¡¯s sword, long enough to be almost useless in these quarters. I oiled it and looked at it in the torchlight. The swirling arms of its wrapping hilt looked like molten gold in the light and the blade was a beam of orange hugging cold silver. I sheathed it and wrapped the whole thing back in the cloth. The drakes head pommel was the last to be covered and it watched me the whole time.


    After the weapons were done with, I made tea and sat reading the war section of a week-old print. It was guaranteed to make me think of nothing else. An officer of a western trade company was interviewed about the situation in south Daeleah. He assured us that the King was no closer to pushing the Horde back over the river and if there wasn¡¯t Imperial military in the area by this time next year the loss to trade would be astronomical. In the southern sea, our navy was fighting to secure the lands bought from the Vishanth while under constant attack from the Sunset fleet. He went on to give descriptions of the various naval forces and their strengths and general territories, as well as to gush about a few new inventions by the Naval scientists. When I finished it I was halfway through the pot of tea.


    With still an hour at least to kill, I picked up a book of history and studied every word. When the time came to leave I found everything I had read had fallen off my mind like rain on oilskin. I drank the last of the tea near the window and cracked it open. The sound of the rain came in clearly and I felt like I was floating out in it. In the depth of the sound, I felt the vastness of the city around me stretching into the dark and rolling storm. I closed the window and was left with the shallow sounds of my room.


    I took three knives from their places and put them under my coat. I grabbed a hand lamp off the shelf and checked the oil in it before putting it on my belt. I lit my pipe and stood in the dark until my eyes adjusted, then I went out the door and passed under the glowing red eyes of the watcher¡¯s pipes. Out on the street the rain had picked up. The sky was darkened by the clouds and without stars or moonlight.


    The Tavern was one I was familiar with though I had never been inside. It was four blocks east at the edge of a textile district. The lantern laws were often ignored in that part of town so when I saw the first patch of dark I unbuttoned my coat and took the lamp out. I had been smoking my pipe upside down and just enough to keep it alight. I lit a spill on the pipe then lit the lamp. I moved the lamps plate to the back so I wouldn¡¯t lose my night sight and let the rain put out the spill before I put it away. There were a few other alehouses on the way with lanterns li,t but they were little more than islands of flickering orange in a sea of solid night. In one dark alley, I saw a huddled group of men, standing in postures that shouted ¡®thief¡¯ to my experienced eyes, their forms vaguely betrayed by a dim light in a window far behind them. They turned to face me as I went by. I looked at them and they didn¡¯t do anything else. I heard them shifting and whispering behind me for a bit but I already knew nothing would come of it. Half a block later I found the tavern.


    It was all wood face and slanted roof stuck between two towering brick workers quarters. Some clothes forgotten on lines fluttered off of them like torn skin. The tavern itself had a single dingy lamp in front of it and I could see the broad shadow of the doorman just below it. A dull sulfur colored light hummed out of the grimy iron grilled windows of the ground floor and silhouetted shifting forms on the glass. There were tables out front where during the day workers crammed in to eat lunch and heckle. Now they were dark and still in the rain with sagging forms thrown over them like corpses. Some of the bodies stirred and mumbled as I walked up. I put the lamp out and the doorman looked me over then opened the door with one arm like a tree trunk. I stepped, still dripping, into the fluttering light and roaring sound.


    There was a low fire in the hearth at the far wall and lamps flickered on all the tables and hung from the beams. It was a well put together crowd, the kind that did all their drinking and roaring for the night sitting down. The few that were out of sorts were either off in corners spilling on themselves or already on the tables outside. The man behind the bar had the figure of a sack of scrap iron standing up all on its own. His face was scared but the eyes were bright and when they saw me he raised a hand and bellowed out.


    ¡°Evening, Welcome.¡±


    I took my hat off- ¡°Evening.¡± - moved to the corner seat, took off my coat, and laid it on the long bench. I had hardly sat down next to it when a serving girl came up and asked me what I¡¯d be having. She was young and stout with the barman¡¯s eyes and the calm of a girl who had seen men broken open for saying the wrong thing to her. I ordered my spiced ale and she left. I had a chance to smell the food, mostly reheated bread and some kind of dull savory remnant. When she came back I ordered bread and whatever they had that was hot. She brought back some old bread with lard and a thick rice stew with the taste of meat, but only a few bones to tell of it. I sucked the marrow out of those first then went to work on the rest. I sat back with my pipe and the ale and read the pamphlet on the war of angels about three times. That took a few hours with only a few shouting arguments from the bar for a distraction. The tavern started to clear out slowly. After another hour of counting raindrops, I was alone with the barkeep and a few muttering bodies in the corners. Most of the lamps had been put out and I was nearly hidden in the darkness.


    The girl came out again and told me in a quiet voice to follow her. We walked behind the bar then through the kitchen and a storeroom to a steep staircase in the corner. There was a hall of small bedrooms on the next floor and she took me to the end of it. She unlocked a slim door I thought would be a broom closet, but opened up to a brick shaft with a ladder in it. She stepped to the side.


    ¡°Go upstairs and sit down. He¡¯ll be up soon.¡±


    I nodded and went up the ladder. Lamplight flickered on a wall above the hatch. She closed the door behind me and I was climbing out of solid darkness.


    The attic was lit by a lamp on a small table. The windows were covered with drapes that looked like they¡¯d been used to birth a foal a thousand years ago. There were crates and small chests scattered along the walls, with a few ruined couches and dressers. In the center of the room, a few high back chairs with just enough cushions to give you the idea surrounded a flat-topped chest that was serving as a coffee table. I sat in one of the chairs and puy my coat down on another. After a while, I heard the hatch open. The ladder creaked as someone come up and closed the hatch.


    It was the barkeep. He was holding a bottle in one hand and had a wide dagger on his hip. His brown hair was back in a dark cloth and he walked up to me as I stood up.


    ¡°I¡¯m Heldar.¡±


    ¡°I need to get into the Complex.¡±


    ¡°You won¡¯t be doing that. You¡¯ll give me what you want to put out, and I''ll make it seen. Understand?¡±


    ¡°Not really. You¡¯re gonna go inside my head?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± He set the bottle of liquor down on the table in front of me.


    ¡°Thanks, but I¡¯d like to go into this thing sober.¡± I said.


    He smiled. ¡°That¡¯s for after.¡±


    He dragged a chair from the side of the table and set it behind the one I had been sitting in.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Our friend said you were looking for someone. What kind of message are you going to send?¡±


    ¡°A memory of a meeting. After I give it to you, what happens to it?¡±


    ¡°I''m going to send it to a tower. Do you know what that means?¡±


    ¡°No. I¡¯m out of my stream here.¡±


    ¡°A tower is someone who can speak to a large number of people. They tie the whole thing together.¡±


    ¡°And they¡¯ll show what you give them to everyone else?¡±


    ¡°Not quite everyone, it doesn¡¯t work like that.¡±


    ¡°Well, how does it work?¡± I felt like I was planning my funeral.


    ¡°No one gets contacted unless they ask, but I have enough, credit, you could say, to get your message seen by people who will know what to do with it.¡±


    The idea of my memory being passed around like a dirty novel made me sick.


    ¡°In your professional opinion, what are the chances this thing gets seen by who I want it to?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s impossible to say unless I know who they are.¡±


    He said it like I had asked him to read tea leaves. I decided to stick to more concrete inquiries.


    ¡°How will I know if they respond, can I come back to you?¡±


    ¡°Yes. You can come around back and knock after hours. If you see anyone else in the alley waiting, it''ll be best to keep walking.¡±


    I took a moment to run through what I knew in my head and tried not to fall into the gaping holes.


    ¡°If they don¡¯t see it, can I have you resend it?¡±


    His face had the stillness that comes from not trying to have an expression. ¡°Once it''s out there it''s out there, and me sending it again won¡¯t do a bit of good. Without getting into too much explanation, I¡¯ll tell you there are people who keep these sorts of messages for others to look up later.¡±


    I stopped myself from asking what the hell that meant.


    ¡°How do we do this?¡±


    ¡°Sit down.¡± He motioned to the chair facing the table. I sat down and watched the lamplight dance on the liquor bottle. I heard him sit down behind me and it occurred to me that Rodgar¡¯s man or not, he could knife me very easily.


    ¡°Take a breath and relax, then turn the lamp down and close your eyes.¡±


    I did it and tried not to think of any reason Rodgar would have to want me killed. I breathed silently for a while and when Heldar spoke again his voice was quieter and had a rumbling quality to it.


    ¡°Relax. Grab the edges of the armrests firmly.¡± They had the unmistakable feel of wood that had been worn smooth by countless squeezing, sweating hands.


    ¡°Now, think about the table you were sitting at downstairs. Imagine yourself sitting there just as you were, but with no one else in the tavern. Can you do that?¡±


    It was a bit of a struggle. I¡¯m not usually the daydreaming type, but eventually, I got it.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°Good. Stay there and don¡¯t think of anything else until I tell you.¡±


    There was a good minute of silence where I pictured myself sitting at the table all alone, taking drinks from an unending ale cup.


    ¡°You are sitting all alone. You reach into your pocket and pull something out. Something you would hate to lose, and something I have never seen you with.¡± He said.


    That ruled my pipe out, so my first thought was of my brother¡¯s sword, but that wouldn¡¯t fit in my pocket. Then again, this wasn¡¯t real, so I imagined myself reaching in and drawing the sword. Its wrapping fell away and I held it there, bare bladed, before me.


    ¡°Do you have it?¡± he said.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°Good, focus on it, but keep the room. Go over every detail of it with your mind, slowly.¡± I struggled to maintain the thought of the room and the sword at the same time, so I imagined myself moving the sword in the lamplight and trying to reflect it across to the bar.


    Then I felt it. It was like the sensation on the ship but far more subtle. The tavern in my head shuddered and small features changed. Things I had not remembered were suddenly there, and things I had misremembered were corrected. That primal, unspeakable fear rose up again, like being watched and smelling death all at once.


    ¡°Focus.¡± He whispered. I did, but now in my mind, I held the sword in front of me as if the tables were going to attack.


    ¡°Ah, it¡¯s a sword, with a basket hilt and a drake pommel?¡± I dug my heels into the carpet, my voice was a weakened gasp.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°Brace yourself.¡± He said. Instead, I ground my teeth so I wouldn¡¯t whimper.


    The tavern solidified. The sword became real. The feeling of sitting in that old attic, grabbing the arms of the chair, fell away as if I had fallen asleep. Then the sword and the tavern fell out of my mind and I was floating in darkness. I tried to open my eyes instinctively but it was no good. I panicked and tried to scream. Nothing happened and Heldar spoke to me.


    ¡°Relax and give me the memory.¡± His voice cut through my mind like a razor and for a moment I thought it was me saying it. I couldn¡¯t feel any part of my body but I knew I wanted to vomit.


    ¡°This won''t get any easier. The faster you get it out the sooner I can let you go.¡±


    I tried to scream and thrash some more but I didn¡¯t have a body that I could feel and my voice was just an idea. I knew I needed to get grounded somehow so I thought about the inn, The outside of it, in the fluttering lamplight that night.


    ¡°Is this what you want me to take?¡± I couldn¡¯t speak so I thought.


    ¡°No, not yet.¡± It echoed, not in the way sound does, but as words do in the mind.


    ¡°Then show me what you want me to take.¡± He said.


    I imagined myself going in the Inn. I walked to the room and opened the door.


    ¡°This room?¡±


    ¡°No!¡±


    I lay on the bed with my back to her and looked out the window. Then I forced out the memory.


    A red bird landed on the ledge outside the window. It chirped and looked around. I felt her raise herself up on her arm to look over at it.


    ¡°Did it wake you?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Yea, loud son of a bitch.¡± I said.


    ¡°Remind me to thank it later.¡±


    She moved her hand under the sheet and I tried to cut off the memory.


    ¡°Go over it again, only what you want me to send.¡± Said Heldar.


    A red bird landed on the ledge outside the window. It chirped and looked around. I felt her raise herself up on her arm to look over at it.


    No. I started again.


    A red bird landed on the ledge outside the window. It chirped and looked around. I felt-


    God dammit!


    A red bird landed on the ledge outside the window. It chirped and looked around. A red bird landed on the ledge outside the window. It chirped and looked around.


    It felt like a weight had been taken off my skull. I floated in the void as the red bird landed on the ledge, sang, then landed again, sang, landed again, and again, and again.


    ¡°I''ve got it.¡± He said.


    The vision shattered into nothing and I felt and saw nothing. Then there was a strange flash, as if a light was turned on in my head, my memory, and my surroundings all at once, and there was that strange sensation of being watched again, but this time I felt like I was watching something too. All this was cut off in a snap and I fell into darkness. Some time passed that I couldn¡¯t measure then the room hit me like a punch.


    I gasped for air and squeezed the chair so hard my knuckles ached. I was hovering above the seat with my heels driven into the ground. I let myself down in a thud. The room spun to a stop and I saw a clay pot on the chest in front of me. I vomited into it then took a gasping drink from the liquor bottle. I sputtered and took another swig, this time spitting into the pot and wiping my mouth on my sleeve. I took another full swig and leaned back. After I caught my breath I looked behind me.


    Heldar was nowhere to be seen. I didn¡¯t have any immediate reaction to this so I drank again. I looked around the room, and on a small table a few feet from me was a bowl of something that looked like food. The table had been against the wall somewhere in the clutter before I had gone under but now it was just far away from me to not be knocked over had I woken up flailing. I shambled over to it. It was bread and cold stew of some kind that had started to film over. It never stood a chance.


    While I was mopping up the last of the soup with the crust, the hatch opened and Heldar came up smoking a fat cigar. He walked up like a pallbearer and looked down at me.


    ¡°Can you walk home?¡±


    ¡°Yea. How long was I out?¡±


    ¡°It''ll be dawn before the hour.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t believe him at first, but when I tried to think back in time I found a lot of dead space.


    ¡°I''ll be going then.¡± I said.


    I stood up and got my coat on and then my hat, which had found its way across the floor. I set the bottle down.


    ¡°Take it with you.¡± He said.


    ¡°Thanks.¡±


    He was looking at me like I was a sick man.


    ¡°I¡¯m fine. I''ll be alright. I''ll come by in a few days to see if you have anything.¡±


    He kept looking at me without saying anything.


    ¡°Is there a problem?¡± I said.


    ¡°Do you remember anything happening after I got the message?¡±


    ¡°When? After the b-¡° He held his finger up to silence me.


    ¡°Yea, about after that.¡±


    ¡°No. Just a flash and then I went out.¡±


    ¡°A flash?¡±


    ¡°Yea. Is that normal?¡±


    ¡°Do you remember anything just after the flash?¡±


    I didn¡¯t like the way he didn¡¯t answer me.


    ¡°No, just the flash then I was out, like I said. Is that a problem?¡±


    He took his time getting his answer out, for all it was worth.


    ¡°No.¡±  It was more of a sound than a word. I nodded and headed to the latch.


    ¡°I''ll be in touch.¡± I said. I could feel him watching me all the way out.


    The tavern below was dark except for two lanterns in a line. I followed them down the hall then saw the door. Outside a light rain was still coming down and the sky was beginning to glow. I walked the whole way home as if I was in the land of the dead. Not a soul on the streets, not even the usual eyes in the alleys. I started to feel that I had never left that tavern and I was fast asleep, but I couldn¡¯t remember ever feeling this ill in a dream.

 Chapter 6: The Night After

    When I got back to the apartment, Sid wasn¡¯t on the door and the slim guy who was snored softly in a chair. I gripped my coat and cat-walked past him. I made it into my room and locked the door before I let the terror take me. That feeling of being watched had never left me and my mind was still reeling from the dull force of having someone else inside it.


    I threw my jacket on the hook and snatched the bottle out of the pocket. I took a deep drink and fought the urge to vomit. I went to the sink and ran some cold water in my hand and threw it on my face. Somehow, I took off my clothes without ever putting the bottle down and got in bed.


    I lay there in the dark and everything rolled like the sea. I took heavy slow breaths with the hope I would fall asleep before the urge to vomit became too much. It was like my mind was trying to break out of my skull, and it used every dark thought it had in its attempt. I focused on the meaningless shapes and images that floated in my eyes and passed into dreaming almost seamlessly.


    I was back outside my childhood home. My brother was there and looked ten years old. Storm clouds faded into the silver dawn horizon. The river had flooded and was flowing right up to my doorstep. All kinds of debris floated on the surface, and I scanned it for any signs of Liana.


    ¡°Why are you looking for her?¡± My brother asked me. I got angry and told him to be quiet. There were corpses all in the water and some looked at me. I had to force myself to look at each of them to make sure they weren¡¯t her.


    In the center of the slowly moving flow of flesh, water, and wood I saw Ethelyn sitting on a table from the caf¨¦ turned upside down. I didn¡¯t want her to see me as a child so I hid behind my brother. She stood up on the table and called for me. I wouldn¡¯t come out. She got more frantic in her yelling and slipped off the table. I screamed and dove into the river after her, falling below the surface. The water was as deep and dark as the Anasian ocean had been when I had fallen overboard. Somewhere in the deep a light flashed and I screamed and woke up.


    There was a dull daylight coming in the edges of the curtains and I heard rain outside. I hit the bottle again and lay back down. I remembered the flash in the dream and a cold terror rose in the back of my skull. I thought of the flash of light I had seen before I woke up at Heldar¡¯s, which I had forgotten until now.


    I had felt a clamoring of voices, a clashing of emotions, then a common confusion. I had gotten the sense in half a second that I was watching someone, then that I was being watched, then that whoever it was demanded something of me. The feeling had stopped just as suddenly as the light had turned to darkness. Now, the memory of the light seemed different, as if I had known it before and had only forgotten.


    I didn¡¯t have the strength to think of what any of it meant, and I knew I had to save everything for whatever tomorrow would bring, so I let my drunkenness carry me off to sleep. The next dream came after hours of empty sleep.


    It was a dim room lit by a strange light that was just less than moonlight. The light came from a stone set in the silver staff of one of the robed men that stood around the wall. The room was made of dark porous stone that shined like it was wet. Set in the walls were alcoves like the ones that hold the dead in the catacombs, but these were trimmed in curtains of gossamer flecked with glittering gems. In the alcoves, mattresses of swelling silk receded into the darkness and on these, in gilded silks with gold crowns and bracelets dangling everywhere, were children. All but one were asleep.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    The robed men were watching one child who was propped up on his elbow looking out to the men like a king to his subjects. He spoke to them and his voice ran through my mind the same way the flash had, like Heldar¡¯s voice had, but it was smooth and I found myself soothed by it. I knew the sounds were of my language, but the words were strange. I knew if I heard them outside the dream I would understand nothing.


    ¡°He is high above Dolthun. It¡¯s already burned. Gelden flies to gather his brother. It¡¯s for nothing. He is laughing. He wants them all gathered.¡±


    The old men flinched at the word ¡°He¡±. The old man in front spoke in a rumble.


    ¡°What did you see in his mind? What of his heart?¡±


    The boy turned away and when he turned back the tears in his eyes glittered brighter than any jewel in the cave. He grimaced.


    ¡°He,¡­¡±


    I felt a hand on mine and I looked over. It was Liana. She was dressed in gossamer, like moonlight flecked with stars, and laying in an alcove. Her eyes pleaded with me and I knew the old men wouldn¡¯t let her leave. I also knew they were distracted at the moment. I grabbed her up in my arms and took off down a corridor. I heard the men yell and ran faster.


    The caves were a maze. I turned at random and heard them yelling all around. Their voices got closer and she held me tighter and whimpered. I felt a rage in me as I ran down the corridor. A light swelled at the end. I sprinted for it and a shadow stepped out into silhouette. In its outline, I saw it was as tall as a man could get and there was a strange motion to its head, as if it was wreathed in writhing snakes. I decided to charge it. I shifted Liana to my back and braced myself to knock it over. A sudden panic gripped me as I feared it would stand firm like a statue. Before I could find out I woke up again.


    I''ve never been one for dwelling on dreams, but I remembered the way it felt to hold Liana and my arms ached. My chest felt cold for her warmth. My neck and face were like fire where she had been just moments ago. I shut my eyes tight and tried to will her back to me. Instead, I got darkness and another fucking dream.


    I was sitting in an office. It was one of those dreams where you¡¯re someone else completely and you don¡¯t remember your real life until you wake up. I was some kind of Cap. That alone should have woke me up but it didn¡¯t. I was sitting across from an older guy who looked like a soldier that refused to age, but let time grey his hair and sprinkle wrinkles in places out of courtesy. He spoke like an axe coming down.


    ¡°It might break you.¡±


    ¡°I thought you said I was the guy for it?¡±


    ¡°You are, but it might break you anyway.¡±


    ¡°I guess that¡¯s for me to worry about, then.¡±


    ¡°As long as you only break after. If you break before it¡¯s all through, you¡¯ll get it from me.¡± He didn¡¯t even smile.


    ¡°Suppose I don''t care too much about that if I¡¯m gonna be broken anyway.¡± I said.


    ¡°I said broken, not dead. Any other questions?¡±


    ¡°Yea, are you sure your guy is good for it?¡±


    ¡°What? He''s not my guy. God damn kid, he belongs to the Spear if he belongs to anyone.¡±


    ¡°You know what I mean. Is he good for it?¡±


    ¡°Didn¡¯t you hear what the fuck I said? Get it in your head what you¡¯re going in for here, or don¡¯t come back in my office!¡±


    ¡°Is that all?¡±


    ¡°Yea. Get the fuck out. ¡®Is he good for it?¡¯ fucking hell.¡±


    I walked out to the hall. I was eager to get on with whatever it was just to finish it and shove it in his face. I packed my pipe and heard a noise down the hall. Liana was walking up to me. She was wrapped in the same cloak she had been wearing in the caves but this version of me didn¡¯t recognize it. This version of me had only known her a little while and didn¡¯t even know she was missing. I put the pipe in the corner of my mouth and smiled in a way I hoped would tell her what was on my mind as I looked through the thin gossamer. She didn¡¯t smile back and hurried closer. She looked like she was going to say something, till something stopped her.


    She looked over my shoulder and screamed without making any noise. I looked that way down the hall. A man was standing there who should¡¯ve died a few thousand years ago when the heroes cleansed the land. He was seven feet tall with eyes like a raptor. His face was wide-eyed and he was smiling like a demon. The more I looked at him the less I could see his features, like he was melting into shadow. I felt Liana move away from me and looked back to see her running down the hallway. I took off after her and I heard him laugh behind me, then I woke up.

 Chapter 7: The Trip

    The light coming through the edges of the curtains was dull orange and I knew I had slept all day. There was only a slight pain in my head now and my body ached more from lack of movement than exhaustion. I rolled out of bed and went to the basin and washed up, then relieved myself in the pot. I put on fresh clothes from the chest then opened the curtains and windows. I stood with my head in the hands-width of space between the pane and the frame. I breathed in the cold air until the last remnants of dreams danced out of my mind and into some kind of darkness. The sun had already set. I really had slept too long and my mind felt drained from all the dreaming.


    I walked into the main room and stepped around the table to open one of the windows. I stopped halfway there.


    ¡°Go ahead, let some light in.¡± The voice came from my reading chair in the corner to my right. I looked that way and only saw black, so I put my back to the window and backed up towards it. I stepped to the side and moved the curtains over fast, hoping to blind whoever it was, then rush them before they could recover. Unfortunately, the guy didn¡¯t even blink. He must have thought of that and been peeking out the window until he heard me get up, or maybe the evening light wasn¡¯t bright enough. Either way, he just sat there.


    He had a face wrinkled by years counted twice and may have been fifty or twenty. His dark oilskin hunters cap and cloak had dripped onto the ground around the chair. He had a crossbow in his hand, single shot, too small to be any serious poundage, but good enough if you weren¡¯t wearing any armor. I wasn¡¯t. Leaning against his leg was a broad-bladed shortsword like the ones that would snake out of a shield wall a hundred years ago, and in some parts of the world still did. Its bare triangular edge glowed orange from the sunlight. I felt like jumping out the window. I should have barred the god damned door last night, of all nights.


    ¡°Anything else I can do to make you feel at home?¡± I said and opened the firebox and lit a slip.


    ¡°You been asking about a girl.¡±


    ¡°I ask about a lot of girls. It helps my chances.¡±


    ¡°So that¡¯s how it''s gonna be?¡± He put the chill in his voice and moved the crossbow just a bit as he spoke.


    ¡°How what¡¯s gonna be?¡±


    ¡°You playing funny.¡±


    ¡°Well, I¡¯m not gonna stammer and sweat if that¡¯s what you mean.¡± I was standing there holding the slip and I realized my pipe was in my jacket on the hook across the room. I doubted he would let me get it.


    ¡°Sit down.¡± He said it like I was a noisy child. I hate rats that get bold when they¡¯ve got a steel edge on someone, and I hate them most when they¡¯re in my home. I tried not to let it show in my voice, tried to guess the fastest way to get to him, if I could spook him into pulling the trigger at the wrong time¡­


    ¡°Oh, thank you for the kind offer, to sit in my own house.¡± I said.


    ¡°It¡¯s my house now.¡± His smile was a yellow one with holes in it, and I heard in his voice that his work made him smile often.


    ¡°Well then, I¡¯ll go. It¡¯s a bad idea to come into a man¡¯s home uninvited, might get killed.¡±


    He didn¡¯t like that and he snarled like a dog. The crossbow wavered a little bit and I tried to think of a way to leap that might set him off. He¡¯d grab that big blade like a maniac and I¡¯d move for the club and buckler.


    ¡°Yea, you¡¯re a real smart guy, got a cute reply for everything huh? So smart you go handing out your address to any school slut that might have doubled up with your girl behind the tavern. Didn¡¯t think any of those girls would give your info to Wrath, eh? Didn''t you know they were giving us everything else?¡±


    He smiled like I was doing a dance for him. I decided I¡¯d take the chance the bolt hit me. I¡¯d taken bolts before from bigger bows and I¡¯d tear him to pieces with my bare hands before the blood loss got to me, big blade or no. He must¡¯ve seen where my mind was going. He whistled and I heard my door open. Two men stepped in. One was a big guy with a scarred face and iron rings on his hands. The other was a shorter guy with brown hair tied in a scarf and a three-sided blade in his hand.


    ¡°Standing out in the hallway? Don¡¯t you know this is your friend¡¯s house?¡± I said.


    ¡°Check him.¡± Said the crossbow guy. The big guy moved one hand like a small dog over me and took out my knife. I looked the smaller guy over again and something clicked. He had brown hair down to his shoulders, black eyes, and looked older than he was in the way all people who lived his kind of life did. Marston. I smiled at him. His eyes grew wide and he white-knuckled the spike in his hand.


    ¡°You¡¯re gonna take a little ride with us.¡± The crossbow guy said before Marston could say what was on his mind. He had tucked the crossbow under his jacket. It looked smaller now that it wasn¡¯t aimed at me and I realized it was just bigger than a hand model.


    ¡°No thanks, I¡¯m supposed to be someplace soon.¡±


    ¡°That wasn¡¯t a suggestion, smart guy. Cut any more wit and I¡¯ll let Kreaton put his rings to work.¡± He nodded to the big guy who patted me towards the door like I was his old nan who had popped in at an odd hour.


    ¡°All right, but I''ll be expected. My friends might get mad.¡± I moved to get my coat off the hook and Marston leveled his spike at me.


    ¡°Leave it.¡± He said.


    ¡°We know your friends and they won¡¯t be interfering with this get together. Rodgar knows better than to put his nose in this thing.¡± The crossbow guy laid on Rodgar¡¯s name as if him knowing who I worked for was supposed to spook me. I was beginning to suspect that besides a lot of iron and a bit of muscle, these guys weren¡¯t working with much. Too bad for me that¡¯s all they needed to get me across town. Anyway, I ignored him all the same and spoke to Marston.


    ¡°It might rain tonight.¡±


    ¡°Then I guess you¡¯ll get wet.¡± He said. I just smiled at him some more and he got madder by the second. The big guy patted me so I went out the doorway. It occurred to me that none of them seemed to be big sprinters, and I could make it down the hall and to the right before crossbow guy got out the doorway and around the others to take a shot. Kreaton must¡¯ve sensed what I had in mind because he laid a big ringed hand on my shoulder as I cleared the doorway. It wasn¡¯t quite as heavy as an iron pig, but it still got the message across.


    ¡°Stay here and keep an eye out. We¡¯ll send someone for you.¡± Crossbow guy muttered to Marston. I didn¡¯t like the idea of him in my house, but the idea of Rodgar popping in for another unexpected visit and finding him inside made it easier to deal with. They shut the door and walked me down the hall. The smoke in the stairwell was the purple of storm clouds at my level and the color of burning coals at the top. The creatures out the doorways watched me like I was the center of a song and dance troupe.


    When we got outside the wine-colored sky was ruffled with clouds in pink and orange and the dark of night had already settled down in the corners and crevices of the alley. The doorman who wasn¡¯t Sid looked down at his feet when I tried to meet his eyes. I would have been mad but I couldn¡¯t help remembering the big plank of iron banded oak that stood lazily next to my door as I had walked out. I hoped the kid had at least been paid off for letting them in.


    Kreaton walked me down the alley with his left hand on my shoulder. His right hand swung freely and he had a big broad boar knife in it that would have made a nice sword for me. Crossbow guy walked behind us and whistled as we approached a carriage. A guy standing next to it tamped out a pipe and got up into the driver''s seat. Another guy standing out in the street walked around and climbed into the cab.  I turned my head to look around the street on the off chance I could catch a familiar face and Kreaton¡¯s big hand shot up from my shoulder to lay on my hair like a helmet. He jerked my head forward and it took a lot for me not to start throwing strikes right there.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    ¡°Eyes front guy. Get in.¡± he said.


    I climbed in and the guy who had gotten in before me pulled me into the seat next to him. Kreaton sat down on the other side of me and crossbow guy sat across from us. He set the crossbow on his lap pointed at me. I thought it was a bit overkill. Kreaton had sheathed his knife and draped his right hand across the back of the seat behind my shoulders with his big ringed hand hanging next to my face. The guy to my right had a three-sided knife in his right hand. You¡¯d have thought I was two orcs riding a drake from all the steel. We stared in silence for a bit as we got moving. The small windows had been covered with a rough fabric and someone¡¯s breath smelled of onions and worse. I was counting blocks in my head by the way the sound outside opened up whenever the buildings gave way to an intersection. I tracked the turns with the mnemonics I had learned almost five years ago. Not that any of this would do any good. They surely didn¡¯t give a shit if I knew where we ended up. After about an hour I probably wouldn¡¯t even be able to spell my own name. But I did it all without meaning to and it would have taken more effort not to do it. After about half an hour of silence, I decided to break the ice down.


    ¡°So what¡¯s this all about friends? Gonna put the hurt on me till I give out the names of all my girlfriends?¡±


    Crossbow guy had flinched when I started talking. The big guy didn¡¯t move and the other guy tensed up.


    ¡°You know how it is, Alany. You¡¯ve run with Rodgar long enough to know where you are in the game.¡± The big guy rumbled like he was explaining that the suns shine.


    ¡°Careful with that name, he might come calling.¡± I said


    ¡°We already said we ain¡¯t worried about him, guy. Try another line.¡± The crossbow guy said.


    ¡°How about this one. I don¡¯t know where I am in this because I don¡¯t know what game you boys are playing. You said I been asking about a girl and that¡¯s true, but I¡¯m working under coin on this one.¡±


    ¡°Ain''t no signature on this, we asked around. You think we didn¡¯t? You running this one solo, and you''re gonna deal with it solo. Rodgar be damned.¡± This was the first I heard out of the guy to my right. He emphasized his speech by pointing his blade.


    ¡°Ask again.¡± I said.


    ¡°Now the begging starts, ha.¡± Said the crossbow guy.


    ¡°Look, don¡¯t take this the wrong way, but I know your crew don¡¯t have the ear of as many people as you¡¯d like, and I say you might wanna ask extra nice on this one, cause the coin I¡¯m moving under rattles around in a lot of pockets.¡±


    Crosbow guy laughed. ¡°Ha, yea, sure smart guy. First, we gotta watch out for Rodgar, and now we gotta be careful cause some captain signed you on. Ain¡¯t no contract friend. All of them are right where the syndicate can read ¡®em and you ain¡¯t on one since the last time you muscled under Rodgar.¡±


    ¡°This one ain¡¯t in the books, and if you knew half as much as you put on you''d know contracts get put behind the curtain all the time.¡± I hadn¡¯t even finished talking when the guy to my right started laughing good and low.


    ¡°Yea, bud, you¡¯re on a black sheet with the syndicate, and I¡¯m a dragon prince. If you was so much as in line for a black sheet, we never would have gotten you out of that piss hole you call a home. Ha ha, the fucking black sheets he says.¡±


    ¡°The black sheets ain¡¯t all cutting down governors and hitting painted men. The job I¡¯m on is personal to someone, and if you can¡¯t put together why that might be after all the loose girls you talked to trying to find me, then-¡°


    Crossbow guy raised his weapon a bit and cut me off.


    ¡°All right, sure smart guy, you¡¯re working a hush job for a painted prince, and it¡¯d be real bad for us if we decide to carve you up, so we should just let you out now with sorrys and kisses, right? Fucking brilliant. Working the black sheets and handing out address cards. I hope the shit you say under the knife is half as funny.¡±


    It had been a few more blocks during all this and we hadn¡¯t crossed a bridge of any size. The carriage had taken two lefts to turn around back when we left my apartment, and I already guessed we were deep in the Stalls now. The light through the flour sack curtains was a dim washed-out orange and dying by the minute. I heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps on the raised wooden sidewalks of the Stalls.


    So far during my little ride, I had learned that crossbow guy was jumpy, the big guy was calm in the way only someone who can lift most of his opponents over his head can be, and the guy to my right hadn¡¯t used his knife much. He moved it too much and enjoyed changing the grip too often. I decided on my next move and controlled my breathing. No matter how it played out, if I didn¡¯t get cut I was probably magic.


    I brought out my best impersonation of a guy who was scared to death and trying not to show it.


    ¡°If you¡¯re eager to cut a guy, then so be it, but I don¡¯t know what you expect to get out of it. I¡¯m a guy on a job. Why don¡¯t you tell me what your game is and maybe we can help each other out?¡±


    ¡°Ha! There it is! Not even there yet and you¡¯re ready to sing? Too bad, smart guy. You shoulda been more helpful at your spot. You''d be snug in bed by now.¡± The crossbow guy spat when he laughed.


    I shifted in my seat to the left and I saw crossbow guy glance at the right door. The guy to my right steadied his grip on his dagger. The big guy didn¡¯t move. He knew he didn¡¯t need to.


    ¡°I don¡¯t mean spill my guts, I just mean there might be a way for both of us to come to an agreement without any blood. We¡¯re both working for someone.¡± I said.


    ¡°I''m not the one who should be concerned about blood.¡± Said the crossbow guy.


    I glanced down at the crossbow then looked away like it was the figure of death trying to get my attention. Crossbow guy noticed this and leveled his weapon at my gut and placed his first two fingers over the trigger bar. It was a simple shooting mechanism, not the trigger system of the modern ratchet bows, and I had heard him swing the safety lever out of place as he sat down. That made things easier.


    ¡°Did Marston mention we knew each other?¡± I said. That did the trick. Crossbow guy''s eyes narrowed and I could feel the guy to my right shift slightly. I only left about half a second after I said it to get their minds working, then I kicked the crossbow to the left with my right leg.


    The guy was jumpy enough that he squeezed the trigger out of instinct and the bolt went into the big guys gut up to the fletching. He grunted and brought his hands together on the bolt. I had ducked right after I kicked so his big arm went just over my head from behind. I rolled into the duck off the seat, across the cab, and slammed my entire body weight into crossbow guy, with my shoulder smashing his head back into the wood of the cab and breaking his nose. I faced the door that had been to my right and braced myself. Knife guy snarled and moved to get in front of it with his blade flashing out at me. The big guy reached out to stop me jumping forward towards it.


    I threw myself backward and slammed out the other door, taking it half off the hinges. The big guy made a last effort to grab at my legs but forgot about the bolt. As he leaned forward he roared and threw himself back against the seat as if something had struck him. I came out almost fully horizontal and crashed into some people on the deck. They cursed and I sprang to my feet.


    We were in the Stalls alright. The towering, clustered, over packed apartments and shop faces pressed in on all sides. A mesh of floating wooden walkways wove through them like a fisherman¡¯s net, running alongside the street and crossing over it at regular intervals. All around lamps swung and flickered in the dying evening. The street was full of cabs and carts, and many drivers had stood straight up upon hearing the commotion. I was standing on the wooden continuous deck that served as a sidewalk down here at the street level. The storefronts and inns were raised up so that people looked down on me out windows and doorways as I ran. The driver of the cab yelled out behind me.


    ¡°Stop him! Sixty stars!¡±


    I saw a few people look my way like dogs wondering if the table food was worth the beating, but I was too fast for them. I heard the driver curse and his voice change as he clattered down from the top of the cab. I ran up the first ramp I came to and got up to the second level. The walkways up here were packed with workers coming home with the dark. I weaved through them and took in the view at the same time to get my bearings. I saw the land rise up on the great slab to the south a few miles away, where wooden buildings gave way to brick towers. The Beros river was half a mile to the east.


    I heard screams and loud curses as the guys behind me cut a path through the crowd with less care than I did. I had to make a breakout fast, or turn and stop them for good. I came to an intersection and glanced down. There was a gap in the foot traffic going across. I glanced back and saw the driver with a spike in his hand and made up my mind. I was sick of knives, especially as didn¡¯t have mine on me. I looked back down and the gap was still clear, thanks to a good number of people looking up at me, so I jumped.


    The people on the ground took a step back and the driver behind me cursed. I hit the ground rolling like I had done a thousand times falling out of ships and jumping out of windows half the world away. It still scared the hell out of me and I took a beating from the dirt.


    When I was on my feet I took off to the right. I heard the clatter of the two guys scrambling on the planks above trying to find the nearest ramp down. I ran and bounced through the cabs on the streets and veered left. I heard some yelling behind me to the right that told me they had made it down but I was already turning left at the first street. I hugged the walls and turned left again down an alley. I ran halfway down it until I saw a doorway and pressed myself inside of it. I heard the shouts in the street grow louder and closer. Then they got quieter and farther away. I stepped out and jogged the rest of the way down the alley. I moved onto the sidewalk and into the flow of foot traffic headed south.


    I avoided the lamplight as best I could and wiped the mud off my face and clothes. I quickened my pace when I heard shouts a street over. After a minute I stopped hearing them and slowed down again. I got to the end of the block and saw the knife guy pass under a lamp across the street. I didn¡¯t see the driver with him, they must have split up. I started walking like a guy who had done twelve hours of good honest work and was heading home to remind his wife what flesh was for. I crossed the street and passed within twenty paces of him and kept on going. An hour later I was back in my neighborhood.

 Chapter 8: A Murder

    I knew they might head back to my apartment and wait for me there, but it was just as likely they wouldn¡¯t, especially with most of their muscle wounded and the surprise gone. I thought about sleeping somewhere in the street, or tying to get a hold of Rodgar, but the idea fell flat. If they were their waiting for me, Id see them before they saw me, and I didn¡¯t feel like owing Rodgar any more than I had to. Besides, I had been in some tougher spots in the war, and maybe I was itching for a fight.


    I made my way down the alley of the block across the street. Lamplight came out of the windows above, danced in puddles and died on the ground. I avoided it and went to the building directly across from my apartment. It was decree housing and of course, it didn¡¯t have a doorman. It was the reason the other buildings on the block had one. Instead, there was a group of guys out the doorway around a dim lamp talking in punching syllables that rattled down the alley. One noticed me as I walked up. He looked at me and was probably waiting for me to walk up to the door, but I hopped up on a windowsill and climbed up to the window of the first landing in the stairwell. The window was open because it didn¡¯t exist. The framed glass panels had long since been hauled off and sold. I pulled myself in as the guys below cracked jokes.


    Down the hall, the pipe smoke was almost thicker than the smell. There were at least two people in front of every door in all manners of repose, most of the unconscious variety, and the ones that looked my way didn¡¯t seem too surprised to see a man climbing in the window. There were no lamps to speak of and I moved around the edge of the moonlit stairwell. Someone was groaning somewhere and a chorus of mumbles rose to the skylight. I moved down the hall past the stairwell towards the gaping window frame at the end of it. When I was halfway down the hall, a door opened and a pockmark faced woman leaned out with greasy light to her back and grunted at me.


    ¡°Huh?!¡±


    I kept walking and she let out a groan that turned into a snarl and slammed the door. I came up to the side of the window and looked out across the street at my apartment.


    There was no one on the street and no parked cabs. The lamp in front of the bared shopfront flickered on its post. I looked down the street and waited. After a while, I changed sides and watched again. I didn¡¯t see anything to make me feel there was anyone waiting, for all that was worth. I went back to the stairwell and down and out of the building. I looked up and down the deep dark of the street as I crossed, but saw nothing. When I got in the alley, I stopped and stood a moment then creeped back out and looked down the street. I didn¡¯t see anyone moving so I went back down to the door.


    The doorman was still there. He watched me take a few steps before he took off down the alley and disappeared into the dark. That made me feel a bit better.


    I went in and up the stairs. There was absolutely no one outside the doors and that struck me immediately. If I had a knife on me I would have taken it out. Instead, I cat walked up to my door and stopped before I got between it and the light from the window.


    I knew Marsten must still be inside. I wrapped my hand in my tunic and tried the latch. It moved freely. I pressed on the door and It gave. No lock and no bar. Maybe he hadn¡¯t seen it, or hadn¡¯t felt the need to bother. I waited a moment to gather myself and focus my thoughts on the layout of the room.


    I swung the door open suddenly and stepped in. My hand was behind my shelf and out with the club before the wind from the door had stilled. There was no one in the front room that I could see. I shut the door silently behind me and waited a bit. I didn¡¯t hear anything from the other room so I moved towards it and stopped. My curtain was torn down off the door. I backed up to the kitchen and lit a slip in my free hand without taking my eyes off the bed. I bent to light the lamp on the low table. It wasn¡¯t there.


    The table had been moved around and the lamp was on the ground. The room around me revealed its changes like a killer stepping out hiding. A chair shifted, things knocked off shelves and kicked across the floor. All of it was sweeping towards the dark doorway. I could taste the bitter fear on my tongue.


    I picked up the lamp and lit it. The light went into the doorway and died. I shook out the slip moved towards the dark room until the lamp lit up a form on my bed.


    She was naked and white with her arms half crossed over her chest. Her legs were sprawled apart, with one hanging off the mat and the other bent up under the blanket. She was looking past me and her mouth hung open just enough to show her teeth. Her grey eyes were ghosts of the shining things they had been at the caf¨¦. The lamp lit her up like a piece of furniture so I moved it quickly and set it on the shelf.


    I parted the curtain and kneeled beside her. When my eyes adjusted to the dim light I looked her over. There were bruises on her face and her neck was dark where she had been strangled. Blood from a gash on her hairline had flowed down her face and stained the matt. He probably hit her with something metal, but I never found it.


    There were no other wounds that I could see. I brought the lamp closer and looked at her in the light until the sick feeling passed. I set the lamp on the floor and moved her and the blanket around while I looked over the mattress. There had been no bag in the front room and there was nothing in here. I had hoped for a small hand purse, something over hers that was left, though I don¡¯t know why. I never found her clothes either. I picked the lamp up and held it over her just to be sure. She was still staring through the doorway. I covered her with the blanket and went back to the front room.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    She must have come to give me a name. I couldn¡¯t think of any other reason she would come this late, unless she just didn¡¯t want to be seen heading to the northside by day.


    The door caught my eye. I rushed to it and set the lamp down on a shelf. I took the thick oak and iron plank from behind the bookcase and slid it into the eyes. I sighed and afterwards there was no sound in a million miles.


    I sat down on the couch. Ethelyn smiled in my head and my throat tried to push my brain out the top of my skull. I squeezed my eyes tight until it passed. I made myself think of her as a body. A body that could not stay in my apartment.


    The only person I knew to call was Rodgar. He would be at home and I had no idea where that was or how to reach him there. I would have to go to Heldar¡¯s place and see if he knew anyone who could get to him at this hour. It would have to be before dawn. Someone would have to get rid of it fast.


    I looked back through the doorway. That girl had a family somewhere. She had people who would walk in her procession and watch her candles. She wasn¡¯t the kind to get chopped up and thrown in the sewers and I wasn¡¯t the kind to let it happen. I had to get her to her family and the best way to do that was to get her to the state.


    I took a sheet of paper out of a notebook on the table, moved the top panel off the table and took a pen and ink bottle out. I wrote slowly:


    Ethelyn


    Student at the University of Throne


    Renflower street


    Killed by a man named Marston


    My vision went blurry and I looked up to the ceiling and blinked the tears away. I looked back through the doorway. If I went to the police myself they would take me in for fuck knows how long. I thought about just carrying her down into the common room and telling Martela I had found her there, but I''d still have to talk to the caps. It crossed my mind to leave her out in the alley for someone else to find. That only made me imagine her laying out there all alone and I wanted to jump out the window and dash my brains against the stones just for thinking it.


    She would sleep, lay, in my bed tonight. It was the least I could do. In the morning I would pack up everything I needed and leave the note for the police. They could confiscate everything I have here and sell it for the family.


    Sure, a few coins worth of old junk from a dead beat, traded for a daughter with all the promise in the world snuffed out by a monster she never should have had to see more than once. I was, I am, an utter worthless wretch.


    The feeling of being about to vomit struck me and I had to move. I picked up the slip and lit the other lamps and started to pack. I put my daggers in my coat and took all my money from its various hiding places and put it in the leather belt purse. I put some clothes in my old shoulder bag. One of the shirts showed through the bullet hole in the leather, a hole from the shot that had pierced my breastplate and barely missed my guts.


    ¡°Should have got me.¡± I said to no one. I filled my canteen from the tap and put some stale bread in the bag. Then I stood in the center of the room. The lamplight flickered across all the still things and moved my shadow on the ground. I hated the light for it. I felt that my shadow shouldn¡¯t be moving. I looked at her under my blanket. It was frayed at the edges and I realized I hadn¡¯t washed it in weeks. I cried like a child for a bit then put out all the lamps and lay down on the couch with my oilskin for a blanket and my bag at my side. Despite my long sleep the night before, I hadn¡¯t been this tired since the war. Sleep was instant.


    I carried her in my arms and she looked up at me, her grey eyes flashing again. I was taking her to a grave, the best one I could find, with blankets of silk and diamonds. They were looking for me and I had already decided that they could take me when I had her buried. They had sensed this and agreed to it. They would arrest me and kill me after. I was very clever though, and I had decided to lay her down in the Imperial catacombs, those secret ones unseen by anyone, in the complex under the great tower. They raged at this but stayed in the edges of my vision, dark armored shadows with bloody angry faces and weapons with blades of fire.


    I carried her down a street with people on all sides. They yelled as I ran, over the bridge, closer and closer to the great tower with its perfect plane of shadow facing me. I ran up the great steps and the solid stone doors groaned open. Inside was a shaded courtyard of old gnarled trees, which I knew had been planted by the hand of the first emperor. The vines that grew everywhere were covered in thorns the size of daggers. As I ran up another wide rising mass of steps, the vines reached for me, but I was too fast for them. I ran up to the great tower and a door opened seamlessly from its stone face. As I moved towards it a dragon roared above and I could feel it jump off the top of the tower and come down for me.


    I ran with the fear burning me like fire and leaped through the doorway. Inside there was only darkness. As I fell through it, I wrapped myself around her. I stopped falling and light poured in from crystals set in the walls. The ceiling was so high that clouds formed and a light rain fell. There were rows of strange carved blocks all around. I ran down the open way between the rows until I found an open slot in one of the blocks. I knew this was where the greatest of the dead were buried. I lifted her body and now it was covered in gold and silks glittering with gems. I set her in the slot on a bed made of the pelt of an animal I had never seen before. When I looked at her face, I realized it was Liana. She looked at me as if she had never seen me before then the face of the stone slid over the opening and shut her in.


    I heard the armored shadows laughing as I beat my fists against the stone. I yelled her name over and over. My hands were beaten down to the bone and my flesh hung off them like the sleeves of a priest. I reached out with my mind, hoping that she would feel my longing through the void, and suddenly I had the sensation of being watched. I became hysterical with fear. The beating on the door woke me.

 Chapter 9: The Caps

    ¡°Mr. Darron! This is the Imperial Police, with cause! Open the door and step out unarmed!¡± I sat up in the dark. Throne is an Imperial city, meaning its policed by the purple guard, not any regional force, so the guys outside my door had probably served in tours on two continents, and kicked in doors like they were eating breakfast. I stood up and grabbed my pack while going over the layout of the room in my mind. I could see Ethelyn on the bed and thought about letting them take me, then I remembered Liana.


    ¡°Huh? What? I paid my taxes! What is this?¡± I slurred loudly as I slipped my boots on and stomped towards the door. The moment I was done yelling I cat walked towards the window.


    ¡°Open the door, empty-handed. You have ten seconds before we break it down!¡±


    It would take them another ten to get past the bar. I made it to the bookcase near the window and pulled a coil of rope out of the back of it. I had tied it behind the bookcases to a support beam through a hole I had cut in the brick when I first moved in. It¡¯s called a burglar¡¯s noose on the streets, to give you an idea of how often it worked. I didn¡¯t have much of a choice. I heard the unmistakable sound of an Imperial bow being ratcheted back. They always had one guy do that because the sound makes the smaller fish shit their pants. For me, it was just nostalgic. They might as well have sung a lullaby at the door.


    ¡°You¡¯ve got 5 seconds!¡± I was out the window in three. It was raining and lightning flashed somewhere out in the city as I slid down the rope. I heard a crash from inside that meant the bar hadn¡¯t held as long as I¡¯d hoped. I all but fell down the rest of the way, burning the leather on my gloves, and knowing that another team of purple boys was probably waiting at the bottom with big smiles and loaded bows.


    I dropped the last fifteen feet or so and rolled. There was no second team. It seemed that the guard had been tipped off by one of Marston¡¯s crew, hadn¡¯t had time to find out anything about me, and had expected a simple smack and sack. I took off into the plot behind the building and heard the first smack of a bow. I dodged to the left and the bolt skidded off the ground ahead of me. The guard started yelling down into the street and I heard him ratchet back the arm even through the noise of the rain.


    In front of me was a wall and a gate that was chained up after hours. Behind the wall was the slim alley that ran between the two rows of buildings on the block. I put my foot in the gate and jumped up to grab the top of the wall above me. I started to pull myself up over it and heard the bow smack again and the bolt hit something concrete in the alley. I threw myself over and landed on the other side.


    Looking back through the gate I saw figures come out into the lamplight outside the apartment doorway. I dropped down and ran to my left. I heard some more shouting from my window as the gate behind me clanged with the sound of metal hitting metal. I stayed close to the alley wall until I was far enough to be out of sight of the bowman, then I ran down the darkness in the center of the alley. All of the buildings had lamps on their back doors, but the orange light died just outside the gateways in the wall, and even there was beaten down by the rain.


    I tripped once and skinned my wrist, and the next time I fell I thought I cracked my shoulder in half, but I kept running. When the high darkness of the buildings to my left gave way to starlight, I stopped and found the gate.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    I looked back down the alley and lightning flashed like a blessing. I saw three forms moving fast and low in bow stances, looking into the lamplit gateways as they passed, the metal arms on their weapons reflecting the white of the lightning and I remembered demons with weapons of fire. When the lightning was gone, it was pitch black again and I climbed over the wall.


    There was no lamp on the other side. The building had burned months ago. All that was there now were gaping stone walls and some beggars tents. I moved through the alley on the side of it as silent as I could. Debris had clogged the drains and there was standing water and piles of rubble everywhere, but I moved fast. I had practiced this path every night I found sleep running away from me, which was often. I could have done it with my eyes closed, and in this weather, at this time of night, I might as well have.


    As I got to the street I heard a shout far behind me. The guards had probably seen the bums in their tents and thought I had tried a bit of disguise. I stepped out onto the footpath and looked around. The lamps down the street lit up the shop fronts with wavering orange light, but the center of the street was black rain. There wasn¡¯t a cab in sight. I ran down the dark street for as far as my lungs could take me, which was about a block and a half. I slowed to a walk and caught my breath before I ran off and on for another few blocks until I got to the docks district and sweet mother darkness.


    Lamp laws were a myth here. The amount of oil it would take to light these massive warehouse fronts made it cheaper just to pay the tickets when they came. They didn¡¯t need orange light to frighten off criminals here anyway. They had the Syndicate. If that wasn¡¯t enough, then any lamp besides hanging the suns themselves out front sure as hell wouldn¡¯t be. I wasn¡¯t protected by the Syndicate, so I walked quietly and kept my knife naked, guiding myself mainly by sound and the silhouettes of buildings that pressed against the almost glowing sky.


    I had just got to the edge of the bridge, which hung over the river like a black bow, when a horse and rider rode out of the darkness and stopped next to me.  A dim hooded lamp hung at his knee. I put my knife up and faced him. He had bright red tassels hanging off the reins, a symbol as old as the tower itself.


    ¡°Late night to be walking the docks. Where are you headed?¡±


    ¡°The wife caught me whoring so I¡¯m headed to the temples to sleep with the angels.¡± I said.


    ¡°Don¡¯t go fuckin those old girls now. Wife won''t like that either.¡± I laughed hard. Jokes from Syndicate guys were always the funniest jokes you ever heard, especially when you walked the docks on a dark night without your name on the books.


    ¡°That I won¡¯t sir.¡± I said.


    ¡°All right, get lost.¡±


    ¡°My life in your hands.¡±


    ¡°My hands a shelter.¡±


    I bowed and hurried away. I always wondered how they get those rites out of their mouths without choking on them.


    The rain was still coming down and I stepped carefully on the slick stones of the bridge. I looked back often, and when I had gotten halfway across I saw the dull glow of a lamp swinging in the dark behind me. The way it moved I knew it was on a carriage, and sure enough, a second one joined it as the carriage turned on the bridge and faced me, the light from its lamps falling on the walkways on either side of the bridge as it headed up.


    I knew I couldn¡¯t outrun it. The horses were moving at a brisk trot. I moved to the edge of the bridge and pressed my chest on the thick barrier. I reached down and the outside face was smooth brick. The black water rushed below me, turning a dead grey as it frothed around the supports. The hoofbeats got louder.


    I threw myself over and hung onto the edge of the brick by my hands. I managed to get one foot wedged somewhat in the mortar for whatever that was worth. By the time the light glowed above me my forearms already burned. I counted to ten after it passed then pulled myself up. My right hand slipped as I threw myself over and I slammed my chest on the barrier and landed on my knees on the sidewalk. The lights were fading into the distance and I waited until they disappeared past the rise of the bridge and I had found the wind that had been knocked out of me, then I moved fast.

 Chapter 10: The Cathedral

    I saw the dark masses of the temples and mausoleums as I came down the bridge. Lamp light was scant, but there were splashes of color in the wet darkness where candlelight pressed out of the colored glass windows. I moved low across the street and scaled a wall to come down in a graveyard. Lightning struck one of the ancient temple towers and the sound of the thunder rattled off the walls.


    I headed through the graveyard towards the looming cathedral on its far side, taking paths I found in silver flashes, that existed the rest of the time only in memory. The short headstones around me were draped in dense foliage, and it grabbed my feet as I passed them in the darkness. There were trees everywhere, dripping rain and flicking it out when the wind hit them. Their branches wove sideways above the ground, like black rivers gathering still darkness in their coils. The trees got larger and wider as I got closer to the cathedral. These were great oaks, clan trees planted over the grave of a patriarch and his kin. I wondered what tree they would bury her under, or if they would scatter her ashes to the river.


    The branches gave way to odd spaces of open sky where rain fell through onto flat concrete slabs, the grave markers of trees cut down to signify a lineage purged in the revolution. I stepped over a slab that was wide enough for two carriages to cross, its surface still as smooth as the day it was poured. The sky flashed in a blue glow and the cathedral lit up in front of me.


    I swung my pack down and took the knives off my body and placed them inside. I knew the caps would ask the sages and elders about anyone who had come looking for sanctuary, but I also knew the clerics liked giving the caps info about as much as they liked giving their lands up to the state in the first place. The caps knew this, so they would just send some plainclothes guys in to search the sanctuaries themselves. I would have to be gone by then.


    I reached inside the recessed square in the stone next to the door and found the string. I pulled lightly and could hear the bell through the door and just over the noise of the storm.


    Rainwater talked on its way down the stone gutters that had listened for centuries. All around the sounds were made of water and shaped like leaves and stone. Thunder off in the distance reminded me of the expanse of the city, and light smeared on the high branches by lightning miles away reminded me that death was in the air. It felt like the world was closing in around me, and I was almost in the mood to let it have me.


    The locks and latches scraped behind the door and I bowed my head in preparation. Warm air rolled out at me as the door opened and I felt just how cold I was. There was a bit of lamplight behind the woman and she held a small candle in a colored glass cup in her hand.


    ¡°What do you need, child?¡± her voice was warmer than the indoor air.


    ¡°Shelter, lady. I have lost my home for want of money.¡±


    ¡°Are you armed, child?¡±


    ¡°No, lady.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s dangerous to walk here unarmed. There have been robberies right up to the walls.¡± Her words were slightly taunting, in a motherly sort of way.¡±If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    ¡°Pray, allow me within the walls then, gentle mother.¡±


    A smile rippled under her face.


    ¡°Come in, child.¡±


    I did and stood in a small entry room. It was cramped and there was thick straw on the floor, cloaks on hooks and walking sticks and a few garden tools on the walls over a few large chests in a line. The woman pointed to one of them as I took my boots off.


    ¡°If you have any weapons you forgot about you can store them in here.¡±


    Not like a knife would do me much good if the caps found me anyway. I set my bag inside one and we went into the main apartment.


    The air still had fragments of incense that hadn¡¯t been smothered by the wood smoke from the hearth. The ceiling was high and the loft above fell back into shadow. There were simple chairs and tables for reading and the whole room was sparsely decorated but the intricate stonework cut sharp shadows everywhere.


    The woman opened a door on the far side of the room. Inside was just a bed and a small nightstand with a platter of splattered candles. She went in and lit one from a lamp she had picked up in the larger room then turned to me.


    ¡°I''ll bring you some water. Have you eaten?¡±


    ¡°Yes, mother. I''ll sleep now, water can wait till morning, good night.¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°Dark dreams come when you sleep in a dry room.¡± She brought in a pitcher and cup from the main room, filled the cup and left both on the table.


    ¡°Sleep safely, child.¡± She kissed my cheek and floated out. The door seemed to close itself out of respect. I had thought the ¡°sleep safely¡± nightly blessing odd when I was a child (what trouble could I get into while sleeping?) but now it seemed a solemn prayer. I put my jacket on the floor, got in bed and was about to pinch the candle out when old superstition got the better of me. I drank the cup of water and poured another before putting the candle out and trying to let sleep take me.


    It took its time. Ethelyn¡¯s face flashed before me, alive, then dead. She had been bringing me a name, a name I hadn¡¯t pressed her hard enough for at the caf¨¦. Marston saw her at the door and that was it. I thought about the things he did to her and how it would feel to peel his skin off. I had to tear my mind away and think about the sound of the rain outside. The sounds slithered under my focus until I pressed my mind against them. Eventually, I fell asleep.


    I was walking down the streets of Throne looking for Liana. I knew I was being hunted. I could feel someone watching me but every time I looked there was no one but people and nothing but the same old buildings. The thing watching me knew my thoughts and was angry at me. It wanted me to find Liana so it could get to her. I pretended I was looking for Ethelyn instead but it didn¡¯t work. The thing in my head showed me her dead face and laughed.


    I ran and the laughter died away. I looked around and found I was in a different part of town and the suns were setting. It was a strange neighborhood, where buildings of all kinds huddled at the street faces. Ancient manors, republican towers, feudal walled homes. Something flew by me, a flash of red. I followed it and it led me to the inn. I watched it fly up and land on the edge of the window and chirp. I knew Liana was there.


    I went inside and up the stairs. There were people, but when I looked at their faces the features fell away as if my memory of them was being destroyed even as it was created. I stopped at the door and I knew it was different.


    It was brighter than it should have been and didn¡¯t match the others in the hall. It looked like the door to the bedroom I shared with my brother as a child. I felt the knob in my hand and something in how the metal felt let me realize I was dreaming. I knew that on the other side of the door was something outside the dream.


    The Complex. Going through the door would open me up to a kind of danger I couldn¡¯t imagine or understand, but I was sick of moving blind. I remembered, hazily, the events of the days before. I had nothing to go on. I was a fugitive. If the complex took my mind so be it. I opened the door.

 Chapter 11: The Complex

    The room was real. It was real in the way that some objects or brief moments can be in dreams, but it was an entire room of realness and it didn¡¯t waver at all. I felt that something outside of me was stopping me from waking.


    The room was as it had been that night, but Liana wasn¡¯t there. The bird sat on the windowsill looking at me. Outside it was night. The faces of the buildings were lit up by lamps of unnatural brightness and color. The skyline was like Throne¡¯s built upon with impossible architecture. Towers stretched into the sky, balconies floated without support, and there were things flying through the air. I realized they were people. Voices came in from the door behind me.


    ¡°Who are you?¡± ¡°What¡¯s with the bird?¡± ¡°Are you looking for someone?¡± ¡°I felt your sadness in the memory, you didn¡¯t clean it very well.¡± ¡°A baby, a new one, reaching out blindly. We eat the young and the weak, fool! Why have you..¡± ¡°Are you with the Emperor? Fuck you!¡± ¡°It¡¯s a girl, isn¡¯t it, it''s always a girl.¡±


    Each voice scraped off my mind like lashes from a whip. Some probed deeper.


    ¡°When were you here? I think I know that Inn. Remember! What day were you here, how long ago?¡± This voice pried my memories up to the surface and I thought of Liana¡¯s legs as they had been in the bed before I caught myself and remembered her body with Ethelyn¡¯s face instead. Her dead face.


    ¡°Ah, you¡¯ve been a bad boy!¡± ¡°Sick fuck! Who are you? I¡¯ll find you!¡±


    The voices prodded and I pushed them out. I focused my thoughts on the sound of rain. It wasn¡¯t raining out the window and I heard it from far away. The voices stopped. I was scared to death. I backed away from the door and sat down on the bed.


    So, this was the complex? No, just part of it. I could sense in everything around me that I was on the edge of something. Beyond the door where the voices came from, I knew there was more, like hearing pebbles falling on the wooden lid of a deep well.


    I thought of her being there, somehow, listening to voices, or speaking to other listeners. Heldar had said something about messages being passed around. If I said something to whatever was behind the door, would she hear it? I stopped myself from thinking of her. It felt like carving up my brain. I knew I couldn¡¯t speak her name, or her face, I couldn¡¯t let them know that I was looking for her. The bird chirped behind me. I got up and moved to the door.


    As I got closer I thought about the voices and that was enough to bring them on. Just whispers at the edge of hearing. I focused my mind on the door and away from them. They stayed just whispers. I put my hand on the knob and slowly opened the door.  More voices flooded in but they didn¡¯t scrape my mind like the others. They seemed like echoes.


    ¡°Four leaves in the cat''s paw.¡± ¡°Thirty days, nine points, another keg. This one half full.¡± ¡°Vulture, my friend wants the mail in his soup. Vulture, my friend¡­¡± And others of the same kind. I pulled the door the rest of the way. There was a swirl of mindless color. It reacted to me looking at it. Wherever I directed my gaze the blurry light, which seemed to come through a foggy glass, solidified and clarified into a recognizable shape. They were not the images I had expected.


    An empty park bench, a naked woman in a mask, a specific amount of coins arranged on a marble slab, two children ice skating. The images became too much and I looked away from the doorway.


    I had no way to make sense out of anything. I felt that the place behind the door was open to me and I had to stop myself from thinking anything when I looked at it, or else I was sure my thoughts would pour out and join those other images where anyone could see them.


    Something tugged at my mind and drew me to look through the door. Fear cut through me. My mind went silent. I saw only one image. It was Ethelyn¡¯s dead face, floating, just as it had been when I put it on Liana''s body, but now it was alone. Something tugged on my brain and I heard a voice.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    ¡°How?¡±


    I thought of Marsten without meaning to, then I thought of her body lying on my matt, then in a flash of fear I focused on the rain, only the rain, and drowned out any other thoughts.


    The two figures floated in the doorway now, Marsten, as he had been in my room, and Ethelyn as she was on the bed. The rain fell on the far away windowpane and I marked every drop.


    ¡°Is this you?¡± The voice was undoubtedly female, but not Liana. The phantoms in the doorway faded away and I saw the window as it had been that morning, with the red bird landing and chirping, landing and chirping, landing and chirping.


    I thought of the rain on the windowpane, the rain on the windowpane.


    ¡°It''s only me listening now, I blocked the others out.¡±


    The rain fell down the windowpane and was warm and smelled of pipe smoke.


    ¡°That¡¯s ok, I know you¡¯re watching. You should be glad no one else found you first. I want to help you. I know what you want. Here.¡±


    Through the door, I saw a temple, the church of the broken spire. It moved towards me as if I was walking up to it, and the sensation of walking filled me. I focused on its form to keep my mind from remembering where I had gone to sleep tonight.


    ¡°Now watch.¡±


    The rain had let up and I knew it was tomorrow. I walked through the tall wooden doors, stood open for the morning, into the arched body of the church. I went to the left and took a votive candle from the rack. I lit it on one of the others and walked down the left side of the church, then went left again to the west wing and through the doors to the crypt entrance, down the stone staircase past two landings to the candlelit room with its wide arches and stone blocks everywhere. The nameplates glittered like dragon scales dropped in dust.


    I walked to the back and through one of the doorways to the dead mazes, a right, then a left, then I stopped in the far back where my candle was the only light. I was shown a recess, like countless others in the mazes, but this one with no shrouded corpse inside, just empty stone fading to solid black. I felt myself blow the candle out and lay down in it, completely blind. I slithered towards the back of it in the darkness. I felt out with my hand and where the stone wall should be, I felt wood. I swung the wooden door up and rolled out of the recess to drop down to the floor on the other side. The wooden door swung back silently behind me.


    I felt my hands reach down and find a lamp and striker left on the floor. With the lamp lit, I found myself in a slim passage cut into stone. I moved down it and when I came to the end, the passage zig zagged abruptly. I came out in a sewer tunnel probably centuries old with a wide, flat-arched shape. I moved down the walkway at the edge of the water until it dropped down a shaft in a drastic waterfall.


    I went down with my feet finding stairs and my hands finding holds hidden by the spray. When I got to the bottom, I stepped quickly out through the edge of the waterfall with my jacket glistening and my torch sputtering.


    It was a great cavern with a river flowing through it like liquid obsidian. My torchlight barely reached to the other side, where sheer rocks were riddled with spots of solid blackness in the shapes of doors, cave mouths, and things that might have been windows. The roof, at least three stories above me, reflected my torchlight in odd patterns.


    I moved to the edge of the river and climbed aboard a raft that was barely large enough to kneel on but took my weight anyway. I moved down the great river until my lamplight shined off something metal stuck in the sheer rocks on the edge of the water, across the river. I paddled towards it and saw it was a polished copper plate. I reached down in the water and grabbed a chain just below the surface, using it to pull myself to the edge. I climbed a set of slim stone steps cut into the rock until I reached a ledge with a thin crevice as tall as a man. It seemed too slim for me to use, but I moved into it sideways and I saw it was zig-zagged like the other passage I had taken, surely to disguise its entrance.


    Down another winding stone passage I found myself in a long hallway. I moved down the hall until I came to a braced wooden door. I knocked and a slit opened and eyes watched me and I was let inside. The vision ended and I was staring into solid darkness.


    ¡°Tomorrow. Come to me.¡± I was standing again before the door, now holding nothing but shadow. I could only think of one thing to say.


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Because I love her.¡± Then suddenly I knew she was no longer watching, the way you know things in dreams that you can''t explain. I shut the door and stepped back. I knew, again with the dream sense, that I could wake up if I willed it. I did.

 Chapter 12: Morning

    I felt an expanse of dreamless sleep between the dream and the morning and the slim window was lavender with early dawn.  My first thought was the path shown to me the night before. It unrolled from memory like water flowing downhill. My next thought was that Ethelyn wouldn¡¯t see the suns rise today.


    Whoever the voice was, they were my only lead. I was almost certain that if I did find my way to some secret underground hideout, I wouldn¡¯t be coming out. I had nothing to offer in this game. They had no reason to keep me around but they might have a reason to get rid of me. It wasn¡¯t that I was afraid to die, at least not enough to keep me from going. It was more that I was afraid this would be a dead end. If I got put out without finding Liana, then Ethelyn would have died for nothing. I thought of her in the caf¨¦, afraid and wanting to help. I thought of her on my bed, still and cold. I was tired of thinking of her and felt I didn¡¯t deserve to.


    I threw myself off the bed, grabbed my hat and put on my jacket and boots. I went through the main room to the entry room and took my bag from the chest. I placed my blades on myself and slung the bag over my shoulder. I went out the door and through the garden along the wall of the cathedral. Light shot down in streams through the great oaks and the glass windows lit up in reversed images. The lady of light stood to the left of the lord of night, the first emperor held his staff in his left hand, but the falling night still breathed white-hot fire down the center of its frame. The ground pushed up the scent of wet earth as I walked, and I thought of that dark cavern deep below.


    I found the gate in the far wall open and moved out to the street. It was already getting crowded with people on their way to Unsana mass. At Candle Way, I headed west down the wide cobblestone road fronted by holy gardens, shrines and grave markers. Incense smoke drifted out of the open doors and gazebos and got swept up in the traffic. The towering form of the Church came into view and its fractured tower gestured at the pink sky. The smoke-colored granite was flush with the dawn light it had been drinking all morning.


    Inside, the expected crowd was already in their normal places, the old people sitting at the icons and images along the walls, lighting candles in the alcoves or huddled before the pool at the base of the altar, their thinning hair lit up by the skylight above. The few young people, all with the same look. Dreamy artist types, lounging in pews or on the windowsills, sketching the flying beams and glowing glass images.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I took a candle off the rack and made my way through the church to the crypt. A strange feeling crept into my mind, like a different kind of memory. I went down just as I had in the dream and noticed that small things were different.


    There were mourners in the first level of the crypt with candles of their own. The third level had a smell to it that could never have been found in a dream, and the air was stagnant and heavy. I found the empty alcove in the same space, though it seemed darker now.


    I blew out the candle and climbed inside and felt a large bug of some kind flutter over my chest, then something else moved over my leg. I slithered through the alcove and dust floated up in my face. When I lit the lamp in the tunnel, rats and insects and other flying things flashed away from the light. The water was higher than it had been in the dream and I almost lost my footing next to the waterfall. The smell of the water was another thing no dream could have carried.


    The chamber of the river, however, was exactly as I had seen it the night before. The only difference was the feeling of it. In the dream, I had felt secure, like watching a battle from far away, but as I floated on that poor excuse for a raft, on a small patch of flickering light in a void of almost solid darkness, the deep roaring water and the fractured ancient ceiling overwhelmed me with their presence.


    This was no hand-dug sewer, but an ancient vein of the great river itself, widened and formed by Eaman mages thousands of years ago. I knew there were others like it below the city, millions of gallons of rushing water flowing in darkness beneath solid stone. That feeling of being surrounded by something so old and powerful, a force with its own goals and methods that were unthinkable to me, never left my mind, and has been lying quietly since that moment, as if waiting to rise up again and show me something.


    The glint of the copper plate brought me back. I landed the raft, climbed the staircase, found the slit and passages, and at last got to the hallway. I had come out in the middle of it. To my left it stretched straight on into darkness, and to my right it curved into shadow just at the edge of my lamplight. I moved down to the left until a recess emerged in the worn stone.


    The door was the color of forest soil with an eye slot and hinges of blackened iron. I knocked on the wood and the sound danced in the hall. The slot clanged open and I was looking into a pair of sharpened eyes the color of blued steel. They stared at me for a moment and I saw the corners crumple into a smile. The cover on the slit was slammed shut and I heard the locks working on the other side. The door opened inward and something in the way she stood reminded me of my loneliness.

 Chapter 13: The Sage

    She had one hand on the door and the other on a dagger hilt at her hip. The square room was carved into the natural stone and shaped with brick. There were two levels. The lower level which the woman was on was empty and the old stone stairs that had once gone up on the left were filled in with rocks and a rough kind of mortar. The only way up to the second level was a ladder behind her. On the second level, sacks of earth made rough cover for the three boys crouched behind them, two with old hunting crossbows and one with a bow that he probably made. Behind the grimy hard-eyed triplet, I could see lamplight flicker on the ceiling of the second level. I put my hands in the air to make them feel better.


    ¡°Don¡¯t bother with that. They worry about me too much. Come in.¡± She said.


    She motioned me in and closed the door. I looked at the boys and reached in my jacket as she worked the locks. One of them white knuckled his bow and yelled at me.


    ¡°Easy you!¡±


    The girl turned behind me as I pulled out my pipe. I packed it as she moved past me and flashed a smile.


    ¡°Larsen, keep your fingers off the trigger. I''m down here too.¡± She spoke like a mother who kept the threat of beatings on hand, and her voice rolled over it softly like a brook with a sword in its stones. I¡¯d seen setups like this before, women who keep young boys old enough to slit a throat or shoot a bow, but too young to turn on her. By the time they got old enough to she had already taken up in their mind. Ten years ago, one out of any five thugs working the streets of the north city had been brought up by Mother Bear.


    The boy moved his fingers off the lever and she climbed up the ladder. I let her get to the top before I followed her with my pipe in my mouth.


    The second floor was half common room and half battle station. The battlements now occupied by the three boys were strewn with blankets, piled rocks, barrels of bolts, and various spears and purpose made pole weapons. She probably let them at it for the same reason she let them point their bows at me. To pump up their ego so she could grab them by it. If any serious door kickers under the purple had a mind to come in here, and knew where it was, the lot of it would have been worth less than a doorstop. The best defense this place had was a hidden escape route buried in the walls.


    The part of the room that wasn¡¯t a play fort was laid out like a living room, which intensified the childlike qualities of the defenses. They seemed like the toys of children strewn on the floor of a family den. She walked past the couches, low tables, and mattresses, all sharing the ground with empty bottles and pipe ash, and led me to one of the doors in the far wall. The boys stood watching us, and as we went through the door one tried to follow. He looked to be the oldest one.


    ¡°Stay and man the defenses, Claus. He may have been followed.¡± She said. The boy nodded seriously but even I could hear the playfulness in her voice. I smiled at him as I grabbed the door and his jaw came unstuck. I slammed the door on whatever he was preparing to say.


    We were on a sort of landing, and through the doorway in front of us there was a spiral staircase. She had picked up a lamp in the living room and it lit up her features as she turned up the stairs.


    She had a face that told you she was familiar with evil and you might enjoy watching her practice it. She held her smile on her mouth like one might hold an ember pouch on a winter walk, always ready to light up into a flame. Her long black hair maintained its darkness against the lamplight and its shine reminded me of the dark waters outside. Her steel eyes stayed cold despite the fire reflected in them.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t get your name.¡± I said as we moved up the stairs.


    ¡°Not yet. Wait till my chamber.¡±


    The next landing above was larger than the one before and there were three doors each at right angles to each other. She hung her lamp on a hook and I heard her unlock at least three locks in the center door before she let me through. I glanced at the door as I passed. I didn¡¯t see any keyholes but it was covered in wrought iron knotwork.


    Inside the room felt like a pit, if a well-furnished pit. The recessed floor was an oval-shaped ring of red carpet and we stood at one end of it. The floor at the center was sunk in about two feet and reached by small steps at the four sides. There were two slim doorways covered by sheets to the right and left, and a ladder going up to a second level that was mostly hidden in darkness and may have just been a walkway. The roof was ancient smoke-stained wood beams that must have been brought in a century ago.


    The walls were covered in shelves with books and bindings of all kinds packed with small paper labels sticking out of the pages. Most of them on the bottom shelves were the kind of pagebooks you would see students with, cheap paper bound together in a cloth cover. They were notes of some kind but none of the symbols or writing on the spines meant anything to me. The words I could read just added to the strangeness. ¡°Castle of Chemistry¡± ¡°Whorehouse three¡± ¡°Green Gang¡±


    ¡°I''m a curator of information, as you can see.¡± She sat down in a large high-backed chair with a few thick blankets and cushions thrown on it. She pulled her feet up to herself and looked like a cat perched there. She motioned to a more reserved chair across from her and I sat down.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Do you know where Liana is?¡± I said.


    She reacted to the name, and it seemed like she had prepared not to and failed. She smiled to cover it and pointed her chin at me.


    ¡°I might, but I need to know everything about you before I tell you one way or the other.¡±


    ¡°Is that why you brought me all this way, to ask me about myself? You could have done that in the dream. You could have done it anywhere.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t have to explain myself to you. I¡¯m holding all the cards here.¡± She spoke without any feeling, as if she was already tired of talking to me.


    ¡°Yea, it¡¯s your game all right. If you wanna waste your time asking about my past that¡¯s your choice.¡±


    ¡°Yes, it is, and I do.¡± She said, smiling all the while.


    ¡°All right then. There¡¯s not much to me, really. I grew up in a river town, joined the army after school, and they sent me to Novera. I was there a few years and came back here, got a job guarding gangsters, met Liana, now I¡¯m looking for her.¡±


    ¡°You left a lot out.¡± She said.


    ¡°If I did, it¡¯s because it¡¯s a lot of waiting around.¡±


    ¡°Why are you looking for her?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve got feelings for her.¡± She threw her head back and laughed.


    ¡°What a romantic! Got feelings for her!¡±  I was sick of it already. She was coming from some other angle I couldn¡¯t see and it was setting her off. I tried to bring things back around.


    ¡°Yea, and I¡¯d do anything to find her. So what-¡±


    ¡°Anything?¡± Her eyes flashed.


    I didn¡¯t repeat myself. She looked at me some more then took a drink from a skin hanging off the back of the chair. I hadn¡¯t lit my pipe yet and couldn¡¯t be bothered. I put it back in my coat like I planned to be buried with it.


    ¡°How did you know her?¡± I asked. She had been working on what she was going to say next and I put her off.


    ¡°How did I know her?¡± she was almost laughing again now. Disgust dripped off her words before she could stop herself. So it was like that.


    They must have been together for some time, probably even at the same time we were seeing each other. It might have been her name Ethelyn was coming to give me. Liana had never mentioned her, so the split must have been bad. This girl seemed like the type that hooks in, seeing how her teenage militia jumped at her smallest movement. I was getting the idea that she had no idea where Liana was and I felt sick.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t you tell me how you know her?¡± She said. The words were measured steel.


    ¡°We met at a tavern a few months ago.¡±


    ¡°Just that?¡±


    ¡°No, we¡¯ve been meeting regularly since then.¡±


    ¡°For what?¡±


    I didn¡¯t answer that. I just looked at her. She smiled with her teeth on her lip.


    ¡°So, you fell so madly in love with her in just a few months that you would slither down here into my little web just to find her?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s right. I know you could snuff me out now if you wanted to. You said you could help me, and you said you loved her, so I came anyway. At the time I thought you were talking about Ethelyn, but you seemed to mean it, and that-¡°


    ¡°I did mean it.¡± She said and hit the last two words like knife blows. ¡°But the question is, do you mean it?¡± Her voice had turned back to cold smooth water by the end.


    ¡°Why would I be here if I didn¡¯t?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Because you think you¡¯re smarter than me, smarter than her, you and the rest of them. You think we¡¯re just dumb little girls playing with toys, easy to be played, but you¡¯re wrong.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re talking about.¡± I prepared to move to the door if she got out a knife. She was working herself up about something and I would bet money one of her little killers was looking through a slit in a bookcase with a bolt nocked. It really was a bad spot.


    ¡°You know what I¡¯m talking about, you arrogant man. You stick your dull, clumsy little head in something you could never understand, thinking you¡¯ll figure it out as you go, just like you figured everything else out in your sad life, with blind brute force!¡±


    I let her talk. I looked away, like it was hard to look her in the eye, and tried to see if I could find any dangerous-looking gaps in the shelves. She rose half out of her chair and drew my gaze back.


    ¡°But I watched you crawl around like an infant, your mind open for any sweeper or snake to waltz right in and turn your memories into dull noise!¡±


    ¡°I said I was out of my element. I already admitted you¡¯re in control here, so what do you-¡°


    ¡°Admitted?!! As if I needed you to tell me that! I know why you came here.¡±


    ¡°I came here to find Liana.¡± I said. She was getting hysterical and I still hadn¡¯t found that arrow slit.


    ¡°You think we¡¯re stupid? You think I¡¯d believe you were some hidden lover, after all we¡¯ve been through together? Or did you think my girlish jealousy would get the better of me, and I¡¯d let you in just to find out how I¡¯d been betrayed?¡±


    ¡°If that¡¯s the case we were both betrayed. She never mentioned you.¡±


    She stood up and threw something at me and I put my hands up reflexively. The glass shattered on my knee. My eyes darted around the room again. I was sure that kid has his fingers on the lever again and all she would have to do is point.


    ¡°Will you stop looking around the room you idiot! You think I need men hiding in the shadows to protect myself?¡± She had a knife in her hand. I hadn¡¯t seen her grab it. I would have seen her grab it or else I would have died a million times from other things I would have missed in my line of work. Either it wasn¡¯t really there now or It had been there all along. Both possiblities made my blood cold.


    ¡°I''m going to give you one chance, just one chance, god dammit, to tell me who you are and what you thought to get out of coming here. Then maybe I¡¯ll let you live.¡±


    ¡°I told you who I am.¡°


    ¡°You think you can lie to me? Do you know who I am? I can turn your mind inside out. Every bit of your fucking life will be laid out before me like a cadaver. Do you want to talk more shit or do you want to tell me who you are right now and save me from having to cut you open!¡±


    ¡°Do it then.¡± I said.


    ¡°What? You think I¡¯m bluffing, you-¡±


    ¡°Go ahead. Look in my mind. If that¡¯s what it takes, so be it. I can¡¯t waste another day, not for her. You''re the only person left who might know where she is. You¡¯re my only chance.¡±


    She stared at me, her eyes wide and her mouth half sob half snarl. She gripped the knife so hard it shook. Tears were coming out of my eyes. I tried to blink them back without too much display.


    She straightened up and looked at me like I was a dog that decided to talk.


    ¡°If you hide anything, I''ll rip you apart. You know that?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how to do that. I don¡¯t want to either. I just want to find her. I¡¯m sick of being useless at this.¡± I didn¡¯t know why I was doing it, but It had seemed the obvious thing to do when I thought of it. If she was lying and didn¡¯t know where Liana was then I¡¯d be right where I had been anyway, with nothing. If she did know and she saw everything I¡¯d done to find her, I didn¡¯t think there she would turn me away. As hysterical as she was, I felt a passion in her. She did love Liana.


    ¡°You will do exactly as I say. You will think about what I tell you. As much as you can focus that weak little mind on what I tell you to. All right?!¡±


    ¡°All right.¡±

 Chapter 14: Him

    ¡°Sit there.¡± She motioned with the knife to the chair I had been in and I sat back down. She circled around the edge of the room, watching me. I followed her with my eyes.


    ¡°Look straight ahead!¡± she shrieked. The knife jumped in her hand. I looked straight ahead at the bookcase across the room. She came around slowly behind me and I had to fight against the urge to whip around and knock her to the ground. Every teacher I¡¯d ever had was screaming at me from beyond the pale for letting an angry woman with a knife walk behind me. I heard her get something off the shelf and I imagined her braining me with it. She came close to me and handed me something over my shoulder.


    ¡°Take this, slowly.¡± It was a book. I took it from her and she whipped her hand back like it was on a spring. The cover said ¡®Paladren, sketches.¡¯


    ¡°Open it.¡± she said.


    I did, and saw a faded book stamp on the first page.


    ¡°Go to a random page, any one with a picture on it.¡±


    I flipped to the middle of the book. On one page was some text on the methods and time period of the sketch, and on the other page was a sketch of a man with a feudal era plated coat and a polearm leaned against his shoulder eating a bowl of something with his helmet on the ground next to him.


    ¡°Do you have it?¡± From her tone, she might have been asking about a murder.


    ¡°Yea, it¡¯s a drawing-¡°


    ¡°Don¡¯t tell me! Yes or no, do only what I tell you, do you understand?¡±


    ¡°Alright.¡±


    ¡°Focus on it, only on it, ignore everything else, and don¡¯t speak, don¡¯t react.¡±


    I tried, but her breathing kept drawing my attention. It went from harsh exhales to steady deep breathing like she was asleep. I scanned the drawing over and over again until I felt it. I choked and almost fell out of my chair. This wasn¡¯t the gentle nudge I had felt with Heldar, but a stabbing intrusion into my mind. It was like every thought took extra effort, even looking at the still sketch seemed to take something out of me. Then I heard a voice in my mind. It was a whisper but it roared.


    ¡°Raise your right hand.¡±


    I did. It was like moving in a dream where all your movements are wrong and your punches land softly. Then the disturbance in my mind stilled and I felt numb and weak.


    ¡°Close your eyes.¡±


    I did and almost fell asleep, but something else stopped me. I felt her there, and though she had been almost cute with the knife before, here she was brandishing something far more terrifying and I could barely breathe.


    ¡°Let me in.¡± The voice said, in her voice and mine. I felt her spread through me in a way I can''t describe, and though my instinct was to resist her, to focus my thoughts away from what she was prodding against, to look for some way to rid my mind of the intruder, I overcame the urge and let her in, over and over again.


    I could feel her in my breathing, in the sensation of my clothes on my skin, she was there in the ache in my sides, the uncomfortable form in my chair. I had never been that vulnerable, never that much at someone else¡¯s mercy.


    ¡°Liana.¡± She said it in my mind and I saw her in front of me. All the distractions that hamper a memory were gone and I saw Liana like a vivid dream. I felt tears down my face and the sensation echoed as she noticed it.


    ¡°Remember the first time you met. From the beginning. All of it.¡± It was so easy now. The memories came like breathing.


    I remembered seeing her from across the room, approaching her, our conversation, the night, the morning after, it all came flowing out of me and it was unrestricted by time. I relived the entire night in a matter of moments.


    Then I first felt the change. The back of my mind was still like a lake in the dark, but I could feel something. At first, it was like standing next to someone in an empty amphitheater. The sensation stood out because it didn¡¯t feel like the others, it wasn¡¯t doubled and repeating. I knew it must be her. Somehow I was feeling her back. She must have sensed it because she came back stronger.


    Liana.


    It wasn¡¯t a word this time, it was the idea of her, the knowledge of her. It was her face and voice and smell and it reached out into my mind and searched for everything about her. I felt like the person in the amphitheater had set themselves on fire, and the fire broke down all of my instincts to resist. My mind was stretched in a way I could have never imagined.


    Every moment spent with her bled out of me. They rolled in my mind, one at a time, then all at once, then backward, then they jumped around. I had no knowledge of the existence of anything else in the world. My mind was all Liana.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    A cold terror was rising outside of me. The person in the theater was screaming. Then there was the pain. She hit me with pain built from parts of my memory. The first time I had been stabbed. The feeling of extreme thirst at sea. A bolt in the leg. The loss of my brother. Finding Ethelyn in the dark.


    Then, she showed me what had made her scream.


    I was with Liana in the dark opera house, that night we had booth seats, our tickets forged, our hands finding each other in the darkness, our teeth biting our lips to keep quiet. But, something was different. In that state I didn¡¯t understand what it was, so she showed me something else.


    I was at the park with Liana. We were sitting on that old blanket, drinking wine from the bottle beneath the shade of a birch tree. She kissed me and whispered my name.


    ¡°Helena.¡±


    Like an echo, I heard her say ¡°Alany¡±, but it was wrong, and the wrongness of it spread to the rest of my mind like a sickness.


    The memories rushed out like before, but they were different. The feelings wrong, the touch distant, the nights of lovemaking purely female. They separated themselves from me. When she had brought me to the dance house hidden in the stalls, now she danced with Helena, leaning down to kiss her, smiling into her eyes. The night after the storm, when we had found the nearest inn and left all of our clothes in a wet heap on the floor, and the sensation of the dry sheets on our damp bodies, Alany was nowhere to be found. All the words, all the promises, curses, pleading questions, now spoken to Helena. My memories went up in shrieking flames and dissolved into ash. My soul reached out to them, tried to find them, but there was nothing there, like grabbing empty air just before falling. I tried very hard to die then, but nothing came of it.


    One memory remained, the night at the inn, the morning with the bird. It refused her and I felt her recoil when she touched it. So, I had spent one night with her, I had met her, had known her, if only once. I felt her anger rise up and she tried to break me for good.


    She dug into the empty darkness where my moments with Liana had once been and showed me what was really there. She drew out my memories of the drunken nights alone, memories now standing tall where passionate nights of love had once lay smiling. She searched for something else, but didn¡¯t find it. She sliced into the memories, my feelings, fears. The time Kal Arren had told me the name of my niece, the color of her eyes.


    ¡°I got a guy in that town. If it¡¯s got a name, I got a guy. Remember it like that.¡± How he had smiled like a wolf. The night Madris had sprung the hit on Rolden. The way it felt to knife that kid as he was fumbling with his blade under his shirt. Then she moved on to something else, cutting deeper¡­


    I felt something else that drew a part of my mind away, dimly aware, while she hacked away at the rest of it.


    If Helena was someone standing in an empty theater, he was the theater changing form, as if the structure around me became soft, alive, full of purpose.


    A memory came out of the haze and Helena turned on it like a drake.


    I was standing in front of Liana, in a field kissed at the edges by frost. She was on her knees, tied up and beaten. There were men nearby in dark clothes. I knew they were Eyes, just like me. I felt Helena get still, now the only thought in my mind was this memory. I took out my knife and lifted Liana¡¯s face up to look at me. One of the eyes spoke.


    ¡°Farmer found her on his grounds in a trap. The wound is fine.¡±


    I spoke.


    ¡°Take care of the farmer if you haven¡¯t already and I¡¯ll take her to Throne. She¡¯ll help us weed out the others.¡± She started to curse at me but my hand grabbed her tongue and cut it out with a single motion. I kicked her hard in the chest and she fell back writhing and choking. I tossed the tongue away.


    ¡°Load her up.¡± I said.


    Then the laughing started. It came from the walls of my mind and echoed off Helena. More visions of Liana being tortured and sobbing, choking, begging. Helena screamed, her mind swelled in fury, the pain expanding her thoughts and cracking open her memories. He got inside her. I felt him do it, like having someone show you how to cut your food when you¡¯re a child. He found all the memories of Liana and spread them open. It was like what she had done to me, in the way that the rising of the suns is like lighting a candle.


    Then he found it. It felt different. She had tried to hide it, even from herself. That made him laugh.


    I watched Liana standing there, in her room, in the dream, telling Helena about the cabin, about how she had found it in the mind of some dying invalid on the edges of the Complex. She had locked it down and wiped it from the mind of the old woman before anyone else could have seen it. It would be safe. She was drunk, asleep, sobbing. It had taken everything from Helena to close her off.


    ¡°Don¡¯t drink anymore, if you forget this, at least remember, I love you.¡±


    Helena had cut the memory out, blocked it off and let it wither and die, the way she had learned. Memories fade to nothing when the mind avoids them long enough, I saw, but it hadn''t been long enough.


    The Cabin. Northeast of the city. A forgotten trade route now superseded by the great roads, then a small path off that, up a winding brook, and there, a cabin, ravaged by the elements but still usable, nestled in a silent ravine with a narrow entrance and a wide forest behind it.


    I felt Helena leap out, her mind reaching outward past him, and touching something for just a moment.


    ¡°RUN!¡± It was a brief thought, but it was all he needed. His mind forced open the contact and I felt her.


    Liana. Her mind was like a wall of steel, but it was there. He didn¡¯t try to breach it, but he danced in front of it. He laughed, gloated, taunted. He painted the walls of her protection with rolling thick waves of pleasure and animalistic glee.


    Something rose out of the edges of it all. In the center was Liana in her fortress of steel, and around that, like a coiling serpent, was Him, but beyond that something crept in. It wasn¡¯t Helena, and she seemed to not even see it, she was out somewhere else in the darkness, screaming and writhing. The thing gently came into view like a horizon coming closer, and I knew, somehow, that it was connected to Him, only exposed because of the reach of his mind, still dancing in excitement. It was like a million doors, and one by one I nudged them slightly, and they opened.


    He was inside. His plans, memories, ideas, and other things; the kind of thoughts that can only exist in a mind that has learned to leave the confines of a skull, and has in fact adapted to such an expanded existence. The thoughts themselves were arranged, protected, organized. I couldn¡¯t crack them or process them, but I could touch them, just for a moment, and I felt something I still can¡¯t describe. Then the doors shut all at once.


    He laughed. She screamed. It was over in a breath.

 Chapter 15: The Cabin

    I shot out of the chair and I fell forward as my leg gave out. I lunged back up to my feet, shakily, and looked back. Helena was writhing on the ground. I grabbed the skin off the chair and ran over to her. I poured the wine in her face and she shook and coughed and looked up at me, dazed. I threw the skin away and grabbed her.


    ¡°How do I get out of here!¡±


    Her blank stare turned into a snarl and she clawed at me. I slapped her and held her hands down.


    ¡°She''s alive! I can get to her first!¡± She looked stunned for a moment then thrashed and shrieked.


    ¡°I can get to her first! He found her!¡± There was a loud bang on the door and one of her henchmen yelled something with his face an inch from the wood.


    I looked at her and tried to open my mind, but I didn¡¯t know how.


    ¡°Please, you have to help me. You know me!¡±


    She didn¡¯t. It takes more than seeing all the events of a person¡¯s life to know them, a lot more. But she did think she could use me and she did believe I was still in love with Liana and that I hated Him. That was enough.


    She stopped struggling and I eased up off of her. She got to her feet roughly and moved to the back of the room. She almost fell going up the ladder. When she got to the top she threw some books off the shelf, opened a hatch, and motioned me up.


    I was up the ladder in three steps. She grabbed the railing and vomited off the side. I moved through the small hatch and it was cave dark inside. I turned back to her.


    ¡°I need a light!¡±


    She shook her head and closed her eyes. I thought she had gone out, but then I felt her in my head. It was a dull nudge and I realized I had gotten used to it.


    I saw the passage lit up by candlelight, felt myself walking through it as she had done a thousand times. I understood and took off.


    I ran through the tunnels as the shape of them was laid out in my head. They were winding paths of all kinds. I climbed, crawled, ran and leaped. Towards the end, I felt her failing. I thought of Liana, of all the memories I had of her, even those that were Helena¡¯s, and she stayed with me.


    When I came up to a door she showed me the key hidden under a rock that would have been lost in a hundred others just like it. Past the door was the city sewers, and she showed me how to get to the manhole before I felt her fall out of my mind. I fumbled my way in the darkness and pushed the iron cover off inches at a time.


    I pulled myself up into the old city, off some side alley. I had gone under the great river somehow. I ran out and stopped a cab and threw all my money at him.


    ¡°East road, fuck codes and caps!¡±


    He did the best he could, but I still thought of murdering him more times than I can count. Now that I was sitting still, memories crashed in my head like guts coming together after a knife wound. I saw the false ones (me cutting out her tongue, our time together) fall away, but there were still gaps left unfilled by any real memory.


    There was something else. It came to me slowly and as I realized what it was I pushed it away.


    I thought instead about what I would do when I got to the cabin. We would have to move north. They would send out the Hunters. I didn¡¯t know how long we could run and I didn¡¯t know if she would come with me. To her, I was just a man who she had spent one night with months ago, and who had helped Him find her.


    A few times during the trip my mind broke. I didn¡¯t know it then, but it was my mind reeling from the effects of being cut into by Him and Helena. Once, before we got out of the city, I was suddenly sure that I was riding in the cab to the university to talk to her professor. I reached in my pocket for my pipe and lit it off the tinder in the box, and tried to think of what I would say to the man. I realized the cab was going the wrong way, we should have turned north on the dock road. I knocked on the cab and the driver looked back. I didn¡¯t remember hiring him to take me to the college. In fact, I hadn''t taken a cab, but had walked there. This brought me back to the present and I almost choked on the smoke. He looked at me like I was a lunatic and I waved him off and leaned back.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    It happened again when we were outside the city. For a few minutes, I was eight years old again looking out the window of the cab wondering where we were going. then I looked around the cab and didn¡¯t see my parents or my brother, so I panicked, and the fear brought me back again, like waking from a dream.


    As the cab raced away from the station at the edge of the trade road after picking up two new horses, I slipped back into the day I had returned from the war. I thought about my brother, what in the hell I would do after I handled the estate, and wondered if I was making a mistake not reenlisting. I remembered I had a bottle of Anasian citrus still in my luggage, but when I looked down my bag was gone. The voice of the cabby brought me out of the dream.


    ¡°Is this it?¡±


    We were at a small trail leading off the road. I had seen it before.


    ¡°Yes!¡± I threw myself out onto the road.


    ¡°End of the line then. Carriage won''t go in that.¡±


    ¡°Give me one of the horses.¡±


    ¡°You didn¡¯t give me enough money for that.¡± He put his hand on his dagger.


    ¡°This is a matter of the State!¡±


    ¡°Yea, I''ve heard that one before. I¡¯m not getting stranded here while you gallop off into the sunset.¡±


    I was wondering whether a man of his age could survive a punch to the jaw when I sensed something above me, and looked up. My mind broke again and for a moment and I was back in Novera.


    There were three of them. Their wings blended into the sky and their metal badges reflected the bright sunlight that still reigned above the amber evening. They flew in a classic V formation. The two tips banked left and right, scanning the ground below. I pointed up and yelled at the cabby.


    ¡°You think those drakes are out for their health? Provide me with a mount, in the name of the Empire!¡±


    He almost threw himself out of the driver''s seat and unharnessed the horse. He moved to the back of the cab.


    ¡°Where are you going?!¡± I yelled.


    ¡°I keep a saddle in the back, my lord¡±


    ¡°Fuck that!¡± I grabbed the horse on the withers and threw myself up onto it. I took the reins and got him going. I hadn¡¯t ridden in three years but I moved like hell all the same. It felt like I was floating and at any moment I could have eaten dirt.


    It was half an hour from the road at the speed I was pushing. When I got to the winding path up the ravine the smell of fire had risen in the air. That would make getting away a long shot. Why would they mobilize drakes for this?


    I dismounted when I knew I was close. I took out my long knife and moved low and quiet toward the cabin. The smell of smoke grew stronger. If they weren¡¯t trying to capture her then it wouldn¡¯t be a controlled burn and I would probably be dead soon.


    The cabin was a small two-roomed thatch topped square of wood with a thrush floor and a central hearth. It was also completely empty. I could still smell the last meal she had made. I went down the trail to the forest and saw fresh hoof prints on the ground. I turned to go back down for my horse but I heard a clamor of hoofbeats from the trail. I couldn¡¯t see them but I knew the sound of a Trooper¡¯s wagon well enough. I cursed every god I could think of and took off again on the forest path.


    I kept under the canopy and cut through the dense foliage. Some of the drakes I had served with had claimed to be able to sense a man hiding under the jungle cover, but I had never seen any proof of that and I hoped not to now.


    I came to a clearing near the bottom of the ravine where the high sides opened up to flat land and the creek snaked down in wide curves. On the far side of the creek, the forest was unmarred but clouds of black smoke rose behind it and I expected the tree line to burst into flames at any moment.


    Liana was in front of the forest looking downstream. Her horse was pacing nervously. I moved fast and low. When I was ten paces into the clearing I dropped to my hands and knees. It was a move of pure instinct and I did it before I realized why.


    The drake flew in low as if it had popped out of the trees. He came at her head on and I saw his leg lift to his chest with the fore claw shining. It flashed down like lightning as he went over her and my breath stopped. I saw the blood when he was already beating up into the air. It came in red splashes from above the horse¡¯s shoulders and they both went down.


    I got up and sprinted to her. It didn¡¯t matter if they saw me now. She had avoided having her horse fall on her and was frantically coming to her feet. She held her hands out towards the flowing wound in the horse''s neck as if there was anything she could do. She heard me and looked up, saw me running at her with the knife still in my hand, backed up frantically and fell over the horse which was still writhing. When I was almost close enough to touch her, I felt him.


    He was walking leisurely towards us, a solid black shape, as if he had cut a hole in the day and exposed the dark night underneath. His darkness was so pure next to the daylight that my eyes struggled to tell distance and it seemed he was right in front of me. I moved between him and Liana and I felt him laugh. He spoke and his voice came from all around and in countless tones.


    ¡°Sleep.¡±


    I did.

 Chapter 16: The Office

    The light through the windows was colored yellow by the thin cotton curtains and lit up the smoke floating in the office. The scribe¡¯s quill quieted for the first time since I began my deposition. I had left out some things, mainly Rodgar, Heldar, and where I had found Helena. I had tied everything up under the label of honest work as best I could.


    ¡°Well, it was an odd way to go about it, but it came out all right in the end.¡± Maderon said. He smiled with his mouth and blinked at me. I moved my pipe with my lips. He was a rough blade, though you might not think it by looking at him, at least not if he didn¡¯t look at you. His eyes always had that look that told of a person who wasn¡¯t bothered by a little thing like conscience. He had fought in the revolution and got a reputation for torturing the soul out of people, then had been moved around a while after the foundation, until he eventually figured out how to adapt his skill set to the new order. Three wars and a few unspeakable whisper jobs later, here he sat, behind a big oak desk with a flaming skull on his shoulder.


    Barrick sat to my left and frowned at Maderon like he was looking at a family dog that just wouldn¡¯t stop barking. He was a cap to the bone and hadn¡¯t any idea what to make of the Hunters.


    Corowen stood behind him, leaning on the paneled wall and smoking a cigarette rolled about as tight as his suit. He looked like he was a majority owner sitting in on a company meeting and knew he was gonna have to make some heads roll by the end of it. He was the shining polished figure of the urban police at its most lethal and vaunted. A viper in tailored wool. He spoke like he got his voice out of his cigarette.


    ¡°So you lot¡¯ll be leaving then?¡± It should have been a question but it wasn¡¯t. It was closer to a threat.


    The other Hunter sitting to the right of Maderon smiled like Corowen had just disemboweled himself. His eyes said he might have had a conscience but it knew when to keep its mouth shut.


    ¡°When the time comes.¡± He said.


    ¡°When¡¯s that? Ain''t the job done, like he said?¡± Corowen stabbed his cigarette at Maderon who watched him like he was a singing bird.


    ¡°When the time comes. You¡¯ll know when that is because we¡¯ll be gone.¡± the Hunter said.


    Corowen chewed his cigarette. Barrack cleared his throat and rearranged himself in his chair. I blew smoke and pointed the pipe at Maderon.


    ¡°I could¡¯ve been knifed in that cave, or torn apart in some wrath dungeon. You telling me you didn¡¯t have eyes on me?¡±


    ¡°As I said, we left all surveillance and any other handling of this case up to Him, with only your team here to serve as a contingency should He require them. Such was as He requested.¡±


    ¡°But I didn¡¯t sign a contract with Him, I signed it with you, and you said my safety would be guaranteed by all the power of the state.¡±


    ¡°And here you are, alive and much richer, which should put an end to your complaining.¡± Maderon said.


    ¡°But it hasn¡¯t put an end to my questions.¡±


    His smile fell off and his lip had the start of a curl.


    ¡°You will give me whatever questions you have left when I ask for them. I will decide then what to do with them.¡±


    Corowen piped up.


    ¡°I got one for ya. Are the Skulls gonna make a habit of utilizing good caps every time some mage runs loose in the city? Cause if so, I¡¯m gonna expect a bump in salary.¡°


    Maderon¡¯s mouth smiled again but his eyes kept on looking like two furnace doors.


    ¡°The only one being ¡®utilized¡¯ here is Sir Darron.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s one way to put it.¡± I said. He didn¡¯t look at me.


    ¡°And that is only because He asked for him by name. You have done nothing beyond the scope of your rank.¡± Maderon said.


    ¡°Sir Maderon,¡± Barrick said slowly. ¡°My men are unsettled by the fact that from their point of view, the Hunters swooped up one of their own and had him working off the books for four days. If word gets around it might seem to some of them like the Hunters are overstepping their bounds and any one of them could be next.¡±


    ¡°Hmm.¡± Maderon laughed. ¡°Well, Captain, I leave such concerns to you and your Chiefs, but I suggest you remind them that Sir Darron here was called to take part in the capture of a dangerous fugitive, and the call to serve one¡¯s government cannot be ignored by its servants, regardless of what symbol is displayed on their patch.¡±


    ¡°Must¡¯ve been quite the scary little girl you guys caught.¡± Corowen said slowly, as if to make sure the words landed right. I dragged on my pipe and I could feel Barrick wince. Even the scribe raised one eyebrow as he took down the words. Maderon spoke as if he was discussing the weather.


    ¡°That little girl could have read your mind like a book from miles away as you slept, Sir Osteric. She could have sold everything about you to any number of dangerous individuals who would then know exactly when you¡¯re the most vulnerable¡­¡±


    ¡°That¡¯d be when I¡¯m taking a shit. Wouldn¡¯t have to go dream dancing to find that out.¡±


    I found something interesting in the ceiling and I saw Barrick smile out of the corner of my eye.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    ¡°Will there be anything else, Sir Maderon? If not I''ll need you to sign Sir Darron¡¯s signory termination.¡± Barrick let his smile color his words.


    ¡°Nothing else from you and your men, Sir, besides the signing of your attestation that you were privy to Sir Darron¡¯s deposition. We don¡¯t want to have to look far should any of the details of his efforts become street gossip.¡± Maderon smiled like a shark.


    He signed my term paper, releasing me from the signorship of the Hold of the Hunters and the House of Magic. I was officially a civilian, at least until I resigned with the guard. It was a strange feeling. I got up to leave.


    ¡°You may remain, alone, Sir Darron, if you still have any questions.¡± Maderon said. Corowen and Barrick looked at me and I nodded. They bowed as slightly as possible to Maderon and went out the door. I sat back down.


    ¡°You will put up your quill and go out the side door to the adjacent office.¡± Said Maderon. He was looking at me but the scribe did as he was told without looking up. After a while, I spoke softly.


    ¡°Who is He?¡±


    ¡°Hmm. An incredible specimen, to be sure. Not only is every corner of the mind open to him in ways that defy our understanding of the power, but he can rearrange and even create memory, as you have experienced.¡±


    ¡°I mean who is he under.¡± Maderon seemed disappointed in my more mundane curiosity.


    ¡°Well, he¡¯s an asset of the House of Magic of course, but as to who he answers to in practice...¡± Maderon pointed his first finger above his forehead. The Emperor.


    ¡°So he¡¯s a Grim Warden.¡± That nonexistent unit of mage hunters, supposedly manned by the strongest mages in the empire, was such a fairy tale it seemed strange to say the name in adult conversation, and even stranger to be in a situation that called for it.


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say that, but He seems to be heading in that direction. He¡¯s young, as strange as it is to say about someone of his ability. His career is quite malleable at this point.¡±


    I puffed on my pipe. I didn¡¯t know why Maderon was answering my questions but I couldn¡¯t help but try and take advantage of it.


    ¡°What will happen to the girl?¡±  It was a mistake. Maderon smiled and I knew it was some kind of trap.


    ¡°She will be trained, of course.¡±


    I exhaled. ¡°So, you think she¡¯ll sign on?¡± I knew enough about the House of Magic to know what usually happened to those that didn¡¯t.


    ¡°Certainly. With those of her age, it¡¯s just a matter of getting them in the right frame of mind.¡±


    ¡°I thought she was an orphan.¡± I said. He looked at me strangely for a moment then laughed.


    ¡°By the fucking tower son, do you think we operate like the Syndicate? You imagine she¡¯s having her fingernails torn off right now?!¡± He laughed like a child. I tried not to break my pipe in half.


    ¡°We don¡¯t need to threaten family or torture someone to get them to think reasonably. Most of the time, the testimony of other Sworn is enough. Once someone of her passion sees how much the state has to offer, how great a power would be at her disposal to change the world, they almost without exception get on board. Everyone sees this great Empire as a terrifying force, until they are offered a chance to decide its direction. Why do you think the assembly exists?¡±


    I pictured her in night colored robes and a glass-eyed mask, the starred hand on her shoulder. Would she? Did it matter? I would never see her again.


    ¡°You could always ask her yourself, if you¡¯re so curious about her future.¡± He smiled like a cat. So it was a trap.


    ¡°I thought she was a dangerous fugitive. Won''t she be under lock and key?¡± I said.


    He laughed. ¡°For the present, yes, but I meant at a later time. I¡¯m sure you two could find time to talk, should you remain under my signorship.¡±


    ¡°What good would I be to your outfit? Im a street cap, not a mage hunter.¡±


    ¡°You sell yourself short, Sir. You tracked one of the most elusive targets we¡¯ve had this year. Her ability to conceal her thoughts even from Him is most unusual.¡±


    ¡°It was all by accident.¡± I said.


    ¡°Much of it was, yes, but much of it was also due to a quality that we cannot teach, and thus look for more greedily in our candidates. You were able to navigate the complex and contact one of its members-¡°


    ¡°I almost threw up on myself every time I did that and the only reason I got anywhere was because Helena contacted me. I was lucky enough to be with Liana for a night and that¡¯s all that qualified me for this job, and you know it.¡±


    He had an angle for trying to get me signed on. Whatever it was, I didn¡¯t want any part of it. He sighed and stood up.


    ¡°Well, far be it for me to tell you of your own ability if you are so set on the matter.¡°


    He held out his hand. I didn¡¯t get up.


    ¡°I haven''t got any more answers, sir, nor any more time. If you change your mind, contact my office. Otherwise, good luck with your peacekeeping.¡±


    I stood up and shook his hand and then shook hands with the other skull, bowed to them both and left.


    Out in the hall, I instinctively looked to my right, half expecting to see Him standing there. He wasn¡¯t. I looked to my left. Liana wasn¡¯t there either, just empty hallway and a few caps guarding doors.


    I went down and outside and Corowen was smoking another cigarette on the second landing of the steps. The street was roaring and the suns were heading to the top of the sky. There weren¡¯t any clouds and the solid endless blue gave me the feeling that the city and the suns were the only things in existence. Corowen walked up to me.


    ¡°You alright, Gar? It¡¯s rough them dragging you out like this.¡± He said.


    ¡°I was about done laying around anyway.¡± It had been a rough few days in the hospital. I had picked a fight with an orderly when I tried to return to my unit and he had told me I wasn¡¯t in the war anymore. There was a lot of that, being ten years old for an hour, being four days younger for half an evening, but it all cleared up in time for me to be summoned to the office.


    ¡°You give that story straight?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Yea. I didn¡¯t bend it up, but there might have been some jumps in it.¡±


    He smiled, then it snapped to a frown and he got closer.


    ¡°It was a tough move, turning her in.¡± It was almost a question.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t really turn her in. I just went down and then she was gone. That part didn¡¯t have any holes in it.¡±


    He took a drag while I was talking and blew the smoke in different directions while he looked around.


    ¡°He offer you a sign?¡± He said.


    ¡°Yea. How¡¯d you guess?¡±


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t take it.¡±


    ¡°Why is that? You got a cousin in the skulls?¡± Corowen had a million cousins. If he ever got knocked over on the job there¡¯d be an army sniffing around taking down names.


    ¡°No, it''s Him. He¡¯s dark, man. He''s like something out of a fucking fable. Those desk knights in there try and act like he¡¯s all wrapped up, walking around with a badge on him, taking out a salary and shit. Fuck that. He¡¯s not on the fucking tables. Demons don¡¯t have ranks, understand?¡±


    I nodded. He dragged and looked around again before starting up, this time quieter and closer.


    ¡°He¡¯s been around a while, in the hidden places.¡±


    The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I tried not to look around. Corowen was about the last person I would pick to have the Power. It seemed more likely he had family who did. No wonder he hated the skulls.


    ¡°He made such a mess they took him on but now they got a dragon by the tail. No matter what they offer you, don¡¯t take it. And they won¡¯t give her to you either, if they made it look like that.¡±


    ¡°They did, and I won¡¯t. Trust me, I¡¯m over it. I just wanna go back to work, the kind I understand. I¡¯ve had enough fae shit for a lifetime.¡±


    He nodded. He didn¡¯t believe me, but he had done enough to feel all right about it. We said goodbye and parted and I took a cab to the northside. I had gotten a letter from Rodgar while I was in the hospital and now seemed like as good a time as any to pull up some work.

 Chapter 17: Rodgar

    I met him at one of his offices. This one was a room above a barbershop, and from what I could tell it was legit and he ran it like he did everything else. I didn¡¯t see a stray hair in the whole place.


    He was up on the fifth floor leaning on the front of a desk with a massive paned window behind him. It was the biggest solid piece of glass I¡¯d seen on the northside. The river and the heart of the city with all its towers stretched out hazily behind him. He had a bottle of good whiskey and two glasses. We used them.


    ¡°So, you finished with your civic duties for the time being?¡± He said. I was sitting in a big leather chair lighting my pipe and almost set the place on fire.


    ¡°What the hell do you know about it?¡± I said.


    ¡°Nothing concrete. This one was out of my scope, which isn¡¯t something I¡¯m used to.¡± He said, raising an eyebrow at me.


    ¡°Is that why you sent me to Heldar?¡±


    ¡°No, I did that because you asked. Was that part of it?¡±


    ¡°Sorry friend, the answer to that question is signed away with the rest of my rights. What did you want to see me about?¡±


    He smiled wider than the window and set his glass down loud and empty and walked around to the back of the desk.


    ¡°Other than to wish you well after your lapse in good health, and to show you what real smoke is like,¡± He pointed to the box of cigars he had given me when I arrived. It was dark redwood with gold leaf lettering. I had wondered how many years I could go without paying rent if I handed it to my landlord.


    ¡°I also wanted to ask about your plans for the future, career-wise.¡± He got something out of the drawer, a piece of card paper. It reminded me of the one I had gotten from Ethelyn. I finished my drink.


    ¡°I''ll still be available to work, don¡¯t worry. I don¡¯t imagine the boys will be giving me more hours than before my little vacation.¡±


    I had been working full duty with the guards for the last year or so and guarding for Rodgar on the side. It wasn¡¯t exactly legal, but it was expected with guys like me. After I got back from Novera I had made a point to burn up leisure time whenever I found it.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    ¡°So, you plan on signing back on with the guard then?¡± He said, lighting a cigar from a strange metal stick he got out of a crystal and brass box on the desk.


    ¡°I don¡¯t see why not. They pay well. Could be a captain one day.¡±


    ¡°I figured with all your manhunting as of late you might be changing jobs.¡±


    The word manhunting found its way from my ears to my heart and did some damage there. I stood up and walked to the window to take in the view.


    ¡°Well, if that¡¯s what I was doing, then it was only a onetime thing.¡±


    ¡°No good at it?¡±


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say that.¡±


    ¡°It can be quite lucrative.¡±


    ¡°Bounty hunting is not my idea of a career.¡± I said to the skyline.


    ¡°What about missing persons?¡±


    ¡°What about them?¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s quite a lot of them recently, and as I said, it could be quite lucrative.¡±


    ¡°Tracking down rich kids who had one too many on the wrong side of town is not my idea of a career either. What¡¯s that?¡±


    He had been holding the card paper in his hand like he was waiting for something.


    ¡°My son Max works at finding missing people in Euralen, or he did until recently. He''s moving up here to Throne next month.¡±


    Rodgar had never so much as mentioned having a pet. Him bringing up his son was something I hadn¡¯t expected. I wondered if he was about to cash in my oath of loyalty.


    ¡°You want me to show him around?¡±


    ¡°Yes, but not as a job, just as a favor between friends.¡±


    He handed me the card.


    ¡°I say he tracks missing persons but they do a lot more than that.¡±


    ¡°They?¡± The card was brown like stained Oak and the lettering was a dull bronze. The font was bold and oddly stylized. It looked terrible.


    ¡°He''s got a company, a few of his school friends, but good lads. Just a bit green. They take all kinds of jobs. Usually those that the guards don¡¯t have time for.¡±


    ¡°Or don¡¯t care for.¡± I said.


    ¡°Right. They don¡¯t specialize necessarily, but missing persons is their top paying gig, next to adultery.¡±


    I smiled at him and looked back at the card.


    Max and Darlic


    Hounds for hire!


    Private hands


    Private Eyes


    For Private work


    On the back was an address in the Old City dock district here in Throne.


    ¡°They got into it originally when a friend of theirs went missing. Never found him, but got a calling out of it.¡± Rodgar said.


    ¡°You want me to help them get a feel for the city.¡±


    He looked at me for a moment and his face got soft.


    ¡°Yes, show them around, and if you hit it off, maybe you could go to work with him.¡±


    ¡°You want me to work for your son?¡±


    ¡°Not for, with. His outfit is making good money and they¡¯ve been looking to bring someone more experienced on. He asked my recommendation.¡±


    I looked back at the card. Rounding up rich kids gone missing after a bender, spying on wives cucking my clients, maybe catching a few cat burglars in the act, if they were amateur enough. It was ugly from every angle, but I didn¡¯t want to say no to Rodgar outright, if for no other reason than the thought of signing on to the guards again made me sick to my stomach and I hadn¡¯t figured out why.


    ¡°I¡¯ll think about it.¡± I said.


    ¡°Glad to hear it. He¡¯ll be in town the first of next month. Let¡¯s have some more of that whiskey.¡±

 Epilogue

    It was a grey evening turning black at the edges, just bright enough out to see. The rain was a light mist but the flashes and rumbles promised a downpour. The tavern was old stones and flaking mortar under a roof of odd tiles. The streets around had cleared out when the sun went down and the eyes that watched out the windows were blind to murder. It was that part of town.


    He came out of the door of the tavern with an orange glow to his back. The door slammed and left him out in the quiet grey. He was smoking a pipe and when the cherry glowed I could see the marks on his face where she had clawed him. The scabs were just beginning to flake off. He walked smoothly to the sewer opening to relieve himself and stopped. He saw that someone had taken the grate off and it was leaned next to the stone mound. The opening was wide and dark.


    ¡°Marsten.¡±


    He turned and already had the knife in his hand. It was worth the risk for him to see me. He snarled and struck out with his knife and I moved in with mine. I got his blade on the outside of my left forearm and got my knife into him up to the hilt. I grabbed his knife arm and twisted the blade in his guts and he buckled up. His other arm swung at me but I didn¡¯t even feel the hit. I took the knife out of his guts and slid it up under his jaw, through the tongue and past the roof of his mouth. Then I got close to him.Stolen novel; please report.


    ¡°Angel Ethelyn is gonna fly you to hell now.¡±


    I pulled the knife out and slashed his other hand away from me as I pushed him back hard. He fell through the hole with a thud and I heard him land in the filth below. I heard him gurgling and thrashing around as I cleaned my knife off in the dirt and put the grate back on. I took my pipe out and packed it as I walked over to where his lay, still glowing. I picked it up, lit mine with it then dropped it on the ground and crushed it under my heel. I went back and sat down on the grate. I could still hear him. I took out the flask and poured some whiskey on the gash on my arm then took a drink. I smoked three pipes there, just like that, listening to him whimper and die.