Shadow's Son Part 15

"I know," she said. They hurried through the slick, black streets. "I know where we have to go to find the next piece to the puzzle."

Caim regarded her with an amused expression. Something flickered across his eyes, too quick to follow. A blossom of heat spread through her chest as she realized she trusted him.

She turned her head as the warmth spread into her face. She gazed into the sky, into the rain and gloom, to the heights of Esquiline Hill.

"I have to go home."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

-shadow crouched by the riverbank where a gentle breeze pushed through the riparian jungle of rushes and cattails. Dark ma.s.ses of silver-black clouds scudded across the starless sky. Somewhere an owl hooted, and the shrill howl of a coyote carried on the wind.

Amid the Memnir's sleepy currents, where the river slid past the fortified walls of Othir, Castle DiVecci perched on a spur of bare rock. The castle's white parapets loomed over the water like cliffs of alabaster in the waning moonlight. Banners hung slack from the st.u.r.dy towers.

A stone span joined the isle to the mainland, guarded at both ends by a gatehouse manned by soldiers of the Prelate's Guard. Othirians called it the Bridge of Tears for all those who had crossed and disappeared into the dungeons beneath the castle, never to return.

The shadow had no need of bridges. One moment it stood on the riverbank. The next, it appeared inside the castle's mighty donjon, in a hallway on the top floor.

The shadow listened as its sandals touched down. The rhythm of the castle was slow and steady, like the heartbeat of huge slumbering beast, broken only by the discordant groans of the d.a.m.ned far below in the catacombs.

Content, the shadow began to hunt. It crept past rows of closed doors and paused as it came around a corner. Firelight spilled from a doorway at the end of the hall. Two bodyguards in white-and-gold livery stood outside, leaning on the polished shafts of their immaculate halberds.

One of the guards looked up as the shadow approached, but too late to give warning as a swarm of inky globules dropped from the ceiling. The men jerked and tried to shout as the shadows wrapped them in tight coc.o.o.ns, but nothing emerged from their straining mouths. The little darknesses devoured them in silence.

The shadow stepped over the dying men, through the doorway. Shelves of books lined the chamber walls from floor to ceiling. Logs crackled behind an iron grate in the broad hearth. A water clock on the mantelpiece dripped out time's pa.s.sage. Above the fireplace was mounted a graphic bronze sculpture portraying the Prophet of the True Faith. The half-starved demiG.o.d hung by a noose on a twisted rope with an expression of supreme sorrow etched on his long, pained face.

The crackle of paper drew the shadow's attention as a thin hand, spotted with age, appeared over the arm of a ma.s.sive cushioned chair beside the fireplace. It turned the page of a large tome before sinking once again out of view.

Levictus pulled back his cowl. There was no one else in the room. The darknesses, finished with their meal, pooled around his feet. He shivered as they scaled the hem of his long black robe and vanished within the garment. A long knife appeared in his hand. For many long years he had waited for this moment. He wanted to make it last, to savor this thing that had consumed his thoughts since the day, long ago, when armed soldiers came to his family's home and took them away, depositing them into cells under this very castle. His parents, both elderly and in failing health, had died under torture on the first night. His brother expired a few days later. Only he had survived.

A voice rose from the chair. Perhaps once strong with authority, time had left it weakened and wavering. "Gunter? There's a chill in the air. Could you bring us another warm brandy?"

Levictus crossed the intervening distance as a bald pate leaned around the side of the chair, followed by rheumy eyes and a wide nose. He made no attempt to hide, but strode purposefully toward his prey. The old man's rubbery lips formed a hollow 0 as the knife rose. The blade's dark surface drank in the light of the fire.

"Mercy!" the prelate cried. "Mercy in the name of Almighty G.o.d."

But Levictus had none. The knife sliced through the man's wrinkled flesh. Thick streams of blood poured down the breast of his snowy robes. It splashed on the book that fell from his hands. The firelight caught the spine and illuminated the golden words printed there. By Fire and Blood: Bringing the True Faith to the North. By Fire and Blood: Bringing the True Faith to the North.

As his victim tumbled to the floor, Levictus opened the folds of his robe and brought out a wooden box. He set it on the floor as he knelt beside the prelate's corpse. Blood pooled beneath the body while he worked.

When the deed was done, as Levictus stood and put away his prize, he studied the man at his feet. No archangels had rushed in to defend His Sublime Holiness; no thunderbolts had fallen from the heavens. For all his majesty, the prelate had died like any other man, less well, in fact, than most. So much for the vaunted power of the True Church.

A strangeness pa.s.sed over Levictus while he stood over his victim. Something buzzed in his ear like a flying insect. He made a pa.s.s with his hands, whispered a sibilant phrase, and the sensation fled on soundless wings.

Levictus went to a cabinet on the wall and rifled through its contents. Leaves of parchment fell to the floor. Then, he held up a sheet to the flickering light. His eyes followed the neat handwriting down to the surprise at the bottom, stamped in a blob of old wax. He stuffed the paper into a pocket. Then, he stepped into the dark s.p.a.ce between two ma.s.sive bookcases and vanished.

He reappeared inside the city, speeding through the slumbering avenues, just another shadow under the sequestering cover of the night.

- Caim pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders as he hunched on the rooftop. Below him, a blanket of silver fog shrouded the street in front of the Frenig mansion. Moisture dripped from the iron spikes atop the walls.

At least the rain had stopped.

Josey sat beside him, her arms propped on upraised knees, her chin resting on her forearm. He watched her in silence, studying her profile, not wanting to break the spell of her beauty. After Parmian's interrogation, Josey had been convinced that the answers to their problems lay within her father's house. Caim had given all the reasons they couldn't return to the scene of the crime-it wasn't a smart move, the place would likely be guarded, it was precisely where he would expect them to go if he were behind this whole charade-but his arguments had withered under her intense stare. Somehow she convinced him.

He almost suspected witchcraft.

Since then, she hadn't said much. Sitting beside him in the dark, she could have been a thousand leagues away.

Caim tried to put himself in her place. To find out that her late father had been the ringleader of a rebellious cult couldn't be an easy thing to swallow. It was simple for him. You lived and you died. What you did in the time between was your own business. And yet, how much of what he believed had been shaped by the uncaring world into which he had been thrust, a world that ground the weak and helpless into grist beneath its colossal wheels? Would he be so nonchalant about existence if his own past weren't so mired in brutality?

Caim sighed and concentrated on the silent house across the way. By his reckoning, they had been hunched up here for almost two hours. Dawn would come soon. If Josey was serious, they had to go now or never.

He whispered her name. When she didn't respond, he nudged her shoulder. She blinked as if coming out of a deep sleep.

"You sure you want to do this tonight?" he asked. "We could come back tomorrow."

"No." Her gaze returned to the s.p.a.ces below. "Is this where you watched our house before coming to kill my father?"

Caim swallowed. He would have rather not answered, but figured he owed it to her. "Here and a couple other places." He indicated a flat-roofed brownstone down the street, and a pair of alleys with good vantage points of the mansion.

"Have you killed many people?"

"I suppose."

"Tell me how you do it. How do you kill people day after day, without regard, without feeling?"

He took in the meager offering of stars strewn through the overcast sky and the gulfs of darkness between them. "You think I like what I do? I didn't ask for this life."

"Then why-?"

"Because killing is the only thing I've ever been good at." The answer rung hollow in his ears, but d.a.m.n her. He didn't owe her anything, didn't care a whit for what she thought of him.

"How old were you when you first ... did it?"

A cloud pa.s.sed across the moon, hiding Josey's expression, but he felt her gaze in the dark. "I'm not sure. Fifteen, maybe sixteen."

"What happened?"

"I was pa.s.sing through some little thorp in Michaia. I forget the name."

He wasn't sure why he lied about that. The town had been called Freehold. It looked and smelled just like any of another score of settlements scattered across the dusty plains of Michaia, just a place to wash the road from your gullet and maybe find a woman before moving on.

"Anyway, some men started a fight in an ale hall. Things got out of hand. By the time it was over, I'd killed two of them."

"So you were defending yourself."

"I guess. I had to run after that, but I learned a lesson. There's always someone looking for trouble. You try to avoid it when you can, but-"

"But sometimes it finds you anyway," she finished for him.

"Yeah, well. Now it's just another trade to me, the same as a butcher or a carpenter."

Josey's face lifted out of the shadow. Her skin gleamed like polished ivory in the moonlight.

"But pigs and wooden beams don't have feelings," she said. "People do. Everyone you've killed had a family who cared about them, who grieved for them after they were gone."

He shifted a foot that had fallen asleep under him. "That makes no difference to me. I do a job and I get paid."

"Don't you ever want more from your life? Something bigger?"

"Like Hubert? You've seen his band in action. A bunch of shopkeeps and pot-boys spoiling for a fight they can't win. That's not me."

"Why not join the army? You're good with your hands. You could lead men."

He didn't try to hide his disdain. "Why is it that if a lord or a king sends you to kill a man, it's somehow n.o.ble? But if you do this for yourself, it's murder. Explain that to me."

Josey's eyes glistened. Was it the onset of tears, or just the way the light touched her emerald irises?

"If you asked me, I'd say you were afraid."

He recoiled as if she had stabbed him. The soles of his boots scrabbled on the hard shingles as he got his feet under him.

She kept going before he could muster a reply. "You're afraid to let people get close to you. So you keep them at a distance, pretend that they don't matter to you. But it's just a ruse."

He peered over the side of the roof. "You don't understand the least thing about me or what I do."

"Fine."

She pulled away and sank into herself like a flower folding its petals after the sun went down. For a moment, she sounded just like Kit and he realized how much he missed his friend. Where was she?

"Look," he said. "I'm-"

She reached up and pulled a something out of her collar. It shined in the muted starlight, a golden medallion in the shape of a key.

"Keep it," he said. "I don't want payment."

"It's not payment. It's the answer to the mystery."

"How's that?"

Josey told him the story of her childhood, how she had stumbled into a secret meeting in the cellar beneath her father's house, and how her father had given her the talisman years later.

"I didn't realize its significance," she said. "Not until tonight."

"So it's true. Your father was the head of a cult."

"Not a cult. A secret society aimed at restoring the empire."

"You believe Parmian now?"

She tucked the necklace away. "I knew it for truth as soon as he said it."

"And now we're here to traipse through your daddy's secrets in the bas.e.m.e.nt?"

"Do you have a better idea? Someone killed my father for what he knew. He must have left some clue in that chamber. My father was a careful man. He would have foreseen the event of his death."

"All right. If we're going to do this, let's get started. I can get you inside. That shouldn't be a problem."

"So now you believe, too?"

"I believe we need to find out what's going on. After that, well, we'll just have to wait and see."

He led Josey to the corner of the roof and showed her where to put her hands and feet. She was a fast learner. Minutes later, they crept around the side of the earl's manor house, their footsteps m.u.f.fled by the swirling fog. The neighborhood was quiet, almost unnaturally still. Caim wished Kit were here and d.a.m.ned her for her obstinacy. But neither wishing nor d.a.m.ning made her appear. He had to do this on his own. For some reason, the thought was more disturbing than he had antic.i.p.ated.

The mansion looked the same as on the night Caim had first broken in. Its tall gables frowned in the darkness as if forbidding them entrance. The back gate was closed and secured by a new chain.

Caim jumped and caught the top of the wall, lifted himself up, and, after making sure no nasty surprises awaited them inside, reached down to hoist Josey. Caim dropped to the other side first, and then helped her descend.

Caim pulled her down into a crouch as he surveyed the yard. Everything looked clear; all the windows were dark. In all likelihood the City Watch had locked up the house and left it alone. The estate would be auctioned off eventually unless a legitimate heir turned up, and Josey's enemies were determined not to let that happen. If the Elector Council was behind the murder of Josey's father, then he was setting himself up against a host of powerful adversaries. And his list of allies was pitifully short. Without Kit or Mathias, he had Josey. And possibly Hubert. A meager force against the most influential men in the realm, and their armies. Yet despite the odds, he found himself thrilled by the prospect.

He motioned for Josey to follow, and together they crossed the grounds, which had grown over during the past few days. Weeds and tall gra.s.s brushed against their shins as they made their way to the rear wall of the mansion. He bypa.s.sed the door. He hadn't brought his line and grapnel, but he thought he could climb to the second floor easily enough. If he could find something to lower, he should be able to pull Josey up. He was studying the wall for good handholds when a faint click reached his ears. He whirled about to catch Josey opening the door.

"Wait!" he whispered too late, and jumped in front of her as the door swung open with a shuddering creak.

"What's-?" she started to ask.

He held up a finger to silence her. The door entered into an empty anteroom. An archway in the opposite wall led deeper into the interior. He drew his knives.

"What's the matter?" Josey whispered over his shoulder. "Did you expect the Third Legion to be waiting in the parlor for us to swing by?"

"Not exactly." All was quiet, but that didn't banish the invisible fingers plucking at his nerves. "But you didn't expect your friend's fiance to give the order to have you drowned either, did you?"

Chastened, Josey hung back while Caim encroached farther into the house. A quick survey of the rooms on the ground floor confirmed his hunch. The front door was locked, but except for a few muddy boot prints on the carpets there was no sign anyone had been inside in recent days.

"Where's the cellar door?"

But Josey had gone to the stairs leading up to the higher floors. She stared up into the gloom. "I want to go upstairs."

"Wait a moment. We can't-"

"I need to see his room."

Caim hissed between his teeth, but didn't argue. He took the lead up the winding staircase. His feet found the soft spots in the boards out of habit; he winced with every creak she caused. To his ears they rang as clear as alarm bells. If anyone was waiting for them, they had ample warning to ready a welcome.