He crouched next to the corpse. Something had happened to that man-something that couldn’t be explained with a single blow to the face, no matter how hard Kalen had struck him. Perhaps the body would yield up clues.
He shot a look both ways down the alley-no one was approaching-then scanned the dead man’s body for hints as to his fate. Had it been a spell that broke his mind? The madman lay on his chest against the wall, his shirt ridden up around his midsection. His clothes were badly torn in a way they had not been when Kalen had attacked him and half a dozen red-yellow welts rose from his back.
Bites? Rabid dogs might have caused this, but the slavering madness took hold slowly, not suddenly. Vermin of some kind? He’d seen spider venom that could do awful things to a man. Or were they plague sores?
Kalen wondered if this had something to do with the supposed plague that had led the Waterdhavian Guard to quarantine the city. These wounds, however, looked like insect bites more than anything else. He raised his scarf over his mouth and nose just in case, then he reached to lift the shirt away from the welts for a better look.
The flesh puckered oddly around the injuries: red and inflamed, but also hard. It looked vaguely … crystalline. He tapped his dagger against it.
No sooner had he touched the body than the flesh began to sag away from the bones. He drew back, but the damage had been done. Like a soapy bubble, the skin burst, letting brackish blood and pus flow, along with an odor of putrescence that made him cover his mouth and nose. Though the madman hadn’t been dead more than a few moments, his body looked as if it had been rotting for tendays.
Rotting from the inside.
Kalen froze, his eyes going to the madman’s back, and tracing among the wounds. He could have sworn the flesh had moved, as though something lived under the surface. A great abscess had formed on the corpse’s back, where the flesh had begun to blacken. Kalen drew his dagger, but before he could prod at the necrotized mound, he heard footsteps out in the cobbled street. Time to go.
He drew a clay flask from under his cloak, tossed it through the back door of the Dustclaw tavern, then walked away. The flask broke and flames spread. Kalen walked on, his cloak drifting around him in the sea breeze.
A pair of Dustclaws came around the corner, racing toward the fire. They stopped after seeing Kalen and their faces twisted with rage. They raised their weapons.
“Good,” Kalen said. “I was worried this would be easy.”
He drew his two long daggers.
We lie forgotten in the rush of fire and battle, but no matter.
We feast contentedly.
The corpse quivers and pops open with a hiss.
Our thousand chittering voices fill the air.
We hunger.
CHAPTER FIVE
22 KYTHORN (EARLY MORNING)
Dawn broke and the sun rose over Luskan like a scalding brand.
The dark things of night fled as sunlight returned with Luskan’s sweltering heat wave. The filth in the streets began to sizzle within moments. Not that the buildings would catch fire-the weather was too dismal and damp most of the year for flames to take hold, as though the city were too damned to burn. If a good fire got going, it would do little more than scar one or two houses, leaving blackened heaps of wood and stone.
Summers such as that of the Year of Deep Water Drifting dealt cruelly with the city of thieves. On the longest days, the breezes off the Sea of Swords faltered and the streets grew bakingly humid. Clean water was hard to find and more precious than blood.
Worst of all, the vermin of Luskan-flies, lice, rats, and all manner of things that crawled and clicked-grew bold in summer. Far outnumbering the population of the city, they feasted on the rotting vegetation, the buildings, and the people alike. The chittering, scratching, biting barrage drove folk in Luskan mad.
As the sun climbed, Kalen shuffled along an alley off the Street of Storms. In Luskan, it was common practice to defile the signs to say something foul that one scoundrel or another had found amusing once upon a time: streets and avenues of Rutted Souls, Stlarner Heroes, Giant Tluiners, and the like. Sometimes, real wit prevailed and the gangs chose to add or alter a letter or two to corrupt the meaning of the sign. The Dragon’s Teeth became the Dragon’s Teat, while Old Swords became Mold Sores. Kalen found the sign for the Street of Storms-with an added expletive for offal-rather amusing, if crude. It was the way of Luskan to taint its own legacy.
He remembered he’d gleefully taken part in that very desecration, once.
He’d done far worse in his time in Luskan.
Kalen was tired. He’d ridden hard for four days, fought his way through guardsmen and thugs alike, set a gang tavern on fire, and his body was finally starting to feel the toll. He didn’t actually feel the aches in his body that indicated weariness, but his limbs weren’t doing exactly what he told them. That meant he needed sleep-or that he was about to die. Either way, he couldn’t very well collapse in the street, if he was to find whoever had Myrin.
Myrin had to be alive. It would be a waste to kill her, if only because of that special talent that she brought to the city: magic.
He moved past various takes happening in broad daylight on the street. An angler dipped a hook toward an unattended pouch, while the victim gazed up at naked flesh in the windows above. Likely, those were nymphers, who lured a mark into bed while an accomplice stole his possessions. Down an alley, Kalen saw a burst of light which sent a man reeling. The thief-a “flash”-ran off with a purloined loaf of bread under his arm.
But these were mundane tricks. Real magic proved a valuable commodity.
In Luskan, those who could work the Art were few and far between. Most rose to leadership in one of the gangs or carved out a piece of the city for themselves. The Dragon, who ran Luskan’s Shou gang, was rumored to be a wizard of some skill. His enforcers wore shifting tattoos that enhanced their strength and speed. The only other mage Kalen knew of was the necromancer who held court in the tower called the Throat. A legion of corpses clawed out of the ground at his command. Kalen hoped he would not have to cross either of those Captains.
Having seen Myrin exercise her own wizardly tricks, her ability to absorb magic and channel it herself, Kalen thought she could disrupt the entire balance of power in the city. And what if she had come by more of her memories in the last year? She could possess far greater power than he remembered.
Another thought came hand-in-hand with that. Would she be someone different?
“Worry later,” Kalen murmured. “Rest first.”
His priority was shelter: somewhere to bandage his wounds and sleep. For this purpose, he searched for an unoccupied, preferably condemned building in which to hole up. It would be easy enough, as much of Luskan was abandoned, leaving hundreds of empty buildings. The city could easily house four times as many folk as lived there, but one did not tend to live long in Luskan.
He settled on the fourth building he’d been eyeing. It must once have been a butcher’s shop but was now unoccupied (unlike the first two, which had boasted squatters and a pack of wolfdogs, respectively) and provided an excellent tactical position (unlike the third, which boxed him into a corner from which he could find no escape). He counted three exits, including the roof, his preferred means of egress. Everything else was covered over in enough wood and stone to create a massive racket should anyone attempt to catch him unawares. A pair of simple snares, and he would have a relatively safe place to rest.