Finally Yanis scraped the bottom of the bowl with his spoon and set it aside. For a time he sat frowning and fidgeting, looking into the fire. “Look here,” he burst out suddenly, “to go on with what I was saying back in the tavern: I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately, and I don’t believe we should stay here any longer. I should be back at home, Tarnal. As Nightrunner leader I have responsibilities to my own folk—and besides, what’s the point in staying? We’re never going to find Vannor—or Zanna. We’ve been combing the city for days now, without a word or a trace of either. I reckon they must have escaped already, or…” Suddenly he couldn’t meet his companion’s eyes. “Or they must be dead.”
Horror gripped Tarnal’s heart, swiftly followed by a blaze of outrage. He leapt to his feet, tipping his chair over with a crash. “You bastard! Zanna is not dead,” he yelled. “You miserable bloody coward—you’re afraid of getting caught. And you’re desperate to get back so you can bed the fair-haired wench we rescued, the one that you fancy so much. You don’t care about Zanna at all! Call yourself a leader? If it wasn’t for your mother, you’d be—” His vision exploded into sparkling blackness as a fist smashed into his face.
Tarnal staggered to his feet and Yanis hit him again—but this time the younger man was ready. Reeling backward, he rebounded off the wall, using it as a springboard to launch himself forward. His blow brought a leaping fountain of red from Yanis’s nose, which the Nightrunner countered with a vicious kick to Tarnal’s knee. The fight went to and fro across the kitchen in a cacophony of clattering pots and pans and splintering crockery, until Tarnal saw an opening and butted his opponent in the stomach. Yanis fell backward onto the rickety table, which collapsed with a crash into matchwood, taking the smuggler down with it. Tarnal dived on top of him, fists flailing, and got in three or four telling blows before Yanis recovered both wind and wits, and brought a knee up into his balls. Tarnal curled up, gasping in helpless agony—and choked as a deluge of cold water hit him in the face. He looked up through streaming eyes to see Hebba standing over them with a wooden bucket in her hands. Her plump, round face was crimson with anger.
“What do you mean by this brawling, you ungrateful, good-for-nothing ruffians? Just look what you’ve done to my kitchen!” Abandoning the bucket for her broom, she began to beat the two young men about the head and shoulders, belaboring them until they howled for mercy, and giving them the rough edge of her tongue all the while.
“I don’t know… Is this your gratitude for my kindness in taking you in, out of the goodness of my heart? What your poor aunt Dulsina would say… You’d have had the city guard down on us with your ruckus… My poor table a pile of kindling and all the good crocks smashed to smithereens… It comes to something, when two healthy young lads who should know better treat a poor helpless widow woman in such a heartless way…”
On and on Hebba went, even after she had exhausted her anger and her voice had turned querulous with tears. She kept up her scolding commentary even as she rummaged in her cupboard for witch hazel and willow bark for the chastened men, and bathed their hurts in cold water. Tarnal had almost preferred it when she was hitting him with the broom, although when he cast his rapidly swelling eyes over the wreck he and Yanis had made of her home, he was ashamed, and sick to his stomach with guilt.
“Oh, shut up, woman, for goodness’ sake!” Yanis roared.
Tarnal looked up, horrified, in the ensuing silence and saw Hebba’s mouth hanging open in shocked indignation. The leader of the smugglers was scowling blackly. “I’m sorry about your kitchen, Hebba,” he muttered indistinctly through puffed-up lips, “but I’ll make amends to you one day, I promise. I’m leaving now,” he flung at Tarnal. “You can stay here if you want—or go to perdition for all I care. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a Nightrunner no longer!” With that he snatched up his sword and went stamping out of the house.
The slamming of the door seemed to echo for an age in the wreckage of the kitchen. To Tarnal—still in a state of shock following Yanis’s announcement—it was the death knell of the only life he had ever known. It was Hebba who finally broke the silence that followed the smuggler’s departure. “Did he say Nightrunner?” she demanded.
That tore it. Tarnal could only nod miserably.
“And Dulsina knew about this?” Hebba’s eyes were wide with astonishment. “Well!” she said indignantly. “Whatever next?”
Tarnal only wished he knew.
It had started to rain. The streaming, leaden skies were a perfect match for Yanis’s spirits as he sloshed, shivering and already hopelessly lost, through the confusing maze of empty, muddy streets. Already his anger was melting, as though doused by the pounding rain. Guilt, however, was enough to keep him going. He couldn’t go back and face Hebba again after what he had done, and as for his former companion…
Yanis gingerly fingered the throbbing bruises on his face and felt a flash of his former anger. “Damn Tarnal!” he muttered. “This is all his fault. How dare he question my authority like that?” Yanis’s pride supplied the final goad. What, go back now and apologize to the little turd? Why should I? he thought. I wasn’t in the wrong. I am the Nightrunner leader. I should be at home with my people—especially in these hard and dangerous times. And, prompted a nasty little voice from within, there are plenty of folk besides Tarnal back home who doubt your fitness to lead. If you want to keep your authority, you’d better be there to defend it.
“The trouble is, my ma is going to skin me when I come back without Zanna,” Yanis groaned. There was nothing he could do about it, though, he assured himself. Had he not searched for her all over? What more could anyone expect of him? “No. I’m going home, and that’s final.” Saying it aloud somehow helped to strengthen his flagging resolve. Now all he had to do was find his way.
For the first time since leaving Hebba’s home, Yanis began to pay attention to his surroundings. The buildings in the narrow street were still those accursed brick-and-plaster structures that were all alike, though it struck him with some force that after all this time he should have been in the older part of the town. “Damn these bloody houses,” he muttered in disgust. “I must have been wandering round in circles.” He stopped for a moment and looked around, trying without success to find a familiar landmark, and his heart sank as it occurred to him that right now, the long journey home was the least of his concerns. In his fit of temper, he’d stormed out without so much as a cloak to his back, and he was already chilled so that his teeth were chattering. He desperately needed warmth and shelter—but since he had so thoroughly lost himself, returning to Hebba was not even a possibility. The locked doors and firmly shuttered windows of the nearby houses turned blank, indifferent faces toward him. With so much lawlessness in Nexis nowadays, folk wouldn’t open their doors to a stranger after dark. Yanis muttered an oath. There was no point in just standing there getting wetter—not that he could get any wetter, he thought sourly. With a shrug, he picked a direction at random and set off again. He had no other option.
In a little while, however, hope returned to the Nightrunner as he emerged from the end of a street to find another road that crossed it, leading steeply downhill to his left. Thank the gods for that! Yanis exhaled on a sigh of relief. All he had to do now was keep heading downward and he was certain to come to the older part of the city. Maybe then he’d be able to get his bearings, and down among the deserted warehouses and derelict buildings near the docks he’d be sure to find a place to shelter.
Yanis hurried along the lonely streets, his head down, his eyes fixed on the treacherously muddy cobblestones, wary of keeping his footing as the steep downhill gradient gave impetus to his jolting strides. The only illumination filtered through the chinks in shuttered windows, or, shone weakly from the occasional lantern hung above a doorway, and the rain-dimmed lamps that hung on the corners of buildings to mark the intersections of the streets. The smuggler was distracted by discomfort from being soaked through and, more particularly, from the damage inflicted upon him by Tarnal’s fists and feet when they had brawled. Because his mind was befuddled by cold, fatigue, and unpleasant thoughts, he was not really concentrating on self-preservation.