As King Rikard Nargol and Chancellor Gilleran came into view, a thought froze Nightfall’s blood in his veins. Kelryn knows about my weight shifting. If she sold my identity, why not my talent as well?
"So this is the notorious Nightfall." Rikard stared at the hunched figure, smashed to the back of his cell.
Nightfall returned the king’s gaze, assessing both men. Though gray in hair and beard, Rikard had retained his densely-muscled frame, and his dark eyes sparkled with vigor and evident wit. Beside the imposing frame and striking coloring of his king, Chancellor Gilleran looked small and nondescript. Only his eyes disrupted the image: pale, squinting, and cold as death.
A long silence followed the pronouncement while Nightfall regained enough composure to speak with his usual boldness. "Sire, my name is Marak." After all that had happened, it seemed ludicrous to try to stay with his original lie, yet he had few alternatives. "I’m a sailor, not a criminal. Your men made a mistake."
The king glanced at his adviser, who shook his head, frowning.
Cued by the king’s attention to Gilleran at a time when it made more sense to watch his prisoner, Nightfall studied the exchange.
Rikard turned to the convict again. "You deny being Nightfall?"
“I would be a fool to do otherwise." Nightfall combed dried blood from his beard with his fingers.
Again, the king looked at Gilleran.
The chancellor scowled. "Certainly, Sire, he speaks the truth." He opened his mouth, revealing straight rows of ivory teeth. "But that doesn’t change the fact that he is Nightfall."
That explains why the king keeps consulting him. Some sort of truth detection, Nightfall presumed. No doubt, a skill wrenched from some innocent. He imagined a child writhing in the terror of a prolonged, sorcerous death, its soul shackled into a limitless agony of service.
"Who are you?" King Rikard directed another question at his prisoner.
Nightfall said nothing. Even if the query had had an answer, he would have chosen to sit in silence. If say nothing, the sorcerer can’t tell if I’m lying.
"Who are you?" Rikard repeated.
Another lengthy pause, the hush interrupted only by the rhythm of their breaths and the mottled shadows created by the flickering torches.
The king loosened a sigh of resignation. His manner became direct, and his tone matched the change. "Look, Nightfall… Marak… whatever your name is. You have nothing to gain by silence. Even if we drop the other charges, you killed two of my guards. For that, I have the right to execute you without trial and in any manner I wish. I’m not stupid. I won’t let you out of that cell until you’re dead. If you insist on ignoring my questions, I’ll call Volkmier and order him to fill you with arrows through the bars." He glared at Nightfall, tolerance clearly waning. “It’s not as bloody as he’d like, but I think he’d enjoy doing it slowly."
Trapped, Nightfall lowered himself to the floor. "And if I do talk? You’ll free me?"
This time, the king did not bother to consult his chancellor. “Actually, that’s a possibility.”
Nightfall kept his hopes in check. To believe such a thing was absurd, futile at best. "Forgive my doubts, Sire, but you did just remind me that I killed your guards. What possible reason could you have for letting me go?"
"Personal reasons." King Rikard’s brow furrowed and his features darkened, as if he considered some distant annoyance. "But first, I need some information from you. Specifically, the truth."
Nightfall looked away.
"You have nothing to lose by honesty. And nothing to gain by lying. Now, who are you?"
Nightfall considered. Silence or lies would seal his fate. He dared not believe the truth might buy him freedom; but, at least, it might buy him time. "Call me Marak. Call me Nightfall. What does it matter?"
King Rikard continued to press. “But who are you? Who are you really?"
The question was nonsense. "I’m Nightfall. I’m Marak. I’m a dozen others as. well.”
Gilleran examined Nightfall with the intensity of a peasant choosing the plumpest chicken in a market square. No emotion escaped his set jaw and rock-steady gaze.
The king ignored his adviser, clinging to the question. "What does your mother call you?"
"My mother is dead.”
Rikard narrowed in. "What did she call you before she died?"
An image filled Nightfall’s mind, blurred by time. He pictured the frail, slender form of his mother, her dark hair combed to a sheen, a red dress hugging curves sharpened by hunger. To him, she looked beautiful, yet her pinched features warned him of coming violence. He shrank from the image. "She called me ‘Boy’ mostly, Sometimes ‘Rat’ or ‘Stupid.’ "
King Rikard glanced sharply, at Gilleran, who shrugged. "Your mother called you those things?"
Bitterness tainted Nightfall’s words. "Some of us don’t grow up on hugs and kisses and silk."
The king seemed to ponder the words far too long before returning to his original inquiry. "But, surely, she gave you a name."
Nightfall searched his memory. Twenty-six years had passed since his mother`s death and thirty, at least, since she had used his name. "I believe it was Sudian, Sire. Though I haven’t heard it since I was a toddler."
"Then it should work just fine," King Rikard announced cryptically. He pulled at his beard, looking thoughtful. "Sudian what?"
Nightfall stared. The question made no sense to him."Huh?"
The king copied Nightfall’s defensive tone. "Well, forgive my growing up on hugs and kisses and a family name. But isn’t it customary in most countries to give a man a second name based on his parentage? Sudian some man’s son‘?"
Nightfall drew his knees to his chest, centralizing his balance. "Sudian Nomansson."
"No man’s son? Are you protecting your father? There’s no need. It’s not his fault his son is a murderer?”
"I have no father? Nightfall stated it definitively, hoping to end the conversation, yet with little doubt it would continue. About Nightfall’s history, the king’s curiosity seemed relentless.
As expected, Rikard pressed. "Every man has a father."
"Not me," Nightfall said shamelessly, catching and holding the king’s dark gaze. “My mother was a prostitute. Any man could be my father." The memories surfaced, the years robbing them of emotion. He recalled lurking in the shadows of the street, huddled against the cold, his thin, unpatched homespun of little comfort against the wind. He remembered trailing his mother and her latest client to the bare, dusty room scarcely warmer than the alleyways, watching them writhe and moan between threadbare sheets. By two years of age, he had learned to disappear before the session ended to avoid his mother’s teary-eyed rages against her lot and the child who, she insisted, cost her dearly in food, money, and time, though she gave him none of those. By the time he was three, he had learned to search her clients’ pockets for crumbs and spare change, inherently knowing that to take too much might turn their wrath against her.
"A prostitute," the king repeated. "Hardly no man’s son. I should think that would make you every man’s son."
The cavalier observation raised a wave of malice. Instantly, Nightfall’s thoughts were flung backward to the winter of his eighth year. Then, he had returned home from seeking food to find a stranger battering his mother while he ravished her. Nightfall had witnessed the final blow to the throat that turned her breaths to terminal gasps. A quarter of a century later, he still pictured the man with a vivid detail that could not be erased from memory. That pig and ones like him will never be my father. "No man came forward to claim me as his, and I am no man’s son."
The king and his chancellor waited, eyeing Nightfall expectantly.
Grimly, Nightfall completed the recollection, as his mind always did. His mother’s murderer had become Nightfall’s first victim, slaughtered by an enraged eight-year-old with a table knife and a lucky stab. The memory would remain for eternity: blood splashing, warm and chokingly thick with an odor like sea things dying on a beach; terror and fear robbing him of anger, yet leaving the dull triumph of revenge.