“Wait a minute, we had a deal,” the gambler said.
Burke clamped his heavy hand on the man’s shoulder and leaned in close. “Shut up if you want to keep breathing.”
The man fell silent.
Varina bent down and retrieved Myrmeen’s knife. “You really must try the bar across the street. They gave us a tankard of ale and Kracauer’s address for a gold piece.”
Myrmeen smiled in defeat. “Well, perhaps we should—”
The mage looked around in distress.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Burke asked.
Cardoc’s brow furrowed and he shook his head. “It was nothing. For a moment I thought I sensed something that could not be. I’m sorry. Perhaps we should leave.”
“It’s about bloody time one of you thought of that,” Ord said. “We’ve attracted a crowd.”
At the other end of the tavern, beside a table in the room’s darkest corner, a young serving maid named Hilya approached one of her husband’s indentured servants. The boy was no more than eleven, and he was standing alone, staring at an empty table.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said, anxiously watching the crowd that had bottlenecked near the gambling room. She would have to keep a close watch to make sure no one tried to get away without paying his bill.
“He went,” the boy said.
“What are talking about? Who went?”
“It was a man,” the lean, blond child said. “I think it was a man. He was very dark. I could never see his face. It’s like he was always in shadow, even when he was standing by the fire.”
“Well, what about him? There’s work to be done.”
“He got up from the table and went to watch the fight with everyone else. Then he came back to his table, drank his mead, and went.”
“You mean he didn’t pay?” she said, her anger swelling. “Why did you let him go? Why didn’t you call someone?”
“There wasn’t no time,” he said. “One second he was there, then he just went.”
“Went where?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “It was like he just stepped into the shadows and disappeared. Like he walked right into the wall.”
The woman pressed her lips together and slapped the boy on the top of the head. He hollered and she grabbed his arm. “That was for lying.” She reached back and slammed his bottom. “That was for letting a customer go without paying his bill, if that’s what happened. Now come with me.”
“What?” he cried. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I’m going to take you back and let Andros give you the once over. You probably took the man’s money and pocketed it for yourself.”
“I didn’t, I didn’t,” the boy said frantically. Andros was the serving maid’s husband and the Two-Headed Mare’s owner. He also possessed a temper that was easily ignited and a strap the boy had seen one time too often. “Wait, Hilya, look there!”
She glanced back at the table, where the boy was pointing, and squinted. Then she released his arm, picked up a candle from a nearby table and walked close to the wall. There, against the hard oak, was a shadow that was deeper than all the others, a night-black silhouette in the form of a man. As she brought the candle closer, the shadow did not disappear. It seemed to absorb the flame’s light.
With a trembling hand, Hilya reached out and touched the shadow on the wall, then yelped in surprise and drew back her fingers, which were burned and bleeding. She gasped as she saw a tiny red trace of her blood vanish into the deepening shadow. Without warning, the entire silhouette disappeared as if it had never been there at all.
Hilya felt faint. She looked at her hand once again and saw that the darkness that had been on the wall was spreading from the tips of her fingers to engulf her entire hand. For an instant she felt as if a river of ice had traveled through the blood in her veins and had taken hold of her heart. Her mouth cracked open and she felt a staggering pain. The boy watched as a tiny cloud of black smoke escaped with her breath, then he leapt back as she fell to the floor, her eyes already glazed over in death.
Tears welled up in his eyes as he saw the smokelike shadow trail across her flesh one last time before it vanished.
Finally, he began to scream.
Three
The death of the proprietor’s wife drew the attention of the onlookers who had gathered to view Myrmeen’s brawl and the aftermath. When the crowd parted, Cardoc received a brief glimpse of the body and froze. Something clearly troubled him, but even when the Harpers were back on the street, several blocks from the Two-Headed Mare, he refused to say what that was. Burke, Varina, Reisz, and Ord agreed to return separately to the inn, as a large group would have drawn too much attention at this late hour. Lucius and Myrmeen traveled down the dark, silent street on foot. In many sections of the city, mounts were only allowed for the city’s guardsmen and commercial carriages. The streets often were so congested with people that horses panicked and bolted in the street, causing injuries among the wealthy tourist trade. Anything that was bad for business in Calimport was strictly prohibited.
Lucius and Myrmeen walked down a ruined street, passing houses and other buildings that often were the survivors of fires or simply the victims of age and neglect. Myrmeen turned to Cardoc and said, “I grew up here. This place hasn’t changed. The government does nothing to help the poor.”
Myrmeen knew that the city’s underdeveloped, less affluent sections actually lent to Calimport’s allure. Wealthy citizens often paid guides to take them through the worst parts of the city so that they could shower the destitute with the occasional coin or scrap of food. They would return to their mansions and tell their peers of their morally correct, charitable endeavors. In truth, the suffering they witnessed gave them grist for their dinner party conversations.
“In Arabel, you encountered a similar situation when you became ruler,” Lucius remarked.
“Even before,” Myrmeen said as she saw a pair of children playing at the end of the street. “My second husband, Haverstrom Lhal, was a good man. But, like many politicians, he catered to the needs of those with money who could most benefit his career.”
“You brought about changes, government reforms to aid those who could not find work and could not afford to house and feed their families.”
“How do you know so much about me?” Myrmeen asked.
Cardoc tilted his head slightly, like a wolf. “I am a Harper. We are the lord protectors of the Realms. It is my business to know who will most benefit these lands and who will bring to them the greatest threat. Your husband died?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “There was a plot, a conspiracy involving the leaders of several races, to find an object that might have ended human dominance on this world. My husband went off with several others to investigate these rumors and left the city in my care. I had already been given an equal hand in the running of Arabel, and the programs you mentioned had gone far in bringing the people of my city together. They accepted me immediately.”
“And your husband?”
“He never returned. He was killed in an ambush, his head placed on a pike. I never would have believed his death, had I not seen his remains myself.” She became quiet. “Lucius, I’d rather not speak of this.”
“Of course.”
Soon they reached a hostel, a gathering place for children who were homeless or had been made wards of the state, and decided that the direct approach would be best. Walking through the front door, they roused the interest of a man in his early fifties who had a wisp of white hair on his head. Hard, square features dominated his face. The hostel itself once had been a beautiful house of lodgings, subsequently sacrificed to the same decay that had eaten many Calimport neighborhoods. The two Harpers were close to a grand, winding staircase that led to a spacious second-floor landing. Myrmeen had the feeling that the children’s actual quarters were closer to the size of closets than the luxury suites the place once had afforded.