Paul Crilley - Night of Long Shadows

“Dyce, has Rowen come back?”

Dyce stopped and scowled. “Now that you mention it, no.”

“Host,” Cutter swore. “Listen, I’m off to the university to see if I can find her.”

“Maybe she just fell asleep or something.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Cutter turned and hurried out the door. Gusts of rain slapped him in the face, driving the last vestiges of sleep from his mind.

Both he and Dyce knew Rowen would never fall asleep at a client’s place. None of the girls did. It was too dangerous, one of the first things they learned.

So where was she?

The first night of Long Shadows

Zor, the 26th day of Vult, 998

Cutter stood in the recessed doorway of a tenement building. He breathed through his mouth, trying not to inhale the stale, acidic stench of old vomit. When he first stepped into the shadowed entrance he’d stood on something soft and brittle that crunched and squished beneath his feet. He didn’t check to see what it was.

He leaned against the wall and watched the Starfire Dragon across the street. It was the only place he could think of nearby that would still be open at that time of night. It wasn’t a theatre, so it didn’t close after the last show. It was more of a supper venue with good food and terrible entertainment. But most importantly, the Middle Menthis residents that frequented it were wealthy enough that they would call a skycoach to take them home. All he had to do was wait.

Cutter’s patience was soon rewarded. He saw the underside light first, a tiny everbright globe that appeared through the rain as a skycoach slowly descended. The bad weather caused the driver to overshoot his mark, so he turned the coach gracefully, coming to a landing outside the doors to the club. Dim blue lighting from inside the boat-shaped vessel lit the underside of the driver’s face.

Cutter darted into the rain. He didn’t give the man a chance to see him. He took his cudgel from his belt and slammed it into the back of the driver’s neck. The man dropped, smacking his head on the seat as he went. Blood flowed from the wound. Cutter grabbed him under the arms and dragged him from the coach. He propped him against the wall of the Starfire and climbed inside the skycoach. As soon as he did so, the rain stopped falling. He looked up, but the downpour had not slowed. The coach no doubt carried a charm to keep the occupants dry.

He shook the water from his face and took hold of the controls. He closed his eyes and focused his mind, bonding with the elemental that powered the coach. It sensed someone familiar with the craft, and acquiesced to his presence. He hadn’t anticipated a problem. There were so many drivers for these skycoaches that they couldn’t be bound to any one driver.

Cutter opened his eyes and pulled back on the controls. Just as he was rising into the air, a man and a woman stepped outside, gesturing frantically for him to come back. Cutter ignored them and kept going.

Driving a skycoach wasn’t just a matter of up, down, and forward. Some time ago, Cutter had worked as a coach driver, and it had taken him a month to get the hang of it. It was almost an art to keep the coach from slamming into the undersides of bridges, clipping the jutting cornices and turrets of strangely shaped buildings, and to avoid the unpredictable maneuverings of other skycoaches. Higher up in the skies, drivers had to contend with the Lyrandar airships. They were the worst. They thought they owned the skies, and they were furious that the Sharn council had given contracts for skycoaches to non-Lyrandar companies. If a skycoach got in their way, they’d simply ram it out of the sky.

Cutter took the coach straight up until the curve of a massive tower appeared out of the rain above him. He slowed his ascent and carefully followed the curve as it flared outward and upward. A long strip of glowing white appeared above him. The curve he was following fed into a bridge that connected the tower to another. The white glow came from the underside of the bridge, a safety feature instigated recently by some of the artificers on the council. Cutter wished they’d done it when he was a driver. It certainly made things a lot easier.

He guided the vessel beneath the bridge, then headed forward again. The multicolored lights of other skycoaches materialized out of the night, their illumination haloed and muted by the rain. Everyone was keeping it careful. Too easy for accidents to happen.

He arrived at Dalannan Tower, home of Morgrave University, and drifted upward, the surrounding towers falling gradually away the higher he went, their lights little more than faint twinklings that faded away below him. The air changed. It was still warm, but it was fresher, less oppressive. He lifted his face and took a deep breath, cleansing his mind for what lay ahead.

The coach soared over the top of the tower. He could see a patch of grass below him, and small clumps of trees. He was disoriented for a second, but then realized that it wasn’t Dalannan Tower. He must have drifted off course as he rose upward. This was Breland Spire. The parklike area would be the Commons. He’d heard about it before. Sort of a gathering place for students. He leaned over and peered into the rain, searching for a bridge that connected Breland Spire to Dalannan Tower. Once there, he could find a way in.

He landed the skycoach beneath the trees and disconnected the glyph stone that powered it. The blue lights died and the rain trickled through the branches into the coach. He jumped onto the grass and set off across the Commons. He found the bridge and paused beneath the cover of the peaked roof. He shook the water from his clothes and looked around. Shops and stalls, locked up for the night, lined one side of the wide walkway. The other side was a wall that was entirely covered in paper-notices of upcoming events, advertisements, pages of interest from the Breland Ledger.

Cutter hurried along, his heavy boots clumping loudly on the wooden flooring. The bridge opened onto a flagstone pathway lined with delicately pruned bushes. This in turn led up a flight of marble stairs that stopped before a set of vast double doors. The doors let into Lareth Hall, the huge dome that capped Dalannan Tower and Morgrave University.

Cutter tried the handles, but the doors were locked. He stepped back and sized up the strength of the wood. No. There was no way he was breaking these doors down. He slipped behind the jasmine bushes at the side of the entrance and followed the curve of the dome until he reached a set of tall windows. They were made of stained glass, their pictures depicting various scenes from history. Cutter stood beneath a scene showing the three dragons-Syberis, Eberron, and Khyber. The window was divided into sections, each lined with lead framing. At least the whole window wouldn’t come down on him.

Cutter slipped on a pair of gloves and lightly tapped the window. The glass was thick. He pulled out his knife and smacked the window with the pommel. Nothing. He hit it again, and this time a crack appeared in the glass. He tapped it a few more times, not hard enough to send the glass falling away on the other side, but enough to extend the cracks, separating the glass into fragments. He hit one piece hard. It smashed, the shards falling down the other side. He waited, breath held, but could hear no sounds of alarm. Then he pulled the broken splinters out of the frame.

It took a while, but when he finished, the hole in the window was big enough to squeeze through. He poked his head in first. The interior was dim, lit by shuttered, yellow everbright lanterns. No one was about.

Cutter pulled himself up onto the ledge and slid through the gap. His feet touched down on soft carpet. He moved against the wall and looked around.