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Tom Lloyd: The Dusk Watchman

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Tom Lloyd The Dusk Watchman

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Though they’d parted on bad terms and Amber was a man who lived by the sword, Nai had enough respect for him to think he deserved better than a club to the head or a hangman’s noose. He had no idea what sort of life King Emin would offer him, but it couldn’t be any worse: they both had to rely on that.

The workshop door jerked open and a slender Litse poked his head out, pushing back long wisps of blond hair as he peered down at Nai.

The necromancer gave him his best smile and raised what he was holding to show the man. It was a peach stone, cleaned and smoothed, with three symbols carved into each side. ‘I was asked to give you this,’ he said.

The man looked from the stone to Nai and back, his mouth opening to speak, but confusion made him hesitate and quick as a snake Nai shoved the stone into the man’s mouth. The Litse recoiled, closing his mouth reflexively as he did. He took a frightened step back and then stopped, his expression of fright fading into glass-eyed blankness. Without waiting, Nai dragged Amber inside with him, nudging the Litse aside and closing the door behind him.

When a voice quavered, ‘Who are you?’ he turned and saw a young boy frozen in the act of rising, a chisel in his hand as though he was ready to attack Nai. The boy took a second look at Amber and opened his mouth to shout, but Nai already had his knife to the unresisting man’s throat.

‘Don’t scream or I kill him,’ he commanded, and ushered the man, clearly the boy’s father, forward. He moved willingly, staring vacantly ahead at the space between them.

‘What have you done to him?’ the boy asked quietly, trembling as he spoke.

‘I’ve put a spell on him,’ Nai admitted. ‘He’s entirely under my control now. If you don’t want me to order him to put his head in the fire, you’ll not cry out or try to escape, understand?’

‘A spell?’

The necromancer nodded and lowered his knife, pointedly turning his back on the man. ‘Go and stand by the door,’ he ordered. The peach stone was a popular necromancer’s tool, but it was only useful for short periods, unless one had an inexhaustible supply of people: the spell would last until the stone was taken out of his mouth, but the victim could neither do it themselves, nor eat or drink with it in.

‘What do you want?’ The boy was no more than eleven or twelve winters, Nai guessed, old enough to be learn a trade but still just a skinny child when it came to intruders.

‘Somewhere to spend the day quietly. We’ll leave once nightfall comes.’

‘He’s a Menin.’ He pointed at Amber.

‘One the enemies of his people are keen to capture, so I cannot allow the duchess’ men to hang him before then, do you understand?’

The boy nodded and Nai helped Amber into a chair, where the big man slumped wearily down.

‘What’s your name, boy?’

‘Isalail, Isalail Hesh.’

‘Well Isalail, can you tell me if anyone’s likely to come visiting today?’ The boy shook his head and Nai looked around the small workshop, then walked over to a doorway in the far wall, watching Isalail out of the corner of his eye as he did so. The boy was staring at his father, clearly unable to understand why he was just standing there rather than grabbing a log and hitting Amber over the head with it.

Then Amber grunted and jerked up in his seat, as though waking from a bad dream. One of his scimitars was out of its scabbard before he was even aware of it, and that action seemed to end any thoughts Isalail might have had of escape.

The door led to a store rather than family quarters. ‘Your father is safe,’ Nai said. ‘Where’s your mother?’

‘Dead, sir.’

‘Brothers, sisters?’

‘Also dead. It’s just me and Da.’

‘Good.’ Nai returned and said to the man, ‘You, tie your son to the chair — not tight enough to hurt him, mind.’

The man at once moved to obey, fetching a coil of rope from a nail on the wall while his son shrank back in his seat.

‘Don’t worry, Isalail,’ Nai added, ‘you won’t be harmed, but I don’t want to have to put the same spell on you. It is not without its risks.’

Tears spilled from the boy’s face. ‘You said he was safe!’

‘And he is. There is, however, an unfortunate side-effect of the spell — he is perfectly safe until I break it, but afterwards he will be vulnerable to ah… outside influences. Before we leave I’ll show you what to do, but you will have to make sure you don’t leave him alone, or in the dark, until dawn — that’s very important.’

‘Why?’ Isalail asked miserably.

‘You really don’t want to know,’ Nai said firmly as he watched the father secure the first knot. ‘Is that too tight? Does it hurt?’

Isalail shook his head and looked away.

‘Good. Look at me: we’ll get through the day and then we’ll be gone, and come the dawn your life will be back to normal.’ He paused and walked over to Amber. Finding the Menin’s purse he pulled out two silver levels and dropped them on the worktable. ‘Back to normal,’ Nai repeated, ‘but best you fetch a priest and pay for an exorcism after, just in case. Now, do you have any food?’

Ardela scratched at her belly for the fiftieth time that day and tried not to swear. The dress was filthy and stank like a cavalryman’s crotch, but that was her own fault for getting one so rancid. The fact that it came with fleas was a delight too far, but there was little she could do about it now. She had sat on the fringes of the crowd outside the Ruby Tower for three days, fading into the background alongside a hundred other broken souls in dirty-white capes or scarves. Brutally cropped hair coupled with fading bruises and a haunted look in her eye had been all the explanation she’d needed to be there; folk knew what that indicated in the wake of invasion. They’d seen she belonged with the rest of the broken.

The truth was she’d chopped off her own hair, and for the second, she’d had no trouble talking some off-duty soldier into doing that. Though she had encouraged him to vent his petty frustrations on her, the man had been too practised at beating an unresisting woman for her liking.

No different to dogs, when they’re worked up, Ardela thought as she walked through the market in Burn’s main square, idly begging for food. The beating I’d asked for, sure enough, but more fool him for not stopping when I said.

A woman held out a hunk of bread to her and Ardela accepted it like a votive offering, tears of thanks in her eyes. The woman looked embarrassed at that and gestured for Ardela to move along, but she was far from the only one to have taken pity on Ruhen’s Children. They were a symbol now: the woes of Byora given form.

The mood in this quarter of the Circle City was strange, a rare mix of pent-up frustration and ill-defined optimism. The priests had been displaced from their district of Hale, and now the Menin were gone too, murdered or chased away as the priests had been.

In their place stood the white-cloaked followers of the child Ruhen, now divided into three distinct groups: the broken and wretched beggars were Ruhen’s legitimacy, the proof that the priests had betrayed the people of Byora and their Gods had spurned them; the soldiers who bolstered the numbers of Byoran and Ruby Tower guards, Ruhen’s burgeoning power, and the preachers, who were his voice in the Land.

Ardela tore hungrily at the bread as she made her way back to the highway that ran down one side of the square. It was the main route between the looming dagger-shapes of the district of Eight Towers and the outer wall. She didn’t know why they were here yet: Luerce, first among these filthy disciples, had led his ragged flock there early that morning, and she’d known in her bones something significant was coming. As she reached the crowd a collective moan rose up on the air and Ardela turned to see the Duchess of Byora’s carriage approaching. She joined the rest of the crowd on their knees, reaching out as though for alms, droning their nonsensical prayer for intercession.

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