Erik de Bie - Downshadow

"Interesting," he said. "The first shall be my reward for this? Why?"

"This is personal," she said. "Someone I've hated for a long, long time." Her face and voice were deadly serious. "You are a professional-I do not think you could understand that."

It was Rath's turn to smile-yet it might have been the brandy. "You'd be surprised at what I would understand." He chuckled. "I am very familiar with hatred."

Fayne paused at that. "Mmm," she said. "Well. I shall deliver your payment-as noted on that parchment-upon completion. Aught else?"

As quickly as a snake might lunge, Rath reached across the table and seized the lace at her collar, wrenching her face close to his own. Fayne went pale.

"You are afraid," he whispered. "Why?"

Fayne blinked. Her face was calm, but her eyes were fearful. "Release me," she said. "Release me, or-"

"Or you will strike me?" Rath smiled. "I could kill you in a heartbeat."

To demonstrate, Rath gave her face a flick with his fingers, splitting open her upper lip. She didn'r wince, and he almost respected her for that. Almost.

He laid his other hand around her neck. "Answer my question."

The woman licked where he had broken her lip. "Dreams," she said.

Rath relaxed his grip. "Dreams?"

"A girl-a girl in blue fire." Her eyes narrowed and her lip curled. "Know one?"

The dwarf sighed and released her to flop back to the bench. He leaned back, drained.

Fayne sucked her broken lip. "So you've caught me," she said. "I suppose I dream of wenches after all-but that isn't a fault, aye?" Discomfited as she was, she winked.

Rath understood something about her then: how she used allurement to fight anxiety. He smiled wryly. So he wasn't the only one who demeaned himself in moments of weakness.

He pulled his hand away. "Within three nights," he said, and gestured for her to depart.

If Fayne had gone then, it would have been well, but instead her eyes held him fast. She reached casually across and plucked up his hand. She rubbed it against her cheek, teasing her lips along his thumb. His arm tingled, and his hand looked blasphemously dark against her skin.

Long after she left the table, her touch lingered.

Rath folded the parchment upon which she'd named his mark and slid it into his black robe. He raised the brandy to his trembling lips, but the cool liquid tasted like ash on his tongue. He threw the bottle aside with a hiss.

Even drink did him no good now. She had ruined it for him.

He needed a woman, he knew, but not her. Not that faceless creature.

His sharp eyes fell on the serving lass. She had smallish breastswell enough-and a strong, rounded backside. He wouldn't enjoy it, he knew, but he had no choice. He wouldn't go so far as ro say he wanred her, but he knew that he needed her.

Needed to drive his demons away-to forget.

"Girl," he said across the tavern, and she stiffened. He raised the mostly empty bottle of brandy. "Come. Drink with me."

He laid gold on the table.

Shadovar assassin hides among corrupt merchants!" cried a boy for the Daily Luck, hawking his broadsheet on the Street of Silks as evening fell. "Watch denies all rumors!"

"Shadovar spy rumors srupid!" called a rival broadcrier, a bob-haired girl crying the Merchant's Friend. She stuck out her tongue at the Luck boy. "Daily Luck prints idiocy!" "Does not!" cried the boy. "Does so!"

A disgruntled Watchman came upon the two and hissed them onto the next street. They ran from him, laughing, hand in hand, and-Kalen thought-likely fell to kissing as soon as they were out of sight. Younglings. He shook his head and smiled ruefully.

"I swear to the gods, Kalen," said Bors. "If you keep on delaying us for words with which to woo yon strumper-when hard coin will damn well do-I shall declare her the Lady Dren."

Kalen surveyed the chapbooks just inside the shop. "Leleera likes to read."

"I suppose we all have our bedchamber pleasures," Bors said. "Kindly don't share." Bors grinned.

Kalen coughed into his hand, though it was mostly feigned. The weakness had subsided since yestereve, but he could still feel numbness throughout his body. As on any other day.

They had stopped on the way up the Street of Silks at a shop called the Curious Past, at which Kalen was a frequent customer. The business-which after more than a century was growing to be an ancient treasure in its own right-sold oddities, antiques, and chapbooks about the old world. Kalen scanned the titles of the books stacked on the table as the anxious vendor looked on.

Both were off duty that day, and as he often did on such days, Bors had invited Kalen to his favorite festhall-the Smiling Siren. Mostly, Kalen knew, Bors did so to interrogate Kalen for intimate information about Araezra. Kalen had not seen his superior that day-she had not reported for duty-but he wasn't about to let his worry show more than was seemly.

Kalen tried to put her out of his mind. He srudied the wares laid out before him.

Though all the thirty-or-so-page books were romantic in nature, they ranged from the speculative (The Chained Man ofErlkazar, The Blood Queen ofQurth) to the historical (Return of the Shades, the First and Second of Shadows series), and from the salacious (Untold Privy Tales of Cormyr: The Laughing Sisters, The Wayward Witch Queen) to the outright naughty (Adulteries ofLadyAlustra: A Confessional, Seven Sisters for Seven Nights, Tortn's Conquests; this last not a reference ro the god of justice, but a lecherous adventurer of the last century).

He also found most of Arita's Silver Fox series, up to the eighty-page eighth volume, Fox in the Anauroch. Rumors of the upcoming ninth, Fox and the Blue Fire, had been the talk of literary circles for some months.

Kalen selected one of the books and handed the vendor five silvers. He slid the book into his satchel and adjusted the thong over his shoulder. The two wore no armor while off duty, but their black greatcoats-hallmark of the Waterdeep Guard-kept vendors from cheating them.

"Well? Which is it?" Bors winked at the vendor's giggly daughrer.

"Aye?"

"Which masterpiece shall Leleera be enjoying this night, man?" asked Bors. "Aught with pirates, nay? I've heard the lasses swoon over pirates these days."

"All due respect, sir," Kalen said. "Can you even read?"

"Ha!" Bors clapped him on the back. "Well enough, then."

As they walked to the Siren, a light rain began to fall on what had been a warm day, sending up dust from the cobblestones. It was that time of winter-turning-to-spring when the weather could not choose how to behave. Dust swirled in a breeze that came from the west. "Sea fog tonight," predicted Kalen.

"Ridiculous!" said Bors. He spread his hands. "You hear this, Waterdeep? Ridiculous!"

Kalen just smiled-and coughed lightly.

With the rain and the approaching eve, business slowed. The street lighters-retired Watchmen, mostly-were about their work, lifting long hooks to hang fish-oil lamps. The streets would grow crowded near the gates, which closed at dusk.

"I don't see," Bors said, munching an apple, "why you bother with lasses of the night, when by all accounts you could tumble a nymph like Rayse for free."

Kalen ignored rhat. "How are Araezra and Talanna?" he asked quietly.

"You mean yestereve? Bah." Bors sparked a flinr and lit his tamped pipe. "Talanna fell-again, though at least this time she had the damn ring. Laid up for healing at Torm's temple a few days, but she'll be fine-that girl's tougher n bone dragons." He took a deep pull of pipe smoke. "I'm sure the damned Minstrel'will run a tale in the morn that makes us all look hrasting fools, but no mind."

Kalen nodded. Cellica would tell him about the broadsheets. He never read them himself-he already knew how bleak the world really was. "What of Araezra?" he asked quietly.