Brent Weeks - Beyond the Shadows

Logan folded his arms. His voice was granite. “My word stands.”

“Can you love an idea more than you love a man and not become a monster? How many friends will you sacrifice on the altar of Justice, Logan?”

“If you force my hand, at least one.”

They were standing on a precipice. Socially, Logan had always been Kylar’s superior. Morally, Kylar had always felt inferior, too. But they’d never been placed in a direct hierarchical relation. Now Logan was giving an order. He would not be moved.

Kylar could only accept his order and accept all his orders henceforth, or reject it and them forever. There was part of him that yearned to obey. He was convinced that killing Terah was the right thing, but Logan’s moral compass was a more accurate instrument than Kylar’s. What was it about submission that was so hard? Kylar wasn’t being asked for blind servility. He was being asked to obey a man he knew and loved and respected, who in turn respected him.

The wolfhound is pampered by the fire. The wolf is hunted in the cold.

“Do you know how much I love you, Logan?” Kylar asked. Logan opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, Kylar said, “This much.” And left.

Kylar was back in the city on his way to the one safe house he was confident hadn’t been discovered during the Godking’s reign when the ka’kari spoke.

~Would you be excited about Logan being king if he told you politics is the art of the possible and asked you to murder his rivals?~

I’m already damned. My crimes might as well accomplish something.

~So you’ll serve clean water out of a filthy cup? You must have better tricks than I do.~

The safe house was on the east side, far enough from the fashionable areas that it had been on the city’s outskirts. Now the building was gone. The entrance itself, a flagstone set flush with the ground, was only paces from the Godking’s new wall. The neighborhood, once unfashionable, was buzzing with activity. After the Godking’s death, thousands of people had fled the Warrens, either hoping to reclaim their lives or hoping to claim someone else’s better life. The fires that the displaced had started on their way out of the city had left great swathes of it bare and black. Too few buildings remained to shelter everyone, even without the thousands who had left the city with Terah Graesin. Now they all were back, and there were no building materials to be found. With an army besieging the city and cold rains starting, people were desperate.

Kylar sat with his back to the wall to listen to the tones of the city. There was no way he was going to get into the safe house before nightfall. Even invisible, he couldn’t lift a flagstone in the middle of what was now a de facto street without dozens of people noticing. The safe house had another entrance, of course. Unfortunately, a new wall was sitting on it.

The gossip was angry. Terah Graesin had stopped the free flow of traffic across the Vanden Bridge this morning, and it had nearly caused a riot. Kylar listened to a proclamation that promised a return to the way things had been before the invasion. The squatters would be driven back into the Warrens, and those legitimate merchants and petty nobility who had been uprooted would be granted their old homes and lands as soon as they could prove their claims. The herald was greeted with hisses and jeers.

“And how in the nine hells am I supposed to prove that I owned a smithy, when the queen burned it and my deeds to the ground?” one man yelled. Kylar would have been more sympathetic if he didn’t recognize the man as a beggar. Others, however, joined a chorus of agreement.

“I’m not going back!” a young man yelled. “I lived in the Warrens long enough.”

“I killed six palies in the Nocta Hemata,” another shouted. “I deserve better!”

Before the crowd’s fury gained more momentum, the herald beat a hasty retreat.

Within an hour, scribes were openly hawking badly forged deeds. An hour after that, a Sa’kagé representative showed up. His deeds were not only higher quality and much more expensive, he said the Sa’kagé guaranteed that no duplicate deeds would be forged. He could only sell deeds for this neighborhood, and he had an allotment of what kind of shops could be represented. Thus, unless the owner still possessed the original deed, Sa’kagé deeds were as good as gold. Within minutes, the non-Sa’kagé scribes had been chased off or coerced to join.

Meanwhile, food prices were skyrocketing. Tough loaves of bread that wouldn’t sell for six coppers in the morning were selling for ten after a full day hardening in the sun. As the sun set, people improvised wood frames with cloaks or blankets stretched over them to make lean-tos against the wall. Others wrapped themselves tight in their cloaks, tucked their purses inside their tunics, and slept where they lay, alone or in groups for warmth.

Not everyone slept, of course. Darkness brought out the guild rats looking for easy bags. One even bent over Kylar, who hadn’t moved in so long she thought him asleep. Kylar waited until the urchin—he couldn’t even tell for sure under the grime but he thought it was a girl—had a hand on his purse. Then he struck, spinning the child into his arms, with both hands twisted behind her back and Kylar’s other hand locked around her throat.

“Please, sir, I was up for a piss, and now I can’t find my da.”

“Kids who have parents don’t say ‘piss’ when they talk to adults. What guild are you?”

“Guild, sir?”

Kylar clouted her ear, but not as hard as Durzo would have.

“Black Dragon.”

“Black Dragon?” Kylar laughed softly. “That was my old guild. How much are dues these days?”

“Two coppers.”

“Two? We had to pay four.” Kylar felt like an old fart, talking about how much harder things were when he was growing up. He let her go. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Blue.”

“Well, Blue, tell the tall kid not to try that fat man’s purse. He’s not asleep. If you all get out of here for an hour, I’ll leave enough to pay your dues for a week. If you don’t, I’ll yell that I’ve caught a thief and tell everyone to watch out for guild rats, and you’ll have to move on anyway—and you’ll all be lucky to escape a beating.”

He let her go, and while she was gathering her crew, he went invisible and lifted the flagstone. Hidden doors set into the ground were never as secure as those set into walls. No matter how expertly constructed, once you opened a door in the ground, you displaced the dirt on the door as well as the dirt that inevitably got packed into the seams. It would be the last time Kylar could use this safe house. A safe house you were afraid to use wasn’t a safe house at all, but Kylar needed a noble’s clothing, gold, and—thanks to the ka’kari—new weapons.

Instead of climbing down the ladder, he jumped, and quickly pulled the flagstone shut. He checked his traps—one on the ladder and two on the door. All were intact. Then he opened the wood door slowly. The hinges protested and he made a mental note to oil them.

The tiny safe house was pristine, if stale. Kylar checked the top of one of the small chests. Across the latch was balanced a piece of his own hair. The hair, of course, wasn’t a foolproof indicator of tampering. Even in a sealed safe house, your own entry could disturb the air enough to displace a hair, but if the hair was in place, it was unlikely that anyone else had entered.

Kylar shook his head. He wasn’t even planning to stay here more than a few minutes, but Durzo’s habit of checking traps and examining every corner for threats had sunk deep.

And where was Durzo? What had he been doing? Had he simply moved on to another life? Was it so easy for him to leave everything behind? The idea soured Kylar’s mood. Durzo was the central figure in Kylar’s life, and he’d abandoned him. Durzo had given him the ka’kari, a treasure of untold worth, but he hadn’t given Kylar his trust—or his time.