Brent Weeks - Way of Shadows

It was the only way Doll Girl would ever be safe.

He knew what becoming a wetboy would mean. Everything would change. Wetboys were knives in the dark. Azoth would learn how to fight, how to kill. He wouldn’t just learn how, he’d do it. Blint would expect him to kill. That niggled at him like a stare from Doll Girl that wouldn’t really count unless he met her eyes. But he didn’t think much about the specifics of murdering. He held onto that image of Durzo Blint, laughing at the entire guild. Durzo Blint, laughing at Rat and his little army. Durzo Blint, fearless. Durzo Blint, who Azoth could be.

Blint would take him away. Azoth wouldn’t lead Black Dragon. He wouldn’t even lead his lizards. But he didn’t want to. He didn’t want the littles looking at him like he was their father, the bigs who towered over him looking at him like he knew what he was doing, like he would keep them all safe. He couldn’t even keep himself safe. This was all a fraud. He was a fraud. He’d been set up, and they didn’t even see it.

The unmistakable sound of the front door being moved aside heralded Rat’s return. Azoth was so scared he would have wept if he hadn’t told Badger to stay awake. He couldn’t weep in front of his bigs. He was sure Rat would come over to him, have the bigs lift him up, and take him away to some horrific punishment that would make Jarl’s look easy. But true to form, Rat pushed into his harem, lay down, and was asleep in seconds.

A wetboy wouldn’t cry. Azoth tried to slow his breathing, tried to listen to see if Rat’s bodyguards were asleep, too.

Wetboys weren’t afraid. They were killers. Other people were afraid of them. Everyone in the Sa’kagé was afraid of them.

If I lie here and try to sleep again, I might sleep here with nothing happening for another night or another week, but Rat will get me. He’ll destroy everything. Azoth had seen the look in his eyes. He believed Rat would destroy him, and he didn’t believe that it would be a week before he did. It’s either that or I kill him first. In his mind, Azoth saw himself as a hero, like something out of a bard’s tale: giving Jarl his money back, giving Ja’laliel enough to buy review, everyone in the guild loving him for killing Rat, and Doll Girl speaking for the first time, approval glowing in her eyes, telling how brave he was.

It was stupid, and he couldn’t afford stupidity.

He had to piss. Azoth got up angrily and walked out the back door. Rat’s bodyguards didn’t even shift in their sleep as he walked past them.

The night air was cold and rank. Azoth had been spending most of the collection money to feed his lizards. Today, he’d bought fish. The ever-hungry littles had gotten into the entrails and eaten them and gotten sick. His urine arcing into the alley, he thought that he should have had someone watching out for that. It was just something else he’d missed.

He heard a scuffing sound from inside and turned, lacing his breeches up. Looking into the darkness, though, he saw nothing. He was losing it, jumping at sounds when there were three score guild rats pressed together in the house, sleeping, moaning on empty bellies, and rolling into their neighbors.

Suddenly, he smiled and touched the shiv. There might be a hundred things he didn’t know and a thousand more he couldn’t control, but he knew what he needed to do now.

Rat had to die; it was that simple. What happened to Azoth after he did it didn’t even matter. Whether they thanked him or killed him, he had to kill Rat. He had to kill him before Rat got to Doll Girl. He had to kill him now.

And with that, the decision was made. Azoth held the shiv up along his wrist and stepped inside. Rat would be sleeping wedged in with his harem. It would only be two steps out of Azoth’s way. Azoth would pretend to stumble in case the bigs were watching, and then plunge the shiv into Rat’s stomach. He would stab him over and over until Rat was dead or he was.

Azoth was within four steps of his attack when he came in sight of his own sleeping space.

Badger was lying on his back in the darkness, a thin line drawn across his neck, black on white skin. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t moving.

Doll Girl’s space was empty. She was gone, and so was Rat.

He lay in the darkness, too stunned to weep. Even in his sudden blind shock, Azoth knew that Rat’s bigs couldn’t be asleep. This was what they had been waiting for. Azoth had left for the barest minute, and they had taken Doll Girl. It wouldn’t even do him any good to wake the whole guild. In the darkness and confusion, he’d never know just which of Rat’s bigs was gone. And what would he do even if he knew? Even if he knew who was gone, he wouldn’t know where they’d gone. Even if he knew where they’d gone, what would he do?

He lay in the darkness, stumbling over thoughts, staring at the sagging ceiling. He’d heard them. Damn him forever. He’d heard the sound and didn’t even go look.

He lay in the darkness, finished. The watch changed. The sun rose. The guild rats stirred, and he stared at the sagging ceiling, waiting for it to collapse on him like everything else. He couldn’t have moved if he wanted to.

He lay in the light. Children were shrieking, littles pulling at him, shouting something. Something about Badger. Questions. It was all words. Words were wind. Someone shook him, but he was far away.

It wasn’t until long after that that he woke. There was only one sound that could have brought him out of his trance: Rat, laughing.

Tingles shot across his skin and he sat upright. He still had the shiv. There was dried blood on the floor, but Azoth barely saw it. He stood and started walking toward the door.

That terrible laugh rang out again, and Azoth ran.

The moment he stepped through the door, out of the corner of his eye he saw the shadow of the doorframe elongate and snap forward. It was as fast as a trapdoor spider he’d once seen, and just as effective. He slammed into the shadow like he’d run into a wall. His head rang as he was pulled back into the deep shadows between the guild building and the ruin next to it.

“So eager for death, little one?”

Azoth couldn’t shake his head, couldn’t shake loose. The shadow had a hand like iron over his face. Slowly, he realized it was Master Blint.

“Five days, kid. Five days you had to kill him.” He was whispering in Azoth’s ear, the faintest hint of garlic and onions laced through his breath. In front of them, Rat was talking with the guild, laughing and making them laugh with him. Some of Azoth’s lizards were there, laughing too, hoping to escape Rat’s notice.

So it begins already. Whatever Azoth had accomplished was already coming apart. The rest of the lizards were gone. Doubtless they’d come crawling back later to see what had happened. Azoth couldn’t even be mad at them for it. In the Warrens, you did what you had to to survive. It wasn’t their failure; it was his. Blint was right: the bigs on either side of Rat were ready. Rat himself was ready. If Azoth had charged out there, he would have died. Or worse. All the time he’d had to plan, and he’d done nothing. He would have deserved that death.

“Calm now, kid?” Blint asked. “Good. Because I’m going to show you what your hesitation cost.”

Solon was ushered in to dinner by an old man with a stooped back and a smartly pressed uniform adorned with gold braid and the Gyre’s soaring white falcon on a field sable, which over the centuries had become barely recognizable as the gyrfalcon it was. A northern falcon. And not Khalidoran or even Lodricari, gyrfalcons were only found in the Freeze. So the Gyres are hardly more native to Cenaria than I am.