Brent Weeks - Way of Shadows

“I need your help,” Azoth said finally. There was no way to cover what he wanted. He wasn’t here to visit a friend. He was here to do a job.

“My help?”

“I need to know what’s happened to Doll Girl. Where is she? And I need to know what’s happening with the guilds.”

“I guess you wouldn’t know.”

“No.” Guilds weren’t part of his life now. Nothing was like it used to be.

“Your master hit you?” Jarl asked, looking at Azoth’s black eyes.

“I got this in a fight. He does hit me, but not like—” Azoth cut off.

“Not like Rat?”

“How is he?” Azoth said, trying to cover.

“Why don’t you tell me? You’re the one who killed him.”

Azoth opened his mouth, but seeing two littles in Momma K’s front room, stopped.

“Blint made you kill Rat to see if you could do it, didn’t he?” Jarl asked, his voice low.

“No. Are you crazy?” In his head, he could hear the echoes of Master Blint’s voice from their training: “Word gets out. Word always gets out.”

Hurt filled Jarl’s eyes, and he said nothing for a long time. “I shouldn’t push, Azoth. I’m sorry. I should just thank you. Rat …he messed me up bad. I’m so confused all the time. I hated him, but sometimes…. When Rat disappeared and I saw you walking away with Blint …” Jarl blinked rapidly and stared away. “Sometimes I hate you. You left me with no one. But that’s not right. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just Rat …and me.”

Azoth didn’t know what to say.

Jarl blinked furiously again. “Shut up, Jarl. Shut up.” He dashed the tears from his eyes with fists. “What do you need?”

There was something Azoth should say, he knew it. Some assurance he should give, but he didn’t know what it was. Jarl had been his friend—was his friend, wasn’t he?—but he’d changed. Azoth had changed. He was supposed to be Kylar now, but instead, he was just a fraud straddling two worlds and trying to hold on as they tore apart. Whatever the cataclysm named Rat had left Azoth holding onto, one thing was certain. A chasm had opened between him and Jarl, and Azoth was afraid to even approach it, didn’t understand what it was, didn’t know anything except that it made him feel dirty and scared. Jarl was letting him put the walls back up by asking his simple question—a simple question that could be answered simply, a problem that they could actually resolve.

“Doll Girl,” Azoth said. He felt relieved to back away from his once-friend and guilty that he felt relieved.

“Oh,” Jarl said. “You know she got …?”

“Is she all right now?”

“She’s alive. But I don’t know if she’s going to make it. They make fun of her. Without you around, she isn’t like she used to be. I’ve been sharing my food with her, but the guild’s falling apart. Things are too bad. We don’t have enough food.”

The guild, not our guild. Azoth kept his face blank, refused to show how much that hurt. It shouldn’t have hurt. He was the one who’d wanted out, he was the one who left, but it still made him feel empty.

You will be alone. You will be different. Always.

“Ja’laliel’s almost dead; turns out Rat stole his review money. And now they lost the waterfront to Burning Man, and others are closing in.”

“They?”

Jarl’s face twisted. “If you’ve got to know, they threw me out of Black Dragon. Threw us all out. Didn’t want buggers and Rat-lovers, they said.”

“You don’t have a guild?” Azoth asked. It was a disaster. Guild rats without a guild were fair game for anyone. That Jarl had stayed alive since being expelled was surprising, that he’d had food to share with Doll Girl was amazing, and that he was willing to was humbling.

“Some of us have banded together for a little while. They call us the Buggers. I’m going to try to join Two Fist on the north side. Rumor is they might get the market on Durdun soon,” Jarl said.

That was Jarl. Always had a plan.

“They’re willing to take Doll Girl, too?”

He was answered with guilty silence.

“I asked. I did, Azoth. They just won’t do it. If you—” Jarl’s mouth opened to say more, then closed.

“I’m not going to make you ask, Jarl. I’ve been looking for you to give it back.” Azoth lifted his tunic and unwrapped the sash full of coins. He handed it to Jarl.

“Azoth, this—this is twice as heavy as it was.”

“I’ll take care of Doll Girl. Give me a couple weeks. Can you take care of her for that long?”

Jarl’s eyes were filling with tears, and Azoth was afraid his would too. They called each other Jarl and Azoth now, not Jay-Oh and Azo.

Azoth said, “I’m going to tell Momma K how smart you are and see if she has work for you. You know, if things don’t work out with Two Fist.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“Sure, Jay-Oh.”

“Azo?” Jarl said.

“Yeah?”

Jarl hesitated, swallowed. “I just wish …”

“Me too, Jarl. Me too.”

T he price of disobedience is death. The words kept running through his head every day as Azoth planned his disobedience.

Azoth’s training was brutally hard, but it wasn’t brutal. In the guilds, a Fist might beat you to make a point and make a mistake that left you permanently maimed. Master Blint never made mistakes. Azoth hurt exactly as much as Blint wanted him to. Usually, that was a lot.

But so what? Azoth had two meals a day. He could eat as much as he wanted, and Blint worked the soreness out of his muscles every day as they trained.

At first everything was curses and beatings. Azoth couldn’t do anything right. But curses were just air, and beatings were just momentary pain. Blint would never maim Azoth, and if he chose to kill him, there was nothing Azoth could do to stop him anyway.

It was the closest thing to safety he’d ever known.

Within weeks, he realized he liked the training. The sparring, the blunted practice weapons, the obstacle courses, even the herb lore. Learning reading with Momma K was hard. But so what? Two hours of frustration a day was nothing. Azoth’s life was good.

Within a month, he realized that he was talented. It wasn’t obvious, and if he hadn’t been so keyed in to Master Blint’s every mood and reaction, he would never have noticed, but now and then, he’d see a faint look of surprise as he mastered some new skill more quickly than Master Blint had expected.

It made him work all the harder, hoping to see that look not once a week, but once a day. For her part, Momma K made him decipher squiggles for longer than he could imagine. She had a way of smiling and saying just the right thing that it pulled him along through the hours. Words were power, she said. Words were another sword for the man who wielded them well. And he would need them if the world was to believe that he was Kylar Stern, so Momma K worked with him on his alternate identity, quizzing him with likely questions other nobles would ask, helping him come up with harmless stories about growing up in eastern Cenaria, and teaching him the rudiments of etiquette. She told him Count Drake would teach him the rest once he went to live with the Drakes. When Azoth walked in the Drakes’ door, she said, he would be Kylar forever after. Blint would train him in a safe house on the east side. Momma K would meet with him in one of her homes on the east side. Only when he started accompanying Blint on jobs would he return to the Warrens.

Azoth worked hard for her and without complaint except for one time when he got disgusted at his own stupidity and threw a book across the room. He worked in the hell of Momma K’s displeasure for a week until he brought her some flowers he’d stolen and she forgave him.