Brent Weeks - Way of Shadows

“How do you know he wasn’t just the easiest person they could get in the Sa’kagé?”

Momma K smiled. “We don’t. Khalidor is putting down some rebellions right now, and it’s not going well for them. But the Godking has earned a reputation as a man who plans for victory, and my guess is that he thinks it may be years before he’s ready to march south, but he wants Cenaria to fall at the slightest blow when he does. If he controls the Sa’kagé, taking the city will be easy. Our problem is that if he was able to get a man as highly placed as Corbin, then there may be dozens of others. The other heads of the snake may show up at any time. Anyone we trust may be working for Khalidor.”

“Why’s that your problem?” Azoth asked.

“It’s my problem because I’m one of the Nine, too, Kylar. I’m the Mistress of Pleasures.”

Azoth’s mouth formed a little O. Always before, the Sa’kagé had been something dangerous, huge, and distant. He supposed it fit—everyone knew Momma K had been a whore and that she was wealthy—but he’d never even thought of it. Being the Mistress of Pleasures meant that Momma K controlled all of the prostitution in Cenaria. Everyone who plied the pleasure trade ultimately answered to her.

She smiled. “Aside from my girls’ more …strenuous duties, they also keep their ears open. You’d be amazed at how talkative men can be in front of what they think is just a dumb whore. I’m in charge of the Sa’kagé’s spies. I need to know what Khalidor is doing. If I don’t know, the Sa’kagé doesn’t know, and if we don’t know, the country may fall. Believe me, we do not want Garoth Ursuul as our king.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Azoth said. “I’m nobody.”

“Azoth was nobody. You about to become Kylar Stern,” she said, “And I think you’re smarter than Durzo gives you credit for. I’m telling you because we need you on our side. Azoth was stupid to go wandering the other day, and it may cost you or Durzo your lives. But if you had known what was happening, you wouldn’t have gone there. You did the wrong thing, but Durzo shouldn’t have beaten you for showing initiative. In fact, I’m sure he’s sorry for beating you, though he’ll never apologize. It isn’t in the man to admit he’s wrong. We need you to be more than an apprentice, Kylar. We need you to be an ally. Are you ready for that?”

Azoth—Kylar—nodded slowly. “What do you want me to do?”

Kylar tried to gawk at the right things as he was ushered through the Gyre estate. Azoth, Momma K had told him, would gawk at anything big or gold. Baronet Kylar Stern would gawk only at things that were both—and the art. Logan had invited him to visit to make amends for hitting him, and Kylar’s first job for the Sa’kagé was to make sure they became friends.

The porter escorted him to another, better-dressed man—Kylar almost greeted him as Duke Gyre before realizing he must be the Gyre’s chamberlain. The chamberlain took him through a vast entry hall with dual stairs that climbed three stories flanking an enormous marble statue of two men, twins, facing each other in battle, each seeing the same opening in the other’s defense, each lunging. It was one of the most famous statues in the world, Momma K had told Kylar: The Grasq Twins’ Doom. In history, Momma K said, the Grasq twins had been heavily armored and during a long battle each had lost the thin tabards that at the time were all men wore over plate mail and all that identified them if they were separated from their standard bearers. They had indeed killed each other, though each had avoided the other in earlier battles. Here, the men were naked except for a shield and sword. Because of the shields’ placement, each was seeing his twin’s face for the first time even as he struck the death blow.

The chamberlain took Kylar up the stairs and down one long wing of the estate. The hallway was wider than most of the alleys in the Warrens. Both sides were crowded with marble busts and paintings of men speaking, men fighting, men seizing women, families moving, women mourning, the aftermath of battles, and horrible monsters boiling out of gaps in the ground. Every picture was framed with heavy gold leaf. Most were big. Walking behind the chamberlain, Kylar could gawk as much as he wanted, and he did. Then they stopped at a huge door. The chamberlain rapped on it with the staff he carried and opened the door to a library with dozens of shelves in orderly rows and the walls lined with books and scrolls to a height of two stories.

“My lord, Baronet Kylar Stern.”

Logan Gyre rose from a table with an open scroll laid across it. “Kylar! I was just finishing—I borrowed this scroll from—oh, never mind. Welcome!”

“Thank you for inviting me, Duke Gyre; your estate is beautiful. The statue of the Grasq twins is breathtaking.” He was reciting it the way Momma K had taught him, but now he meant it.

“Please, Logan. You’re most kind. You really like it?” Logan asked.

The “you’re most kind” gave him away. Logan was trying as hard to be an adult as Kylar was. Kylar was nervous because he was a fraud, but “Duke” Logan felt like a fraud, too. The title was too big and too new for him to feign comfort convincingly. So Kylar answered honestly, “Actually, I think it’s amazing. I just wish they weren’t naked.”

Logan burst out laughing. “I know! Most the time I don’t notice it anymore, but every once in a while I come in the door and—there’s two huge naked men in my house. Because of my new duties I’m meeting all of my father’s retainers and friends, again. Really it’s a chance for ladies to introduce their daughters and hope I fall madly in love. I was greeting a lady and her daughter, I won’t name names, but they are beautiful women and very prim, very modest. So I’m pretty tall, right? and they both have to really look up to look me in the eye, and as I’m talking and I’m in the middle of a story and the mom is tittering and the daughter looks utterly captivated, and I start to wonder if I’ve got something in my hair or on my ear or something, because they both keep glancing just a bit to the side.”

“Oh no,” Kylar said, laughing.

“I glance over my shoulder, and there’s …well, there, three times life size, is marble …genitalia. And there’s this moment where they realize that I’ve noticed that they’ve been looking over my shoulder the whole time, and I realize this is the first time that the daughter has ever seen a naked man—and I totally forget what story I was telling them.”

They laughed together, Kylar desperately thankful that Logan had given enough context so he could figure out what “genitalia” meant. Did all nobles talk like this? What if next time Logan gave the punch line without the context? Logan pointed to a portrait on the library wall of a square-jawed bald man dressed in an unfamiliar style. “I have him to thank for that. My great-great-great grandfather, the art lover.”

Kylar smirked, but he felt he’d been slapped. Logan knew things about his great-great-great grandfather. Kylar didn’t even know who his father was. There was a silence, and Kylar knew it was his turn to fill it. “I, uh, heard that the Grasq twins actually led like six battles against each other.”

“You know their story?” Logan asked. “Not many people our age do.”

Belatedly, Kylar realized the risk of posing as a story lover to this man who loved books—and could actually read them. “I really like old stories,” Kylar said. “But my parents don’t really have any use for me ‘wasting my time filling my head with stories.’”

“You really do like stories? Aleine always starts pretending to snore when I talk about history.” Aleine? Oh, Aleine Gunder, Prince Aleine Gunder X. Logan’s world really was different. “Look at this,” he beckoned Kylar to the table. “Here, read this part.”