Brent Weeks - Way of Shadows

Leaving the diamond-shaped castle yard, Kylar walked up stone stairs that had been climbed by so many feet over the centuries that the middle of each step dipped several inches lower than the sides. The guards ignored him, and he assumed the attitude of a servant. It was one of his most frequent guises. Blint liked to say that a good disguise cloaked a wetboy better than the shadows. Kylar could walk right past almost anyone he knew with the exception of Count Drake. Not much escaped him.

Soon he passed through most of the buzz of activity that filled the inner yard and the great hall. He went past the lines of people waiting for an audience in the throne room, past the open double doors of the gardens, and made his way to the north tower. The halls were busy everywhere until he stepped into the north tower’s antechamber.

Devon Corgi wasn’t there. For the first time taking pains to be silent, Kylar opened the door that led to the stairs and climbed them quietly. The stairway was blank. Nothing decorative, no niches, no statues, no ornamental curtains or anything that would afford Kylar a place to hide.

He made his way to the top of the tower. It was, it seemed, just a large bedchamber, currently not being used. A young man balancing a large ledger book was going through the drawers of a bureau, apparently taking an inventory of the neatly folded sheets for the enormous featherbed and the alternate curtains for the large shuttered window. Kylar waited. Devon was turned sideways to the door, and without the Talent to shadow Kylar’s approach, there was a good chance the man would see him enter.

The waiting was always the worst. Keyed up with no place to go, Kylar began to entertain fantasies that the guard was going to come up the stairs at any minute. Seeing him here, this late, he’d search him. Searching him, he’d find the slit in Kylar’s trousers. Finding that hand-sized slit, he’d find the long knife strapped to Kylar’s inner thigh. But there was nothing for it. Kylar waited just out of sight, listening, willing his ears to hear even the scritch of the quill on the ledger.

Finally, he checked and saw Devon disappearing into the closet on the far side of the nearly circular chamber. Kylar crept into chamber and looked for places to hide. His feet made no sound, not even the sound of leather scuffing against stone. Master Blint had taught Kylar how to boil the sap of the rubber tree to make a shoe sole that was soft and silent. It was expensive to import, and only a little quieter than properly worked leather, but to Master Blint, even the smallest margin mattered. It was why he was the best.

There were no good places to hide. A great place to hide was one where Kylar would be able to see the entire room, keep his weapons at ready, and be able to move quickly either to strike or to escape. A good place to hide gave a decent view and the ability to strike or escape with only a little difficulty. This room had no dark corners. It was practically a circle. There were rice paper screens, but they’d been folded and were leaning against the wall. Pitifully, the only place to hide was under the bed. If Kylar were a wetboy, perhaps he could have vaulted up a wall and dangled off the chains of the chandelier, but that wasn’t an option.

Under the bed? Master Blint will never let me live this down.

But there was no other option. Kylar dropped flat onto his toes and fingertips crawled under the bed. It was good he was still slight, because there wasn’t much space. He was uncomfortably in place when he heard someone coming up the stairs.

The guard. Finally. Now take a quick look and get the hell out.

He’d chosen the side of the bed with a view of the closet, and that meant that he didn’t have a view of the stairs, but from the sound of the footsteps, he became certain that it wasn’t a guard. Devon stepped out of the closet holding a chest, and guilt flashed across his face.

“You can’t be here, Bev,” he said.

“You’re leaving,” the unseen woman said. It was an accusation.

“No,” he said. His eye started twitching.

“You stole from them, and now you’re stealing from the king, and for some reason I’m surprised you’d lie to me. You asshole.” Kylar heard her turn, and then Devon was stepping close to the bed, putting the chest down on it, his legs just inches away from Kylar.

“Bev, I’m sorry.” He was moving toward the door, and Kylar was stricken with panic. What if Devon went after her, and she went down the steps? Kylar would have to kill both of them on the stairs, knowing that the guard would be coming along any minute. “Bev, please—”

“Go to hell!” she said, and slammed the door.

Wish granted. It was the blackest kind of humor, Durzo’s kind of humor. He liked to say that the irony of overheard conversations was one of the best perks of the bitter business, though he said that the wisdom of last words was highly overrated. Wish granted? Kylar didn’t like that he’d even thought that. Everything this man had planned was about to end, and Kylar was smirking about it.

Devon swore to himself, but he didn’t follow the woman. “Where’s that guard anyway? He was supposed to be here by now.”

This was what it was like, Durzo had told Kylar. You come in at the end of a drama—whether it’s just started or has been going on for years, your arrival signals the end—and you rarely get to know what the story was about. Who was Bev to Devon? His lover? His partner in crime? Just a friend? His sister?

Kylar didn’t know. He’d never know.

There was jingling on the stairs, muffled behind the door. Devon picked up his ledger. The door opened.

“’Lo, Dev,” the guard said.

“Oh, hello, Gamble.” Devon sounded nervous.

“That courier find you?”

“Courier?”

“Little shite musta got lost. Everything fine up here?”

“Sure, just fine.”

“See ya round.”

Devon waited until the guard had been gone thirty seconds, and then he stepped close to the bed and started stuffing his pockets. Kylar couldn’t see with what.

Here it is. The guard would be far enough away now that even if Devon managed to cry out, he wouldn’t be heard. Devon stepped away from the bed toward the bureau and Kylar crawled out from beneath the bed like a bug. He stood and drew the knife. Devon was mere paces away. Kylar’s heart was pounding. He thought he could hear the rush of blood in his ears.

Kylar did everything right. Low ready stance, advancing quietly but quickly, balanced so that if at any moment the deader reacted, Kylar wouldn’t be caught flat-footed. He brought the knife up to eye level, preparing to grab Devon and give him what Durzo called the red grin—a slash across the jugular and deep through the windpipe.

Then he imagined Doll Girl giving him the look she’d given him when he took the biggest piece of bread for himself. What are you doing, Azoth? You know this is wrong.

He recovered late, and it was as if his training abandoned him. Kylar was inches away from Devon, and Devon still hadn’t heard him, but the very nearness panicked Kylar. He stabbed for Devon’s neck and must have made some sound, because Devon was turning. The knife bit into the back of Devon’s neck, hit spine, and bounced out. Because of his convulsively tight grip that Durzo would have beaten Kylar for, the knife bounced right out of his hand, too.

Devon turned and yelped. It seemed he was more surprised by Kylar’s sudden appearance than by the sting in his neck. He stepped back at the same time Kylar did. He put a hand to his neck, looked at his fingers and saw the blood. Then they both looked down to the knife.

Devon didn’t go for it. Kylar scooped up the knife and as he stood, Devon dropped to his knees.