Brent Weeks - Way of Shadows

Kylar turned away. The landing had a window overlooking the market, too. It was simple glass, clear, neither cut nor colored like the glass in the courtesan’s room. It too was barred, though with simple straight iron, the bars’ edges as sharp as one of Blint’s knives. Elene had come closer and he could see her scars, but then she smiled and her scars seemed to disappear.

How often did girls in the Warrens smile like that? Kylar found himself smiling in response. He felt lighter than he could ever remember. He turned and smiled at Momma K. “I wouldn’t have expected to find absolution from you.”

She didn’t smile back. “It’s not absolution, it’s reality. And I’m the perfect person to give you that. Besides, you carry guilt as badly as Durzo.”

“Durzo? Durzo never feels guilty about anything,” Kylar said.

A flicker of disgust passed over her face. She turned to look at Elene. “End this farce, Kylar.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Durzo told you the rules: you can fuck but you can never love. He doesn’t see what you’re doing, but I do. You believe you love Elene, so you won’t fuck at all. Why don’t you get this out of your system?” Her voice got gentle. “Kylar. You can’t have that girl out there. Why don’t you take what you can have?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Go in to Daydra. She’ll thank you for it. It’s on the house. If you’re worried because you’re inexperienced, she’s a virgin, too.” “Too”? Gods, did Momma K have to know everything?

“No,” Kylar said. “No thanks, I’m not interested.”

“Kylar, what are you waiting for? Some glorious soul union with that girl out there? It’s just fucking, and that’s all you get. That’s the deal, Kylar, and you knew it when you started. We all make our deals. I did, Durzo did, and you did too.”

Giving up, Momma K gestured to one of her bashers downstairs to let a client through.

A hairy-knuckled slob wheezed his way up the stairs. Though richly dressed, he was fat and ugly and foul smelling and grinning broadly with black teeth. He paused on the landing, licking his lips, a slack-jawed picture of lust. He nodded to Momma K, winked conspiratorially at Kylar, and went into the virgin courtesan’s room.

“Maybe they were bad deals,” Kylar said.

“It doesn’t matter. There’s no going back.”

Feir Cousat knocked on a door high inside the great pyramid of Sho’cendi. Two knocks, pause, two, pause, one. When he and Dorian and Solon had been students at the magi’s school of fire, they hadn’t rated such prestigious rooms. But he and Dorian hadn’t been given the rooms now so much to thank them for their historic services as to keep an eye on them.

The door cracked open, and Dorian’s eye appeared on the other side. Feir always thought it was funny: Dorian was a prophet. He could foretell the fall of a kingdom or the winner of a horserace—a lucrative trick when Feir could convince him to do it—but he couldn’t tell who was at his own door. He said that prophesying concerning himself involved spiraling uncomfortably close to madness.

Dorian ushered Feir inside and barred the door behind him. Feir felt himself passing through an improbably high number of wards. He looked at them. A ward against eavesdropping he’d expected. A ward against entry was unusual to maintain when you were in the room yourself. But the truly strange one was a ward to keep magic in. Feir fingered the threads of the weave, shaking his head in astonishment. Dorian was the kind of magus born once a generation. After studying at Hoth’salar, the Healers’ School on Gandu, and mastering all they had to teach him by the time he was sixteen, Dorian had come to the school of fire and mastered fire magics while not even pretending to be interested in them. He’d only stayed because he’d become friends with Feir and Solon. Solon’s talents were almost solely in Fire, but he was the strongest of the three. Feir wasn’t sure why the two had become friends with him. Maybe because he wasn’t threatened by their excellence. They were so obviously the kind of men who’d been touched by the gods that Feir didn’t even think to be jealous for a long time. Maybe it helped that he’d been born a peasant. It probably also helped that whenever he was struggling with his studies and started to be jealous, one or the other of his friends would suggest sparring with him.

Feir looked fat, but he could move and he trained daily with the Blademasters, who kept their central training facility mere minutes from Sho’cendi. For Solon or Dorian to volunteer to spar with him was to volunteer for bruises. Dorian could heal bruises later, but they still hurt.

Dorian had half-packed saddlebags open on the bed.

Feir sighed. “You know the Assembly’s forbidden you to leave. They don’t care about Cenaria. Honestly, if Solon weren’t there, I wouldn’t either. We could send him a message to leave.” The school’s leaders hadn’t phrased it that way, of course. They were more worried about delivering the continent of Midcyru’s only—perhaps the world’s only—prophet into the Godking’s hands.

“You don’t even know the best part yet,” Dorian said, grinning like they were children.

Feir felt the blood draining from his face. The wards to keep magic in the room suddenly made sense. “You aren’t planning to steal it.”

“I could make the argument that it’s ours. The three of us were the ones who tracked it, found it, and brought it back. They stole it from us first, Feir.”

“You agreed it would be safer here. We let them take it from us.”

“So I’m taking it back,” Dorian said, shrugging.

“So it’s you against all the world again.”

“It’s me for all the world, Feir. Will you come with me?”

“Come with you? Is this the madness?” When Dorian’s gift for prophecy had surfaced, one of the first things he’d tried was to tell his own future. He’d learned that no matter what he did, he would go mad one day. Delving into his own future would only hasten that day’s arrival. “I thought you said you had still had a decade or so.”

“Not so long, now,” Dorian said. He shrugged like it didn’t matter, as if it didn’t break his heart, exactly the way he’d shrugged when he’d asked Solon to go to Cenaria, knowing it would cost Solon Kaede’s love. “Before you answer, Feir, know this: if you come with me, you will regret it many times, and you will never again walk the halls of Sho’cendi.”

“You make such a convincing plea,” Feir said, rolling his eyes.

“You will also save my life at least twice, own a forge, be known throughout the world as the greatest living weaponsmith, have a small part in saving the world, and die satisfied, if not nearly so old as you or I hoped.”

“Oh, that’s better,” Feir said sarcastically, but his stomach was doing flips. Dorian rarely told what he knew, but when he did, he never lied. “Just a small part in saving the world?”

“Feir, your purpose in life isn’t your happiness. We’re part of a much bigger story. Everyone is. If your part is unsung, does that make it worthless? Our purpose on this trip isn’t to save Solon. It’s to see a boy. We will face many dangers to get there. Death is a very real possibility. And do you know what that boy needs from us? Three words. Maybe two if the name counts as only one. Do you want to know what they are?”

“Sure.”

“‘Ask Momma K.’”

“That’s it? What’s it mean?” Feir asked.

“I have no idea.”

Sometimes a seer could be a pain in the ass. “You ask for a lot from me,” Feir said.

Dorian nodded.

“I’ll regret it if I say yes?”