Jon Sprunk - Shadows son

Caim picked up his pace to put the unpleasant edifice behind him. He wished now he'd been smart enough to turn down Mathias's offer. With the city in such a state of turmoil, the last thing he wanted was to risk his neck doing Ral's secondhand work. This job had better be the easiest he'd ever done or someone was going to regret it. Hell, he regretted it already.

A pair of painted slatterns called out to Caim with promises of earthly delight from the mouth of a cramped alley and flicked their chins at him as he walked past. The street branched ahead of him, both lanes crowded with street-level shops and sprawling tenement houses above. Murmurs of life filtered through their faded, whitewashed walls, sounds of laughter and tears, talking voices and wordless moans. The city was a living creature, hungry and untamed beneath its thin veneer of civilization.

In the kaleidoscopic days and weeks after the attack on his family's home, he and Kit had trekked across the countryside like hunted animals, moving at night, holing up during the daylight hours under whatever cover they could find. He ate whatever came his way-wild berries and nuts, the few animals he was able to catch or knock down with well-aimed stones, stolen goods from the occasional farmstead. Chicken coops were his favorite. He became adept at pilfering eggs without disturbing the sleeping hens.

The towering gray walls of Liovard, the first real city they encountered on their flight south, amazed him. They stretched up to the sky several times the height of a grown man. Beyond those mighty stone ramparts protruded the peaks and turrets of more buildings than he had ever seen in one place. His father's estate, including the fields and bordering woods, would have been lost inside the walls, and Liovard, as he would learn later, was petite compared to the great cities of the south: Mecantia, Navarre, and Othir were all larger and more diverse. Yet, walking through the iron-shod gates was like passing into another world, a realm of noise and commotion where everyone hustled on vital business. Business was a new word he'd learned in Liovard. Just the sound of it quickened his pulse. That's what he wanted to be reckoned: a man of business.

It didn't take him long to learn about the messy underside of city life. For a young boy with no family and no prospects, the city was a frightening place. He slept in alleyways and inside piles of garbage. A stack of discarded shipping crates provided shelter for almost a month until the street cleaners took them away. He moved from place to place, always hungry, always searching for his next meal. If he thought he was safe from harm amid the bustle of the city, he learned better the first time he encountered a street gang. He'd been rooting through a barrel of halfrotten apples when cutting laughter erupted behind him. A dozen older boys surrounded him. As a lesson for trespassing on their territory, they beat him bloody. After that, he learned to avoid them. He snuck like a rat through the slums with Kit, his only companion.

But if the street toughs were dangerous, the tinmen were worse. The bully boys only wanted your food and whatever you had hidden in your pocket, and maybe to rough you up a bit. Yet when he was dragged into a backstreet by two looming guardsmen after stealing a pomegranate from a vendor's stall, he knew with sinking certainty they wanted more than to thrash him. While Kit swatted ineffectually at their heads, one held him fast while the other ripped open the laces of his breeches. He struggled, but they cuffed him hard across the face, knocking him to the ground. A white-hot ember of rage burned in the pit of Calm's chest as he remembered that day, but also a thread of euphoria, for no sooner had the guards begun pawing at him with their big, clumsy hands than something erupted inside him. At first, he thought he was going to be sick as the feeling bubbled in his belly. Then, the colors of the waning day faded before his eyes. As he was turned onto his stomach, a new spectrum of shades emerged from the bleak drabness of the alley, blacks and grays of marvelous, vivid tones. While his tears mingled with the dust beneath his face, something extraordinary happened.

A shadow moved.

He had seen shadows move before, when a cloud passed in front of the sun or the object casting the shadow shifted, but this shadow stretched out from under a heap of broken boards like a black tentacle of tar. Strangely, he wasn't afraid as it oozed toward him, and the guardsmen were too distracted to notice. One held him down by the shoulders while the other tugged down his pants. Caim didn't recoil; he wanted to know what it was, this crawling, amorphous darkness. When it touched his hand, he yelped as a sensation of burning cold slid over his skin, like dipping his hand into a bucket of ice water. More shadows crawled into the light, swarming over the alleyway until Caim couldn't see the ground under his nose. The guardsman holding him down shouted and let up enough for Caim to wriggle. He kicked and scratched. When a hand seized his face, he bit down hard until warm, salty blood filled his mouth. A strangled scream pierced the gloom, and then he was free.

He didn't hesitate, but hitched his breeches around his waist and ran. Fear thundered in his ears with every stride.

Caim let the memory fade away as he turned his footsteps toward High Town. Two things were clear to him. First, he couldn't risk using his powers until he figured out what had happened at the Vine. He couldn't risk losing control. And second, he would avoid contact with the Azure Hawks for the time being. Those decisions made him feel a little better. Then he remembered that he'd left his cloak back in the taproom.

Caim hunched his shoulders against the night's chill and hurried through the umbrageous byways of the city. Yet the haunting images of his past followed him down every street.

aim awoke to the faint glow of dawn. Long shadows crept across the floor of his bedroom. Two plum pits and a crust of rye bread lay on the nightstand.

Remnants of a dream lingered in his head. The same old dream. The burning house. The corpse-strewn yard. The same questions without answers.

Caim blew out a long sigh and got up. After his ablutions, he went to the cabinet and pulled out his work clothes.

Kit appeared behind him as he climbed into his breeches. "I like the view. Ready yet?"

"Almost."

Caim tucked a black hood and a pair of soot-blackened gloves into his belt. He didn't anticipate any difficulties tonight. He had studied the workup supplied by Mathias. An old man with no guards; a simple enterand-kill and he'd be gone before the clock on Septon Chapel struck midnight. He strapped on his knives and settled a medium-length cloak, the color of old dishwater, over his shoulders. He'd let his whiskers grow; the stubble would make his face more difficult to distinguish in the dark.

He turned around to see Kit, levitating above his bed. She wore a short emerald dress. Sparkles danced across her chest.

"I confess," she said. "I still don't understand why you're going along with this. Even after throwing most of your money away, you've got enough to last for weeks, maybe months the way you live." Her eyebrows rose in wry disapproval as she looked around the apartment.

He didn't feel like a debate. His mind was already working the job, combing through the details for anything he might have missed, checking every angle for flaws.

"Mathias was in a bad spot. I took the job as a favor. What else is there to say?"

"And when has that overstuffed bladder ever done you any favors? He treats you like a half-trained wolfhound. He snaps his fingers and you jump to do his bidding."

Caim grabbed the rest of his gear and headed for the door. "You know better than that."