Patricia Briggs: When Demons Walk

The Old Man collapsed on the floor. Sham knelt almost as swiftly as he had fallen, running gentle hands over him. She found no wounds that could be bound, only a multitude of small, thin lines from which the old man’s lifeblood drained to the floor. Her motions grew more frantic as she realized the inevitability of his death was spattered on the walls, on the floor, on her.

There was no magic she knew that could heal him. The runes of healing she drew on his chest would promote his body’s own processes, but she knew that he would be dead long before his body could even begin to mend. She tried anyway. The effort of working magic so soon after she’d played the flute caused her hands to shake as she drew runes that blurred irritatingly in her vision as she cried.

“Enough, Shamera, enough.” The Old Man’s voice was very weak.

She pulled her hands away and clenched them, knowing he was right. Carefully, she drew his haltered head into her lap. Ignoring the gore, she patted the weathered skin of his face tenderly.

“Master,” she crooned softly, and the Old Man’s lips twisted once more into a smile.

He would be sorry to leave his little, contrary apprentice. He always thought of her as he had last seen her, at that point where child turns to woman—though he knew she was long since grown, a master in her own right. She hadn’t been a child since she’d rescued him from the dungeon where he lay blinded, crippled, and near death. He had to warn her before it was too late. With hard-won strength he reached up and caught her hand.

“Little one,” he said. But his voice was too soft: It angered him to be so weak, and he drew strength from that anger.

“Daughter of my heart, Shamera.” It was little more than a whisper, but he could tell by her stillness that she had heard. “It was the Chen Laut that was here. You must find it, child, or it will destroy ...” He paused to grasp enough strength to finish. “It is ... close this time or it wouldn’t have chanced attacking me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master,” she answered softly. “Chen Laut.”

He relaxed in her embrace. As he did, a wondrous thing happened. The magic, his own magic, which had eluded him for so many years returned across the barrier of pain as if it had never been reft from him. As he stopped fighting for breath, the power surrounded him and comforted him as it always had. With a sigh of relief, of release, he gave himself to its caress.

Blank-faced, Shamera watched the old mage leave her, his body lax in her arms. As soon as he was gone, she set his head gently on the floor and began straightening his body, as if it mattered how the Old Man lay for his pyre. When she was finished, she knelt at his feet with her head bowed to show her respect. She let the magelight die down and sat in the darkness with the body of her master.

The sound of boots on the floorboards drew her from her reverie. She watched numbly as four of the city-guards flooded the small room with torchlight.

Belatedly, she realized she should have left when she could have. Her clothes were soaked with blood. Without witnesses, she was the most likely suspect. But this was Purgatory; she could buy her way out of it. Money was not a problem; the Old Man wouldn’t need the gold in the cave.

Sham stood up warily and faced the intruders.

Three were Easterners and the fourth a Southwoodsman, easily distinguished from the rest by his long hair and beard. They all had familiar faces, though she’d be hard put to name any but the apparent leader—he answered to Scarf, named for the filthy rag he tied over his missing eye. She relaxed a little: The whisper was that he could be bought more easily than most.

Scarf and one of the other Easterners, tall for his race and cadaverously thin with large black eyes, looked at the blood that splattered almost every surface of the room with dawning respect. While the other two looked around, the Southwoodsman and the third Easterner kept their eyes on Sham. She carefully kept her arms well away from her body so she presented little threat.

Scarf put the torch he held in one of the empty wall brackets and motioned to the Southwoodsman to do the same with the second torch. Scratching at his forehead, Scarf turned in a full circle to assess the room again before letting his gaze come to rest on Sham.

“Altis’s blood, Sham—when you decide to kill a bastard, you have a right pretty touch.” He hawked and spat—a tribute of soils, thought Sham once she’d deciphered his fragmented Southern.

Before she could answer, a fifth man walked into the room, this one dressed in the garb of a nobleman. She took a step back at the wide smile on his face.

Scarf looked up and spoke in his native Cybellian. “Lord Hirkin, sir, I think you’ll find this one more helpful than the other. This is Sham the thief—I’ve heard the Shark watches out for him.”

“Good, good,” said Lord Hirkin, the man who ruled of the guardsmen of Purgatory.

He made a gesture toward Sham and Scarf stepped behind her, securing her by wrapping his massive hands around her upper arms.

Tide save her, Sham thought, this wasn’t going to be easy alter all. She set her grief aside for later, turning all her attention to the situation at hand.

“I have been looking for just such a murdering thief,” Hirkin continued, switching to Southern for Sham’s benefit. “This man who calls himself the Shark. You will tell me where to find him.”

Sham raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know where he stays; no one does. If you want him, leave a message with one of the Whisperers.”

Actually she was probably the only person outside of the Shark’s gang, the Whisper of the Street, who did know where the Shark was most of the time, but she had no intention of sharing that information with anyone. The Shark had his own ways of dealing with such problems, methods bound to be much nastier than anything this man could dream up—besides, he was a friend.

Hirkin shook his head with mock sadness and turned away to address the three guardsmen behind him. “It always takes so long —” he spun on his heel and backhanded her across the mouth “—to get any truth out of Southwood scum—too stupid for their own good. Perhaps I ought to turn you over to my man here.” He nodded at the cadaverous one who smiled evilly, revealing a missing tooth. “He likes boys about your size. The last one he got to play with I killed afterwards—out of mercy.”

Sham looked suitably impressed by Hirkin’s threats: that is, not at all. She snorted and smirked around her cut lip. She had learned early that the scent of fear only excited jackals and made them more vicious.

“I’ve heard about that one,” she commented with a jerk of her chin toward the guard that Hirkin had indicated. “Whisper has it that he can’t tie his own shoes without help. Throw me to him and you might find the pieces of him afterward.”

She was expecting the next blow and turned her head with the strike, averting some of the force. They hadn’t searched her for weapons. Her dagger lay where she had thrown it, but several of her thieving tools were almost as sharp. Scarf’s grip wasn’t as secure as he thought it was—not when he held a wizard. She just had to pick the best time to make her move.

Watching the proceedings, Talbot, the lone Southwoodsman guard, ground his teeth. This was the fourth such beating this night. The first two he’d only heard about. The third one he’d come upon after the victim was already dead.

It wasn’t that he had trouble with a beating or two in the name of justice, but this interrogation had nothing to do with the body lying forgotten in the corner of the room—no way a lad that size could rip a door out of the frame that way. Then too, the sight of the Easterners hitting a Southwoodsman brought back an anger he thought long buried.