Patricia Briggs: When Demons Walk

This book owes debts to a number of people—

Dr. Virginia (Ginny) Mohl, MD, PhD—who put up with late-night phone calls concerning a variety of gruesome topics.

Donald J. LaRocca, Associate Curator, Arms and Armor, Metropolitan Museum of Art—who recommended a number of sources of information on swords, and answered a vital question concerning Kerim’s sword.

Jess Roe, swordsman, swordsmaker, and martial artist—who lets me pick his brain at every con I see him at, and is largely responsible for all the authentic details for the fights in this and future books. Any mistakes are mine.

Sham sat on a low stone fence in the shadows of an alley pulling on her boots. In the darkness that even the moonlight failed to reach, a sea breeze caressed her hair. She drew in a deep breath of the fresh air.

Even the sea smelled different here in the hilly area of Landsend. The Cybellian conquerors, like the Southwood nobles before them, had chosen to make their homes far from the wharves. In Purgatory, the westside slum where Sham lived, the ocean air smelled like dead fish, old garbage, and despair.

She stood up and ran her hands lightly over the silk of her courier’s tunic to make sure that the black and gray material hung properly. She had to fluff the opaque sleeves twice to keep them from revealing odd bulges where she stored the tools of her trade.

It was still early in the winter season, so the silk was warm enough if she kept moving, but she was glad the trousers were made of heavier material. After bundling her other clothes, she tucked them out of sight in the lower limbs of a tree that graced the garden behind a wealthy merchant’s house.

Messengers were common on the streets of Landsend, Southwood’s capital, even in the darkness of early morning. Female messengers were not, but Sham was lightly built and, on the streets, could pass easily as a boy—as she had for the last twelve years. Even the long braid that hung down her back was not out of place. Only recently had the Southwood men begun to crop their hair like the Easterners who had conquered them.

As she strode through the empty, moonlit street, she noticed a guardsman standing near a cross street watching her. The east-city guards were as different from the guards of Purgatory as the smell of sweetsalt was from rotting fish. Most of them were younger sons of Cybellian merchants and traders rather than the glorified street thugs who were supposed to keep order in the less prosperous areas of town.

The guard caught Sham’s eye and she waved to him. He responded with a nod and waited for her path to bring her nearer.

“Late night,” he commented.

She noticed with hidden amusement that he was even younger than she’d thought—and bored as well to talk to a mere messenger.

“Early morning, messire,” she grumbled cheerfully in Cybellian, not bothering to hide her Southwood accent since her white-blond hair kept her from claiming Cybellian birth—as long as she chose to leave it uncovered.

He smiled agreeably and she continued past him, careful to keep a rapid straight path and looking neither to the left nor the right until she’d traveled several blocks.

The house she was looking for was on the end of a block, and she waited until she’d turned the corner before giving it more than a casual glance. The hedge was too high for her to see much of the building, but there were no signs of occupation in the upper story. First checking to see if anyone was watching her, Sham dropped to the ground and shimmied under the wall of greenery that enclosed her target for the evening.

The manicured lawn was tiny: Land was expensive in this part of the city. The tall greenery that surrounded it kept out the faint illumination provided by the street torches as well as the somewhat brighter light of the moon. Sham knelt where she was, watching the dark mansion intently for movement that might indicate someone was inside.

The three-storied edifice was newer than the hedge around it; the Eastern noble she was robbing had purchased an old manor and had it torn down and rebuilt in the Cybellian style as soon as the fighting had died down. Open-air windows on the second and third floor might have been useful in the hot, dry climate of Cybelle, but Landsend, despite its southern location, was wet and chilly in the winter months as the ocean currents brought cold waters from the other side of the world to the cliffs of Southwood.

She approved heartily of the new style of architecture; after all, she didn’t intend to live in it. The open windows, even shuttered, made her job much easier than the closed, small-windowed native styles. As she studied the building, she warmed her hands against her body. The night air was cool and warm hands gripped better than cold ones.

According to her informant, the owners of this particular house were currently enjoying a se’nnight at the hot pools a day’s ride from Landsend. Some entrepreneurial Cybellian had taken over the abandoned buildings there, turning them into a pilgrimage temple to Altis, the god of the Cybellians.

The Cybellians didn’t believe in the restless spirits who were responsible for the abandonment of the old settlement. They called the native people “backward” and “superstitious.” Sham wondered if the protection of Altis would keep the ghosts under control—and hoped that it wouldn’t.

However, she wasn’t going to wait for the Wraiths of the Medicine Pools to attack the Cybellians. In her own small way, she continued the war that had officially been lost twelve years ago to the god-driven Cybellians and their eastern allies who crossed the Great Swamp to conquer the world.

Using almost nonexistent hand-holds, she pulled herself up the walls. Setting her calloused fingers and the hard, narrow soles of her knee-high boots in the slight ledges where mortar separated stone, she climbed carefully to a second-floor window and sat on the narrow ledge to inspect it closer. The lip of one shutter covered the opening where both met, making it more difficult for a thief to release the inner latch.

Her informant, the younger brother of the owner’s former mistress, had said that the wooden shutters were held closed by a simple hook-latch. A common enough fastening, but not the only possibility, and it was necessary for her to know exactly what she was dealing with in order to open it.

Closing her eyes, she put a forefinger on the wooden panels and muttered a few words in a language that had been out of use for living memory. The shutter was too thick for her to hear the faint click of the latch hook falling against the wood, but she could tell it was done when they opened slightly.

She slid to one side of the window ledge and used her fingertips to open one of the shutters. Stealthily, she entered the building and pulled the panel closed, hooking the latch behind her. Magic was a useful tool for a thief, especially when her victims, for the most part, didn’t believe in it.

She stood in a small sitting room that smelled of linseed oil and wax. With the shutters closed the room was awash in shadows. Without moving for fear of knocking something over, she drew magic from a place that was not quite a part of this world. She pushed aside the familiar barrier and tugged loose a small bit, just enough for her purpose. Holding it tightly she molded it into the shape she wanted, using gestures and words to guide her deft manipulation. In another place and time she would have worn the robes of a master wizard.