Dallin shook his head, his own gaze never resting, scanning the people milling about on the street and looking for anything suspicious, anything at all—a lingering look or even a deliberate not-look, a telltale bulge of a weapon, a hulking shape that looked too much like him….
Still nothing, or at least nothing he could see.
“Nothing, I guess.” Dallin’s voice was quiet, his tone probably not at all convincing. “I thought….” He shook his head, eyes still moving, troubled. “I don’t know—something.” He turned to Wil. “Don’t you feel it?”
It felt as though Wil should feel it—it felt as though anyone within a hundred paces should feel it, like it had physical shapes and Dallin just couldn’t see them.
“C’mon.” Wil tugged anxiously at Dallin’s elbow and tried to drag him down the steps. “Let’s go.” Between his teeth this time, and quietly uneasy. Whatever was thrumming through Dallin was now leaking out onto Wil. Wil tugged again. This time Dallin let himself be moved.
His hand went automatically to the revolver strapped to his thigh, flipping the fastenings and resting his fingers lightly on the butt. He reached for Wil’s arm and latched on.
“Put your hat back on.” Dallin angled them down the steps as Wil complied, and they turned back into the little side lane from which they’d come. “Back to the alleys.” Dallin didn’t know why he kept his voice so low, but he did, eyes trying to look everywhere at once, words from dreams haunting—the Watcher is watched—yammering through his head like a sinister mantra, except he couldn’t bloody see anything. No one lurked, no one stalked—everywhere he looked, he only saw ordinary people going about their ordinary business on an ordinary market day.
When they reached a crisscross pattern of lanes leading off in six different directions, Dallin pulled Wil over toward a stand of bushes ringing a dooryard behind an aging heap of stone that likely used to be the very impressive home of some prosperous citizen but was now run-down and depressing in its dilapidated gloom. Dallin had to stop a moment and get himself together. There was no good reason for the absurd anxiety, and all he was doing was ramping up Wil’s already unpredictable state of being. Except Dallin couldn’t find that cool reserve, the remove that normally walked him through tense situations.
The Watcher is watched.
And yet there was nothing—no one—there. Anywhere.
“Is it gone?” Wil eyed Dallin with trepidation and as close to dread as Dallin had seen since they’d shown Dudley their backs.
It wasn’t gone; it was getting worse, and the afternoon sun was whining in Dallin’s head with an insectile buzz that was drilling into his teeth, making his peripheral vision too bright and too sharp. They were being watched, and it wasn’t just in his head; it was real. He could feel it all the way to his bones.
Dallin didn’t answer, instead throwing his glance over the spiderweb of alleyways, then choosing a random direction and tugging Wil’s arm again. “This way.”
Amazingly, Wil didn’t argue, didn’t even try to get loose from Dallin’s grip, following Dallin without objection or comment. They headed down a dirt lane, winding between squat, decrepit brick structures, the purpose of which Dallin didn’t pause to ponder. The atmosphere was growing seedier, the air taking on a rank smell of piss and dirt as they went farther. The buildings crowded together, blocking most of the light.
They passed doorways and niches carefully, Dallin edging around each one first, holding Wil back until Dallin determined they were safe enough to pass by. One or two seemed to serve as living quarters, ragged men lurking in their corners and growling balefully at the sight of Wil, then in turn cowering at the sight of Dallin and even more so at the sight of his weapons. Wil and Dallin passed unmolested until they came upon an alcove outside what appeared to be a less reputable hostel, alleyway strewn with rubbish and the contents of pisspots emptied into the gutters and not washed away.
A haggard woman lurched up from her crouch in the hovel’s recess, staggering at Dallin with intent, hands outstretched like she was greeting an old friend. She was thin as wire, dried up and wispy as a husk, eyes sunken and vague above a delicate, near toothless grin. Her muscles twitched with uncontrollable tics, her breathing labored and rheumy. There was a sour smell about her, over and above the pervasive stench of the alley, the clothes hanging off her thin frame rank with age-old dirt and rot. She was dying, wasting into nothing—Dallin could smell it on her—and the soft, dreamy look all but beat the drum for it. She was this close to death from one thing or another—lung-sick, maybe, or blight, who could tell?—and that beatific look of serene peace in her eyes told Dallin she truly didn’t care.
A leaf user.
“Exile!” she cried. “Ye’ve come! Bless. Bless.”
She reached for Dallin, fingernails thick and yellowed beneath the layers of grime on her shaking hand. Dallin stepped back to avoid the touch, knocking into Wil, who stood staring with horrified fascination inside grim surprise.
“I’ve watched, I have.” The woman’s soft giggle was all the more unnerving for its girlishness. She held her filthy hand out palm up and waggled her taloned fingers. “Redeem your word and I shall redeem mine.”
Dallin almost brushed past her—Wil shouldn’t be seeing this, and the stiff posture, the inability to drag his revolted gaze away, told Dallin that Wil knew exactly what he was looking at—but something about what she’d said, or maybe just the way she’d said it, made Dallin stop. He stared down at her dirty hand, its meaning universal and very clear.
“Remind me of my word, Miss.” Dallin reached to his belt for his purse—slowly, so her abstracted gaze could follow. “You’re not the only one watching, after all.”
“Ah!” She giggled again and shook her finger. “And I thought I was yer one and only.”
Mother’s mercy, the woman was trying to be coy. She was bloody flirting.
Dallin dragged a smile onto his face, making it as easy and pleasant as he could. A light shudder ran through Wil, shimmying into Dallin’s hand through his grip on Wil’s arm, and Dallin squeezed in reassurance.
“Oh, but you are certainly my favorite.” Dallin winked and broadened his smile when she giggled some more. He shook the purse. “And what was our agreement?”
“Five gilders.” Her gaze was sly, and her smile was going slightly sideways.
Lying, of course. Whatever she’d agreed to do for this “Exile,” and whatever price she’d agreed to do it for, it was likely more along the lines of a few billets. Nonetheless, Dallin made quite a business of taking the proper coins from his purse before he turned around and handed the rest to Wil.
“Hold on to that. And get on the other side of me, in case you have to grab for the rifle. Just don’t rip my arm off doing it, if there’s trouble.”
The woman probably wasn’t dangerous—Wil had been right; leaf and violence were rather mutually exclusive—but she was showing signs of withdrawal, and addicts deprived of their addictions were predictable only in their unpredictability.
Dallin turned back to the woman and held up the coins. He kept silent, merely lifting his eyebrows, expectant.
Her playful smile turned joyous as she stared up at the money, and she clapped her hands like a little girl. Eyes fixed to the gold, she sauntered closer, leaning in conspiratorially. “The one you seek comes to you.” Her sour breath puffed too close to Dallin’s face, but he kept his mien graciously encouraging. “Wait and Watch.” She pulled back and covered her ruined mouth with her hand. The effect was nauseatingly coquettish.
The words made Dallin’s eyes narrow slightly, and he didn’t know what they were doing to Wil—he daren’t look back yet to find out.
It couldn’t be what Dallin thought it was. He must be hearing things through his own skewed expectations. All the secrecy that seemed to surround this whole business, men killing for it, and this filthy slum leaf freak knew?
“This one I seek,” he said, smoothly cordial. “What does he look like?”
The smile fell, but only a little. “Ah, walks in shadows he does, poor lad.” Amazingly, she managed to pout through the smile that was more and more making Dallin want to smack it off her skull-like face. “He’s the feel of the culled, but I know him when we sleep.” Her head fell back, and her arms crossed over her small, flat breasts. “Touches my brow with his tattered fingers, plucks at my thread, and sings me to dancing.” An ungainly bit of a sway, to and fro, and her eyes fell shut. “I know it’s him by how he marks me.” A spindly hand came up, fingers sweeping at her brow. “Blood to blood.” It was a hum, tuneless and ragged.
Dallin actually looked closer to make sure there wasn’t in fact a bloody fingerprint on the woman’s forehead. He turned to Wil—somewhere between disbelief and confused revelation.
Wil’s gaze was pinned to the woman, sickened and horrified but held by macabre fascination. He turned slowly to Dallin, shook his head, mouth working but nothing coming out of it. His eyes were doing that thing they did, going murky and bright at the same time, color twisting inside them.
Dallin’s stomach dropped, and he reached out to lay a hand on Wil’s shoulder. “Hey. You’re all right, there’s nothing—”
“—the big one first!” came from almost right behind him. He spun too late, instinctively shoving Wil back before his vision was blocked by something wide and very hard smashing into the side of his head. Damn it, he’d let himself get distracted, forgot the first rule of both offense and defense and let someone get behind him, hit him blind.
Dazed, Dallin staggered. He blinked to keep blackness from taking his vision or his perceptions. There was a scream, and several shouts wound through the dull ringing in Dallin’s ears. Everything happened at once.
A tug at the rifle’s strap. Wil. Dallin dropped his shoulder and let Wil have the gun. At the same time, Dallin drew the handgun from its holster, all before he’d even completed the turn to face his attackers and put his back to the wall. He shot his glance down to each end of the narrow lane before settling it back on the men in front of them.
There were five of them, the guard from the gate standing foremost, his pig eyes glittering with petty vengeance. Bloody hell, Dallin must have really pissed him off.
A sticky rivulet of blood ran down Dallin’s temple. A broken length of timber lay at the gate guard’s feet. If Dallin was lucky enough to get out of this without much more damage, he was at least going to have a bugger of a headache once the adrenaline wore off.
The woman was on the ground, on her knees, crawling about and collecting the gilders that had scattered from Dallin’s hand. She peered up at Dallin as she scrabbled up the last gilder, and gave him a happy grin. Dallin resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
Wil stood to Dallin’s right, rifle cocked and ready and aimed into the center of the small cluster of men who faced them. Three of them had swords drawn. The other two flashed standard military pistols.
“Back off, and we’ll be on our way.” Wil’s voice was calm. Dallin was absurdly proud of him.
Thirty seconds ago, Wil had been all set to panic. Now, with the rifle once again in his hands, he was cool and more deadly than any of these men could imagine with their small minds.
Two of them snorted. One of them mimed a kiss. They all had the same look to them—small, mean men who got their few meager pleasures out of making others their prey. This wasn’t personal; they were just looking for their twisted version of fun, and Dallin had crossed the gate guard’s path on the wrong day. He hated to think what sorts of prison guards they’d make.
“This is my fault,” he murmured to Wil. “Sorry. I don’t know why, but my instincts have turned to shit.”
Wil adjusted his grip, tilting his head and sighting down, the barrel now pointed directly at the gate guard’s chest. “After we get out of it, I get to keep the gun.”
Dallin didn’t dare twitch a smirk, but he wanted to. That rifle looked more at home in Wil’s hands than it had ever felt in his, and he wouldn’t dream of taking it back now. He reached down, resting his free hand over the new revolver, letting his fingers twitch when he saw one of the men follow the movement with a beady gaze.
“Don’t shoot unless you have to.” Dallin kept it low and calm. “You counted six before, and there are only five now. Watch for another.” He took a deep breath. “Here goes.”
Bold, Dallin pushed away from the wall, holding his gun up and out in his left hand. He kept his right hand over the other as he took two slow steps forward.
“I don’t know what this man has told you”—Dallin nodded toward the gate guard—“but I am a visiting constable from the province of Putnam, and therefore probably a lot more trouble than you bargained for when you agreed to this little… party.” He watched their eyes. Three of them showed obvious surprise, then doubt. “Walk away now, and it goes no further. We’ll be gone before day’s end.”
They stared, all of them still and silent. Dallin watched the eyes of every one of them but mostly kept an eye on the one from the gate. If this went bad, it would be on his signal. It was just how these things went. One stupid leader and a handful of followers who were too used to obeying orders and pretending at loyalty to talk sense into him.
The warning came by way of a flare in the gate guard’s eyes. He rushed, sword swinging. With a deep-chested cry, he lunged at Dallin. It was somewhat clumsy, but he was formally trained, so Dallin didn’t underestimate him. Dallin turned sideways, flung his arm out, and thoroughly clotheslined him. It sent the guard to his back in the dirt with a breathless snarl. He didn’t stop swinging. His blade flashed in the dribs and drabs of sunlight that filtered through the buildings. Dallin had to spin again and dance out of the way to avoid getting his shins sliced up.
Wil was still holding three of them off with the aim of the rifle and a look that would have made Dallin stop and think twice. Another was helping the gate guard up from the ground, staring at Dallin and dragging at the guard’s elbow.
Dallin was just wondering again where the sixth had gone when a sharp pain sliced into his lower back, searing and incandescent with bright white agony.
Dallin jerked with a throttled cry. He drove his elbow back first, then followed it with a blind, spinning right hook, the butt of the gun against his palm lending more power to the blow. He didn’t even have time to be satisfied with the painful grinding of his knuckles as they mashed into the assailant’s jaw, the gratifying crunch of tooth and bone vibrating up his arm.
A shot boomed, the heavy whoof of air exploding from a broken chest almost muffled beneath the roar. Dallin heard every mechanism in the rifle click and churn as it was pumped and cocked again. Another shot whizzed past Dallin’s shoulder. He only noticed vaguely when a warm spray of blood spattered him. He was otherwise occupied with watching the top of a man’s head split off from the bottom… otherwise occupied with trying to breathe through pain that was almost sublime in its agony.
“Good shot.” Dallin realized it came from him, only it huffed out fuzzy and slurred. His vision pulsed between light and dark in time to the pain radiating up his back, engulfing the whole left side of his body. He reached back, fingers blundering into the hilt of a knife jutting from low in his back. Exquisite, blinding pain vibrated from his touch, sent hot bile to the back of his throat, and sparkled at the edges of his perception. “Shit.” He swayed. “This is… this is bad.” Not fatal—most important things were higher and on the other side—but bad.
Two more shots rang out. Dallin blinked. His right arm shouldn’t feel like it weighed twenty stone, but just raising his gun, pointing it into the blurred mass of moving bodies, made his vision go dark.
“Brayden!”
Dallin blinked again. He shook his head but couldn’t clear it. A vague shape that resolved itself into Wil was coming toward him—face fierce and determined, lit from within and as close to actual feral beauty as Dallin had ever seen. He was like some kind of avenging spirit. He was saying something, shouting, but Dall
in couldn’t hear it. Dallin peered up, wondering why Wil was suddenly so much taller than him. Oh. He’d gone down to his knees, oddly disturbed that he couldn’t remember when.
“Hey!” Fear and real concern slicked through Wil’s shout. “C’mon, we have to go.” He took hold of Dallin’s shoulder. “We have to go!”
“Don’t shake me,” Dallin mumbled, or hoped he did. Shaking would be bad. Shaking would bloody hurt. “Can’t go.” Dallin shook his head, but everything was still too bright around the edges, muddled. “Just… give me a minute.”
He just needed to catch his breath, that was all—catch his breath and clear the tangle of pain that was clouding every thought, turning him slow and stupid, sucking him down into that quickmud everyone kept chastising him about.
“What’s wrong?” Wil gripped tighter. “Are you shot? Did they get you? I don’t see anything—is it your head?”
Muzzy, slow, Dallin blinked up into Wil’s face. Then up into the face of the man looming behind him. Noted the beaded braids in the gold-gray hair… the rough, notched scar.
Just how corrupt did an Old One have to be, Dallin wondered dazedly, before the others sliced your Marks from off your face?
“The Watcher is watched.” Dallin wheezed out something between a sigh and a thin moan.
Failed. Failed, damn it, and he hadn’t even started yet.
Vertigo closed him in a hard fist. He dragged his eyes back to Wil’s, reached out, gun dropping from his hand as it latched on to Wil’s sleeve.
“Run.”
3
WIL JUST barely kept himself from growling anxious impatience. They must have hit Brayden with that chunk of wood a lot harder than Wil had thought. Wil was going to have a bugger of a time getting Brayden to his feet, let alone out of the alley, before the gunfire started attracting a crowd.
The men had all scattered, except for the two Wil had shot, and Wil had no doubt the others would be back within minutes with reinforcements. The scraggy woman was cowering in the doorway of what Wil assumed was the hostel’s kitchen, clutching her gold to her thin chest and singing to herself, that eerie smile still pulling at her mouth. Before, her sudden appearance and the realization of what she was had thrown him almost completely. Now he dismissed her.
Dream Page 10