by Jon Sprunk
He glanced back at Liana, who trudged a few steps behind him, lost in her thoughts. As usual. She never had any dreams, at least none she cared to share with him. She was the most boring person he’d ever known, except maybe his father. Like two bumps on the same log.
As he stepped around a stinking brown puddle, Keegan’s gaze was drawn to the east side of town where the prison house was located. He couldn’t see it from here, down by the riverbank, but he wondered how Caedman was doing, or even if he was still alive. His shame returned. He couldn’t change the past, but maybe he could make up for it.
Keegan looked around for a food vendor to take his mind off his guilt and spotted a group of men pushing through the street ahead. They wore coats of iron scales and carried enough weapons to start a war. Freeswords. Foreigners by their look, Hveklanders or Warmonds. It didn’t matter which; they were both bad news.
“Come on, Li.”
He turned down a side street to avoid the armored men.
“I’m coming,” she replied.
Caim watched Liana walk away. She was only trying to help, but he needed to cut his ties with them. And Keegan seemed to know where he was going.
Caim looked down the street in the opposite direction. He needed a physician, and then someplace he could warm up and get a decent meal. As he started walking he was glad for the dwindling sunlight; it would make moving around easier. He passed a group of young men in heavy wool coats and caps—maybe laborers heading to their favorite watering hole—and decided to follow them.
The city looked different than he remembered; it had loomed so large and forbidding in his memories, and the reality was disappointing. Othir could have swallowed Liovard whole and still had room for a couple more courses. The architecture was an odd mixture of northern and southern styles. The city was laid out like two-thirds of a wheel, with a bare hillock bordered by the river filling the missing space. Atop the tor stood the citadel, a stone fortress dwarfing everything around it. He recalled seeing it when he was a boy. Back then, its concentric walls and square towers had seemed so remote, like the moon or a different world, impossible to reach. Lesser buildings in red and gray stone tumbled down the hillside and surrounding land, intermingled with wooden homes and shops. All in all, the city gave an impression of past glories imposed by distant Nimean emperors. Combined with the antipathy he had received from Keegan’s people, it gave him something to think about.
Many of the stalls and shops he passed were already closed or in the process of shutting for the night. Few windows showed any light, and those that did were covered by heavy shutters. Even the noises of the city were muted. An odd stall was still open. Three venerable women in quilted shawls with handkerchiefs over their heads sat under a blue awning, chanting to the beat of small metal drums. Caim remembered something about the ritual from the months he’d spent living on these streets. The chanting was supposed to fight off evil or give good luck. As Caim stood watching, a man in a simple undyed robe ducked under the awning and gave the women a copper penny. Then he sat while they played and chanted for him. Caim moved on.
As he walked, the smells of the city filled his lungs. He’d missed them and the feeling of firm stones under his feet, the high walls around him. He would enjoy sleeping on a bed again instead of the ground, but sleep was the last thing on his mind. This city had an undercurrent; he felt it the moment they passed through the gates. It was a sensation he knew from his days in the south, the feeling of terror. It nipped at the back of his mind.
Caim crossed a broad thoroughfare, the bumpy cobbles underfoot changing to broad blocks with worn channels from the passage of countless wheels, and stopped at an intersection of two streets. On the opposite corner stood a pile of broken masonry covered by a blanket of unsullied snow. The ends of burnt timbers and long pieces of twisted iron protruded from the wreckage. Caim glanced down the street, but this was the only building he could see that had been demolished and left in its ruined state. He crossed the street for a closer look. Pieces of splintered wood hung from the doorway’s broken hinges. Stone shards covered the ground. He kicked one over with his toe and discovered it wasn’t stone, but a piece of dusty, yellow-stained glass. He took another look at the building as a whole, trying to fill in the missing details with his imagination. It had been a church.
Caim studied the structure as he walked past. He had become so accustomed to churches and holy grounds being sacrosanct that seeing one in ruins was disconcerting, like coming across an open grave in the middle of the street. He didn’t see any signs for barbers or medicine shops, but spotted the bright lights of a tavern. Deciding a good night’s sleep would have to do for now, he pushed open the front door. Instead of a taproom, the entire ground floor of the building was open, filled with long tables and benches. Serving boys and women came up from a staircase in the back carrying double handfuls of tankards and trenchers of food. The smells made Caim’s mouth water.
The crowd was a rowdy mix of hard-drinking lower-class types, as well as a smattering of soldiers. No, not soldiers. Mercenaries. Caim could tell by their haphazard appearance and the variety of dialects shouted across tables.
When no one came over to see to his needs, he stopped one of the scullions. With a jerk of her sharp chin, she indicated he should find his own seat.
“Do you rent rooms for the night?” he asked, trying not to shout, but having trouble hearing himself over the din of the patrons.
“I’ll send the master of the house over to see you,” she said, and hurried away.
Caim waited for a few minutes. He was about to find a seat when a young man ambled over. He was dressed rather sharply, with a leather vest and fine trousers tucked into knee-high boots. Caim would have taken him for just another patron until he introduced himself as the proprietor.
“How can I help you, sir?”
“Is it always this loud in here?” Caim was thinking about trying to sleep with this racket going on under his room.
The young owner gave him an appraising look. “It’s Holbermass Eve, sir.”
Already? Holbermass was fourteen days before Yuletide. Caim counted the days in his head and found he had missed a few. The year was almost over.
“I’ll take a room and a bath,” Caim said. “Followed by a hot meal.”
The owner named a price. Caim didn’t bother haggling, but just paid it, whereupon he was passed off to another serving girl, who led him to the back where another staircase climbed to the second floor.
A candlemark later, he returned to the ground floor freshly bathed, shaven, changed, and feeling almost human. If anything, the tavern was fuller than when he went upstairs, so he had to look around to find an open seat against a wall with a good view of the entire room. He wound up taking the end spot at a table full of young people, men and women no older than Josey, if that, drinking and laughing. He leaned back as he sat down, trying to keep his face out of the light as much as possible. The shadows tickled at the edges of his perception, but he kept them at bay. The last thing he wanted was to draw attention.
A girl brought his dinner, mutton on the bone, a loaf of brown bread large enough to choke a mule, and a mug of what smelled like the same barley beer he had gotten at the roadhouse. He tossed her a couple pennies as he tore into the food. The fare wasn’t fancy, but it tasted like heaven after so long on the road. He even stomached the beer.
His fingers were stiff as he ate, and the forearm began to itch. He had changed the dressing after his bath, but the wound was still oozing. He needed to find a chirurgeon to take a look at it. Tomorrow.
He had almost finished the platter when a table near the middle of the room fell over on its side. Benches scraped as men jumped to their feet. Steel flashed and someone yelled, and everyone backed away as two men grappled amid puddles of spilled beer. One wore a vest of iron rings, the other a coat of boiled leather. Holes appeared in their armor and leaked blood as they punched at each other with short daggers. All the while, their comrades
shouted and laughed at the spectacle.
Caim waited to see what would happen. While the others at his table stood up on their seats for a better look, most of the room cleared out. The owner stood well away from the brawl, frowning as his profits ran out the door. Caim debated staying put, but after another minute of watching the mercs brutalize each other, he got up and went to his room. He gathered his things, few as they were, and pulled the black sword from its wrapping. The weapon felt right in his hands, like a part of him. He bared several inches of the night-black blade and ran his fingers across the pommel, down the hilt to the crossguard. It’s only a sword. Nothing more. Yet the quiet hum in his fingertips when he touched the metal told him otherwise. He shoved the weapon back into its housing. Adjusting the straps on the scabbard, Caim slung it across his back before he picked up the other bundle and left.
The outside chill was refreshing after the heat of the tavern. The light was fading. The moon was a golden fingernail paring over the city skyline. A heavy crash resounded from inside, and Caim started walking. He had paid for the room, but he didn’t feel like sleeping someplace that might get raided by the authorities or burned down around his ears by a bunch of angry drunks. He would find a cheap flophouse and in the morning seek out a guide. Or not. Either way, he was leaving the city tomorrow.
Slush splashed under his heels as he crossed another avenue—it must have been the South Road leading out of the city—and entered another neighborhood. When he left the tavern Caim hadn’t much of an idea where he was heading, but with every step he found himself going deeper into the sorrier sections of the city. Though less ornamented, the buildings in this district were taller, some reaching as high as six stories, their upper floors leaning out over the street to shut out the sky. Down at the street level, the darkness was nigh absolute. It reminded him of Low Town in Othir, except everything here was built of wood and wattle, even the shanties. And, of course, there were no people on the streets. Even in the darkest hours, there were always a few people out and about in the Gutters: bully boys, smash-and-grabbers, sailors from the docks. Here, the quiet was eerie, like he was the only soul alive in the entire city. He reached back to loosen his knives in their sheaths and almost called for the shadows before he stopped himself. He was getting too comfortable with them.
He passed a cobbler’s shop, quite unremarkable with small frosted windows and a black wooden placard over the door in the shape of a boot, but it perfectly matched an image he’d had stuck in his head for a long time without realizing it. Past the shop, Caim turned left at the next intersection on instinct. The street that opened before him could have been torn from his memory. Rows of narrow tenement houses lined each side, jammed together like toy soldiers in tight formation. Each house had a front stoop or a patio on the street. In his mind’s eye this neighborhood was clean and prosperous, but the image before him was quite different. Mounds of garbage piled between the homes. Low shadows slipped between the heaps, dogs rooting through the refuse. Feeble lights in a few of the windows over the street showed that people still lived here despite the conditions.
Caim strode down the middle of the street. Some of the doorways were occupied by blanket-covered lumps. A tiny fire burned in one brick archway beside a drowsing white-haired man with a dirty beard. Caim stopped outside a building with a large blue door, its round bronze knocker green with verdigris. Four windows faced the street. The shutters had all fallen off except for one stubborn panel on an upper window. No light showed through the grimy panes. The place looked dead, like no one had lived here for years.
Caim kicked aside a lump of snow-covered trash and ascended the uneven steps. The front door swung inward with a low whine. Darkness pooled inside the doorway. Odors of wood rot and mildew pulled him inside. He stood on the threshold as his eyes adjusted. A hallway extended all the way back through the tenement. Doors branched off to either side, and a rickety staircase led upward to more darkness. Smears of charcoal marred the cracked plaster walls and ceiling.
Caim peered through the doorways as he passed down the hallway. The first door was closed. Inside the next was a sparse room, containing only a loveseat with ripped cushions and a rocking chair in a corner. Broken bottles and scraps of dingy blankets littered the floor. The stench of excrement was choking. Caim went to the stairs.
The steps creaked underfoot, loud to his ears. He climbed them with caution, listening for sounds of occupation, but the place was deadly quiet. At the top, a faint gleam of moonlight filtered through the dirty windows at either end of the hallway, illuminating dark streaks and piles of trash on the floor, and the shadowed doors of three apartments.
Caim stepped to the middle door. Long scratches gouged the varnished wood. The bronze handle was loose and unlocked. Standing out of the way, he nudged it open. Trash and broken furniture covered the floor of the front room. Slivers of yellow light showed a narrow hallway on the other side and outlined a door at the far end. Caim slipped into the corridor. So much had changed over the years, but he still remembered how the place used to look. The lime-green walls, now besmirched with marks and holes, had been clean ivory white. There had been a long blue runner down this hallway and a quilted blanket hung over the now-bare left-hand wall.
Before he reached the door, it swung open, spilling light into the hallway. Caim tensed to see a figure standing in the doorway. It was short and heavyset like a toad. The figure took a step. Something tapped on the hardwood floor, and a creaky voice screeched.
“Out!”
By the sound, the voice belonged to a woman, and an old one at that. Caim stood his ground. Warm air wafted from the room beyond, carrying with it a strange blend of sweat, crabapple, and sour wine. He stood up straight and kept his knives out of sight.
“I won’t hurt—”
“Get out!”
Caim winced as her voice carried through the apartment. If there was anyone else in this building, they would have heard her. He didn’t need any unwanted attention. He started to back away down the hall. Then she stepped after him and pointed a long object at him like an impossibly long finger. A cane.
“Challen? What are you doing here? Your mother will be—” She sounded confused, but then the shrillness returned. “You broke my teacup!”
Caim remained where he was.
“Come on!” she snapped before he could say anything. “You’re letting in the cold.”
Caim followed at a respectful distance as she turned and shuffled back inside. He stepped into a cramped kitchen. A rickety table sat against the near wall. Three dirty glass jars sat on a shelf above the table; two were empty, the third was two-thirds full of dead roaches. On the other side of the room were a cast-iron stove and a battered coldbox. The light came from the stove’s feeble flame. A stack of papers, leaflets by the look of them, sat on the floor beside the fire pan.
The old woman jabbed her cane at the table’s sole chair. “Sit.”
While he obeyed, she went over to the stove and fidgeted with a dinged teapot. She wore a shabby housecoat that didn’t look thick enough to keep a dog warm in this weather, and a pair of what he took to be woolen boots at first; but then he realized with a closer look that she had old shirts wrapped around her feet.
Caim took off his gloves as the old woman poured two cups and brought one over to the table.
“Mind you don’t break this one,” she said.
Caim nodded and sniffed the tea. It smelled awful. He set it aside when she turned around. Traces of memories tugged at the back of his mind. Everything was recognizable, and yet not quite right. The stove, for instance, had been in the corner once where the coldbox now stood. The walls were cracked pea-green plaster, but splotches of a darker color peeked from under the peeling strips of paints. Brown? Yes, he saw it clearly now. This had been their apartment, his and Kas’s, when they lived in the city.
While Caim looked around, the old woman perched on a wooden stool. She looked like a bird hunched over her cup, shoulders bowed
and the sleeves of her coat drooping from her spindly arms.
“Everyone says old Ida is losing her mind,” she said. “But I still remember you and your father. What was his name?”
“I don’t think I am who you think I am.”
“Such a handsome man he was. A bit scary at first, but he had the heart of a kitten. Used to come over some nights when you were sleeping. We’d sit right here and talk until dawn. Very nice man.”
“A lot has changed around here. The city feels …”
Caim wasn’t sure how to finish that statement. In this neighborhood, which had once been a flourishing community full of life and well-being, the dogs outnumbered the people, and probably ate better. It was as if the entire city was …
“Dead,” she said.
Caim sat back in the chair. Yes, that was what he’d felt, like he’d been walking through a graveyard, every building a charnel house holding naught but the dead and their caretakers.
“What’s happened?”
“Happened?” Her thin shoulders rose and fell. “They’ve all left, or gone down to Arugul’s dark realm since she came. All the good ones dead. And those that stayed behind have been sucking this town dry like a pack of ticks on a dead hound. The duke don’t see it. My husband gone. My sons gone, too. And this”—she shook her cup at the walls and ceiling—“this is where I spend my last days.”
A talon of cold slipped between Caim’s ribs to prick at his heart. “Are you talking about the duke’s witch? What do you know about her?”
The old woman gave a sharp laugh. Her eyes, which had looked glassy a moment before, stared at him intently. “You shouldn’t have come back, child. Dark’s been waiting for you.” Then she coughed into her balled-up hands.
“What did you say?”
The old woman’s coughing fit lasted several moments as Caim tried to get her attention with no results. Finally she waved him away.