Turning back toward his room, the paladin stripped off his sweaty nightshirt and replaced it with a clean one that came to his waist. While naked, he frowned at a bruise on his right hip where a fellow paladin had scored a hit during training yesterday. Rathamik refused to have it healed by a Green. He could have healed it himself, had he so chosen. Instead, he chose to let it heal naturally to serve as a reminder against making a mistake similar to the one that had let the other warrior inside his guard.
Rathamik shivered with another chill, and he turned back to the open window. The pigeon was gone, so he shut the glass. The cold feeling persisted, though, and he contemplated climbing back into his bed and trying for a few last minutes of sleep before his manservant, Dervin, came to wake him. His yellow cloak hung on a hook behind his door, challenging him to stay awake and begin his day.
A soft skittering sound made him glance at the floor, and Rathamik grimaced at the sight of a rat scurrying under his bed. He made a mental note to ask Dervin to have the building swept clear of the vermin. With a soft sigh, Rathamik sat back down into his bed and pulled the sheets back up from the floor.
As he tugged on the linen, the rat flew toward him from the sheets.
Rathamik cursed softly. The beast must have been caught in the sheets when he tugged it up them up from the floor, and now it was in his bed somewhere. Resignedly, he began sifting through the linen, looking for moving lumps.
A sudden burning in his abdomen made him look down, and he stared with incomprehension at a brown shape pressed against his chest. Of course, the rat, he thought. Perhaps it had bitten him.
Swiftly he grasped the rat, surprised at how cold and smooth it felt, as though it had no hair at all. He tugged it away from him and gasped in sudden shock and pain as he instead tugged a small claw out of his lower chest. Blood poured from the suddenly opened wound, and Rathamik choked on his own cry of shock. He turned his head toward a rustle in the sheets before him, and stared numbly at the demonic humanoid that was suddenly revealed.
It can’t be! No!
Rathamik found his breath and tried to cry out, but all that came out was a spluttering gurgle. His throat burned with a fiery agony, and he stared uncomprehendingly at the lump of bloody flesh in the creature’s other hand. His throat torn out, Rathamik fell forward onto the sheets. With his last remaining consciousness, he felt the demon fasten its teeth on his neck and heard a horrifying slurping sound.
Then he knew no more.
- 5 -
Dervin knocked on his master’s door, knowing the aged paladin would likely already be awake. It seemed that as the old man got even older, he only woke earlier and went to bed later. He thrived on what would exhaust a man half his age. Much as it often exhausted Dervin, he counted himself lucky to be Rathamik’s manservant. Certainly no other servant ranked higher than he, and Dervin carried a sort of authority of his own among the staff.
The knob twitched, then turned. The door opened, and Dervin looked at his master. The aged paladin was wearing a long, white nightshirt, and did indeed look as though he’d been awake for some time.
“You’re awake then, sir?” Dervin asked pleasantly.
“Yes,” Rathamik replied. “And a good morning to you.”
Chapter 6
The sheer mass of humans in the world compared to demi-humans tells us something: this is a human world. All that remains is deciding how to deal with the lesser races – do we ignore them, try to elevate them to our level, or just wipe them out and be done with it?
- Emperor Alexiter II of Merishank,
“The Human Manifesto” (738 AL)
- 1 -
Glint gazed with apparent disinterest at the building across the street. The home was his third target of the day, and thus far it showed no signs of racial abnormality. Humans, elves, gnomes, and dwarves walked the streets in profusion – far too many of the demi-humans for Glint’s liking – but none of them approached the home. Only one person had entered in the last two hours, a properly human male, and it was nearing the time for Glint to pack his belongings and set up shop near his next target.
Glint’s role as an investigator for the Men for Mankind Coalition required him to immediately report the presence of any non-human in any way associated with an employee of the Coalition. Some interactions were entirely appropriate, such as having a denarae servant or chimney sweep, but any association deemed questionable was immediately investigated. Low-level employees ran the risk of being black-listed against ever advancing higher, while more powerful men caught in improper associations… Glint practically salivated at the thought.
His days were spent carefully watching men’s homes, his schedule usually picked at random to prevent a target from learning ahead of time of his home’s investigation and warning away any non-human associates. Weekends and holidays were the most profitable for him, since men tended to let their guard down. Most days, as today, he assumed a disguise as a simple merchant hawking honest, human-made merchandise. Glint was sufficiently average-looking that no one looked twice at him, and his wares were short on selection, ensuring he would never have a too-large crowd that might impair his observations.
“Here, good sir,” he said, holding a pan up for inspection, “take the missus home a nice gift. She’ll love this new, improved steel pan, and she’ll reward your thoughtfulness with a tasty meal, I wager. Reduced price today, only twenty Merishank silver.”
The potential customer in question walked by with only the briefest of glances at Glint and his wares. He caught the eye of a passing woman.
“You have an interest, madam?” he asked, his voice just short of a bellow in the crowded streets. “Brand new design, human-made, guaranteed to meet or beat the performance of dwarven pans, or your money back.”
Glint knew this offer was a safe one, not because of the quality of his wares, but rather because after today he would be in a new disguise and a new location, and the woman would never recognize him to voice her complaints. All in all, he considered this a fair deal. Anyone able to test such an offer had to already possess a dwarven-made pan, and so they deserved to lose some money for their foolish xenophilia.[21]
He smiled unctuously as she happily doled out the requisite coins and glowed with sincerity as he again assured her of the product’s quality.
The crowds began to thin in the midday heat, giving Glint the perfect excuse to take down his sign and move on. Only the most desperate of street vendors stayed outside during the heat of the day, at least during the summer, and Glint’s current guise was far from desperate. By the time he reached the home of his next target, though, he would be properly situated and his appearance would have dropped to impoverished to account for his presence in the summer heat.
Glint pulled the front of his small cart down and bolted it to the side, then suddenly he stopped. Across the street, a gnome’s face was peeking out of a doorway, peering anxiously up and down the street. Glint made a point of knowing the homes of each target he was to inspect, and he knew that while this home was not on his list for today, he had inspected it only last week.
Danner de’Valderat.
The name sprang into Glint’s well-trained mind, and the presence of a gnome in this house set off all kinds of warning bells. Last week when he’d investigated the home, he’d seen no sign of demi-human activity. Perhaps the gnome had been forewarned to stay out of sight then. If so, it was under no such constraint now, and it stepped carefully out into the street.
Perhaps it was merely luck, but Glint murmured a quick prayer of thanks to God for giving him such an opportunity. De’Valderat was reasonably well-regarded within the local ranks of the Coalition, much better in an everyday reckoning than Glint was himself. The chance to reveal such a treachery would surely increase Glint’s standing, perhaps even earning him a promotion. He smiled eagerly at the prospect.
But first, he had to be sure.
He watched the overweight gnome for a moment, and saw that it had merely ste
pped outside long enough to walk around the side of the house and grab a stray piece of metal from the ground beneath one of the windows. It disappeared back into the house without hesitation, demonstrating familiarity with the dwelling. This meant, to Glint’s mind, that the halfling did, in fact, live there, or was at least a known guest and was not present illicitly.
His eyes glittered maliciously as he smiled.
De’Valderat was going to fall, and Glint would be the man to bring him down. He hurriedly finished packing his cart, then lifted the handles. Glint had to force himself not to run as he returned to the Coalition’s headquarters.
- 2 -
“What time will Danner get off from work?” Birch asked his brother.
Hoil looked up from his ledger.
“Come again?”
“What’s that, brother?” Birch asked instead, pointing to the sheet of paper. “I thought ledgers were only for honest businessmen.”
Hoil looked insulted.
“You and the boy, both,” he grunted. “We corrupt and damnable thieves use them, too. How else can we keep score of how much we’ve swindled, stolen, extorted, and liberated?”
“Liberated?” Birch asked mildly.
Hoil grimaced.
“A term I picked up from the boy,” he said. “I think he feels he’s doing the money a favor by putting it in more worthy hands. His own, namely.”
Birch paused, considering his brother.
“Does he know you’re proud of him?” Birch asked, squinting at Hoil.
The master thief squirmed. He had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that his brother was staring directly into his soul and reading his innermost secrets. For perhaps the first time in his life, Hoil felt guilty about his means of profit.
He cleared his throat gruffly.
“Likely as not,” he said. “Boy’s quicker than I am sometimes.”
“He does have a name…Hoil,” the paladin said, emphasizing the name.
“You’re one to talk about names…Birch,” Hoil answered, deliberately mocking him. Then Hoil scowled and shook his head. “Names have a funny way of making two people feel close to each other, and the closer you get the more you can get hurt.”
Birch stared at Hoil a moment, stunned.
“Wings and demons, he’s your son, Hoil,” Birch said exasperatedly. “You’re saying you can’t get too close to your son?”
“Can’t allow it,” Hoil said, fighting to keep an inner pain from his voice. He saw Birch’s expression ease slightly, and he knew he hadn’t been entirely successful. “Not for my sake, you understand, but for his. I don’t want the poor lad to miss me too much when I’m snatched, or should I say liberated, from this world.”
Birch looked silently at his brother, his fiery gaze thoughtful.
Hoil wished desperately that his brother would look someplace else. He didn’t know how to tell him that his aversion to using names was because she had always said his name so sweetly. She had said his name in a way that made his heart ache just remembering, and he’d done his best to do the same. So many times he’d wanted to tell her what she’d meant to him, but he never had the words. Instead, he tried telling her just by the way he said her name… and sometimes by the sparkle in her eyes and the smile on her lips he thought just maybe he’d succeeded.
But always there’d been that look of sadness, as though she heard something in his voice, or else he was missing something in hers. When she said his name, that sadness somehow made it all the more poignant and meaningful, as though she only had a limited number of times she could call him by name, and hear her name in return. Like an unuttered prophecy, Hoil thought bitterly how true that was. Perhaps she had known.
“She was wonderful, brother,” Birch said softly, his voice intruding into Hoil’s thoughts.
Hoil sniffed, and only then did he realize that his face was stained by a sparkling tear. He wiped his cheek with a rough swipe of his hand and glared at his brother. The expression held no force, though, and Hoil found himself turning away first.
“You have no idea,” Hoil said simply.
“No, I don’t.”
The silence hung between them for a long moment. Hoil was vaguely aware of the sounds of others moving about around them, but it was as though there was a bubble of concern around the two brothers that just didn’t include the rest of the world. Then Birch spoke, and the bubble disappeared.
“When will Danner return from work?” Birch asked. Hoil seemed to remember his already having asked that, but couldn’t remember whether he’d already answered.
“He’ll be by in an hour or so, if he’s returning here,” Hoil answered. “Tomorrow’s Octday, so if he needs to buy food with the purse he lifted from me last night, he may just decide to go straight home.”
“I think I’ll go meet him,” Birch said. “These dark shadows and cramped rooms may be ideal for your work, brother, but I find I feel the urge to feel the sun and stretch my legs.”
“Still claustrophobic, eh?” Hoil asked, smiling.
“And besides, Selti needs to catch his own food, or he’ll get lazy,” Birch said, ignoring the jibe. Quickly, Hoil gave him directions on how to find the headquarters of the Coalition.
Birch pushed back from the table and whistled softly. In a moment, a rustle of leather announced the dakkan’s arrival, still in the diminutive drann form. Selti nearly smashed into Birch’s chest, but pulled up at the last second and neatly grabbed hold of the fabric and hauled himself up to Birch’s shoulder.
“I’ll be back soon,” Birch promised.
“Don’t get lost.”
“If I do, I’ll send Selti to lead a rescue mission,” Birch said, smiling faintly. Hoil noticed there was a distinct lack of humor in the expression, as if it had been forced.
“Right.”
- 3 -
Danner pushed his chair back from his desk and stretched slowly. The main drawback to a desk job, he thought idly, was working at a desk. Someone, somewhere, had decided that all desks should be of a relatively uniform size, designed to fit everyone but the person who used it. Danner sourly thought about the one elven desk he’d once seen in his father’s den, which was so cunningly crafted that it was comfortable for almost any man. The desk had once belonged to a wealthy merchant who had erroneously decided to ship it across the city to his new home without first verifying that the men who showed up actually worked for the company he’d hired.
Fen, Daarl, and Weathermik had simply loaded their cart with the most valuable of the merchant’s belongings, promising to return soon for the remainder. From what Danner knew, it was nearly a day before the merchant realized what had happened to him, and by then the furniture and valuables were already on their way to Menka to be sold in the shadow market.[22] Everything except the desk. Such furniture was hard to come by, and it prevented Hoil from having to spend a fortune custom-ordering a desk to fit his expansive dimensions.
The desk, Danner had been disappointed to learn, was lost during a deron’dala raid on a previous hideout. No doubt it now sat in the home of some official and was never seen by the original owner ever again. His father occasionally grumbled about how he’d break into every house in town if necessary to find and take back his desk. Danner mentally shrugged. Such was the way of things.
He glanced at the imitation timepiece on his desk, rolling his eyes as he usually did as he yearned for a good dwarven-made piece. There were definite drawbacks to working for the Coalition, he thought, almost enough to counter the amount of money Danner made off of them.
Almost. He smiled to himself.
“Well, time to call it a day,” he said, his voice straining as he again stretched his arms above his head.
He grimaced briefly as he remembered that there’d been no chance to make money that day either. Chance, it seemed, had been conspiring against him lately. Danner wasn’t worried, though. He knew it was only a matter of time before he had another opportunity to liberate more money, and he was stil
l heavy with most of the purse he’d acquired from his father.
Danner blew out the lamp at his desk, plunging the room into a deep gloom that lasted only as long as it took his eyes to adjust. A thick plume of smoke curled up from the lamp, temporarily enveloping Danner in a haze. He jerked back in surprise, but not before he’d inhaled a trickle of the haze that set him to coughing.
“I don’t like my new lamp,” he said, his voice rough past the tickling in his throat. Someone had brought a fresh lamp to him an hour before, replacing the almost-depleted one he’d been using and admonishing him to remember to blow it out before leaving.
Shaking his head, he watched absently as the lingering haze drifted toward the nearby windows. They were set high in one wall that let in light in the mornings, but since it was nearing sundown there was only a faint, ruddy glow that filtered in from outside. The Coalition had learned its lesson long ago about putting windows too near the ground, which made them easy targets for denarae terrorists.
“Terrorists?” Danner muttered to himself as he walked away from his desk. “Listen to me. Now I’m starting to sound like one of these bloody idiots. Pretty soon I’ll actually start believing all this crap they shove down everybody’s throats.” Danner was careful to keep his voice low. Uttering such comments was worth his life while anywhere but in the safety of his own home.
“What floor?”
The voice jolted Danner, and he realized he’d already reached the elevator cage, which had conveniently been waiting for him. The air in the corridor seemed foggy and indistinct, as though the smoke from his lamp had somehow spread to the rest of the floor. He blinked and shook his head to clear the smoky image.
“First floor, Alex,” Danner answered tiredly. He was suddenly very weary. “I’m on my way home.”
“Very good.”
Danner frowned slightly – the operator hadn’t called him “sir.” Something about that bothered him, but he couldn’t focus his mind enough to wonder exactly what it was. The operator’s face swam before him, and he heard him call into the tube. Danner couldn’t understand what the man yelled, but he was still awake enough to realize that it hadn’t been a call for the first floor.
Hunting The Three (The Barrier War) Page 7