Striding over, she entered the room that had simultaneously saved and doomed her. With no windows and only the tiniest sliver of light coming from a tightly shuttered lantern set on the pedestal in the center, the room was pitch black. No sooner had she walked over and for the second time in as many minutes, the door slammed shut at her back.
Aeryn whirled, forgetting about the knife. She whirled again, the door forgotten as a voice sounded behind her.
“The first thing you need to learn—something I think you would have learned on the streets a long time ago—is not to draw undo attention to yourself. Wearing clothing fitted for gong farmers and tanners while beyond the Lord’s Gate stands out like a spot of rust on a gleaming breastplate.” The voice belonged to Merek, but every time Aeryn spun to face its source, it silenced for a moment, and resumed anywhere but the direction she was facing.
“And telling everyone I’m your street whore is better?” Aeryn asked the darkness.
“Lady Mareen began that particular rumor after you so thoughtfully barged in last week,” Merek said. “Though I must admit, it does solve a number of thorny problems in one fell swoop.”
Bloody nobles. Aeryn asked. “Like the one where you prefer boys to girls? I assume that is why you are not married and don’t have any children.”
Aeryn caught a distinctive hiss emanate from the corner. She twirled to try and to catch a glimpse of the elusive Lord.
“You should have asked what the second thing you need to learn is.”
“Oh yeah?” Aeryn grinned smugly at how off guard she had just put him. “What is that?”
“Light is the enemy.”
A slash opened the sleeve of her left arm and scored the skin beneath. Aeryn yelped and spun, too late forgetting she had no knife to defend herself with. A mirrored cut appeared on her right sleeve and arm. Aeryn spun again. When she stopped, head trying to catch up, she realized she could not point to the door. Reaching for the lantern, she unshuttered it all the way and held it aloft, bathing the room in light. It was empty.
“I thought you were more clever than that,” Merek said from behind her. “At least, the girl who tamed a draven, killed a Shade and tried to corral a Lord was. Perhaps I was mistaken.”
Twirling, lantern in hand, she found. . .nothing. Cold steel pricked her neck. Blood welled. She whirled again.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“You.”
Aeryn growled. “I would sooner die than bed you.”
“No,” Merek said. The air stirred as he moved, invisible. “I have no desire to bed you.”
“Then what do you want? If you’re going to kill me, get it over with. I’m not afraid of death.” She did not welcome it either, but every street urchin knew what death looked like and accepted that sooner or later, it would come for them.
“I’m not going to kill you. At least not until I see who you really are, see behind the curtains and see what you are made of.” His voice circled her, a wolf stalking in the shadows. She tried to face it, but it was hard to focus on a disembodied voice. “Just as a draven fears not the deer, neither does the Drifter fear the night.”
Blood dripping from a good dozen cuts, a spark ignited in Aeryn’s mind. He was giving her clues! After all, if he wanted her dead, he had had ample opportunities. She stopped turning, and ignored the stinging wounds that dotted her from her cheeks to her ankles. Dravens hunted at night, which must mean Drifters—whatever they were—did as well. It hit her all at once. She might be wrong—hell, she probably was—but she grabbed onto the idea as though it were a life raft and she a sailor swept overboard during a storm.
Light is the enemy.
Aeryn snuffed the lantern’s flame and hurled it at the last place she had heard Merek’s voice, praying her aim was true. As it soared through the air, she stepped forward with it and faded into the darkness as she had done so many times before. The room grew brighter, just as the night had.
The lantern hit the wall. A waterfall of shattered and broken glass crashed to the floor. A curse and a grunt said she had found her mark.
She stepped forward again, willing herself to be one with the blackness. The darkness brightened enough to make out a shape, rolling past her and away from the spreading oil. A final step, willing herself to be one with the shadows and the room became a dusky twilight. She stood against the wall over the broken shards of glass. Ripping off her sleeve and twining the cloth around her hands, she bent and picked one up a jagged shard in each hand. She turned, knees bent and ready.
Merek stood opposite, a slight smirk painted on his face. His simple robes were dark where the lantern had hit and cut from the broken glass. He appeared not to notice either.
“What you just did is called Drifting. In essence, it is melding with the darkness. In reality, it is quite a bit more complicated. Though you won’t need to worry about that for some time.”
Able to see, Aeryn circled around the room, her back to the wall, until she reached the door. It was time to get away from this Lord. Blackmail did not work if your target was mad. In fact, it usually backfired quite spectacularly.
She pushed open the door, took one step into the bedroom and stopped. Though it was high noon outside, it might as well have been midnight in the bedroom. Only inches behind her, Merek chuckled. Aeryn whirled.
“You won’t need those,” he said, looking down to the glass knives in her hands.
Aeryn held them up menacingly. Blood dripped through the cloth wraps to stain the rugs at her feet. The jumble of questions rolling through her mind was enough to distract her from the sharp stinging pain.
“What trick is this?” she asked and jerked her head to the bedroom.
“No trick.” Ignoring the makeshift knives, he pushed past her. “I’m not surprised you haven’t noticed this before. Not only have you probably never Drifted this far, but unless I miss my guess, you’ve also never Drifted during the day. Let me take a guess.” Merek turned and faced Aeryn. “You only ‘become one with the darkness,’ or ‘fade into the shadows,’ at night? And when you do, you always shy away from lights, people, and animals? Except for your draven, of course,” he added, “who is always at your side, visible.”
Events of the past week flashed through her mind. Aeryn nodded cautiously. “How did you know that?”
Merek chuckled again. “That much was obvious.” He flung the window curtains open.
Aeryn’s jaw unhinged. Instead of sunlight, shafts of darkness stabbed through the window. Merek’s shadow was actually lighter than its surroundings. She looked back. So was hers.
“What trick is this?” she managed to stammer.
“I told you. It’s not a trick. Light is the enemy. The further you Drift, the further inversed the world becomes. For now, all you need to know is that everything light becomes dark, and everything dark becomes light.”
“Then why does everything look grey except for the sunlight?” Aeryn asked. The glass knives hung limply in her hands, forgotten.
“Because despite this being the furthest you’ve ever Drifted, you are barely scratching the surface of what you will be able to do with more training and experience. As for the sunlight, the more intense the light—or dark—the more intense its inverse is as you Drift, regardless of how deep you go. Just as sunlight at noon is always bright white, so too is a new moon always bright white to a Drifter.” At Aeryn’s frown, Merek added, “Concentrate on pulling away from the darkness and I’ll show you what I mean.”
Doing as he said, this time fading into the light—that was such a bloody weird thought, fading into the light—the world became “normal” again. It was strange how comforting that felt. Evidently, Merek had done the same because he also appeared “normal.”
“As you Drift, so too does your body change,” Merek explained. “Before today, this was about the furthest I bet you had ever gone.” He turned to a hazy grey. Though still there and recognizable, shadows obscured all but his most prominent details. He
changed again, this time becoming an indistinct black mist. “This was about how deep you were just now.” Again and again he Drifted, becoming darker and fuzzier with each step until he was completely invisible, a voice speaking from thin air. “This,” he said, “is the furthest it is possible to go.”
Aeryn waved her hand in front of her. “If I can’t see you, does that mean you can’t see me?”
“Very good,” Merek said. “You catch on just as fast as I’d hoped. Always keep in mind that even though neither of us can see each other, we both still exist.”
The curtains drew shut and Aeryn felt something shove her shoulder, sending her stumbling backward off-balance. She brought up the glass shards as Merek coalesced back into sight. He stood staring at her as if expecting a reaction.
“But that means. . .” Aeryn’s mind sprinted from one point to another, connecting them as she went. She gasped and jerked her head up. “What I saw in the square the day of Nameless’ anniversary. That was real. Which means Shades and Voices—“
Merek clapped his hands together, interrupting her revelation. “That’s enough for today.” Grinning like a fool, he opened the bedroom door to the hallway beyond. “I don’t want to wear you out too badly the first time.” Two serving women walking past quickened their step at the sight of Aeryn emerging, hair disheveled, sleeves torn off, clothes rumbled, cut in a dozen places, and seeping blood like scratches made during the thrones of passion. “Same time next week,” he added a bit too loudly, “only next time be sure to wear more presentable clothes.”
Aeryn whirled on the spot just in time to see him wink and slam the door in her face. “You bloody prick! I—ARGH!” She threw the glass shards at the door where they shattered into a thousand tiny fragments.
Nearing the end of the hall, the two women turned and looked back, heads close together, whispering conspiratorially.
“What are you looking at?” Aeryn shouted. Turning on her heels, she stomped away, face reddening. Bloody Lords!
Quickly striding through the maze of rooms trying to outdistance the giggles trailing her—how many flaming rooms and servants did one Lord need?—Aeryn was intent on reaching the anonymity of the streets as fast as possible.
Today had not gone anything like she had expected. It would be nice to be back on the streets where she understood the rules. Rounding a corner, she ran into a shapely woman. Perfectly proportioned in all the right places, garbed in richly embroidered silk from head to toe with flowing golden hair hanging to her waist over a painted face, the woman was the very definition of beauty.
To the side in sharp contrast, Reeve’s face bunched up over top of a plain wool jacket. “Watch where you’re going, girl!” Turning to the woman, he bowed and ducked his head. “I apologize, Lady Alys. Did the girl hurt you? I assure you she did not mean anything by it. She is just a simple street—” His eyes widened until they were on the verge of popping from his head. “Your dress!” Where he stared, Aeryn saw a drop of blood staining Lady Alys’ silk. Very nearly lost between the twining embroidery, it was a wonder he noticed it at all. “Oh, I do apologize. I’m sure Lord Merek will offer to replace it for you.”
Lady Alys chuckled. “No, whatever Lord Merek says, I’m not so delicate that a bump weakens my knees. As for the dress,” she waved a hand in the air as though brushing away a fly, “I’ve a dozen more like. However, I would like to have a word with Lord Merek about him allowing a street girl running around his house unchecked. It sets a bad precedent for us all.”
Reeve gulped audibly and bobbed his head. “Yes, Lady.” Giving Aeryn a look that should have turned her into ash on the spot, he swept his arm wide. “Right this way, Lady Alys.”
“Is that the girl Lady Mareen was referring to the other day?” Lady Alys asked as they walked away.
Reeve cast a glare over his shoulder, ducking his head as he turned it back. “Unfortunately, yes. I don’t know what Lord Merek sees in her. I’ve tried telling him it is improper cavorting with a street rat like her—out beyond the Lord’s Gate where nobody is the wiser is one thing, but inviting them into his home is something else all together!—but he won’t listen. You know how he is; when he gets something in his mind, it’s impossible to get him to listen to reason.”
“I see,” Lady Alys said. Rubbing at the blood spot on her dress, she looked back and eyed Aeryn beneath her brows. “Tell me, Master Reeve,” she brought her head up, giving the chamberlain an ample view of her bosom while flashing him a smile that could have melted frozen steel, “as a man with his ears next to the grindstone, so to speak, what else can you tell me about. . .“
The voices faded out as Aeryn turned and stomped away. The last thing Aeryn did before she slammed the front door open and shut again was follow her nose to a pantry and filch a double handful of still-warm pastries laced with swirls of white sugary glaze. She figured that if Merek was going to ruin her only clothes and not give her any coin for replacements, a few pastries was the least he owed her.
At least she was on her way back to the streets she understood. A place where common sense and life’s essentials ruled, rather than inane intrigue and flashy frivolities. The problem was that dangers existed in each. One misstep and you paid for it—dearly. And right now, Aeryn felt like she was mired in quicksand in the middle of a bog laced with poisonous snakes and scorpions, and all while a storm buffeted her from every side.
5
Life’s Essentials
Lost in thought, Aeryn barely noticed the bustle of people out and about on ordinary, everyday business. Here, a woman negotiating with a merchant over the price of bauble, there, a man shouting and flailing his arms, insisting a bushel of wheat had weevils, while an equally furious and red-faced vendor yelled back that the man needed to get his eyes checked.
Not that she typically paid them any mind, other than constantly sweeping the crowd for hushed murmurs and people quickstepping from the center of the street. Both were telltale signs of approaching merchant guards, sellswords, soldiers, or worst of all, the rare Shade, or rarer still, Voice. The latter always brought proclamations of Nameless ordering higher tithes and inciting commotion that lasted for days. That, and proclamations of some imminent threat posed by Shadows that only Nameless and his disciples could protect Maerilin from. Even if you only believed half of what they said, Maerilin balanced on a knife’s edge, destruction and ruin on either side.
Though the vast majority of Maerilin’s citizens lived from copper to copper, they always ponied up the required tithes. No one wanted to incur the wrath of a God, or more tangibly, be without Nameless’ protection from Shadows for one second longer than they could afford.
Aeryn had ever seen a Shade protect a commoner. That simple fact did not seem to matter. She had yet to meet a person who did not assume that they were only alive because they were being protected. The reasoning typically went: “I see Shades, but no Shadows. Thus, they must be protecting me, else I would be dead.” That logic had always seemed circular to her. After all, they could hardly grumble about a lack of protection if they were dead, and since they were not dead and no dead person could talk, their reasoning looped back around and became self-fulfilling.
All of that was a distant concern at the moment. It had not taken long to realize that rather than empower and embolden her, Merek’s lesson had actually weakened her position. Drastically. And not just because he had forced her to wait hours to see him. She had gotten her revenge there by sleeping, blissfully comfortable.
It was that their sparring in that alcove. Besides demonstrating how easily he could dispatch her should he desire and showing her just how much she had yet to learn, in one fell swoop he had also ensured no one would listen to a word she had to say. Based on that little production at the end within earshot the passing servants—timed to perfection, Aeryn had to admit—any words from her mouth, true or not, could easily be discredited as loathsome rumors spawned by a disgruntled and jealous street whore. If that were not enough, he had
also returned Mareen’s necklace, her bargaining chip.
Her words would not have carried much weight in the first place, but it had been just enough to tip the scales into her favor the night of the dinner party. After all, she had been Drifting for years without knowing it, and she could hardly believe some of the things he had told her. What would someone like Rickon—whose piety was all too common in Maerilin—say? More than that, no one would actually believe the word of a street urchin over that of a prominent Lord.
Aeryn made a mental note not to underestimate Merek again. The blackmail she had thought foolproof had turned out to be full of more holes than the roof of her small shack, no abandoned. While she stumbled along, blundering into one trap after another, Merek flew high above, no doubt cackling with delight at the neat strings he had tied around her.
Aeryn sighed. Mired in a trap of her own making, she nonetheless had to keep moving forward. What was the other option? Become Merek’s puppet? Let him kill her? At least by moving forward she would still maintain some semblance of control over her own actions.
Right now however, she meant to take care of one thing that had been bugging her. At least temporarily, until Ty had finished with the favor she had asked of him. She angled toward an overweight fellow hawking his wares from a weather worn table at the edge of the square.
“. . .finest steel! Never rusts or needs sharpening! Perfectly balanced, fit for Nameless himself!” shouted the hawker into the passing crowd.
Edging closer, between a woman tightly gripping her child’s hand and a youth just come into his prime who was fawning over the swords on display while eating the hawker’s every word, Aeryn rolled her eyes. The only word that had been true was that the blades were made of steel; even that was dubious by the cheaply painted appearance of a few of them.
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