Stars danced before Aeryn’s eyes. Her breath came short and her lungs began burning like Ty’s furnaces. Blackness crept in at the edges of her vision. She punched the Shade in the kidneys. With no leverage and struggling to stay conscious, the blows landed feebly.
“I have you now, you little rat,” the Shade snarled. He reached out and grabbed Aeryn’s wrist with his free hand, contemptuously pinning it against the wall. “But don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you. Oh no, not just yet. First I’m going to make you tell me everything. Starting with who taught you to Drift.”
“Then I’m going to kill her,” said the second Shade. Rising, he drew out Aeryn’s dagger from his side. Scowling, he tossed it to the ground. It clattered and bounced, coming to rest a pace from Aeryn’s dangling feet. Gritting his teeth and grimacing with every step on his shattered kneecap, he hobbled over to his companion.
“Tell us what we want to know,” said the Shade pinning Aeryn against the wall, “and I won’t torture you—
“Speak for yourself,” said the second Shade. He grabbed Aeryn’s other arm and twisted it viciously. Lungs burning, Aeryn could not even draw a breath to scream.
“—that much,” finished the first Shade with a wicked grin. “Who taught you to Drift?”
“Can’t. . .” Aeryn stuttered.
The second Shade leaned down. His foul breath washed over Aeryn’s face. “What?”
“Breathe. . .”
“I don’t think she can breathe.”
“Oh, silly me,” said the first Shade with a chuckle. He lowered Aeryn until the tips of her toes touched the ground, then loosened his grip a fraction.
Aeryn drew in a series of quick, ragged breaths. Air filled her lungs. She barely had the presence of mind to whistle as fresh oxygen rushed to her brain and her head seemed to float free, rising up to the stars above. The whistle came out feeble and raspy without her fingers in her mouth.
“I think you crushed her windpipe,” said the Shade with the rancid breath.
Aeryn whistled again. This time it was no more than a hiss, her lungs refusing to use any air for anything but satisfying its burning starvation.
“Definitely crush,” said rancid breath. “She won’t be talking again, Gib.”
The Shade—Gib—pinning Aeryn to the wall shook his head. “Why are the Shadows always these bloody weak kneed girls?” he asked, Aeryn all but forgotten. “Why can’t they be one of those big chested women for once?”
“Go suck your mother’s teat, Gib. She stabbed me and broke my flaming knee! Now put her down. Since she can’t talk, I’m gonna have some fun with her before her body gets cold.”
Gib’s hand opened around Aeryn’s neck. Without its support, Aeryn sank unceremoniously to the ground.
Rancid breath stood over Aeryn and dropped his pants. “It’s time for a little payback you bloody bit—“
Jynx took him at the neck.
Clawing at the ground, the tips of Aeryn’s fingers touched the hilt of her knife. Pulling it into a fist, she swiped it at the only thing in reach: Gib’s ankles.
The blade bit deep. The Shade fell to the ground, clutching at the white bone showing through. Aeryn wasted no time and stabbed the blade into his throat, twisting it as it went in. His head lolled to the side, blood spurting out from the gaping hole.
It took Aeryn a good five minutes to regain her breath and another ten to rise with the help of the wall.
“Where were you Jynx?” she asked between racking coughs. “You don’t have to wait until I call you to help, you know.”
Jynx rolled his eyes. At least, he would have if dravens could roll their eyes. Letting out a soft yip, he sauntered off down the alley.
Once her balance returned, Aeryn followed. Just around the nearest corner, Jynx had stopped. He stood proudly over a pair of soldiers armed with shortswords and a street thug that still clutched a spiked mace. All three of their faces were mangled beyond recognition. With his newfound bulk and muscle, Jynx was a one draven hunting pack.
“More?” Aeryn asked.
Obviously she had been wrong about the soldiers not patrolling beyond the Lord’s Wall at night. Very wrong. Once, or twice could be written off as a coincidence, but this was the what, fifth? sixth? such group she had found in the past few weeks. And each of them had always had some type of street thug, cutthroat, or strongarm with them. It seemed the Voices were worried enough that they had all their disciples prowling the streets. Aeryn would have set traps—a spear trap took out a soldier as easily as a wild board—but was afraid an innocent urchin would set it off. Thus, the head-to-head confrontation.
These nightly outings had started simply because Aeryn wanted to feel like she was doing something while Mareen, Merek, Asher, and she planned the real attack during the day. Her goal was to keep thugs, strongarms, and cutthroats from taking advantage of Maerilin’s rising chaos as Nameless’ soldiers and Shades took to the streets in droves and bled the commoners dry.
It had gone far beyond that now. She had no choice but to tell Merek, Mareen, and Asher what she had been doing these past weeks. Doubly so now that a pair of Shades were dead.
Speaking of doing something, where was that girl she had seen? “Hello?” Aeryn whispered into the night. “It’s ok. It’s all over. You can come out now.”
No response. Aeryn went silent and listened for breathing, the scuffing of leather on stone, anything that would give away the girl’s position. She hoped the girl was not among the bodies that littered the cobbles.
Jynx perked his ears up, cocked his head to the side, then walked towards a pile of rubbish heaped against the base of a wall. A few paces and Aeryn had no problems seeing the girl’s eyes, shining from the light of the new moon. Even after all this time, Aeryn still had trouble reconciling a new moon with so much light.
“It’s ok,” Aeryn said. She held out her hand. Jynx purred softly.
“Are you going to kill me like you killed them?” the girl squeaked.
“No. Why would you think that?”
“Be—because you—you’re a Shadow.”
Aeryn sucked in a breath. She knew that voice. How did she keep running into the girl?
“It’s ok, Katelyn. You’re ok now. It’s me.” Aeryn sighed and Drifted back to the Physical Plane. Jynx followed suit. “Lady Aeryn.”
“Lady Aeryn?” Katelyn asked. Crawling forward on all fours, she let out a yelp and froze at the sight of Jynx yawning. She clutched the shawl wrapped about her shoulders as though it were the only thing keeping her alive. In hindsight, giving the girl the shawl in the first place had been a mistake. A mistake that had painted her a target.
“It’s ok,” Aeryn said. “It’s just Jynx. He won’t hurt you. Will you Jynx?” She patted the draven on the head.
Katelyn crawled the rest of the way out and stood, eyes wide in wonder. Hesitantly, she reached out a hand and touched Jynx’s fur. The draven muzzled her back. Katelyn giggled in glee.
“I have to go,” Aeryn said. “But first I wanted to make sure you were alright. Are you?”
Katelyn nodded vigorously, taking to a purring, blood-covered Jynx as if he was nothing more than an oversized doll.
“Good.” Already late, Aeryn turned to leave, and patted her thigh for Jynx to follow.
“Lady Aeryn?” Katelyn asked.
Aeryn looked over her shoulder.
“How come you’re not afraid?”
Aeryn frowned, wondering how to answer. She decided on the truth. The girl deserved that much. “I am afraid.”
“Then how come you don’t run and hide?”
“I used too,” Aeryn said, thinking back to when she had lived on the streets, just as Katelyn was doing now. “I used to run as fast as I could and hide in the darkest alleys I could find. For a little while, I actually lived in a crumbling shack at the base of a building everyone swore was haunted by Shadows, just so that no one could find me.”
“Then what happened?” Katelyn asked.
Looking over her shoulders at the corpses that stained the streets, Aeryn rested her hand on the hilt of her knife. “I realized that unless you stand up and fight for something you believe in, you’ll never be able to stop running. Besides,” she smiled at the girl, “some things are worth fighting, and even dying, for.”
Drifting, Aeryn disappeared into the night, Jynx at her side. Behind, she thought she heard a faint, “I believe in you, Lady Aeryn,” echo off the alley walls.
“Where have you been?” Merek asked.
“Forget where she had been, what has she been doing?” Asher demanded.
“I’m sure she was just helping those too small and weak to help themselves,” Mareen said with a smile.
Blast the woman! She was like a spider. And a bloody big one. Not only did she know everything that went on in each of the nobles’ households, but she had also dropped hints about knowing a hundred other things, from Aeryn buying out shops to feed her street urchin following to her sneaking out at night to save one of them. Though the corpses that had popped up in the morning and spawned a hundred rumors of roving gangs of Shadows was a pretty dead giveaway for the latter.
“Well?” Asher said, tapping his foot. “We’re waiting.”
“I was killing soldiers and Shades,” Aeryn said.
Silence filled the room like a lead weight.
“You were WHAT?” Asher shouted. “After all our meticulous planning, you go and ruin it by killing soldiers and Shades? Are you flaming mad, stupid, or both?”
Merek stared at Aeryn, wide-eyed.
Mareen placed a hand on her son’s forearm. “I’m sure she had a good reason. Why don’t we let her explain?” Of all the Ladies Aeryn had met, never would she have thought Mareen would be the one to stick up for her.
“While you sit around in your golden palace twiddling your thumbs,” Aeryn began, smiling at the blood that rushed to Asher’s face, “I have been doing something. It’s a good thing too, because you’ve been lying to us.”
Asher jumped up. His chair crashed backwards to the floor.
“You dare accuse me? You? A filthy street rat that is only here because you whored your way into Merek’s bed?” Asher shouted.
Aeryn reached for his knife. “It doesn’t change the fact that you’re the Voices’ pet, and a bloody liar who has been two-timing us all along.”
“You flaming—“ Asher lunged for Aeryn’s throat.
Merek was out of his chair in a heartbeat to hold Asher and Aeryn off one another.
Mareen turned to Aeryn. “I think you had better explain, dear,” she said. She cast a glance at her fuming son, barely restrained by Merek. “And quickly.”
Aeryn started at the beginning—all the way at the beginning—the night she and Will had broken into Merek’s house. Briefly, but deep enough to get the point across, she touched on the Shade killing Will, Brin, and Bran the very next night. The point was inescapable. How would the Shade know where to find them if not for a snitch? Next, she detailed Jins hounding her followed by her turning the tables on him and his dying confession. That led swiftly to her nightly forays of the past week, which ended with the events of only a few hours ago.
“If Jins and his gangs really worked for the Voices through the Shades,” Merek said when Aeryn finished, “why didn’t he kill you when he had the chance?”
“Greed, cruelty, love,” Aeryn said, “or lust,” she waved a hand, “it doesn’t matter.” Merek looked skeptical, Asher furious as ever, and Mareen simply looked thoughtful. “Remember that purse you slipped me during that first lesson?” Aeryn asked. Merek nodded. “It likely saved my life. Jins was in love with this girl,” Aeryn quickly told them what she know about Marlyn, “and once Jins found out I didn’t have any more gold—that was before you let me raid your coffers at will—he did try to kill me. He almost succeeded too, I might add.”
“That Marlyn sounds a lot like Alys,” Mareen said. She gave Merek a hard stare.
Merek let go of Asher and held up his hands as if to prevent an invisible onslaught. “It was only once! How was I supposed to know she was so conniving?”
“Because she’s a woman,” Mareen answered flatly. She turned back to Aeryn. “What are you saying, dear?”
“I’m saying that the Shades have cutthroats and street thugs working for them. There are too few Shades to be everywhere and know everything, especially without an actual god leading them, so they pay off various street gangs to pass along information and sow seeds of fear.”
Mareen nodded. “It certainly makes sense. A few well placed strings and a small council of Voices could ensure their unchallenged reign with minimal effort or risk of their subordinates rising against them or becoming too wise.” She turned and eyed her son. “What do you have to say about this?”
Asher plopped down into his chair once he righted it. “They are beggars and street rats, mother,” he said. “Nobodies. In exchange for a few copper or silver, they tell us what is happening in the city; who is stirring up trouble, disrupting the peace, blaspheming, that sort of thing. Some of the others use them for side projects, but it doesn’t matter. We have bigger problems.” He glared at Aeryn. “Like what to do now that two soldiers and two Shades are dead.”
“We fight for everyone,” Mareen said, “or we’re no better than your Masters.” She gave the word a twist that lowered Asher’s eyes. “When we’re done here, you will stay behind, young man. We need to have a little chat. Now,” she said when there were no arguments, “what do we do about this change of events?”
“This is far bigger than we ever imagined. We need allies,” Merek said. “Lots of them.”
“Agreed. But who? Anyone have any ideas?” Mareen asked.
Aeryn looked at them as if they were daft. “You nobles have money. Why don’t you use it? Hire more guards and sellswords.”
“We can’t just spend all our money on sellswords,” Merek said. “It’s too suspicious.”
“How so?” Aeryn asked. “You all have personal guards anyway. As well as guards to patrol your estates, guards to protect your caravans, and guards to keep street urchins out of your markets. Just hire a few more. No one will ever notice.”
“Well for starters, people will notice,” Merek said. “Not to mention that—“
“No,” Mareen said, “it’s perfect.” Merek trailed off with a frown. “With Nameless’ anniversary approaching, we can say we’re hiring more sellswords to protect Maerilin itself. After all, what better time for Shadows,” she smirked, “to disrupt the city than during the celebration of his thousandth year? Additionally, we can always hire in a few more to protect our caravans and carriages. Finally, no one will think twice if we bring our huntsmen and trackers in from our estates. Not if they’re only coming for the celebration and returning after.”
“That still won’t be enough,” Asher said. “There are only two of you. Even if you pull in everyone you can, that can’t be more than a few hundred. The Voices have a thousand soldiers.”
Mareen grinned. “I’ve got that covered.”
Merek cocked his head. “You do?”
“Isolde, though utterly tactless and with ears so bad she can barely hear a thunderstorm, is still sharp enough to see what we are trying to accomplish. Her husband, Cedric, cares for two things: wine and women.”
Merek nodded along, seeing where Mareen was going with this. “I’ve got the women,” he said.
“No,” Mareen corrected. “I’ve got the women. You’ve got the perfect cask of eighty year old port in your cellar.”
“I don’t quite think you’re Cedric’s type,” Aeryn said to Mareen. “I’ve got the women.” She had the perfect one too, one that loved gold enough to bed Jins.
Mareen looked taken aback, doubly so when Merek laughed. “You have grown out a bit, Mareen,” Merek said.
“I’m not bedding that old coot you bloody fools. But fine, Aeryn will handle the women. I’ll see to getting Piebald on our side. The guy has been in l
ove with Isolde since they were children, and if she’s in, he will follow.”
“What about Helda?” Merek asked. “She has more guards than anyone.”
Mareen shook her head. “Helda is so scared of Shadows I wouldn’t be surprised if she were scared of her own. Her husband Bornhald exists solely to make her happy. They’ll never join us. Besides, Helda and Isolde have never agreed on a thing in their lives.”
“Ok, so you might have enough men, but what about the Shades?” Asher asked. “There are a score of them working for the Voices, all of who can Drift. Given an opportunity, every one of them could take out an entire squad of soldiers.”
Mareen’s face fell. “I only know three people that can Drift,” she said. “You three.” Her eyes flicked over Aeryn, Merek and Asher. “No offensive, but you three are hardly enough to take on all the Shades.”
Merek’s face lit up like a sun peeking out from behind dark black storm clouds. “Ahh, but they don’t need to be people, do they?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Mareen asked.
“Never you worry,” Merek said, smirking. “I’ve know of the perfect furry pack to take on the Shades.”
“Well alright then,” Mareen said with one eyebrow raised. “But perhaps you can enlighten us a little and set our minds at ease. Who?”
“Not ‘who,’” Merek said, “but hounds—“
“I hate to break up your little party, but this is all still too big a risk,” Asher said, interrupting the back and forth.
“Do you have any better ideas?” Mareen asked her son.
“Well, no,” Asher said after a time.
“I thought not,” Mareen snapped. “Everyone knows what they are to do, so let’s get to it. Lady Aeryn, after you get the women for Cedric, continue building your own private street army.”
Aeryn looked at the rotund woman askew. Her own private street army? It took a second to register that Mareen had called her “Lady Aeryn,” not just Aeryn. She thought she understood.
“I’ll need gold,” Aeryn said. “I’ve a few ideas that might work, but they will take gold if I’m to see them completed in time. Lots of gold.”
Shadowborn Page 30