The Return of Nightfall, page 21
“Me?” The word was startled from Nightfall. “Prince Leyne liked me? But . . .” Nightfall stopped himself from mentioning that the elder prince had barely known him. He wondered what it was about excruciating pain that was making him honest to the point of stupidity.
Volkmier dipped a hand into his pocket and emerged with a battered book, its cover dyed a rich purple with decorative silver flourishes. The guard brandished it like a weapon. “Leyne’s diary. In it, he says he tried his best not to like you, not to trust you, but he wound up doing both.” He slammed the book down on his other palm. “Of course, he didn’t know who you really were, which makes it all the more useful. He tested your loyalty to Edward and found it stronger and tighter than he believed possible.” The book disappeared into Volkmier’s meaty hand, then back into his pocket. “I tested you again, when I let you go after Edward despite my own orders to detain you. You saved him from Gilleran and proved us both right.”
Nightfall nodded, knowing neither man had had the key piece of information: Gilleran’s oath-bond had coupled Nightfall’s soul to the prince’s life. If Edward had died, Nightfall’s essence and talent would have passed to Gilleran, an eternal torture. Compared to that, any lesser death had seemed a blessing. He knew better than to share the explanation. It could only dampen Volkmier’s faith at a time when Nightfall needed allies. The situation then did not matter. Now, he would do exactly what Volkmier hoped he would: he would rescue King Edward, if such a thing were still possible. He did still need to make one thing clear. “How did you know I had nothing to do with Ned’s disappearance?”
Volkmier smiled. “Because while the Council met with the nobleman Schiz had sent, I talked to his entourage. The guards know and see a lot more, and it’s usually untainted by politics.”
Nightfall nodded his understanding.
“Schiz’ guards like you. Duke Varsah—”
“—doesn’t.” Nightfall completed the understatement. He managed a grin of his own, remembering how he had gained the men’s trust with his antics at The Sharius’ mooring. Then, it had seemed foolish, now so very wise. “So, how am I going to escape?”
Volkmier’s smile disappeared, and he back stepped. “I don’t know. I figured you could manage it.” His gaze went to Nightfall’s bandaged shoulder, and the corners of his mouth drooped lower. “Right?” The last word sounded far less certain than the others.
Nightfall restored the confident inflection. He knew Volkmier could not appear to assist him in any way. Now that he had the commander on his side, Nightfall finally looked at the lock, a basic construction he could handle, though he would need a pick or blade. He ran a hand through his clothing, a fresh outfit that, though not Alyndar’s colors, had no holes or patches either. Beneath it, he found the undergarments the servants had dressed him in after his bath. The guards had not fully stripped him, which meant he might still have a few of his hidden daggers. A cautious touch revealed at least three, his favorites, the slender throwing knives he usually kept secured to his right arm. The shutter latches would yield to them as well. “Where are we?”
“South Tower. Third floor.” Volkmier looked doubtfully at Nightfall’s injured arm. “Are you going to be able to climb down?”
Nightfall carefully slipped his injured arm from its sling, easing it through its full range of motion. The muscles had stiffened in his sleep. Every movement hurt, but he had performed through pain before. At least, the muscles, bones, and tendons seemed to work. “No problem,” Nightfall lied. He found it impossible to admit weakness, even to someone who had promised to assist him, at least indirectly.
Volkmier explained the normal procedure. “It’s my job to stay with you until you awaken, to scare you into complying with the understanding that any attempt at escape will result in your death, then to let my underlings take over.”
“Consider me warned.” Nightfall wondered how effective such a threat ever proved to a man under sentence of execution.
“You also must understand you were situated in a low security area because of your title and status, and it would be beneath your station and unethical for you to attempt escape anyway.”
Nightfall rolled his eyes. “Wouldn’t want to go to my execution having done anything . . . unethical.”
Volkmier snorted his amusement, then continued, “We’ll keep you comfortable and well fed, and a guard will remain with you at all times, either inside this room or just outside the door.” He gestured at the only exit.
At the mention of food, Nightfall remembered he had missed at least two meals. His mouth felt dry as cotton and his stomach pinched. He waited for the routine speech to end. None of it really mattered.
“If you feel we have neglected a need, you have the right to ask, though we may not grant it.”
Volkmier paused, though whether because he had finished or only for breath, Nightfall never knew. “I do have one request.”
Volkmier nodded curtly.
Recalling how Volkmier personally had foiled at least two of his escapes, Nightfall suggested, “When it comes time to recapture me, could you please command your guards in a way that makes sense for hunting down Sudian rather than . . . ?”
“Nightfall?” Volkmier supplied helpfully.
“Well, yes, thank you.” Nightfall fixed his blue-black gaze on Volkmier. “And I’d appreciate it if you never used that name in my presence again.” He softened the warning by adding, “Please.”
Volkmier nodded his agreement to both requests. “And I’d ask one thing of you, as well.”
Nightfall duplicated the amenable nod.
“When making your escape, don’t permanently harm any of my men.”
“I’ll do my best.” Nightfall’s last dungeon break had left two guards dead, under very different circumstances.
“Then . . . I guess I’ll turn you over to your regular detail.” Having said that, Volkmier made no move to actually leave. He stood, frozen in place and time, seeking something Nightfall did not feel certain he could give.
Nightfall knew Volkmier wanted reassurance that he had not made a horrible blunder, that he had not just loosed the demon back against the world and doomed King Edward to the very death he desperately wished Nightfall would prevent. “I can’t eliminate your doubts. I’m not even sure I can diminish them, but I am going to do everything I can to find and, if possible, rescue King Edward Nargol of Alyndar.”
That confidence, spoken with innocent sincerity, loosened Volkmier’s tongue, just as it had the cabin boy’s on The Sharius. “The Council still believes a ransom note will come.”
“The Council is wrong.”
Volkmier jerked. “How—how do you know that?”
“I don’t,” Nightfall admitted, rising to a crouch. “But nobles kidnapping nobles don’t kill their entire staff in the process. If it were coming, a note should have arrived by now. The abduction of a king doesn’t occur on a whim.” He shook his head. “There’s something odd and very different about this situation that the gentry doesn’t realize or understand. It’s beyond their experience.” He added carefully, “. . . and into mine.” He shook his head, dislodging straw from his combed-out locks, already beginning to collect knots. “I should never have left Schiz. I should have stayed until I found him.” That mistake haunted him more than any other ever had. “The sooner I get out there, the more likely I’ll still find useful clues.”
Volkmier’s head bobbed again. “You’re right, of course.” He kneaded his fingers together in concern but did head toward the door.
Though Nightfall worried about pushing his luck with the shrewd chief of prison guards, he had to speak of the matter that had brought him back to Alyndar. “One thing more, Captain.”
Volkmier froze in position. Though he did not face Nightfall, he clearly listened.
Encouraged, Nightfall continued. “The reason I didn’t immediately follow Ned’s trail . . .”
Volkmier turned, interested.
“The king’s capture was too well coordinated to have been thrown together in a week. News of our destination traveled faster than any word of mouth could.”
The corners of Volkmier’s eyes twitched, and he gave Nightfall a sideways look. “What are you saying?”
“One of Ned’s advisers or councillors, someone in the room the day he announced his decision to apologize to Duke Varsah, is a—”
“Don’t say it,” Volkmier warned.
Nightfall dropped the loaded word “traitor” from his explanation, turning obediently vague. “Either intentionally or inadvertently, someone sent word to the thugs who murdered Ned’s escort.” He added the qualifier that overrode the possibility of accident. “At great speed.”
Volkmier strangled his reply, “Who?”
Nightfall shook his head. “I haven’t had a chance to find out, but I’ll bet it’s the same man who contrived my arrest.”
“Contrived . . .” Volkmier’s voice remained strained, and he contemplated the possibilities. “A traitor among the honored men of Alyndar’s High Council? Impossible.”
Nightfall took the words in stride. He had hoped, but never expected, the chief of the prison guards to believe him over the nobility. Still, Volkmier seemed the only one with the willingness, knowledge, and ability to find Edward’s betrayer in his absence. Nightfall had to try again. “Perhaps traitor is the wrong word.” He tried to place himself in the position of the members of the Council. Though a totally foreign mind-set, he thought he understood. “More than a few of the gentry never expected Ned on the throne, and I’m certain few of the Council can stand me.”
Though Volkmier’s prior words had appeared to dismiss Nightfall’s suggestion, his mouth remained pursed in a twist, his brow furrowed. “I suppose someone very loyal to Alyndar might see King Edward as dangerously inexperienced and you as a threat.” Volkmier straightened abruptly, as if suddenly shocked. “Of course, such a person could not have known the fiends would slaughter the king’s escort.” He continued to mull over the details. “We all know the king would never dismiss you himself, but with him detained, that would open the way . . .” Volkmier did not finish. The evidence for his last thought stood right in front of him. Nevertheless, he shook his head vigorously. “I can’t believe I’m even considering this.”
Nightfall said nothing. He had committed himself to rescuing Edward. It remained up to Volkmier and those honest members of the Council to secure castle and kingdom for his return.
“I’ll do what I can.” Again, Volkmier headed for the door. As he reached it, his face tipped upward, as if beseeching the gods.
No longer wholly certain of his own motives, Nightfall hoped Volkmier got the answer he sought.
Volkmier walked purposefully through the door, pulling it closed behind him.
Nightfall waited only until the panel clicked shut before scurrying to the cell lock. A practiced shift and flick brought a knife to his hand. He slipped the tip into the lock, feeling every slight vibration, each glide of steel against the mechanism. It gave with a nearly inaudible click, and Nightfall slid the door open amid a slight squeak of hinges.
Cringing at the sound, Nightfall hurried to the window. Stabbing the blade low through the crack between the shutters, he worked it gently upward until he met resistance. He flicked over the first latch, then continued the knife’s journey to the second, which was just as simply disengaged. He edged the left shutter outward barely far enough to allow a hint of darkness and moonlight to funnel inside. Apparently, he had slept for several hours, though not through the entire night. He realized with a pasty-mouthed jolt he had had nothing to drink either since the previous morning.
A key rattled in the door lock to his room.
Nightfall returned the dagger to its proper place, then crouched on the sill, waiting. He wanted the guard to witness his escape, to divert suspicion from Volkmier.
The door bashed opened, and a man dressed in prison guard gray and lavender entered, balancing three bowls and the heavy door, which he held open with a burly hip. “Good night, Sudian. My name is—” The guard broke off with a gasp as he saw the empty cell. His gaze swung from the gaping cell door to the window.
Nightfall gave him a feigned look of surprise before shoving through the shutters and sinking out the window.
The clatter of dropped crockery filled the room behind him, followed by a shout. “He’s escaping, gods damn him! Captain, help! The prisoner is escaping!”
Nightfall clung to the edge of the ledge, letting his boots fall to the ground. Flinging down his weight, he swung himself by his good arm in a solid arc that brought him up beside the prison window. He scrambled toward the roof, agony tearing through his left shoulder, as the guard pounded across the room. Hidden by a fifth-floor ledge, Nightfall watched the guard’s head thrust suddenly through the shutters, now two floors beneath him. As Nightfall expected, the man looked down; people searching always did. Nightfall went utterly immobile, hoping the guard would not think to glance upward, hoping that, if he did, he would miss the still form hovering in the darkness.
Amid a round of raucous cursing, the head withdrew.
Nightfall continued his mad scramble toward the roof, glad for the talent he had so often cursed. His feather weight kept his injured arm from supporting too much for him to bear. Just moving it hurt, and he could scarcely imagine trusting it with its usual load. Mapping the rooms of the tower in his mind, he selected the one he wanted, on the sixth floor, and scuttled through the window like a bug.
Sleeping forms cluttered the floor, huddled beneath threadbare blankets on mounds of straw. Scarred furniture, mostly trunks and old dressers lay flush with every wall. Nightfall cautiously tiptoed around the servants, the minuscule sounds made by his clothing and bare feet masked by heavy breathing and gentle snores. Now on familiar territory, he breathed a silent sigh and set to work.
Kelryn sat on her room’s only chair at a simple table that held her cold and untouched dinner: a small roasted hen, a buttered round of white bread, a mound of mashed tubers, and a mug of mulled cider. Her face felt like putty, and her hands had gone numb from supporting it. A dried flood of tears glued her elbows to the table. Pulled on hastily, her flimsy nightgown fell loosely around strong, sinewy shoulders; she could not muster the wherewithal to bother with stays and ties.
It all seemed impossible and insufferably ironic. For twenty years, Nightfall had plagued the four kingdoms of the world and every place between them. For twenty years, the demon of legend had roamed free, apparently unstoppable. Then, just as she and, inadvertently, Edward, had taught him to tap the goodness Dyfrin had sworn lived deep within him, the gentle compassion she had perceived from the day she had met him, he would face execution for a crime he had not even committed.
Trapped in a terrible limbo of grief, Kelryn found herself incapable of eating, incapable of sleeping, incapable it seemed, even of moving. She had maintained her position for more hours than she knew, tears gliding from swollen eyes that could no longer form or shed them. She had suffered so much for love. Discovering the true identity of her darling Marak had proved a shock from which she had never expected to recover. Yet, coming from him, a secret he had never shared with anyone, it had seemed almost exciting. She had adored him all the more for sharing that deadly confidence, for doing so had proved the depth of his love for her as well. He had dared to open himself to her, to trust her, as he had no one before her.
Now, he was going to die. Not for being Nightfall. His slayers would never even know his true identity, if indeed he could be said to have a real one at all. He would die for all the things he had once rejected as foolish and dangerous: friendship, morality, caring. Even if he evaded his sentence, he would always know the reason he suffered. She wondered if he might, once again, disdain those things she and Dyfrin had fought to draw out of him, those ideals they had teased and loved and dragged from the depths of his being. Decades of painstaking work destroyed in seconds by the decree of a power-mad Council.
A tap on Kelryn’s door, though delicate, startled her. She jerked her head from her hands, and her face peeled painfully from her palms. Her room, though unlit, seemed uncomfortably bright compared with the closed-eye view of the last several hours. “Who is it?” Her voice emerged as a deep croak.
The soft, lispy voice of a child barely wafted to her. “Maid, milady.”
“Maid?” Kelryn wondered aloud. “At this time of night?”
The other seemed put off, pausing several beats before admitting, “We thought you could use some company, Lady Kelryn.”
Kelryn managed a smile despite her sorrow. How sweet. She rose too quickly, assailed by a sudden light headedness that rendered her blind and dumb. It seemed to take forever to pass in a wave of specks and spirals before she regained her equilibrium. Crossing the room, she tripped the latch and ushered a young chambermaid into her quarters.
The newcomer looked unfamiliar, long hair tucked beneath a head scarf, except for a few wispy black strands that escaped onto a young-looking face. The eyes dodged Kelryn’s. The cheekbones sat high, the lips bow-shaped and darkly pink. The standard gray uniform fit well, defining the early stirrings of breasts and hip curves on an otherwise waifish body. The chambermaid glanced around the room, looking nervous and uncertain.
Though she felt dead inside, Kelryn tried to reassure her. “It’s all right. I’m glad you came. I could use someone to talk to.”
