The Return of Nightfall, page 26
Nightfall walked to the door and opened it, immediately confronted by the two guards, who snapped to attention.
“I’m fine,” Genevra called out to reassure them. “My brother and I had a lovely visit. Thank you so much.”
The guards made no replies other than a few curt nods before returning Nightfall to the night. Feeling infinitely better, he savored the crisp air and disappeared as swiftly as he could without appearing practiced at it or guilty. He could hardly wait to catch a few good hours of sleep.
Chapter 13
Power and knowledge live in unexpected places.
—Dyfrin of Keevain, the demon’s friend
AFTER HIS VISIT to the Delforian healer, Nightfall discovered an intense clarity of mind he had not even realized he missed. He could not wholly credit the absence of pain’s distraction; Genevra had told him his wound had festered. A fever he had not even realized he had had affected his mind as well. With those burdens lifted, he felt like a free man, triumphant and ready to face whatever obstacles Alyndar’s guards placed in his way.
Nightfall also knew he would need all his wits about him. Moving swiftly along the coast, the journey from Delfor to Trillium took two weeks. Autumn and its encroaching cold made food more scarce, but he still managed to catch small, young lobsters, made sluggish by the dwindling temperature of the water. They huddled beneath stones near the shore where they could feast upon minnows, safe from the larger fish in deeper waters that found the tiny lobsters a particularly tasty snack. Many men, it seemed to him, led the same kind of life: hiding from larger predators in the shoals, biding their time until the quarry became large and dangerous enough to stalk the hunters.
Nightfall made the decision to avoid Trillium while he walked. The city existed on land jointly owned by three of the world’s four kingdoms, though most people considered it utterly independent, lawless, and ripe for any perversion or trade. Anything legal anywhere else in the world was considered fair game in Trillium, and that opened the way for a flourishing black market as well. If any place held the information he needed, Trillium did; yet Nightfall knew he would have to penetrate the darkest, most dangerous criminal dens to find the answers he sought. Even then, he had no certainty he would receive correct information rather than innuendo, rumor, or downright misdirection. Only one persona could cut to the truth, and that persona was irretrievably dead.
It made more sense to slip past the city, where every lone traveler would evoke suspicion. Men spurred by the promise of a kingdom’s reward might kill a solitary stranger first and bother with his identity later, if at all. While some of Nightfall’s alter egos would not be unfamiliar to some of Trillium’s regular inhabitants, the shifting population and masses of visitors, usually not of the most wholesome type, might still put him in the way of many who did not know him. It seemed better to bypass the whole mess than to try to deal with it or have to worry that his frustration and temper might drive him to actions he might regret. People who hindered the demon tended to wind up dead.
That same mind-set sent him veering widely around the hidden home of Finndmer the Fence. A master seller of even the most hunted merchandise and information, Finndmer hid his darker dealings behind the image of an innocent woodcutter. At their last meeting, the fence had sold Nightfall, as Sudian, a patch of swampland that had proved useless in landing Edward. If Finndmer did the slightest thing to further irritate him now, Nightfall did not believe he could contain himself. Given Finndmer’s arrogance, greed, and tendency to mistrust and mislead strangers, exasperation seemed a certainty. Finndmer was important to some of the most dangerous men in existence; by harming him, Nightfall would find himself the object of another, equally vigorous manhunt.
So, Nightfall continued hugging the coastline, avoiding roads, any sign of travelers or brigands, and towns and villages most of all. As he passed over the border from joint land to the outskirts of the kingdom of Shisen, he veered southward toward the city of Schiz. That same day, he changed his appearance again, this time to that of Frihiat, his Schizian persona. He combed and bleached out his hair to a yellow-white sheen that hung in a straight curtain. He rearranged the layers of his clothing to enhance his size and make him appear twisted and stricken. He practiced walking with a warped and off-balancing limp to display the damage he attributed to polio.
Though slowed by an affectation he dared not drop for a moment, he gained time and ground by switching to the well traveled paths and roads leading to Schiz. As Frihiat, he had right and reason to travel when and where he wished, and it would look more suspicious for him to seem to magically appear from nowhere. Frihiat would not go unnoticed on the streets, not only because of his appearance but because he was well liked among the regular inhabitants of Schiz.
The awkward movements of Nightfall’s alter ego bothered him as they never had in the past. So far, he had made excellent time, zipping across the rocky coastline on foot nearly as fast as he and Edward had managed on horseback. He waved and smiled at the people who passed him, going in either direction. He could not keep up with the walkers, let alone those with mules, horses, or wagons. Though he knew he had handled the situation as well as possible, he wished he could abandon everything about the Schizian storyteller and return to the quiet existence he had known for the last several weeks. Then, he had no one to worry about but himself and his own survival, and that came so naturally to him he scarcely needed to think.
It felt like an eternity before Nightfall reached the edge of the city, and he began to appreciate the slowness he had cursed earlier in the day. As evening grayness descended over Schiz, people tended to closing their businesses, finishing those tasks that could not wait until morning, and reuniting families separated by jobs and chores. Without appearing to intentionally do so, he easily dodged the need to explain his recent whereabouts to a curious horde, one man at a time. Instead, he made his limping way past the wood scrap sign of the He-Ain’t-Here to shove open the door with his right hip and shoulder.
The hinges squealed their usual noisy protest, announcing his presence to the few patrons, travelers, and those without work or family obligations. The aroma of baked bread and spitted meat wafted to him, and his gut churned in excitement. After weeks of sea plants and raw young lobsters, more shell than meat, the idea of filling his belly with a greasy array of roasted lamb or pork and vegetables became a pleasure he could not deny. He barely noticed the background odors of stale beer, fire, and sweat, though he imagined he caught a whiff of blood that soured his ardor for food. Several of Alyndar’s finest had died here.
Resisting his natural urge to find a table in a dark corner, Nightfall flopped gracelessly into an empty seat at the center table. Though less defensible in this position, he savored a security born of familiarity. Frihiat always sat here, where his stories could become the center of attention. He never checked his pockets before ordering. If he had money, he would spend every copper buying drinks for himself and anyone he considered a friend, for which he had a loose definition. If he found his pockets empty, someone else always jumped in to pay.
A serving girl headed toward Nightfall. An instant later, the proprietor caught up to her and waved her aside to serve the newcomer himself. Gil eased his bulk onto a chair directly across the square table and smiled, teeth a dull yellow against his jowly face. “Frihiat! Haven’t seen you in a seaman’s age. Rumor was, the scourge of your childhood finally caught up to you.”
Nightfall returned the smile with one of his own, instinctively keeping it a bit crooked. “You know better than to believe rumors, Gil.”
The proprietor tipped his head sideways and made a dismissive facial gesture. “Rumors are usually all I get. And you’ve spread enough of your own to know there’s usually at least a kernel of truth to ’em.”
Nightfall loosed Frihiat’s free-flowing laugh, so much less guarded than his own. “Well, you know I haven’t succumbed.”
“Unless I have, too.” Gil’s laugh sounded more like a throaty roar.
Nightfall glanced around the common room. “If this is where good folk go after death, I’ll take the alternative.”
Gil tapped his fist against Nightfall’s shoulder in a manly, friendly gesture. “What makes you think you’d go anywhere good folk go?”
Though glad for the healing that took all pain from the proprietor’s vigorous gesture, Nightfall seized on the paranoid notion that Gil had just tested him. Was he checking the place Alyndarian guards told him to look for a wound? The question seemed ludicrous. No one in decades ever crossed my identities. Gil’s not smart enough to be the one. “So I’m in some hellish afterlife inflicted on me by the gods?” He threw another, more exaggerated, glance around the tavern. “I should have guessed that by your presence and my surroundings. I always knew there was something noxious about your drinking hole.”
“My drinking hole?” Gil tipped his head in mock insult. “Are you referring to my establishment? Or my mouth?”
Nightfall passed off the rhetorical question with another uninhibited laugh. “I’ve spent the last several months checking out that new healer in Delfor.”
Gil rested his elbows on the table, his head in his hands, and leaned forward in clear interest. “Yeah? What did you find?”
Nightfall made a disgruntled noise through pursed lips. “Every man with a scratch or ailment had the same idea. Only, it costs ten fortunes to actually see the lady. So the streets were packed with every scrofulous, pus-reeking beggar in the four kingdoms.”
Gil’s eyes widened. “That explains why we’ve seen so few. Can’t say as I miss ’em.”
Nightfall’s brows inched upward.
Gil studied Nightfall’s silent features a moment before realizing the potential for offense in what he had just said. “Oh, fie! I don’t consider you one of ’em. You’re not scrofulous or pus-reeking, for one. You’re a decent fellow who just happened to get sick when you were young and has a bit of a limp now, that’s all.”
“I also won’t stoop to begging.” Nightfall shook his head, not having to imagine the scene of hundreds of filthy, disease-riddled beggars groping at the fortunate. He had lived it at Edward’s side. “I took up any odd job offered, though I spent some time convincing those Delforians I could handle some things.”
Gil rubbed his stubbly cheeks and chin. “They don’t know you like we do.”
Nightfall shook his head, then rolled his eyes. “Come to realize over time the healer’s powers are limited. I’m doing all this hard labor, saving up my coppers, only to find she can’t cure ailments like mine.”
“She can’t?” Gil’s interest grew more intense. He thrived on the information travelers brought to the tavern, especially tidbits he could sell or share with clients who might appreciate them enough to bump up tips.
“She can’t.” Nightfall shook his head with a sigh. “Should have known I’m destined to live with this curse forever.” He shrugged. “Guess I did something to offend a god who holds a wicked and long-standing grudge.”
Gil raised a hand to make a warding gesture. His religious beliefs were more stolid than Frihiat’s. “Is it because your problems came from polio? Or because you’ve had them so long?”
Nightfall shrugged one shoulder, then let it fall. “From what I understand, she can only heal injuries, not afflictions or illnesses.”
“Ah.” Gil shifted his bulk backward in clear contemplation. “Perfect for a noble with a standing army or guard force.”
Nightfall nodded gloomily. “But useless for a man like myself.” Dejection was such a rare part of Frihiat’s character, Nightfall abandoned it. “Ah, well. Not sure I’d know what to do with right-working legs anyway. I might start going through life too fast to really enjoy it.”
Still clearly considering Nightfall’s words, Gil did not speak.
“So, I hear I missed some major excitement here.”
Stricken from his reverie, Gil jerked. “Huh?”
“Word on the roads is the king of Alyndar and his entire entourage vanished from this very tavern.”
Gil glanced around with clear nervousness. He licked lips that seemed to have gone dry in an instant. “Not exactly vanished.”
“No?” Nightfall encouraged.
“The king, himself, disappeared. But we cleaned up a heap of bodies.”
“Glad I missed it,” Nightfall said, using a tone pitched to encourage. “What exactly happened?”
“I . . .” Gil’s eyes became inordinately busy looking anywhere but at Nightfall. “. . . I . . . can’t say.”
Nightfall displayed his best twisted look of incredulity. “You were here, weren’t you?”
“Well, yes, but . . .”
Nightfall waited; but Gil did not complete the thought, so Nightfall prompted. “But . . . ?”
Gil shook his head, barely disturbing his sweat-plastered hair. “I can’t talk about it. I’m sorry.”
Nightfall stared, hoping to convey his thoughts in a look. Frihiat just bared his soul and handed that jerk the most useful piece of news he got in months, and all I get back is silence.
Apparently getting the point, Gil drew into himself on the chair. It made him look rounder, rather than smaller. “Look, Fri. I’d tell you, but . . .”
Nightfall could not afford to let Gil off the hook. “But what?”
Gil lowered his voice to a whisper. “They’ll kill me.”
Nightfall also whispered. “Who?”
“They,” Gil hissed. “the ones who did it.”
Nightfall leaned in so they could hear one another. “How will they know?”
“They have eyes and ears everywhere.”
Though tiring of the game, Nightfall continued to whisper. “Even on their bellies? Their backs? Their butts? That must make them look . . . very silly.”
Gil’s mouth twisted. For a moment, it looked as if he would laugh, then he shook his head instead. “This is no joke, Frihiat.”
“I agree,” Nightfall said. “But I hardly think the Bloodshadow Brotherhood is going to dismember you for telling what you saw to an old cripple.”
Gil turned greenish. “How . . . how did you . . . know about . . . ?”
Not wanting to wait until the tavern became too busy for Gil to spare the time, Nightfall interrupted. “The Bloodshadow Brotherhood?”
“Shhhh!” Gil cautioned, looking around nervously again.
Nightfall made a stern noise. “Gil, would you stop acting like a cat dangled over a fire pit? I assumed. Who else could get you to clam up so tightly over something so interesting?”
“Then you know why I can’t say anything.”
“To the guards, maybe.” Nightfall could not afford to let the matter drop. “But I could have been here that night, should have been. Who could I tell that would matter?”
Gil rubbed his hands over his sleeves in edgy bursts.
“Gil, you owe me. And I don’t mean a few glasses of that watered urine you call ale.”
Clearly anxious, Gil let the insult to his product slide. “You can’t tell anyone, Fri. Not anyone.”
“Have I ever betrayed you?” Nightfall could ask in good conscience. Frihiat had never duped anyone, at least not in that particular guise.
“No,” Gil admitted.
“Then spill.”
Gil’s gaze went toward the quarters at the back, but he made no suggestions that they move. Nightfall knew he had chosen the most defensible spot when it came to people overhearing. Windows would pose the greatest hazard here, and those existed only in the back rooms. Though he had chosen the centermost table to maintain character, it turned out to have other advantages as well.
“No one can hear us,” Nightfall reassured, certain of his words. “If you didn’t look so guilty and anxious, no one would even know we’re not discussing the coming weather.”
Gil bit his lower lip. He could not afford to believe in evil spirits, given the information that regularly passed through taverns; yet he clearly worried those arisen from the blood of a demon could listen through solid walls, ceilings, and floors. Perhaps he believed they hovered around him, invisible to the human eye. Nevertheless, he recounted his story. “They slipped in like the wind. Some were already inside, looking like regular travelers. Others slithered through the windows in the back, their hands and weapons already stained crimson with the blood of the sleeping Alyndarian guardsmen. They knew the strongest warriors, who to kill first, and they took those men out before the others realized their danger. Some fought, including the king himself—a surprisingly masterful swordsman, by the way. But even he was no match for the . . .” He dropped his voice so low, Nightfall could not hear, but understanding and lip movement filled in the word: Brotherhood. “They worked like a single seamless being, the reincarnation of the demon Nightfall himself. They overwhelmed the guards with their numbers, butchered everyone, and took the injured king away.”
Injured. Nightfall had to fight to keep from saying the word aloud. He knew better than to distract Gil now that the proprietor had lapsed into story mode.
“They disappeared into the night, and no one has seen them since.”
As Gil had clearly finished, Nightfall needed to ask. “The Brotherhood took no casualties?” He could scarcely believe such a thing possible, given the competence of King Edward’s entourage.
“They took their dead and wounded with them. Four, at least, from what I saw. And,” he shivered grimly, “we found another outside the sleeping room window, his throat slit, disemboweled. Clearly done in by one of his own.”
Great way to inspire loyalty. Nightfall believed he knew the young man, the one who had not managed to steal the ring Nightfall still carried on his person. “Where did they go?”
“What?”
“Where did they take the king?”
Gil looked at Nightfall as if he had gone daft. “Wherever demons go. They disappeared as swiftly as they came, melting into the shadows like the demonspawn they are. No one knows that.” His eyes narrowed. “Why would you want to know a thing like that?”
