Shadow of the Father (34 page)

“You’d betray our trust for a bowl of hot soup,” Dewry sneered. “I’ve never held any illusions about that.”

“No, no,” Balinni protested.

Dewry had already turned back to Sinch. He drove his knife point into the table and spread his paws. “Very well,” he said. “Then I will tell you this: if you do not bring the crown back here by sunup tomorrow, I will kill your little pretender lordling. Ah, yes, that’s gotten to you, hasn’t it?”

He looked impassively at Sinch’s knife, which had moved to within inches of his muzzle. It was trembling despite Sinch’s efforts to hold it still. “You want to be careful,” he said, rage and fear pushing his newfound confidence to dangerous highs. “I killed the Shadow for threatening Yilon. I’d bet you don’t have nearly as many friends.”

Dewry laughed, pushing the knife away with a careless paw. He picked up his own and sheathed it. “Enough to make sure that your lordling will not survive if I’m killed, even without poor Kites. No, I would say it is in your best interests to keep me alive for the moment.” He gathered his cloak around himself and lowered his ears so he could flip his hood over them. “I have more friends in this town than you have in the world, little sextoy. Never, never forget that. I will see you tomorrow morning. If I see you before then, it will not go well for you.”

Before Sinch could reply, the fox had swept out of the back doorway, hunched over until he was nearly a mouse’s height. Sinch stared at the empty doorway, lowering his knife to the table slowly.

“Is he… is he gone?” Balinni said from the floor.

Sinch walked around the desk and poked his head out of the back door. He looked onto an alley that was narrow even by the standards of the Warren, barely wide enough for a mouse to walk with his shoulders squared. There was no place for anyone to hide, and the alley was empty in both directions. “He’s gone,” he said, coming back into the office.

Balinni was pulling himself up by the edge of his desk. He avoided Sinch’s eye as he dusted himself off, picking up his chair, and seated himself behind his desk again. Sinch remained standing, with his dagger out, playing with its balance in his paw. “So,” Balinni said, as though the interruption had never happened, “what have you done with Valix?”

Sinch looked down at the scarred muzzle, as composed as it had been when it was telling him that his knife wasn’t worth six gold, that Valix would be his shadow. “Do you have any way to negotiate with the Shadows?”

Balinni flicked his ears back. “One doesn’t hold this position without having certain connections.”

“Good. How can we…”

The mouse laughed, shortly. “Why do you assume that my connections would be put at your disposal?”

“Because you want to see Valix alive again.”

Balinni smiled. “So she is alive. Why didn’t you tell me you’re sleeping with the lord-to-be?”

“He may not be the lord if we can’t recover the crown,” Sinch pointed out. “And if we do, then whoever helped me recover it might earn quite a bit of favor.”

The scarred mouse’s ears flicked forward, but his expression remained neutral. “The Shadows do not negotiate.”

“You just said…” Sinch sputtered.

Balinni spread his paws. “I said I had connections. The Shadows work on their own. They despise us for weak, ineffectual creatures. We despise them for their savage natures. But they fill a necessary role. They force the foxes to respect us.”

“Meanwhile, you live off of them.”

“Of course,” Balinni said. “We all live off of the foxes one way or another, but they live off of us as well. They,” he gestured outside the office, “collect the refuse, the discards, and make a life from it. In return they provide labor and service.”

“And you simply take nice things from them. From the foxes.”

“To deliver to the rest of our people,” Balinni said. “We pass along luxuries to improve their lives.”

Sinch sat down, still playing with his knife. “They don’t seem to appreciate you.”

Balinni waved a paw. “There are a few hard-headed fools who would prefer to live in squalor than take the remotest chance of offending the foxes. They remember Kishin only as a tragedy, not as a triumph.”

“Triumph?” Sinch raises his eyebrows.

“They could have razed the Warren. We fought them off! A few mice died, but it could have been so much worse! And Kishin didn’t live out the year.”

“You killed him?”

Balinni looked annoyed. “We certainly were instrumental in his downfall.”

“How so?”

“We haven’t time to review all of that,” Balinni said. “I believe you have a crown to retrieve.”

“So how can you help me?”

Balinni pulled out a parchment and unrolled it on the desk. “This is a map of the entrances to the sewers, the ones that are usually patrolled and the ones that aren’t. Once you get in there, it’s up to you.”

Sinch studied the parchment. He was pleasantly surprised to find that through his adventures of the past day, he was familiar enough with Dewanne—at least, the east side—to find one or two of the marked entrances. While looking at them, he studied the rest of the map of the city, locating both Dinah’s house and the entrance Valix had led him to when they were fleeing Maxon. “What can you tell me about Dewry?”

He had made the mistake of not looking up when he asked the question. At Balinni’s silence, he did, and saw the scarred mouse trying to hide his fear. “He wouldn’t want me to say anything.”

“Why does he want to kill Yilon?”

Balinni paused, looking into the distance, fighting to make a decision. At length, he said, “You’d best be on your way. Please… please don’t hurt Valix.”

Sinch stood. “She’s safe. She was hurt, but she’s recovering. I’m sure she’ll come back as soon as she can.”

The scarred mouse nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “And good luck.”

Sinch sheathed his knife, and glanced at the package on the edge of the desk. “Can I take ‘Kishin’?”

Balinni hesitated, placing a protective paw on the package. Sinch leaned over. “It’s my best chance to settle things with Dewry.”

The scarred mouse set his jaw. He raised his eyes to Sinch’s and pushed the package across the desk, scattering papers. “Bring him back safely.”

Sinch couldn’t tell whether Balinni was more concerned about the costume than he’d been about Valix. He tucked the bundle under his arm. “If I’m not here when Dewry arrives tomorrow, try to keep him here. I will be here if I can.”

“Rodenta be with you,” Balinni said.

Sinch walked out past Cal and Mal, who were gaping at him openly.

He paused in the doorway and turned back. “Can either of you fight?” he said. They looked at each other, then shook their heads simultaneously.

“Of course not,” he said, and walked back out into the Warren.

He had it in his head that he might be able to track Dewry by the fox’s smell, but though it remained strong in the small alley behind the house, he lost it in the tangle of smells in the busier streets. So he turned his steps toward the trench. With the sun halfway up the sky, the refuse in it smelled even worse, but at least it was deserted. He ducked into the same small tunnel, beneath the guard post, and opened the sack.

To his surprise, he found the costume less objectionable this time. The smell of fox was just as strong, but he avoided looking into the glassy eyes and instead pulled the cloak over the head almost immediately, letting only the nose show. That was how Dewry had covered himself; even in disguise, foxes would want their noses exposed to sniff out any possible threat.

With the head secured on his shoulders and the cloak firmly around him, Sinch ascended the stairs on the city side, glancing back to make sure the guards were not in view. A short wall separated the west side of the city from the Warren, but it came up only to his chest, and even in the disguise, Sinch would have little trouble hopping over it if he needed to, on the way back. He walked along the dirt road that mice had called “Uphill Way,” even though it sloped gently downward. Few other walkers joined him on the road; the mice in Dewanne were either at their hidden service jobs or had already come home. He walked until he felt flagstones under his feet and smelled the warm, fresh odors of bread and porridge, and then marched along the street toward the plaza.

The first thing he had to do was make sure Yilon was safe. Dewry’s speech had set a gnawing nut of worry in his gut that only the fox’s smiling muzzle would dispel. The smells of food reminded him how long it had been since he and Valix had shared that soup, back in the Warren an age ago, but he didn’t feel quite confident enough in his disguise to attempt to buy anything. Hopefully Dinah would have food at her house.

The thought of a breakfast of porridge with Yilon in the new, bright day set his paws moving quickly across the plaza. He kept to the side nearest the lake, opposite the castle, but he couldn’t help glancing over at the castle as he walked. The plaza was not crowded, and what foxes there were moved deliberately, strolling in the shadows of the old stone buildings and their rooftop crests. And then, as he was about to move beyond the plaza and along the lakeside road, he took one more look toward the castle and stopped so abruptly that the fox walking behind him brushed the cloak and muttered “Your pardon” as he swept by.

Sinch stared along the facades of four buildings, to where a cloaked, hooded figure stood at the corner of the building nearest the castle. He felt as though he were looking into a mirror at the other, as still as he himself was. There were other cloaked foxes in Dewanne, some of which he had seen while walking through the west side, but he felt sure that this was Dewry.

The fox’s head turned, and now Sinch could feel the weight of his gaze. He hurried onward, nearly stepping on a fox’s tail in his haste to get out of sight. But the image of the cloaked fox would not leave his mind. Dewry, meeting someone outside the castle? He knew he should go immediately back to Yilon, but he had to know more. He turned right down the first street and wove his way through the thicker crowd of shoppers, the heat of the morning already suffusing the street with the smell of a hundred foxes over the smells of the fabrics they’d come to shop for.

Sinch made his way to the end of the street and there turned right again, cautiously, looking for Dewry. The cloaked fox was not where Sinch had seen him last, but after a moment of panic, Sinch spotted him, closer, waking in his direction along with another fox. Sinch moved around, but Dewry’s companion muzzle was in shadow, and foxes kept walking between them. Then they stepped into a patch of sunlight, and Sinch felt no surprise at all as he recognized Maxon.

The two of them had their muzzles close together, and though Sinch couldn’t see Dewry’s expression, his ears were perked up while Maxon’s were back. The steward frowned and said something, then flicked an ear to listen for Dewry’s answer.

He had to hear what they were saying. Heart pounding, paw on the hilt of his knife, he moved closer, passing them and then circling around behind. He cupped his free paw to one ear, and fortunately his cloak helped focus the sound of their whispers so that he could at least catch some of the conversation, as long as he stayed directly behind them.

When he passed them, the steward was saying, “…tell where we might be overheard. This is safest.” Sinch didn’t hear Dewry’s response; by the time he was behind them, Maxon was speaking again. “…get a message to me and meet somewhere else. Don’t come up here again.”

Dewry’s response included something about “my way,” probably telling Maxon it was on his way back. The steward dismissed this and asked something, to which Dewry said, “…didn’t know anything,” and then the word “sextoy” came loudly back to Sinch. His ears flushed and flattened, so that he missed the next thing Dewry said, but it ended with “he’ll do it, all right,” and a laugh.

“Don’t be so sure,” Maxon said. He lowered his voice, so that the only words Sinch caught were as he was finishing: “…than you might think.”

“I didn’t need Kites.” Dewry’s voice was sharp.

Maxon murmured something else, to which Dewry responded, “He found it?”

“Shh.” The steward hushed him, and the next few exchanges were inaudible. Sinch had just begun to creep closer when Dewry stopped in his tracks. Sinch turned quickly and looked in the nearest store window.

“How could you let that happen?” Dewry cried. Another fox, passing nearby, flicked his ears but kept walking. Both Dewry and Maxon looked at him and lowered their heads again.

“Did not have any choice in the matter,” Maxon said. He put an arm around the fox and urged him forward. “Come on. It’s best you not go back there just yet.”

Sinch hurried to catch up. Dewry was saying, “…kill him no matter what happens.”

“Moderate your voice,” Maxon said sternly. Sinch lost most of the rest of his sentence, until he finished by saying, “…if he should die.”

“Ha.” Dewry now seemed less worried about keeping the conversation secret. “What could anyone do?”

“Put a stop to you.” Maxon sounded quite irritated.

“You wouldn’t,” Dewry said. “You’ve been too much help, invested too much.”

Maxon’s response, whatever it was, made Dewry stop cold and shove the steward angrily away from him. Maxon stared back at Dewry, but Sinch’s movements had placed him, too, directly in the steward’s line of sight. He felt the stillness of both of them and hurried to move around Dewry, ducking into the nearest store. Behind him, Maxon called, “Ho! You there, in the cloak!”