The Hawk And His Boy (21 page)

The boy was dead. When he killed people, they stayed dead. That was his job.

“You should know. You’re the one knifing people.”

But it hadn’t been a knife. No. Poison. Enough of it to kill a horse.

Ronan stepped into the alley. The walls were close and high. The stones underfoot were slick with mud and garbage. There was no light at all, but he heard the scuffle of footsteps retreating before him. As quiet as a mouse, but enough for him. He’d tracked animals in the past that made less noise than mice. They were just as easy to kill.

“You saw him? Saw who?”

Abruptly, the alley angled around a corner. He strained his ears but all he could hear now was the rain pattering on the roof and dripping from the eaves.

“Who’d you see?”

The knife slid from his sleeve and into his hand without a sound.

“You know, cully, well as I do.”

The voice was closer than where he thought it would be. It was a little girl’s voice, he was sure of it. Brave. He had to give her that. Brave, like the boy had been. He paused. The knife felt heavy in his hand. But then he took a step closer and the night burst red with pain. A tremendous blow struck his head. Again and again. Something shattered on the cobblestones next to him. Wood splintered. He staggered, trying to duck and hide but there was nowhere to go. His body would not obey. The world spun. He caught a glimpse of the night sky above him. There were faces in it. No, not in the sky, but leaning out, peering down from above the eaves. Children’s faces, wizened and evil, leering at him. A boy heaved over a wood barrel right on top of him.

The world went black.

It was still raining when he came to. He was laying face down in the mud. He tried to roll over and then immediately wished he hadn’t.

At least it’s still raining, he thought dizzily. I’ll be able to wash this muck and blood off. Children. The Juggler’s children.

I don’t blame them.

Surprised they didn’t cut my throat while they were at it.

“How you doing, cully?”

It was the little girl. He opened his eyes.

“Don’t feel too good, do you?” she said.

She crouched down, hands folded around her knees, eyes intent on him. Just out of reach. Not that he was in any shape to try anything. The rain had plastered her brown hair against her head. She wore a shapeless brown dress several sizes too large for her, and the sleeves were bunched up in rolls around her arms. A scar lay like a hand slap across the side of her face.

“Felt better,” he said. He could taste blood in his mouth. “Give me a few days.”

He tried sitting up but he couldn’t. The little girl did not move away, but he saw her tense. He heard feet shuffling around him in the darkness. Other children.

“You’re the Knife,” she said. “The big, bad old Knife.”

She flipped a blade in her hand, end over end and catching the haft. His knife.

“Jute,” she said. “The boy who did the chimney job. He’s my friend. The Juggler says he got snaffled by a fire-ward, but you can tell when he’s talking rot. Besides, we saw you.”

“You saw me?” he said stupidly. His head ached. This was almost as bad as when he got thrown and trampled breaking a yearling when he was a boy. Years ago. He could still remember his father’s sudden yell, running toward the corral. Blacking out when the horse stomped on him. He hadn’t been much older than this girl.

“Course we did,” said the little girl. “Haro an’ I climbed a house close by an’ watched the whole thing. Jute went down the chimney, we saw that. An’ then we saw you push him down when he tried to come out. We saw it all, cully.”

Ronan closed his eyes and saw the boy’s face again, staring up at him from within the chimney darkness. The girl stood up. She kicked him in the side. A rib grated against another and he almost blacked out from the pain of it. She crouched down next to his face.

“All that hurt like fallin’ down a chimney, cully?” Her voice trembled. “I wish I could kill you, but I can’t. I just can’t. It ain’t in me. I’d like to, for Jute. I’ll be keepin’ your knife. Maybe I’ll grow up one day and change my mind.”

He heard her footsteps fade away and then there was only the sound of raindrops dripping on cobblestones. He took a deep breath and pushed himself up to his knees.

Pain wasn’t a bad thing altogether. It meant you were still alive.

He scooped up a handful of water from a puddle and tried to clean his face, but the water only ran through his fingers. His side was on fire. Broken rib, he though dully. More than one. He levered himself up to his feet, cursing the day. He was in no condition to attempt the Galnes manor. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A DISTURBING ENTRY ON SCEADUS

The night arrived as the sun slipped down into the ocean. The moon crept up into the sky, but no stars were visible yet. To the east, a dark bank of clouds rolled toward the city.

Nio sat in his library and stared out the window, a book open in his lap. Fynden Fram’s
Endebyrdnes of Gesceaft
. The Order of Creatures. He knew the book by heart. There was not much point in reading it, but he was looking for reassurance. Vainly looking, of course.

When he had returned to the house after meeting the Juggler, he had found the wihht shambling about the rooms. It was unsettling, for his command over the thing should have kept it waiting in the basement. Somehow, his control was fraying. The thing had been unwilling or unable to give him much of a reason for its behavior, only mumbling that it was hungry. It needed food. Just some food. Just a taste. A bite. But wihhts didn’t need food, like a man or an animal needs food to survive. Wihhts survived on the strength of their maker’s will.

At least, that’s what he had assumed.

The thing had lurched off to the basement without protest as soon as he snapped out the order. Still, it made him uneasy. There were definitely some things about wihhts he did not know yet.

But Fynden Fram, despite his genius, had nothing to say in his
Nokhoron Nozhan Endebyrdnes of Gesceaft
that Nio did not already know. Wihhts only ate on command of their master, and only then to bring about a modification their master willed. Nio thought uncomfortably about the wihht absorbing his blood. It had wanted to take more than he had wanted to give, hadn’t it?—right at the end? That didn’t line up with what old Fram had written. No matter. He would unmake the wihht soon. Besides, it would be good to have the thing unraveled and gone before Severan or one of the other old fools might come by the house and stumble on it.

The irritating thing about Fynden Fram’s writing was that, despite the wealth of detail, his descriptions of creatures tended to be divorced from historical context. For example, if he wrote of giants, he had nearly nothing to say of their origins, or in what lands or wars they had been encountered. Rather, he provided terse descriptions of physiognomy, habits, and social customs. In addition, there were often details on how a creature interacted with magic or was affected by the same.

The giant, or
oyrs
, can live to ages of over three hundred years, though they reach their full maturity at the first hundred. In death, they are laid out upon the ground where, in some curious interaction of the moonlight, they slowly turn to stone. In appearance, the giant resembles the race of man, though one must be a distance away from a giant in order to notice the similarity. If one gets too close, besides the hazard of proximity, one will find the giant’s face so large that it cannot be viewed in entirety; rather, it must be looked on in part—here is the nose, here is a huge, staring eye, over there is a portion of mouth or cheekbone.

The scarcity of historical setting in the entries gave one the unpleasant feeling that all the creatures the old scholar wrote of were still alive.

Such as the sceadus.

A scant page in the book was devoted to details of the sceadus. It was the shortest entry among hundreds of other entries that ran from the next shortest—five pages about cobolds—to the longest—seventeen pages about dragons, a section that made for fascinating, but unsettling reading. Almost as unsettling as what Fram had written concerning sceadus.

The sceadus were not created by Anue. Rather, they were made out of darkness, woven from the feorh of it into forms of their master’s choosing. Legend tells that only three sceadus were ever brought into existence, though I am not certain of this claim. Some analogy exists between the making of a wihht and the making of a sceadu. An external will must be brought to bear upon the essence desired as the foundation material for the creature. There, the similarity between the two types ends. A wihht, of course, can be made from nearly anything, combinations of material such as earth, wood, water, fire, or stone. A sceadu, on the other hand, can only be made from darkness, and thus is a thing of pure evil. Certain histories indicate that the sceadus are close in power to the anbeorun themselves. While some have claimed the ability to fashion wihhts of all shapes and strengths, no man has ever had the power to fashion a sceadu. No man ever will—thankfully. This begs the question: if not the gods, then who was powerful enough to have created the three sceadus?

That was the question. Perhaps one of the four wanderers, the anbeorun, could command enough will to shape darkness? But they would never have reason, for the creation of a sceadu meant a level of evil in the creator equal to the abomination created. That made no sense in light of what was known of the wanderers. According to history, the anbeorun existed to guard against the Dark. Yet the mosaic indicated a tie of some kind between the anbeorun of fire, Aeled, and a sceadu.

The entry in Fynden Fram’s anthology continued.

A sceadu can take any shape it chooses: stone or shadow, the wind crossing the plain, animals, man, a tree growing in the forest. It mimics the shapes of things that already are, just as its power is merely a reflection of the strength of its maker and the darkness. There is no reliable way to determine the presence of a sceadu, though one account of the death of Allevian Tobry—

Who was Allevian Tobry? Nio had always wondered about that, for he had never come across any other mention of the name.

—records that a stranger appeared at his gates, cloaked and hooded despite the summer’s heat, and so brought death to that lord with a touch of his hand. Everyone of his household felt an intense cold emanating in waves from the stranger, as ripples do spread out around a stone tossed into a pool. After the stranger had departed, all fell sick of a lingering fever. The wizard of the household claimed it had been no man, but a sceadu. I cannot vouch for the truth of this account, as there is little other firsthand knowledge of encounters with sceadus. There is no known way of killing the creatures, though they themselves feed on death and will kill for no reason at all. They need death in order to live. This is not surprising, as they are the oldest servants of the Dark.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

LISS GALNES

The following day, Ronan made his way to the Street of Willows in the Highneck Rise district. It was still raining. It had not let up through the night. The gutters ran with water.

The worst of his injuries had faded to dull aches over night. Except for his ribs. He’d have to be careful there. He had always been a quick healer. His mother had said that came from her side of the family.

A sour smile crossed his face. He could only hope the children wouldn’t breathe a word of what they’d done. If anyone found out about it, he’d be the laughingstock of the Guild. But those children would be thinking hard on what they’d done. Especially when they were alone. They’d be looking over their shoulders for a long time. He’d been the Silentman’s Knife for seven years now, settling matters in alleys and in back rooms where his prey had nowhere left to run to, except into the tired arms of death.

Death. Like a shadow always on his heels, treading closer over the years until it was almost like his own shadow. But they weren’t friends, even though he had handed over many souls into its embrace. No, it was a working relationship, begun in distaste and dulling over the years into numbness. He didn’t dream anymore. His memories no longer troubled him, for they also had numbed.

But it would be different when he went to Flessoray. It was too late to go back home, but he could go to the islands. If he could get the Silentman to release him from his duties. Maybe he would have to sneak out of the city. The Flessoray Islands were north, off the coast of Harlech. They rose up out of the sea, made of stone and scrub pines. Folk lived apart there, content with their lives and having no interest in the outside world of Tormay. Life was measured by the patience of the sea and by the wind wearing away the days until stone and man alike were scraped clean to their bones. Perhaps then, there, things would be different, and he would let the wind blow through him until he was empty.