good night’s sleep would have to do for now, he pushed open the front door. Instead of a taproom, the entire ground floor of the building was open, filled with long tables and benches. Serving boys and women came up from a staircase in the back carrying double handfuls of tankards and trenchers of food. The smells made Caim’s mouth water.
The crowd was a rowdy mix of hard-drinking lower-class types, as well as a smattering of soldiers. No, not soldiers. Mercenaries. Caim could tell by their haphazard appearance and the variety of dialects shouted across tables.
When no one came over to see to his needs, he stopped one of the scullions. With a jerk of her sharp chin, she indicated he should find his own seat.
“Do you rent rooms for the night?” he asked, trying not to shout, but having trouble hearing himself over the din of the patrons.
“I’ll send the master of the house over to see you,” she said, and hurried away.
Caim waited for a few minutes. He was about to find a seat when a young man ambled over. He was dressed rather sharply, with a leather vest and fine trousers tucked into knee-high boots. Caim would have taken him for just another patron until he introduced himself as the proprietor.
“How can I help you, sir?”
“Is it always this loud in here?” Caim was thinking about trying to sleep with this racket going on under his room.
The young owner gave him an appraising look. “It’s Holbermass Eve, sir.”
Already? Holbermass was fourteen days before Yuletide. Caim counted the days in his head and found he had missed a few. The year was almost over.
“I’ll take a room and a bath,” Caim said. “Followed by a hot meal.”
The owner named a price. Caim didn’t bother haggling, but just paid it, whereupon he was passed off to another serving girl, who led him to the back where another staircase climbed to the second floor.
A candlemark later, he returned to the ground floor freshly bathed, shaven, changed, and feeling almost human. If anything, the tavern was fuller than when he went upstairs, so he had to look around to find an open seat against a wall with a good view of the entire room. He wound up taking the end spot at a table full of young people, men and women no older than Josey, if that, drinking and laughing. He leaned back as he sat down, trying to keep his face out of the light as much as possible. The shadows tickled at the edges of his perception, but he kept them at bay. The last thing he wanted was to draw attention.
A girl brought his dinner, mutton on the bone, a loaf of brown bread large enough to choke a mule, and a mug of what smelled like the same barley beer he had gotten at the roadhouse. He tossed her a couple pennies as he tore into the food. The fare wasn’t fancy, but it tasted like heaven after so long on the road. He even stomached the beer.
His fingers were stiff as he ate, and the forearm began to itch. He had changed the dressing after his bath, but the wound was still oozing. He needed to find a chirurgeon to take a look at it. Tomorrow .
He had almost finished the platter when a table near the middle of the room fell over on its side. Benches scraped as men jumped to their feet. Steel flashed and someone yelled, and everyone backed away as two men grappled amid puddles of spilled beer. One wore a vest of iron rings, the other a coat of boiled leather. Holes appeared in their armor and leaked blood as they punched at each other with short daggers. All the while, their comrades shouted and laughed at the spectacle.
Caim waited to see what would happen. While the others at his table stood up on their seats for a better look, most of the room cleared out. The owner stood well away from the brawl, frowning as his profits ran out the door. Caim debated staying put, but after another minute of watching the mercs brutalize each other, he got up and went to his room. He gathered his things, few as they were, and pulled the black sword from its wrapping. The weapon felt right in his hands, like a part of him. He bared several inches of the night-black blade and ran his fingers across the pommel, down the hilt to the crossguard. It’s only a sword. Nothing more. Yet the quiet hum in his fingertips when he touched the metal told him otherwise. He shoved the weapon back into its housing. Adjusting the straps on the scabbard, Caim slung it across his back before he picked up the other bundle and left.
The outside chill was refreshing after the heat of the tavern. The light was fading. The moon was a golden fingernail paring over the city skyline. A heavy crash resounded from inside, and Caim started walking. He had paid for the room, but he didn’t feel like sleeping someplace that might get raided by the authorities or burned down around his ears by a bunch of angry drunks. He would find a cheap flophouse and in the morning seek out a guide. Or not. Either way, he was leaving the city tomorrow.
Slush splashed under his heels as he crossed another avenue-it must have been the South Road leading out of the city-and entered another neighborhood. When he left the tavern Caim hadn’t much of an idea where he was heading, but with every step he found himself going deeper into the sorrier sections of the city. Though less ornamented, the buildings in this district were taller, some reaching as high as six stories, their upper floors leaning out over the street to shut out the sky. Down at the street level, the darkness was nigh absolute. It reminded him of Low Town in Othir, except everything here was built of wood and wattle, even the shanties. And, of course, there were no people on the streets. Even in the darkest hours, there were always a few people out and about in the Gutters: bully boys, smash-and-grabbers, sailors from the docks. Here, the quiet was eerie, like he was the only soul alive in the entire city. He reached back to loosen his knives in their sheaths and almost called for the shadows before he stopped himself. He was getting too comfortable with them.
He passed a cobbler’s shop, quite unremarkable with small frosted windows and a black wooden placard over the door in the shape of a boot, but it perfectly matched an image he’d had stuck in his head for a long time without realizing it. Past the shop, Caim turned left at the next intersection on instinct. The street that opened before him could have been torn from his memory. Rows of narrow tenement houses lined each side, jammed together like toy soldiers in tight formation. Each house had a front stoop or a patio on the street. In his mind’s eye this neighborhood was clean and prosperous, but the image before him was quite different. Mounds of garbage piled between the homes. Low shadows slipped between the heaps, dogs rooting through the refuse. Feeble lights in a few of the windows over the street showed that people still lived here despite the conditions.
Caim strode down the middle of the street. Some of the doorways were occupied by blanket-covered lumps. A tiny fire burned in one brick archway beside a drowsing white-haired man with a dirty beard. Caim stopped outside a building with a large blue door, its round bronze knocker green with verdigris. Four windows faced the street. The shutters had all fallen off except for one stubborn panel on an upper window. No light showed through the grimy panes. The place looked dead, like no one had lived here for years.
Caim kicked aside a lump of snow-covered trash and ascended the uneven steps. The front door swung inward with a low whine. Darkness pooled inside the doorway. Odors of wood rot and mildew pulled him inside. He stood on the threshold as his eyes adjusted. A hallway extended all the way back through the tenement. Doors branched off to either side, and a rickety staircase led upward to more darkness. Smears of charcoal marred the cracked plaster walls and ceiling.
Caim peered through the doorways as he passed down the hallway. The first door was closed. Inside the next was a sparse room, containing only a loveseat with ripped cushions and a rocking chair in a corner. Broken bottles and scraps of dingy blankets littered the floor. The stench of excrement was choking. Caim went to the stairs.
The steps creaked underfoot, loud to his ears. He climbed them with caution, listening for sounds of occupation, but the place was deadly quiet. At the top, a faint gleam of moonlight filtered through the dirty windows at either end of the hallway, illuminating dark streaks and piles of trash on the floor, and the shadowed doors of three apartments.
Caim stepped to the middle door. Long scratches gouged the varnished wood. The bronze handle was loose and unlocked. Standing out of the way, he nudged it open. Trash and broken furniture covered the floor of the front room. Slivers of yellow light showed a narrow hallway on the other side and outlined a door at the far end. Caim slipped into the corridor. So much had changed over the years, but he still remembered how the place used to look. The lime-green walls, now besmirched with marks and holes, had been clean ivory white. There had been a long blue runner down this hallway and a quilted blanket hung over the now-bare left-hand wall.
Before he reached the door, it swung open, spilling light into the hallway. Caim tensed to see a figure standing in the doorway. It was short and heavyset like a toad. The figure took a step. Something tapped on the hardwood floor, and a creaky voice screeched.
