Shadowbane

accent, which had grown more pronounced. It came from somewhere far south of here-possibly the moors or deep in the Heartlands.

It reminded Kalen of the source of Toytere’s anger: his sister.

“It’s me you want, not him,” Kalen said.

“True, true, but we’ve a use for pretty lads here in the city of vice.” Toytere pulled back from Rhett and swaggered over to Kalen. “Also, this be not about what I be wanting, but rather, what she be wanting. And she be wanting you alive.”

“She?” Kalen asked. “You have a mistress, do you? And here I thought you’d climbed high in your shit hole of Faerun.”

Toytere grasped Kalen’s collar and pulled the man’s face toward his winning smile of pointed teeth. Several teeth were missing from that smile, but it held no shortage of unsettling charm. “She say she wants you breathing-she not specify unharmed.”

With that, Toytere punched Kalen in the jaw, knocking him into Rhett. Both men groaned. “Godsdamn it,” Rhett said. “I didn’t even say anything.”

“That be for Cellica,” Toytere said, cracking his knuckles. “First of many, no?”

He stopped and stared at Kalen, his eyes glazed. His grin faltered. From between his lips emerged a soft, droning hum.

“What-what’s happening?” Rhett asked.

“The Sight,” Kalen said. “He can’t see or hear us.”

“Sight?”

“Seeing the future, reading minds-in his case, it’s not all a con. He sees glimpses, so there’s probably no escape for us.”

“Wonderful,” Rhett said. “He seems pretty upset about this ‘Cellica’ lass.”

“She-” Kalen fought down a lump in his throat. “She’s his twin sister.”

“Ah, the protective brother,” Rhett said. “And what befell yon lass? You broke her heart? Left her at the altar?”

“Not exactly.” He remembered an awful morning a year ago, tinged with the smell of blood. Cellica-his adopted sister-gave him a last disapproving smile.

“With child, then? Can humans and halflings even-?”

“She’s dead.”

“Oh.” Rhett sounded somber. “This … this is worse than I thought, isn’t it?”

“Much.”

Toytere shivered and returned to the world. His expression fell a bit, as though disappointed, and he waved at them. “Well,” he said to the Rats who had remained in the hallway. “Go on. Take them.”

“To her?” The thugs at the door shivered visibly. “To-to the Witch-Queen?”

“Aye, rotters!” Toytere swayed out of the room. “Whom you think?”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Rhett murmured. Kalen shook his head.

The guards jerked the two men to their feet and ushered them into a corridor that smelled of rich earth and old blood. Two rooms branched off the cramped tunnel: the cell they had been in and another one whose door lay in moldering pieces against the opposite wall.

“Does nothing in this city hold together?” Rhett said, pretending not to have spoken when the guards glared at him. He looked to Kalen. “The Witch-Queen?”

Kalen shrugged. “Apparently.”

“Torm’s blade, but this will go well.”

“Shut up!” One of the guards put a fist into Rhett’s belly.

The boy groaned. “Godsdamn it.”

Kalen had last seen the interior of the Drowned Rat fifteen years previous, and it hadn’t changed much. It seemed bigger once upon a time, but then, he’d been much smaller. The tavern’s ramshackle walls curled with age and the weight of the roof until it resembled less a man-made structure than a cavern hollowed out by a thousand small talons. A rat’s nest, for true.

Unlike other gang taverns in Luskan, the Drowned Rat boasted no ostentatious audience chamber. A simple raised dais sat at the end of the common room, a place where bards might have sung in days not quite as awful as these. A padded chair faced away from the main room, floating above the dais. Even at this distance, Kalen could feel the power in the occupant of that chair. It awakened the spellscar that burned inside him: it yearned in that direction.

The Witch-Queen, Kalen thought. If he could capture the queen, the court would fall.

They had one chance at this. He focused on the short sword sheathed at the nearest guard’s belt. If he could get that, they might yet find a way to bargain themselves free.

The hall stood empty but for a pair of toughs hunched over a card game, like rats surveying their hoard. They looked up at Kalen and Rhett with beady, distrusting eyes. Their lips drew back from their yellowed teeth. Sithe stood impassive on the dais-in the light, she was easier to see but no less intimidating-holding Vindicator sheathed in its lacquer scabbard.

“Me lady.” Toytere addressed the dais. “The intruders, as you-”

Kalen feigned a lurch, as though his step had faltered, to cover pulling free from his bonds. When his captor leaned forward to restrain him, Kalen slammed his forehead into man’s face. The Rat fell back, and Kalen snatched the sword from his belt.

The room reacted slowly. Toytere turned toward them, and Sithe drew out her axe. Kalen dashed right past her-he stood no chance against her in his current condition, even if he could get Vindicator-and bore down on the Witch-Queen’s chair. Capture the queen.

The chair pivoted and sudden thunder split the air. Kalen’s eardrums rang as an unstoppable wave of force flung him back like a carelessly cast-off doll. He flew five paces before he crashed back to the floor, deafened and coughing.

Gods. The beating he’d taken must have addled his wits something fierce. The Witch-Queen of the Dead Rats looked like-

Blue hair swirled as Myrin shook it back from her face. “Kalen?’ she asked.

Rhett leaned toward him. “You know the Witch-Queen?” he asked.

CHAPTER EIGHT

22 KYTHORN (NIGHT)

Considering the two battered men sprawled before her, Myrin reflected on this odd turn of events. She couldn’t say for certain what she’d expected when Toytere had told her of the infiltrator who’d come to Luskan. It might be a bounty hunter, assassin, wizard-anything or anyone following her trail. Not a day had gone by in the past year that someone hadn’t been after her. But the last person she’d expected was …

“Kalen?” she asked, startled. “How did you get here?”

“Gods,” Kalen murmured.

Myrin stared at him where he lay on the floor and he stared right back at her. Breath was hard to come by. They might not have seen each other in a year, but in that heartbeat the connection between them came back- every smile, every kind word, every argument.

She saw in him the man who’d carried her across half of Waterdeep, faced a lich to get her back, and thrown himself off a building for her sake.

She also saw the man who had, a year ago, killed her kidnapper in cold blood and that cooled her growing ardor. The memory snapped her back to the present.

Kalen was hurt, Myrin realized, and badly. She started forward, wanting nothing more than to tend to his wounds, but stopped, reconsidering. The Dead Rats were staring at her, waiting for a cue. After that outburst, she