Shadowbane

“Again,” Sithe said.

“Ag-” Kalen had only that small warning before she lashed out with her axe.

He leaped back, dropped, and rolled to recover Vindicator. Water flew from the blade as he swept it out wide and ready.

She was on him. They clashed, faster and harder than before.

Sithe slashed and tore without grace, her movements without art. Now, she was just trying to kill him-as quickly and with as much blood as possible.

Fine by him. She was angry, but so was he.

Slash, counter, parry. He dodged more than he deflected and watched her body as much as her blade. She moved like nothing human, but she’d beat him enough that he had a sense of how she fought.

He lasted eight moves this time, rather than three.

He lay groaning on the wet rooftop, his insides burning. Agony built up inside him, the barrier of his numbness worn thin by Sithe’s brutal assault. Breath rippled through lungs clenched tight as though in a vice. It was not as bad as it had once been-never as bad-but gods, how the pain gripped him.

A cool hand touched Kalen’s fevered brow. Sithe crouched over him.

“A man walked … Kalen Dren!” She snapped her fingers in front of his face to draw his attention. “Do you hear me, Kalen Dren?”

“Wh-what?” he groaned. “Dammit-”

“A man walked across the broken mountains of a dark land,” she said. “He climbed as high as he could and walked until his feet could carry him no farther. When finally he fell to his knees, starving and exhausted, it was at the edge of a great black abyss. He stared out into the darkness-deep, impenetrable, infinite-and his heart delighted.” She leaned forward. “What did he see?”

Kalen stared into her face. Her black eyes dropped as deep as the void she described, draining his thoughts as he gazed into them. He was the man staring into the infinite darkness.

“Kalen.” Sithe slapped him on the cheek. “What did he see?”

Sweat slaked his face. “Nothing,” he said. “Death. I don’t-”

“ ‘Nothing’ and ‘death’ are not the same,” Sithe said. “What joy did he know?”

“He had gone mad,” Kalen said, fumbling for the words. “He surrendered.”

Sithe stared at him a long, long moment. Rain dripped from her axe onto the rooftop by Kalen’s ear. He panted and fought for breath.

It wasn’t fair. Cruelty raged within him, begging to break through. Kalen Dren was a thin skin stretched painfully over a tempest.

“No,” Kalen said. “Not … that man …”

The rain abruptly stopped, the gray clouds parting to reveal a sliver of welcome daylight. Wind blew, stirring the darkness that leaked from Sithe’s scalp instead of hair, tugging at the light silks that sheathed her body. Kalen felt the wind dance across his brow, marveling that he could feel it.

“Wind,” Sithe said. “Wind … and nothing.”

Kalen could hardly make his thoughts connect. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Is this the answer to your riddle?”

“No.” She held out her hand, letting the breeze stir her gossamer sleeve. “The wind is breath-the air that gives life. My mother had a soul of wind, traced in the lines of her face and skin. My father, however …”

She trailed off, standing up and staring over her shoulder at the fleeing night.

“You are like me,” Kalen said. “Born of two worlds-the dark and the light.”

Somehow, the words gave him the strength to push to his feet.

She lowered her hand, casting aside the invisible wind trapped within it. “I am not like you, Kalen Dren,” she said. “I know what I am, and I am content.”

“With what you choose to be.”

“Choice is an illusion,” Sithe said. “You believe you choose wrongly-that all is your fault-but it is not. All will be as it will be.”

“We are responsible for our actions. You cannot convince me otherwise.”

“So you say.” Sithe seemed to accept this. “But if you are right, and you truly choose the course of your life, then why do you choose wrongly in every instance?”

“I don’t,” he said.

Sithe looked at him for a long time. He could hardly read her placid face, but he thought her gaze held something like sympathy-or perhaps amusement.

She looked off into the darkness. “I would meet you one day, Shadowbane.”

“I stand right here.”

“I do not mean you, Kalen Dren.”

Sithe descended into the Rat as the sun rose.

“What’s the matter?” Eden asked. “You seem … out of sorts.”

Toytere hadn’t realized his nails kept scratching at the table, despite the sodden creak they made against the smoke-stained wood. He lifted his hand to his stubble-covered chin. “Nothing, Eden, nothing.”

“I see.” He could tell she didn’t believe him-godsdamn him if he believed himself, just now.

Gods be praised for the stuffy and dark interior of the Whetstone that disguised so much, for Toytere felt ill. His brow was sodden and his mouth wouldn’t stop moving around, like it chewed on nothing without his permission. If Eden saw any of this, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill him on the spot.

“Do you still have the girl?” Eden asked.

“Ah.” Toytere sniffled and wiped at his nose. That was the question, wasn’t it? “It’s proven-difficult to manage, that it has.”

“But you do still have her,” she pressed. “Right?”

He remembered Myrin’s arms around him and the words she had whispered in his ear: “I trust you, Toy.”

His arm hurt like all the Hells.

“Me dear one,” Toytere said. “There be another complication.”

“This is how you want to play this? If you seek to raise the price, halfling-”

“Oh nay, nay,” he said. “Simply, she be missing, is all.”

The lie was surprisingly hard, for a man accustomed to lies. He could hardly make the words filter through his sharp teeth.

Eden’s face seemed white. “You had better find her. My patron is offering a great deal of coin and he isn’t one to be disappointed. I am not one to be disappointed.”

It spoke highly of just how sick Toytere was that, when he received this warning, panic filled him. Where was his unshakable confidence?

“Bah to your worry, lass. I be finding her, nothing to worry.” Blood beat in his wrist, setting his flesh alight with pain. It made him angry and anger was a good tool. “And spare me your threats, you one-eyed she-wolf. You’ll be getting your girl when and if I say. Threaten me again and I’ll never say.”

Irritation flickered across Eden’s face, but she smiled. “You really are a beast, Toytere.” She reached across and caressed his wrist. “If there’s anything I might do-”

Pain erupted and he pulled his wrist back. “You be leaving me be, for a start.”

“Oh, but surely you must have considered it,” she said. “Or would you rather have some blue-haired whore?”

The image of Myrin rose up in his mind and he wrenched away from Eden. She opened her mouth, but he slapped her across the face with his other hand. Her head struck the grimy wall behind her bench. Something fell and rang on the floor with a clear, metallic sound. She reached up to her livid face, startled, as he leaped on the table and loomed over her, hissing like the angry rat he was.

When he had grasp of his senses again, Toytere couldn’t believe what he had done. Eden was no woman to be trifled with and he had cut through their game to offer her a stark insult. That was stupid.

Even more stupid, Toytere found himself wanting to laugh, not apologize.