Either way, he’s new to his cloak, Tylar concluded, or he wouldn’t scuff his boots on such a petty street brawl.
Bargo finally coughed loose his tongue. “This scabber were a’beggin’ in Goodly Master Rind’s tavern house. We were bending his arm a bit to send him back down to Punt.”
“Is that so?” the knight asked. Tylar heard the wry amusement in the other’s tone. “From my vantage, I’d say he was the one doing the bending.”
Bargo blustered.
The boots Tylar had been studying stepped closer. “Your name, sirrah?”
Tylar remained silent. He didn’t bother to look up. There was no need. The knight’s features would be hidden behind a wrap of masklin, a facecloth cut from the same blessed material as the knight’s cloak. All that was ever seen of a knight’s face were the eyes and the triple stripes that blended into the masklin.
“Is what they claim true?” the knight continued. “You are aware, sirrah, that begging of coin is not allowed after sunset.”
As answer, Tylar reached into his pockets and tossed the pair of brass pinches on the cobbles before the knight’s toes.
“Ah, so it seems the scruff here has a coin or two. Sirrah, perhaps your pinches are better spent in a tavern of the lower city.” A toe nudged the bits of brass back toward Tylar.
Such rare kindness earned a curious glance toward his benefactor. The knight was tall and lithe, a willow switch in a cloak. His face was indeed wrapped in masklin. Eyes glowed at him. Tylar saw them pinch in surprise. A step was taken back.
“He’s a stripped knight,” Bargo said. “A shiting vow-breaker.”
Tylar pocketed his coin and gained his feet. He stared the knight up and down, anger burning away shame. He read the disgust in the other’s stance. He met the other’s gaze fully for the first time. “Fear not. Disgrace is not contagious, ser.” He turned swiftly away.
But not swiftly enough…
“Ser Noche…” The knight spoke his name with raw shock. “ Tylar ser Noche.”
Tylar’s step faltered. A thousand reaches from his home-lands and he still could not escape his cursed name.
“It is you, ser, is it not?”
Tylar kept his back to him. “You are mistaken, ser knight.”
“Curse my blessed eyes if I am!” Boots scuffed closer. “Face me.”
Tylar knew better than to disobey a Shadowknight. He turned.
Beyond the knight’s shoulder, he spotted Bargo and Yorga slinking back to the Wooden Frog, happy to escape the knight’s attention. They knew their game had ended, but Bargo stopped at the threshold. He wiped blood and snot from his lips and cast a murderous stare toward Tylar, a promise of pain to come, a debt he meant to collect. Then the brawlers pushed back into the tavern.
Tylar’s attention focused back to the fellow before him. “As I was saying, you mistake me for someone else, ser.”
As rebuttal, the knight reached to the clasp at his throat. A shadowy waft of masklin fluttered free.
Tylar instinctively glanced down. Only a knight was allowed to see another knight’s features.
“Face me, ser.” Command lay thick on the other’s tongue.
Tylar trembled and obeyed.
He found a familiar countenance framed within the cloak’s hood. Tylar knew those features: high cheekbones, white-blond hair, amber eyes. The young knight was all sunlight and autumn fields, in contrast to Tylar’s stormy and dark countenance. Time sailed backward. Tylar recognized the peach-faced boy behind the bearded man who stood before him now.
“Perryl…”
The last time he had seen this face there had been only two stripes. Perryl had been one of his three squired lads back in Tashijan, under his tutelage before… before…
He glanced away, his heart aching.
The Shadowknight dropped to one knee before him. “Ser Noche.”
“No,” Tylar refused. “No longer Ser Noche. It is simply de Noche.”
“Never! To me you will always be hailed as ser.”
Tylar twisted and stumbled away. “Get off your knees, Perryl. You shame yourself and your cloak. It seems even in this small task I have failed the Order… training you so poorly for your station.” He continued down the street.
A scuffle sounded behind him as his former squire gained his feet and fled abreast of him. “All that I am, I owe to you.”
The words cut like poisoned daggers. Tylar hurried on, knowing he could never flee a blessed knight, but perhaps he could escape his own memories.
Perryl kept beside him. “I would speak to you, ser! Much has changed back at Tashijan. If you will meet with me on the morrow-”
Tylar stopped and swung toward Perryl. His chest heaved on swells of shame and misery. “Damn your eyes! Look at me, Perryl.” He held up his crooked arm. “The knight you knew is gone, long buried. I’m a scabber out of Punt. Leave me to my hole and seek me out no more.”
His outburst thrust the other back a half step.
In the knight’s face, he saw the boy again, wounded and at a loss for a response. The young man stared up at the lesser moon’s glow. “I must be away,” he mumbled apologetically, fixing his masklin back in place, then met Tylar’s eye firmly, a knight again. “Whether it bring you pain or humiliation, I would still speak with you.”
“Leave me be, Perryl,” he begged with all his heart. “If you ever loved me, leave me be.”
“For now… only for now.” He swung his cloak and backed into shadow, blending away. Only a pair of eyes glowed back at Tylar. “A dread and perilous time is upon us… upon all of us.”
Then Perryl was gone, moving with the speed born of Grace.
Tylar stood a moment longer. His fingers clutched the pair of brass pinches in his pocket. Would that he had a silver yoke to drown away this night. But he doubted that even a pouch of gold marches would wash this pain away.
He let the pinches slip between his fingers into his pocket as he continued down the street. He skirted around the darkest alleys of Punt, aiming roundabout for the docklands and his lone bed.
On the morrow, he would seek a boat to another island. He did not want to be known or remembered. He would lose himself again, sinking into the solace that came with anonymity.
Still, Perryl’s words stayed with Tylar as he hobbled along. A dread and perilous time is upon us all. A streak of dark humor cut through his pain and shame. A dread and perilous time? That fairly summed up his state of affairs since he was stripped five years ago. How was any of this a new tiding?
With a shake of his head, he shut out such thoughts.
It was none of his concern.
As the night wore thin, Tylar walked from streets lined in cobbles to those simply worn from the natural sandy rock. Here the houses were shuttered and dark, hiding their faces.
Off to his left, the alleys and narrows of Punt echoed with cries, shouts, and sounds to which it was best to be deaf. But one could not escape Punt’s smells. It shat and sweated and pissed like a living creature, ripe with corruption, pestilence, and decay.
One never developed a nose for it. It was too changeable-by day, by season, by storm, by fair weather.
Tylar kept his shoulders hunched, skulking through pockets of gloom. One learned the value of being inconspicuous in the lower city. He crept along shadows. Though now Graceless, he was not without skill at moving unseen.
He rounded past Gillian Square with its empty gallows and cut through Chanty Row with its tanners and dyeworks.
Still, he could not fully escape Punt’s gaze. It leered at him as he crawled home. It screamed and laughed and watched him from a hundred dark windows.
He hurried over Lumberry Bridge as its stone spanned the stagnant canal that drained the upper city, carrying
