The Complete Twilight Reign Ebook Collection (303 page)

No, not alone: never alone in the shadows.

As Shanatin turned back to the deserted street ahead he accidentally scuffed his foot on the cobbles. The sound echoed off the surrounding buildings before he managed to catch his balance again. His heart chilled as he peered timorously behind himself and caught Chaplain Fynner’s thunderous expression; he only just managed to stop himself bursting into a torrent of apologies, which would have enraged the chaplain even more.

Behind the white-haired chaplain were three full squads of troops, two of regular infantry in heavy armour and one of witchfinders. Shanatin wasn’t marching amongst his fellows because he had no spark of ability himself. Those discovered among the rank and file – there were always a few – were transferred to the witchfinders, and the regular troops considered the regiment to be full of misfits and madmen under the command of spies, reporting as they did to the Serian, the Order’s intelligence branch.

The Knights of the Temples would not use magic in battle, but they knew its power full well, and pooled the limited power of its witchfinders to deflect their enemies’ efforts. As they were about to arrest one of their own for being a secret mage, they needed all the defences they could muster.

Fynner caught him up and grabbed Shanatin by the arm. ‘Keep yourself together, man,’ the chaplain hissed. ‘There’s no place for cowards in the Devout Congress – not that it will matter, if your information about Captain Perforren proves inaccurate.’

Fynner was two decades older than Shanatin, but he was more than his match physically. It was clear the priest was comfortable in armour and knew how to use the sword on his hip, while the closest Shanatin had come to battle was the regular beatings he took from anyone who took exception to his face.

‘Sorry, Father,’ Shanatin whispered meekly, and cringed until Fynner let go.

They were marching down a backstreet in the eastern district of Akell, the quarter of the Circle City ruled by the Knights of the Temples. Considering the Devout Congress now dominated Akell there should have been no need for stealth, but their numbers remained few; those who had not been disarmed by the Menin had been conscripted into the invasion of Narkang or lost their weapons when the armoury burned.

‘Just don’t make any more noise,’ Fynner said as he waved over the captain commanding the troops. ‘We’re almost at the meeting point, and we’ve still the best part of an hour to wait. Captain, position your squads out of sight – that warehouse, I think, and have some on the other side of the main road so they can cut off any escape. Remember, hiding his abilities as a mage while being promoted to his position of trust is a capital offence under the Codex of Ordinance. We want to capture Captain Perforren alive for him to face trial, but he’ll be desperate to escape, so use whatever force is necessary. As for Sergeant Timonas, I don’t give a damn about one corrupt witchfinder. Taking him alive for interrogation is preferable, but it’s unlikely he’ll have any useful information for us.’

Shanatin had to stifle a smile at the idea of Sergeant Timonas under questioning. Fortunately the gloom of night hid his reaction and Fynner only paused at the movement, not bothering to waste any more time on him.

‘You’ll stick beside me,’ Fynner ordered. ‘You’ll only get in the way otherwise. If Timonas arrives first I will want you to confirm his identity.’

The witchfinder bobbed his head in acknowledgement and followed Fynner to a dark stone house at the corner of the street. The chaplain produced a key and let himself in, then led Shanatin up to a room on the first floor that smelled of mould and rotten wood. They gingerly settled themselves down on the broken furniture, positioned so they could watch both directions from behind the tattered curtains covering the windows.

Shanatin took care to test a rickety stool before easing himself down onto it. The last thing he needed was to further incur Fynner’s wrath – the chaplain’s plans were going to go sufficiently awry already.

Captain Perforren slipped out of the tavern’s rear door and walked slowly through the yard. It was lit by a single lamp in the window of the back room, barely enough for anything other than to make out the lines of the privy. Perforren checked inside the shed for drinkers relieving themselves, and after confirming it was empty he headed for the gate beyond it, slipping the bolts as silently as he could and making his way into the street outside.

He waited a long while in the shadows for a tail to appear, but after five minutes he concluded there was no one watching him that night. Head down, the collar of his coat turned up, Perforren hurried across the street and turned east. The message had been too short for explanations, and the messenger was as nondescript as the coat he’d handed over, but the man had certainly played the part of a fervent follower of Ruhen to Perforren’s satisfaction.

Drinking companion has urgent information. Meet at small bridge in Yatter. Bring only those trust completely.

At any other time Perforren would have laughed in the man’s face and knocked him down, but times were far from normal. Ruhen’s Children remained a limited presence in Akell, enough to annoy the Devout Congress but not distract their enthusiasm from the violence they inflicted on their own Order. Sergeant Kayel – Ruhen’s bodyguard, who’d visited Perforren and Knight-Cardinal Certinse one night for a drink – had promised them help to take back control of the Order. They had been waiting patiently for weeks now, enduring the insults and iniquities the fanatics of the Devout Congress regularly imposed upon the Order’s secular majority.

It was a half-hour journey to Yatter, a small, poor district in the east of the quarter where foreigners comprised most of the inhabitants. It had fewer inhabitants since the Menin conquest, but night patrols still walked the streets and Perforren was forced several times to hide from soldiers whose allegiance would not be apparent until too late. Eventually he found himself at a stone arch behind which, during the day, a smallholders’ market took place.

It was a secure vantage point from which he could see the bridge he’d been directed towards, but when he arrived the streets on both sides of the river were empty. The bridge was only five yards across, and no taller than waist-high; there was nowhere to hide aside from crouching under the bridge itself. He waited and watched, listening intently for sounds in the street beyond, but aside from the distant, regular tramp of a patrol he heard nothing. Above the building ahead he saw a sliver of Kasi, well on its way to the horizon: that meant midnight was not far off and the darkest part of the night had begun. As though to confirm that thought, a cloud drifted over the greater moon, Alterr, and what little he’d been able to see in the street faded.

‘Seen anyone?’ came a whisper in his ear, and Perforren’s heart jumped into his throat. He was reaching for his sword even as he realised it was Kayel who’d spoken. The big mercenary grinned, hands resting easily on the knives in his belt.

‘No one,’ Perforren said once he’d recovered himself. ‘Unless you were followed, we’re alone.’

‘Good. I’ve got something to show you.’ Kayel indicated the bridge ahead of them and started off, not waiting to make sure Perforren was moving. The captain took one look behind, wondering how Kayel had come through the market so silently, then hurried to catch up. It sounded like his light footsteps were the only ones in the street: Kayel’s moved without sound and Perforren guessed the soles of his boots were covered with something to muffle the noise. For once he wasn’t wearing his long white cape, preferring instead a dark jacket covered with black-painted steel links. In the spirit of stealth he wore a peasant’s cloth cap to shade the pale skin of his face, and Perforren noticed the man was serious enough about secrecy to eschew his usual gaudy, jewel-hilted bastard sword. Instead he wore only his daggers and a plain short sword like any nightwatchman in Yatter might carry.

At the bridge Kayel paused and looked around. They were alone as far as Perforren could see, and Kayel seemed similarly satisfied.

‘So?’ Perforren whispered.

Kayel’s smirk returned as he pointed down the largest of the streets ahead of them. ‘Look.’

Perforren did so. ‘I don’t—’

Something whipped across his throat and Perforren felt a rush of cool night air on his skin, then something warm spilling over his skin. He tried to speak, but the Land tilted underneath him and a sharp flood of pain stuck him so hard his knees buckled. He staggered, and felt his thigh strike the bridge. The impact twisted him around and he saw Sergeant Kayel watching him, eyes glittering with infernal delight.

Perforren put a hand to his throat and felt something wet there as the chill of night enveloped him. His knees crumpled underneath him and he sank slowly down, his back against the bridge, transfixed by the sight of Kayel. In moments the pain started to fade and his mind grew heavy. The Land started to recede as his limbs grew cold and his vision darkened, drifting further and further until, with the softest of sighs, Captain Perforren of the Knights of the Temples went still.

Ilumene gestured behind him and wiped his dagger clean. Looking down he saw the late captain’s blood slipping closer to his boots. He deliberately lifted one boot then the other, slipping off the cloth coverings from the sole of each and stepping squarely into the widening pool of blood. Footsteps came from behind him and he turned to see a small man scamper over, barefoot and dressed like a tramp in ragged clothes.

The man was of a similar age to Ilumene, but there the similarity ended. He had a fleshy face that looked too big for his slim body, and a tangled thicket of hair dark enough to be Farlan or Menin.

‘Find yourself a nice spot down Balap Street,’ Ilumene ordered as he carefully trod bloody footprints across the bridge to the other side. ‘You saw men in witchfinder uniforms run that way, get it?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Good. Got me some arson to do now.’

The agent recognised that as a dismissal and raced off, careful to keep his feet away from the bloody trail Ilumene was leaving so carefully. The renegade Brotherhood man followed until the blood was nearly used up, then he slipped the coverings back onto his shoes again and checked around once more. There were no shocked faces in sight, nor vengeful troops, but that would change soon enough.

A distant voice broke the quiet: the long, low cry of a dying animal or a person whose mind was broken. Ilumene felt a
frisson
at the sound. It was followed by voices, so quiet he could barely hear them: it could have been monks chanting a prayer, it could have been the whisper of witnesses to his latest crime, but he knew it was neither. There was a sour taste in the air that made him tighten his grip on his knife and looked up into the sky. The clouds were thin and drifting slowly, but against them he saw movement as though dark coils of shadow were overlaying them.

‘Right again, Master,’ he said with a tight smile. ‘The boundaries are weakened; the sound and scents of the other lands touch us now.’

He disappeared silently into a side-street and took an indirect route west, skirting the streets used by the patrols. Before he was halfway to his destination the first human calls went up, and he allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. They were as attracted by the spilled blood as the Dark Place had been.

‘He’s taking his time, witchfinder,’ Chaplain Fynner muttered. ‘If you’re wasting mine, it will go hard on you.’

‘This is what the message said!’ Shanatin protested, a hot flush of fear in his cheeks as he spoke. When the chaplain rounded on him Shanatin didn’t need to feign his emotions.

‘I hope so, for your sake.’

The Devout Congress had appropriated the long arcade of shops in the northeast of the quarter that for centuries had sold temple offerings to the faithful. In these troubled times it now resembled a conveyor belt of tribunals. In the cold stores below they obtained their evidence, while magistrates heard the accusations and passed sentence above. The sentences weren’t carried out on site, but Shanatin guessed that was simply because it lacked the public arena High Priest Garash preferred.

Anything could lead to an arrest – and when you did the work of the Gods, those you arrested were never innocent, otherwise those guided by the spirits of the Gods had made an error, and how could that ever be? Shanatin recognised the looks in the eyes of the fanatics and their followers: some believed, some saw an opportunity. But the much-abused fat fool of the witchfinders was an expert on bullies. With no fear of retribution, the worst of humanity was brought to the surface. Shanatin wasn’t so certain of his standing with Azaer that he dared test the shadow’s loyalty to its followers, but he knew he was on the right side if he opposed such men.

‘Timonas’ll be here,’ he insisted, ‘and Perforren too.’

The chaplain returned to his vigil at the window and Shanatin relaxed a touch. The street was empty and quiet outside, and the strong stink of mud rose in the warm summer air. He squirmed as a trickle of sweat ran down his back, but stopped at a look from Fynner, flinched and edged closer to the window, realising Fynner would have struck him had they not been trying to keep quiet. Before a threat followed however, there came the sound of feet in the street below.

Glad of the distraction, Shanatin peered between the half-dozen remaining shutter slats. They had seen a few false alarms, but now the witchfinder felt a flicker of fear in his stomach as he recognised the brass plated cuirass and red sash that denoted a low-ranking officer of the Order. The man walked without haste, remaining as unobtrusive as possible, but his polished armour caught Alterr’s pale light and seemed to flash a warning to Shanatin.

‘A captain of the Order,’ Fynner whispered, voice laden with anticipation. ‘It must be Perforren – our prey is most obliging.’

‘Unless his dose has worn off,’ Shanatin muttered, to himself as much as anything, but Fynner was in an obliging mood and took the bait.

‘Worn off? I thought you said he’d have plenty from last time.’