Nio tightened his cloak around his throat when he stepped out the front door. It was just past twilight and stars winked down from the dark sky. He was late, but it wouldn’t hurt the Juggler to be kept waiting. A cold rain was falling. It had been a strange summer for weather, almost as if the earth was no longer sure of the seasons. He wondered what the fall would bring. An early snow, perhaps. The streets were nearly empty of people, and the only ones he passed hurried along with their heads down, intent on reaching their homes and the warmth and welcome and firelight waiting there.
Once, a long time ago, he had wanted the same kind of life.
Cyrnel. He had loved her—that much he was sure of. But when he tried to recall her face, there was only an impression of beauty and a blur in his memory. He remembered freckles on her arms and a low, laughing voice. She smelled of fresh bread and the sunlight on the wheat fields in the valley east of the Stone Tower in Thule. The school bought their milk and cheese and grain from her father, the farmer. Nio remembered the look of the cheese more clearly than the farmer’s daughter: small, white rounds smelling of caraway. The cook had been stingy with that cheese. Nio almost smiled to himself at the thought.
Perhaps he had wanted to marry her. He would have had a home to hurry back to at night. Someone waiting for him, other than the old ghosts sleeping inside the books in his library. But he had chosen the ghosts. Or perhaps they had chosen him. Some days he wasn’t sure.
It was dark by the time he reached the south market square—an ugly, cramped plaza hemmed in with shops shuttered against the night. The rain had turned into a mist heavy enough to blur the shapes of buildings and the lights shining from windows. The stars and the moon could not be seen at all. It seemed he was alone in the city, for the mist also had the effect of muffling noise. Even his boots on the cobblestones only whispered.
Nio smelled the butcher’s place before he saw it. A cloying scent of offal and blood filled the air, and the mist felt greasy with it. The stones there were stained dark. He turned west and walked down the street called Forraedan. It was narrow enough to be more of an alley than a street. He fancied he could almost stretch out his hands and touch the houses on both sides as he walked. The mist thickened, and close by he heard water dripping.
Seventh house on the left, the Juggler had said. He passed the fourth. The street turned sharply to the right where the fifth house stood, though it was puzzling to make out where one house ended and one began. They were built right up against each other, sharing their walls and a common sweep of roof that loomed overhead. Perhaps he should have been counting doors instead of houses. Fancy a brothel being hidden away in this warren. But then he came to the sixth house and the street ended against a stone wall taller than the houses themselves. A door opened behind him, further back up the street. He turned.
“You’re late,” said the Juggler. The fat man was standing about twenty feet away. A lantern hung from his hand and cast a glow on the wet cobblestones.
“I was reading and lost track of the time.”
“Ah,” said the Juggler. “I’ve never gone in much for reading.”
“There’s no seventh house,” said Nio. His voice was mild. “You did say come to the seventh house, didn’t you?”
“I did,” said the fat man.
“There’s only this wall.”
“Yes,” said the other, nodding. “There’re only six, and then this wall. It’s not a house, as you see. It’s the back wall of a warehouse where an old man makes candles, he and his family. Candles made of grease, boiled in cauldrons and poured into his molds. Nothing to steal inside. Only thousands and thousands of candles. We leave him alone, we do, and in return—well, he’ll use just about anything to make his grease with. Just about anything. We keep ‘em well supplied here. It’s convenient for us.”
“Where’s the man called the Knife?” asked Nio.
“Ah, the Knife,” said the fat man, laying one finger alongside his nose and looking concerned. “Well sir, I says to him, come on out tonight as there’s a gent who wants to talk with you. But he says no, I’ve got better things to do than that—you go tell him I’ll see his gold first before meeting. That’s what he says to me. See now, sir, he’s a difficult lad, the Knife is—always has been, always will. Won’t come to heel when you call him, and even the Silentman knows that.”
“That won’t do. I’m afraid you’ve disappointed me.”
“Aye, and I’m disappointed the same!” said the fat man. He shook his head sadly. “I begged the lad nicely. Just a few minutes’ chat and then you’ll have your gold. But he wouldn’t have none of it. Tell you what we’ll do, sir. Why don’t you hand over your bag of gold and I’ll see the Knife gets it. That’ll put him in a better mood.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
At the words, two shapes materialized out of the darkness behind the Juggler. They were both large men—the sort of brute that Nio had seen in the Goose and Gold. He sighed inwardly. The evening could have been spent in a more pleasant fashion, reading a book in his library and smoking a pipe.
“Tsk,” said the fat man. “We’ll just have to take it from you, then.”
“I don’t think so,” said Nio.
This seemed to please the Juggler. He smiled, his teeth gleaming in the lamplight.
“Then we’ll have to kill you.”
The two men behind the Juggler moved forward. Knives appeared in their hands. The darkness and mist blurred their faces so their eyes were only gouges of shadow and their mouths black holes. Skulls, thought Nio. He sighed again. One of them reached for him, a big, bony hand. Moisture gleamed on the skin, and the lamplight picked out scars across the knuckles.
He whispered a word and time slowed. The air thickened around the two men approaching him so that they swam through it. Their limbs were ponderous and weighted. He stepped to one side. Their eyes could barely follow him. The Juggler stood frozen behind them, huddled against the stone wall of the building. The light cast by his lantern seemed to have congealed and turned a yellowish gray. Water dripped from an eave overhead, falling so slowly that he could have plucked them from the air, one by one, like jewels.
The darkness in the street behind the Juggler trembled, and then a wisp of it separated, clotting together to form the shape of the wihht. On unhurried legs, it started forward and reached for the fat man.
“Na, hie aerest,” said Nio. The thing obeyed, veering, and made for the closer of the two other men. Shadow closed on flesh and grew, flaring up like a flame leaping into life, but without light or heat—only darkness that surged with quick movements. A scream cut off into silence. The second man was turning, turning slowly until he saw the shadow reaching for him. His eyes widened, and then he was blotted out in a wave of darkness. Only seconds, perhaps, went by. Nio was not sure, for the spell of slowing still held sway within the confines of the cobblestones and walls and dark, shuttered windows that looked on in silence.
The mass of shadow receded until there was only the wihht standing there. The two men were gone, although a few damp rags of clothing fluttered to the ground around the wihht’s feet. It turned toward Nio and seemed to smile. He could not rightly tell in the little light there was, but it seemed now that the features of the thing were finer and more human.
“And this other?” it said, voice still hoarse and awkward.
“Bidan,” he said. Wait. He bound it into patience with his will woven into the word. Yet, even though the word and his will held, the wihht walked at his heels as he advanced toward the Juggler. The lantern trembled in the fat man’s hand, his fingers white-knuckled across the handle.
“You chose poorly,” said Nio. The other only stared at him, eyes huge in their sockets. Behind them, the wihht chuckled.
“Though this night has proven disappointing,” continued Nio, “as you have brought no Knife, we must talk, you and I. Perhaps you know nothing I would find valuable, but I must make sure. I hope you understand. Now, where is the Knife?”
But the fat man remained silent, frozen except for the lantern trembling in his clutch and his eyes flickering from Nio’s face to the shadow waiting behind and then back.
“Cweoan,” said Nio. Speak.
“I don’t know, my lord!” stammered the Juggler. His face shone with sweat. “He did a big job some nights back. A real big job! Did it with one of my boys. He owes me money now, but the Guild ain’t paid up yet!”
“What was the job?”
The words came in a rush, but Nio knew the answer already.
“A box lifted from a rich merchant’s house. Just a little box, but it had something valuable in it. It wouldna been so or the Knife wouldna run the job. Usually, those jobs are left to the burglars—and he ain’t a burglar, he’s the bleeding Knife! I saw the box myself, right after it was nicked. The Knife was carrying it when he entered the tunnel underneath the Goose and Gold—the inn where you and me first met.”
Nio said nothing, though it was all he could do not to grind his teeth together.
“The tunnel—it goes to the Silentman’s court,” gabbled the fat man. “Through the labyrinth. Nice place, all old stone, but strange. I hate going there! The Silentman ain’t paid up yet, which means the client ain’t got the goods yet. That’s standard Guild procedure.”
“How many in this Guild of yours know about the box?”
“Er,” gulped the Juggler, his eyes sliding past Nio toward what waited behind him, “prob’ly not many. The Silentman’s real silent ‘bout his jobs an’ clients. That’s why he’s called the Silentman.”
“How many?”
“Um, mebbe four at most. The Knife, the Silentman and his advisor fellow, and me.”
“What of your boy?”
“Oh, well, he was—he was dead by the time the work was finished.”
“Ah,” said Nio. “Broke his neck in a fall, did he?”
“No, no! More a matter of tying up loose ends. Another sign of the importance of the job. No need for flapping lips about. The boy was poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” said Nio. “What do you mean by that? A strange sort of business, this Guild of yours, if it kills off its employees as they work.”
“Just a boy,” babbled the fat man. “Nothing personal. As soon as he came up out of the chimney, handed the box over, the Knife jabbed him full of lianol. Out like a blown candle. He wouldn’t have felt a thing.”
“What?!”
The fat man gurgled like a water fountain, but Nio no longer heard him. Lianol. The poison was lethal. There was no way to reverse it. He had never heard or read of any way possible.
His mind froze. The box. If what he guessed about the box was true—if what he guessed about what was inside the box was true—then that was how the boy had cheated death. Nausea swept over him. The boy had opened the box. The boy had touched what was inside the box. Blood had been drawn.
Nio turned back to the Juggler. His voice shook with rage.
“Who contracted the Guild for this job?”
“I don’t know,” said the fat man.
Behind Nio, the wihht stirred to life and stepped forward. Out of the corner of his eye, Nio could see the pallid face and the light gleaming in the sockets.
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” shrieked the fat man. The lantern fell from his grasp and broke on the cobblestones, sending up a brief flare of flame over the pooled oil. Glass crunched underneath the wihht’s boot and the flame was extinguished.
“No, no!” sobbed the Juggler. He shrank away and covered his face with his hands.
“I believe you,” said Nio.
“You do?” faltered the fat man, peeping at him from between his fingers.
“Yes. By the way, it’s nothing personal, but this will probably hurt a great deal.”
Nio turned and stalked away down the dark street.
The boy was all that mattered now. Only the boy. But he would make the Guild and its client pay dearly for what they had done. First the boy, then he would see to everything else. Everything! He ground his teeth together in fury. He had been so close. The boy had been within his hands. He could have snapped his filthy little neck. The wihht would find him. It would find him, sniffing its way through the city until it caught the scent.
Behind Nio, a scream choked into a sort of bubbling noise, and then a sigh. The clouds in the sky had frayed away sometime in the last hour, and the moon stared down, pale and white and disapproving.