Dawnbreaker: Legends of the Duskwalker - Book 3 (20 page)

In the span of time it’d taken him to complete those thoughts, the woman had felled three more patrons; the two juicehead friends, and one heavyset woman that the bartender had once seen beat a man to death with an unbroken bottle. A guy in a red jacket grabbed her from behind, but the woman melted to the floor down between his legs and somehow came up behind him. She snatched him by his belt with one hand and under his chin with the other and jerked the man’s head back and down on to her shoulder. She swung him to one side and then back the other, warding off the others, wielding him like a gibbering shield.

The crowd was confused, and one young man took the opportunity to lunge for her. She met him halfway, thrusting her human shield out and knocking the young man to the floor before drawing back, her captive once again secure before her.

“Twenty Hard was too high an offer for the lot of you,” she said. “This man here,” she waggled the man in the red jacket back and forth as she spoke, “is already dead. If you love your own life more than you love his, leave now.”

Everyone else seemed frozen in place.

“Can’t
any
of you idiots read?” the bartender yelled, and he showed the business end of the sawed-off around to whoever was looking his way. “Get outta here!”

For a moment it was silent. Then someone cursed about the same time someone else said
Kyth
and that broke the spell. People started clearing out every which way they could, as long as it didn’t take them anywhere near the red-eyed woman. The guy in the red jacket had taken to crying through his teeth, undoubtedly wishing he’d made wiser choices about his life.

The woman held her captive locked in place until the bar was empty of everyone else, save for the four bodies on the floor and the bartender. She looked over at the bartender then, down at the sawed-off he was pointing vaguely her way, then back up at him again. She arched an eyebrow. He put the gun down.

She adjusted her grip on the guy in the red jacket, just enough so he could open his mouth. Immediately a torrent of apologies erupted.

“I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t see ’cause I was behind you and I thought you were just some cat, please I swear, I swear!”

“I wish I could say acting out of ignorance was its own punishment,” the woman said. “But I can’t go around making exceptions. You laid hands on Kyth’s property. From your reaction, I judge you’re aware of the penalty.”

“Please,” the guy said, “please, I swear I didn’t know.” He was almost whispering now. The bartender couldn’t watch. He picked up the almost clean glass again and started wiping it out with a towel.

“I can do it now,” the woman continued. “And it’ll be quick. I let you go, Kyth’s still going to have his due. Can’t promise you when or how. Might be tomorrow. Might be ten years from now. Only thing I can tell you is it’ll be much, much worse.”

“Please, please don’t kill me.”

“Suit yourself,” the woman said. Then the bartender heard a thump, a grunt, and the sound of the guy in the red jacket hitting the floor. After that, she returned to her barstool, took a sip of her drink. Plunked something down on the bar.

The bartender didn’t want to look at her. “Still on the house.”

“Still not for the drink.”

He sighed, put the glass down again. Turned to look at her from his safe distance.

“Lady, I’m just trying to make a living here. It’s easy for folks like you to roll in off the streets and throw your weight around because it’s little people like me that always pay the price for it. I told you before I didn’t want any trouble, and you brought me a heap of it.” He slung his towel on the bartop and started wiping it just to give himself something to do. “Not that you care about any of that.”

“On the contrary, I do care. Quite a bit. That’s what this is for,” she said, tapping the stack of Hard she’d left on the bar. “So you don’t have to pay the price.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“You won’t have to pay
that
price, either,” she continued. “The kid in red will wake up in a bit, and live the rest of his days in abject fear, I suppose. Maybe he’ll use his time to do some good. And a couple of folks will be around shortly to take care of the others. Things are going to be changing around here.”

“Yeah? And why’s that?”

“Corrin and his ilk annoyed Kyth.”

“Seems like a bad idea.”

The woman finished her drink in a strong gulp, placed the glass gently on the top of the bar, and then stood.

“There are two possible outcomes to annoying Kyth,” she said while she put on her coat. “One is that he takes away one of your favorite toys.”

She stopped there, left him hanging, headed for the door. The curiosity was too strong.

“What’s the other?” he called after her. She’d already opened the door partway, but stopped and looked back at him.

“He takes away one of your favorite toys, and then he takes an interest in you,” she said, and she flashed that heartmelting smile at him. “What’s your name, bartender?”

“Name’s Weston,” he answered.

“Well, Weston. Thank you for the drinks.”

“You’re welcome...” he trailed off, leaving room for her to offer her own name. She declined. And he knew it was silly to ask, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying. “I don’t suppose you got a name?”

“My name’s my own,” she said flatly. Then that smirk crept back up. “But most people just call me Trouble.”

W
hen Wren
first surveyed the twisted ruins across the open plain, he found himself completely overwhelmed by all the possibilities. At first, he had stood at the door looking back the way they’d come just like Haiku had told him to. But nothing he saw jumped out as an obvious refuge.

Everywhere he looked seemed equally sparse; all bad options and none better than any other. Having all choices was almost as bad as no choices. Maybe worse, because at least having
no
choice gave some direction. Wren adjusted his pack, more for something to do than because it was necessary. He did need to get moving, but the fear of heading the wrong way kept him frozen in place. And more than that, though he tried not to admit it to himself, there was a feeling of security there at the foot of that fortress. Even outside the tower, the strength of the place radiated outward and cut the sense of exposure. To leave it was to invite the malevolent eye of the wide open.

“Any action’s better than just standing around,” Wren heard Three say. Not quite audibly, but the thought formed so clearly in his mind he almost looked for him. “Get moving. You’ll find it.”

The weariness of his mind and body blended dreams with the real. But though Wren knew Three was dead and forever gone, his heart still responded to the confidence in the man’s voice, imagined or remembered.

You’ll find it.

Wren picked a direction more or less in line with the way he’d first come in and forced himself to leave the meager security at the foundation of the steel fortress. That security was an illusion anyway. The first few steps were always the hardest, he told himself. He’d feel better once he was on the move.

But as he walked across the barren plain and the distance between him and the building grew, fear swept in to fill the emptiness behind him. Whatever change of perspective he’d gained about the Strand on his way in had evaporated. Memories haunted his every step, images he’d suppressed awoke with vengeance and torment. Come nightfall, his mind told him, this empty stretch of dead land would be alive with the Weir. This was their land, their home. Wherever he hid, they would find him. He turned back towards the tower.

You’ll find it.

The phantom voice echoed amidst his thoughts, a stillness in the heart of the storm. Wren drew his knife and gripped it so hard it hurt. The blade was too small to save him, he was too weak to wield it well, but there was courage in the steel. And Haiku’s words as they left Greenstone too came back to him; back there was a life paralyzed by fear, nothing more.

He had already chosen. Now his job was to execute that choice. The fear was the way. And though he didn’t feel any safer or any braver, he turned his face away from the tower and into the fear, and with trembling steps, he advanced.

Once Wren had resolved himself, he made much better progress and his mind quieted. In ten minutes, he’d crossed the border of the dead space and reached where the first broken buildings rose. At first, he wasn’t sure what to look for. Haiku had told him somewhere high, or somewhere small. That seemed too vague to be of any real help now. He wandered amongst the ruins, searching for a place that looked right. Was the second floor of a building high enough? Was something he could crawl through on his hands and knees small enough, or did Haiku mean something he had to get on his belly to enter? He spent maybe half an hour trying to think of all the things anyone had ever told him about being out in the open after dark, and using them to evaluate each option as it presented itself. Nothing seemed promising.

And then Wren realized he was going about it all wrong. He’d spent three nights traveling with Haiku, two of those outside the safety of a wayhouse. Maybe he didn’t have to
think
about it, maybe it was something he couldn’t figure out just by looking. Maybe he had to find something that
felt
right. And the only way to do that was to get inside some of the places he’d been passing by. It was obvious that nothing in the immediate area would do; there was hardly anything with two standing walls here. But armed with a new perspective, he doubled back.

Wren wandered without any specific direction, turning whichever way he felt like going. The first place he came to was a low one-story structure that had caved in on one side. The only entrance he could find was choked with debris, but there was a narrow gap that looked just big enough for him to squeeze through. He stood outside for a good two or three minutes trying to build up the courage to poke his head into that space. Ultimately, he couldn’t bring himself to do it, and moved on.

Wren wandered on as the sun slipped lower and the shadows grew longer, and his barely-suppressed anxiety threatened to bloom. About ten minutes later, a narrow three-story building caught his eye. Most of the front of the building was sheared off, but somehow the rooms inside were still in place, like some grotesque dollhouse. Both sides and the rear of the structure were still standing. The roof had collapsed and dumped a good portion of itself in the front; where it remained, it was deeply bowed. It was almost as if some giant hand had descended from the sky and stuck a finger right down the face of the structure. On the right side he saw an exterior staircase, rusting and skeletal, leading up to the second floor. He walked around that side to take a closer look.

The stairs were twisted and sagging, and a section of it had pulled away from the exterior wall, but Wren thought he might be light enough to make it up. He’d always been a pretty good climber. The staircase led to a metal-mesh landing, where a dark and doorless entryway awaited. The fact that it was dark inside probably meant there weren’t too many holes in the walls and ceiling. Wren didn’t like the look of it all that much, but he knew he was running out of time, and he decided to check it out.

He went to the bottom of the stairs and took hold of the metal railing. It wobbled a little when he took it, but it didn’t feel like it was going to break off. Not immediately, anyway. He started up cautiously, testing each step before he committed to it. The first few stairs groaned and creaked under foot, but they held. He took that as a good sign. Maybe not good, exactly, but at least it wasn’t a
bad
sign. The section that had pulled away from the building was about six feet above the ground, and it drooped and leaned inward towards the wall. Wren stood at the last stair before that part, looking carefully at how far he had to go before the staircase fully reconnected to the building. He figured it was five stairs. It was too far to jump and now that he was close to it, it didn’t seem like the steps in between could bear even his meager weight. He stood there considering for a few moments. The outer frame of the staircase on the high side was wide and still looked like it was in pretty good shape. He thought that if he could keep his balance and walk along the frame, he might be able to get up quickly enough that it wouldn’t collapse under him. And if the steps did collapse, well... at least it wasn’t
that
far to the ground.

Wren took a deep breath and tested his footing, first with his right foot then, when that felt weird, his left. That actually seemed worse, so he tried leading with his right again. The angle of the railing made it more difficult than he’d expected, but after a couple of false starts, he held on to the rail and took quick, short steps along the outer frame. The metal whined and shifted beneath him. On his fourth step, the whole staircase shuddered and then popped, and Wren felt everything sliding to the right, away from the building. Further up the stairs, he saw another bolt pull free.

His balance had already been off-center and even though he did everything he could to adjust, his next step came down right in the middle of the unsupported section. The staircase shrieked beneath him. He didn’t break through immediately, but he could feel the metal flexing and giving way with a sickening, almost mushy sensation. Without thinking, Wren threw himself forward with his arms outstretched.

He didn’t get the push-off he had hoped for, and the impact was hard; his chin slammed down on one of the steps. A flash of pain, spots in his eyes. Not a graceful landing at all. But he hadn’t fallen through. Wren lay still for a long moment, sprawled flat on the stairs, feeling them vibrate under him. When he felt confident enough that the whole staircase wasn’t going to collapse with him on it, he risked lifting himself up and looking back down the steps. His feet were still dangling out over the bent and broken segment, but from the waist up he was laying on the more stable upper portion, where the staircase remained firmly secured to the building.

Wren drew his legs up behind him, and crawled up the few remaining steps to the top. There, he turned and sat on the landing with his feet on the stair below. His chin burned. He touched it lightly, winced, and his fingers came away wet and bright red. He ran his thumb through the fresh blood and then wiped his hand on his pants. From his vantage he could tell the stairs were definitely in worse shape than they had been just before his ascent, and he wondered if he’d have to find an alternate way down. A moment later it occurred to him that, with as much trouble as he’d had coming up, that ruin of a staircase might be almost as good as another wall. A Weir probably wouldn’t try to come up that way without good reason, and even if it did at least it wouldn’t make it to the top without making a whole lot of noise. It was kind of like having a built-in early-warning system.

Wren decided to check out the inside of the building. He touched his chin again, and then had to wipe his hand on his pants again. The blood was still bright and he noticed it’d dripped onto the stair at his feet. He was going to have to do something about that. For the time being, he tugged the cuff of his shirtsleeve out from his coat and used it to wipe the blood off the stair. Then he dabbed it gently on his chin. Wren got to his feet and stepped into the building, pausing at the entrance for a minute to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The air was musty and when he shifted he could feel the grit on the floor under his feet. The sun was getting low and the door was facing the north anyway, so the light didn’t penetrate very far, but once his eyes started to get used to it he saw he had been partially right about the room. The walls didn’t have any holes at all that he could see. It was the ceiling he’d been wrong about.

The ceiling had collapsed in the middle. Or maybe it was more accurate to say it was the floor above that had fallen in. In any case, from where he stood on the second floor, he looked up through a yawning hole above and into utter blackness. Whatever else was up there, at least the roof hadn’t caved in over this portion. There was no visible daylight that he could see. He set his pack down on the ground there by the doorway and rummaged around for his chemlight. It took him a while to find it; it had fallen down into the very bottom, of course. When he finally felt it and wrapped his fingers around it, his hand brushed against the cold metal of the bundle he’d carefully packed on one side. The cloth he’d wrapped it in must have come undone.

Wren crouched by the door. He pulled the chemlight out and laid it next to the pack on the floor, and then drew out the bundle and rested it on his lap. The cloth had fallen away in one part, exposing a portion of the grip and some of the surrounding steel. He’d intended just to wrap it back up and put it away, but now that he had it out, laid across his legs, he couldn’t resist peeling back the rest of the cloth and taking a peek. He drew the cloth away and looked at the heavy prize in his lap.

Three’s pistol.

He ran his fingers over it lightly, tracing the cylinder, the grip, the trigger guard. It was unloaded, but even so, he wouldn’t touch the trigger. He still remembered the deafening thunderclap that had filled the room and made his insides tremble, the one time he’d seen Three fire it. The pistol was massive but well-balanced. The scuffs and scrapes showed years of hard use; the finely-tuned components told of the great care that had been taken over it. Rugged and resilient. A precise instrument whose design left no doubt as to its purpose. Wren opened the cylinder to see the three empty chambers, then snapped it closed again. After a moment, he repeated the process. There was something almost soothing about the way the mechanisms all worked together. Even so, the pistol felt menacing in his hand. It thrilled him, but also felt wild and uncontrollable, as if at any moment it might turn itself on him.

Mama had kept the pistol for a long time. Right until the end, when she’d passed the weapon on to Chapel, who had in turn presented it to Wren on their second day in Greenstone. Chapel hadn’t said much, just that Wren’s mother had wished him to have it, and he’d laid it on the table in front of him, with its three remaining rounds of ammunition on the side. It was as if some ancient king had handed down his sword from of old. Wren didn’t know the story of the weapon, but he could tell there was one. Three had handled it with both familiarity and reverence. For a long while, Wren had just looked at the gun on the table, too overwhelmed, too afraid to touch it, but too awed to turn away.

It was Mol, of course, who had come to the rescue. She’d brought an aged but fine cloth and helped Wren wrap the weapon securely. The ammunition they kept separate, in a small pouch on the side of Wren’s pack. It was too rare to leave behind, and far too dangerous to leave in the gun.

A dark, wet splotch appeared on the grip; it took Wren a moment to recognize his bleeding chin had just dripped. He hurriedly scrubbed the spot on the gun clean with his shirtsleeve and then dabbed his chin again. There was a cheap adhesive bandage or two in his pack. He wrapped the gun back in its covering and returned it to its place in his backpack, and then rummaged around for the bandages. Mama would be upset about him using his sleeve like that. The thought made his chest go tight, but he kept himself under control while he pressed the bandage onto his chin.

With that completed, Wren finally got to the task at hand. He picked up his chemlight and twisted the endcap to ignite it. It glowed yellow-green and illuminated the small room with its soft light. Not that there was much to see. The room was filled with debris, almost as if the room above had been full of concrete and had dumped it all in a pile here below. In fact, that might very well have been what had happened. There was more to the pile than just concrete, of course, but it really did look like someone had poured out a huge bucket of construction material. That didn’t leave much room for anything else in there. There were no windows and if there were any connecting rooms, their doors had been completely choked with the rubble.