Shadow's Son (41 page)

Justice.

Levictus had stopped half a dozen paces away. The sorcerer stood
there with raindrops streaming down the hard planes of his face.
Watching. Waiting.

With a grim smile, Caim stepped toward his enemy, and the ache in his
chest exploded. Kit appeared as a sensation of weightlessness enveloped him.
Joy radiated from her smile like the dawn of the first morning. He had never
seen her like this before. Gone was the girlish ingenue. In her place was a
woman in full bloom, the woman Caim had always imagined she could be.

She bent down to him, and the darkness flowed along her body like a
second skin, but it wasn't entirely black. Murky patterns twisted within
the dark. As he reached up, they played along the flesh of his hand and
arm like tiny vibrations, and then penetrated his skin, through the muscles and sinews down into his bones. Colors beyond description spun
around him, striations of light and shadow cast into physical form.

"Trust yourself," she whispered.

Caim took a deep breath. He knew what had to be done, but could he
do it? Could he release the bands of self-control that had held him
together for so long? If he let go, would he lose himself? He took another
glance over the side. The darkness parted around him like a veil of
sheerest gossamer and he saw Josey, clinging to a stone projection. How
she fought for life! She wouldn't give up, not as long as a single breath
remained within her. Yes. He could do it, for her.

Caim released the breath, and with it all his reservations. The sorcerer
stood like a statue of some forgotten demigod of the night. But Kit had
said he could bleed. If he could bleed, he could die.

Caim saluted with the sword.
His
sword now. Levictus nodded as if
they had come to some agreement, and then advanced across the rainsplattered tiles. Again the shadows darted at
Caim. He could see them
better now, not as amorphous blobs, but as small, sleek creatures with
sharp teeth and glittering black eyes. But before they could reach him, a
black shape erupted from the darkness. The tiny shadows scurried out of
the beast's path. It was huge. Striding on four big paws, it resembled a
great sable mastiff.

Caim leveled his sword at the creature. But instead of attacking him,
the thing turned to pursue the shadows, scooping them up in its massive
jaws and tearing them to bits. Then he realized this was the same shadow
creature he had seen before, at the Vine and in the cellar under Josey's
manor. It had never threatened him, only his enemies, and by the vibration thrumming in his head as the beast tore through the sorcerer's pets,
this thing was somehow bound to him.

A violent hiss was the only warning
Caim got. He lifted the sword in
time to deflect a black knife aimed at his throat. Phosphoric sparks flew
as the weapons connected, recoiled, and clashed again. The shadows had
fled into the darkness, and the beast with them. Caim almost felt like his
old self. On the next pass, he beat the sorcerer's counterattack by a fraction of a heartbeat. He feinted high and slashed. The sword tore through
black fabric and found flesh underneath.

Levictus vanished, leaving behind a few spots of blood. But this time,
Caim witnessed something he hadn't before. As the sorcerer disappeared,
he stepped into a hole in the air, like a window into nothingness. It
slammed shut behind him, but tendrils of dark luminescence remained.
Caim turned, following them with his eyes. He was ready when Levictus
reappeared on the other side of the roof. He struck. The sorcerer nearly fell
on his back evading the lunge. His knives deflected the sword's path
enough to avoid being spitted. Then, like a cat he righted himself and
kept coming.

Around and around they circled while Kit danced above their heads.
Her laughter rivaled the thunder. Caim took a scratch on his left hand, a
shallow wound, but Levictus followed up with a series of stabs that put him
on the defensive. Yet the sorcerer was slowing with every step, while Caim
felt his stamina improving. The sword twitched in his hand like a living thing. He pressed with a riposte, but Levictus parried and leapt at him.
Caim tried to reverse his momentum as the tip of a black knife raced toward
his unprotected chest. He didn't have time to think as he twisted to avoid
the deadly strike. The edge of the roof reared up toward him. Off balance,
he would have fallen, should have fallen, except that the darkness billowed
around him, cradling him in its grasp. His feet left the tiles, and came down
a moment later behind the sorcerer. Somehow, he had been transported a
dozen feet through thin air. Levictus turned, his knives moving. Even as his
brain boggled at what had just happened, Caim lunged.

Levictus made no sound, but the tendons of his neck stood out like
taut cables. His eyes stabbed at Caim with the hatred of the damned for
one interminable moment. Then, he slumped to his knees.

Caim shoved the blade deeper and stepped back. The sword's hilt
quivered in the sorcerer's chest like the masthead of a floundering ship. In
his mind, Caim saw his father, kneeling in the blood-drenched yard of
their family estate.

Justice. At last.

Sibilant whispers echoed in the darkness.
Caim balled his hands into
fists as the shadows returned, but they ignored him. Skittering like tiny
spiders, they adhered themselves to the sorcerer's body until they encased
it in a black cocoon. The corpse dissolved before Calm's eyes, melted away
with the rain and ran down the cracks between the roof tiles. A minute
later, nothing was left but his father's sword and an empty, sodden cloak.

Caim watched the black garment flap in the wind. The presence was
gone, the beast and the little shadows with it, and something else as well.
His fear. A weight had been lifted from his mind. He was different-he
accepted that-but he wasn't a monster.

A faint wail rode the storm's howl.
Josey!

He limped toward the roof's edge, but froze as a barrage of lightning
strokes illuminated the night. Ral blocked his path, face streaked with pink
lines of blood, sword drawn back. Caim recoiled, but there was nowhere to
go. Even an old woman couldn't miss from so close. Ral grinned through
his gory mask as the sword shot forth like a bolt from an arbalest. Caim
grabbed at the blade with his naked hands, but it slid between his fingers
and plunged into his stomach. Warm blood bubbled over Calm's hands as
he braced himself for the disemboweling twist, but the sword dropped from the killer's hand to clatter on the tiles. Ral gaped with a stunned expression
as he collapsed at Calm's feet for the second time.

Caim lifted his gaze to the slight figure in drenched rags standing
behind the dead assassin, one of his
suetes
clutched in her shaking, bloodstained hands.

"Jo-"
Caim tried to say, but the roof jumped up to smash his face.

Then, he was on his back. Josey and Kit knelt on either side of him.
Their hands tugged his jacket in different directions, each trying to pull
him upright, but the darkness held him in its embrace. His thoughts were
slow to come. Water coursed down Josey's face. Overhead, the heavens
roiled in their wrath, but an expanding sense of peace filled the hollow
spaces of his soul. She was safe.

"It's all right," he whispered with a smile that took all of his dwindling strength.

"Don't leave!" Josey and Kit shouted in his ears. "Stay with me!"

He wanted to stay, but he had to disappoint them both as the night
pulled him down into its unfathomable depths.

orning brought a fresh glow to the city. Breezes laden with
the sea's cleansing tang blew across the cemetery grounds and
banished the lingering stenches of smoke and death. Low strains from a
six-piece orchestra filled the grassy strips between long rows of tombs
while people gathered around the freshly dug plot.

An imposing marble gravestone stood in the midst of the assembly, the
beveled edges of the words engraved upon it glinting in the pale sunlight.

Caim Du'Vartha

1218-1242

Dear Friend and Loyal Subject.

It is Not the Night We Fear,

But the Gathering Shadows Beyond Our Ken
.

From his vantage in a thicket of aged brushwood
Caim read those
words, their letters seared into his brain like harbingers from the next
world. Although the faux funeral had been his idea, Josey had come up
with the epitaph. He wasn't keen on the "loyal subject" part.

It was an odd thing to observe his own funeral. He supposed this was
how ghosts, recently evicted from their corporeal bodies, must feel as they
watched their friends and loved ones gather to pay final tribute. In all, he
found it rather dreary

Then again, the world had taken on a different shade since the events
on the palace roof. The trees, the grass underfoot, even the people
attending his memorial-none of them seemed completely real. A new
presence flitted in and out of his awareness, always on the periphery. Every
so often he would catch a glimpse of a shadow-low to the ground, moving swiftly-and then it would be gone. It was as if he had stepped
through a doorway into another world, one deeper and more profound
than the one he had known all his life, and there was no going back.

Kit hadn't changed, of course. Or rather, she had returned to the same
waif she had always been, ever youthful and bubbling with effervescence.
Whatever transformation happened to her that night, it had reversed back
by the time he regained consciousness. She refused to discuss the beastly
presence, refused even to admit she'd seen it, which shouldn't have surprised him. Same old Kit.

But everything else was different, much of it oddly so. For a known
assassin to enter the palace was unnerving enough. To awaken in the
imperial bedchamber, attended by dozens of physicians and nurses and
servants, had almost been too much for him. But then Josey had appeared
and everything seemed right again. Even now the sight of her, dolled up
in full regalia as she officiated over the ceremony, made his pulse race. She
looked every bit an empress. Her hair had been dyed back to something
close to its natural color. A gown of crushed velvet in somber purple lined
with snow leopard fur accented her complexion and set off the jewels dripping from her neck, ears, and wrists. She was every man's fantasy: young,
beautiful, kind-hearted, yet tough enough to stand on her own.
And as far
beyond your reach as the moon and stars.

A graceful young woman stood beside Josey. Anastasia, a friend from
some important family. Fetching enough for a blonde, but she was outshone by the empress. A stooped, elderly man in a plain gray suit perched
at Josey's elbow. Earl Frenig's manservant had been squirreled away in the
palace dungeons after his master's murder. Besides being a bit undernourished, the old codger was little worse for wear.

Hubert stood in the front row amid several palace ministers. Head
bowed, his left arm in a sling, the new Duke Vassili was a hero. In Low
Town they were calling him "Lord of the Gutters." Not the most
charming title, but he had taken to it like a kitten to cream. Just days
after taking over his father's affairs, Hubert had spearheaded an effort to
revive the Thurim. Their first item of business was a salvo of bold reforms
aimed at relieving the plight of Othir's poorest citizens, including a plan
to rebuild the parts of the city destroyed in the fire. Together, Hubert and
Josey were going to accomplish magnificent things.

Another initiative coming out of the palace was the disbanding of the
Sacred Brotherhood and the stripping of lands from wealthy priests. In the
aftermath of the People's Revolt, as it was being called, the remaining hierarchs of the True Church had convened to elect a new prelate, one favorably
disposed toward the restored imperium. Fresh proclamations of friendship
and mutual assistance flowed from Castle DiVecci daily. To all appearances,
it was the beginning of a new era in Nimea. For the first time in a long time,
the future on the horizon looked brighter than the fading glories of the past.

Kit leaned on Calm's shoulder while he watched the proceedings.

"Isn't this all a bit much?" she asked. "I mean, it's not like most of
these people actually gave two figs about you when you were alive."

"Yes. Well, people have to have their pretenses."
Caim snapped off a
twig from a tree branch and dropped it to the ground. A leather pack sat
at his feet, beside a pair of wrapped bundles the length of his arm. Some
victuals and a couple bottles liberated from the palace wine cellars, his
bow, and his father's sword. Along with the clothes on his back and his
knives, they were everything he owned in the world. The thought was
oddly liberating.

"You think anyone will fall for this?" Kit asked.

"Why not? After the murders and the riots, everyone just wants to get
back to some semblance of normalcy. If the burial of one poor thug is
enough to satisfy them, isn't that a small price to pay?"