The Wicked Day (54 page)

“No sense dragging our feet,” said Magret. And, with that, the five children set off down the street.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

WHAT FEN SAID

“Another round for the house!” roared the bigger of Lena’s two captors.

He wiped his mouth and slammed his mug down on the counter. The Goose and Gold roared back in appreciation. The inn was crowded now, which was what always happened when someone began standing drinks for the customers. People surged up against the counter.

“What’s the occasion, Malo?” said someone, slapping Lena’s captor on the back.

“Caught me a goose,” said Malo, swaying a bit on his feet. He looked around and then lowered his voice to what he thought was a conspiratorial whisper. “A golden goose. One of them gooses chock-full of gold. And the Silentman’s gonna pay.”

The enthusiasm around Malo dimmed at this news. People edged away, clutching their mugs of ale. The innkeeper leaned across the counter and filled Malo’s mug. “Perhaps the gentlemen might care to relax in one of our rooms to wait? The, er. . . the—he’s coming. I sent word through the, uh. . . He should be here very soon.”

“Nonsense,” said Malo. “I’m a man. He’s a man. We’re all men here—besides,
hic
!—besides my little golden goose. She ain’t a man, I tell you. She ain’t. I’ll fight any three men of you, if you sez different.”

He glared around the room, but no one met his eyes. Several people slipped out the door, and those who remained drifted away to the shadowed corners of the room. Lena sat in her chair, watching all this. For the hundredth time, she tensed against the bonds around her wrists and ankles. It was no use. They were as tight as they had been an hour ago. The front door opened and closed and two more patrons slipped out of the inn. A dusting of snow blew in through the door as they left. The room was cold, despite the fire crackling on the hearth. And with the chill in the air was fear. She could feel it, a sort of brittleness in the air that hardened in staring faces and left the innkeeper wiping the countertop in trembling and uncertain movements. Her other captor, the basher, stirred in his chair at the corner of her eye. He was a quiet man in comparison to Malo. The more dangerous of the two, in her estimation. He hadn’t had any ale the entire evening but sat in his chair watching the room and watching her.

“Fool,” muttered the basher.

He might have said more, but he did not, for it was at that moment that someone stepped through the doorway behind the bar. The one that led to the stairs and the cellar below. The temperature in the room seemed to drop. The innkeeper shrank away. The flames in the fireplace leapt up, crackling, but they changed in color from orange and red to a yellowish blue. The room was silent. Lena could hear the wind outside, whispering in the eaves and scratching on the windows with the icy fingertips of snowflakes.

“Good evening,” said the newcomer. His voice was friendly, but there was an odd sort of vibration in the sound, as if he held himself tightly in check. “Good evening, good evening. That is, I mean to say, good evening.”

He stepped forward and the light of the fireplace fell on his face. Lena’s heart shuddered. The man from the tunnels. The regent. Nimman Botrell. But no, it wasn’t precisely him. There was something fuller about the face, deeper about the eyes, as if there was more to him than merely Nimman Botrell.

“Someone summoned me? The mirror spoke to me. Quite urgently. It asked for the Silentman. I suppose that’s me. I don’t mind being bothered, but only when I don’t mind, and I always mind. Being bothered makes me hungry. I really need to consult someone’s memories on this. I have so many inside of me, it’s like storing a library in my head. Ah, there it is. I suppose you, innkeeper, you were the one who summoned me. Some sort of Thieves Guild affair, no doubt? I've always considered the Guild a miserable collection of wretched little maggots. Cutting throats and lifting purses? Is that the best you can think of? Think higher. Think bigger. Think with your mind! I think with my mind; I’ve eaten quite a few, and I certainly know how to think. Why stop at one throat? Cut everyone’s throat until the streets fill with blood, so deep, so swift that you must pole about in boats. Ah, what fish you might catch then in those waters, eh?”

There was no response. People sat motionless in their chairs. Malo stood unmoving at the bar. Even the fire on the hearth seemed to no longer flicker but crouched there like a statue of carved flame. The Silentman looked around the room, his head bent forward, his hands clasped behind his back. He smiled, as if he were among friends, but Lena saw the sharpness of his teeth and the madness in his eyes. Somewhere behind her, a footstep sounded furtively.

“What’s this?” said the Silentman, turning. “Leaving so soon?”

“Please, if your lordship,” said a plump little man near the door. “Gotta—dinner, I mean, my wife. . .”

“Wife? Dinner? Come, man. Speak up. Enunciate. Form your words with care and an appreciation for language. Now, what was it you were saying? You’re going to eat your wife for dinner, was that it?”

This encouragement did nothing for the little man. It only served to plunge him further into stuttering incoherence. Sweat beaded on his face. The Silentman stepped forward, tall and stooping, not unlike a vulture leaning over its prey.

“Cat got your tongue?” he said. “Perhaps not just yet.
Catte
is the older, more precise rendition of the word.
Catte
.” He spoke the word this time with a snap in his voice. The air trembled in front of him, an odd sort of shudder that defied the eye to focus on it. Lena smelled a whiff of something strange. Scorched metal, perhaps. And then, there, on the ground before the Silentman, was a cat. A big, black cat sitting on its haunches. The Silentman nodded approvingly.

“And, of course,
tunge
is more apt than tongue,” he said. “
Catte, aetbringa tunge
!”

The cat leapt forward. Lena shut her eyes as tight as she could. Her ears, however, she could not plug, for her hands were tied. Screams filled the room, screams that quickly turned into a wetter sort of moaning, an inarticulate anguish of mangled noise. The cat snarled once and then was silent.

“There,” said the Silentman, “that’s much better. By the way, is there anyone else who needs to leave? Any pressing engagements? Soup boiling over at home? Loved ones choking on fish bones? No? Excellent. Who was it? Ah, yes. Innkeeper, barkeep, whatever you call yourself, why was I summoned here? No, don’t answer it yourself. I’ll do it.”

With one swift movement, the Silentman pounced on the innkeeper and grabbed him by the head. His fingers sank into the unfortunate man’s skull and, with a jerk, he hoisted him off the ground to dangle kicking and squirming. The innkeeper made no sound, other than a sort of hissing exhale, as if he were a bladder deflating. And deflate he did, shrinking and shriveling away until there was only a tangle of skin and cloth hanging from the Silentman’s hand.

“Interesting,” said the Silentman, flicking the remains off onto the floor. “Interesting and delicious, except for the aftertaste of mediocre ale. Now, you must be Malo. You’ve apparently captured a little girl that my—ah—predecessor was interested in collecting. Happily enough—at least, happy enough for me—I, too, am interested in the little girl.”

“I caught her, my lord,” said Malo, almost choking on the words.

“Like a fish?”

“There was a bounty. . .”

“Twenty pieces of gold.” The Silentman surveyed Malo with a smile. “Twenty shining, round bits of metal grubbed out of the ground that will enable you to drink yourself into sodden oblivion for the rest of the year until you wake up one day with your throat cut and the remainder of your money gone. You have a shining future in front of you, my friend. Now, get out before I lose my patience. All of you. Out.”

The Silentman did not raise his voice, but the room instantly emptied with a scraping of chairs and one last slam of the door. The fire on the hearth burned an even deeper blue, its reflection wavering in the windows, on the copper pots hanging on the wall, on the cracked mirror behind the bar. The Silentman’s gaze settled on Lena.

“We’ve met before, you and I, haven’t we? At least, I have memories from somebody—ah, yes, that fool Botrell—he met you. No matter. The second I walked in this room I could smell the boy on you. Jute.” The Silentman seemed to tremble slightly when he uttered the name. “He’s in your memories like dust in a room. By the fifth name of darkness, how I hate him. Do you know what it is to hate someone, my dear? To loathe the thought of their existence, to regard their destruction more precious than the preservation of one’s own soul? I doubt it. You’re young still. Jute stole my knife, you understand. He stole it from me. From who I was. I would’ve been someone different if it weren’t for him. Very different. Every time I—ah—assume someone else, I find myself changing in odd little ways. Now, for instance, I have a tendency to talk too much, sip fine wines, and buy expensive horses. And all these memories sloshing around in my head. One hundred twenty-one different bags of memories. Most of them tedious. A few fascinating. The last one was the castle cook. All the other servants fled, after I’d eaten several of them, but the cook was too fat to make it up the stairs in a timely fashion. How he yowled. His thoughts tasted peculiar. A stew of boredom and bacon and a delicious disdain for the nobility.”

“What do you want with me?” said Lena, her voice trembling.

“Want?” The Silentman smiled, showing all of his teeth. “Not a great deal, my dear. Merely everything of Jute I can rip from your memories. Every thread and shred and tatter I can tear out of you. Conversations, thefts, shared meals, beatings, pain, hungry nights, the common misery of two children without home or father or mother. I daresay this will be extremely painful for you, but rest assured that I will enjoy it to the full. That’s my—how shall we call it?—my motto for the moment. Enjoy it to the full. It changes from day to day. Sometimes it’s kill ‘em all, or eat the thin ones last, or—”

“Nio.”

The voice came from the back of the room. From the hallway leading down into the cellar. The Silentman hunched forward at the sound, his face blank as if he were rummaging through memories to discover why that name should mean anything to him. An old man stood in the hallway. A young man, anxious-looking, with a sword held wavering in his hands, stood beside him. The old man’s hands were cupped in front of him and something sparkled and seemed to change colors within them.

“What have you done to Nio?” said the old man.

“Nio served his purpose,” said the Silentman. “He was a path we walked down, and the Dark does not return to the past. Nio is gone.”

“So be it.”

With one swift movement, the old man flung something into the air, bits of shattered glass or stone or something else that Lena could not determine. He uttered a single word, but the sound didn’t make it past his lips, for the Silentman was even swifter than him. He snapped his fingers and time stopped. The tiny shards hung motionless in the air. The old man’s face was frozen, his mouth still open. A drop of water dangled like a pearl below the faucet behind the bar counter. Lena could feel her heart poised between beats. She could not breathe. The Silentman, however, was not bound by his own spell. He stepped forward and plucked a shard from the air.

“Clever,” he said, nodding. “Very clever. A stone of the farseeing mosaic from the university. Ah, yes, I remember you now. Severan. You shattered the mosaic, didn’t you, when I almost had Jute in my grasp. You’ll suffer for that. What fun. This day is turning out well.”

The Silentman wandered around the room, chuckling and collecting tiny stones from the air. He plucked several right from Severan’s outstretched fingertips.

“Begne the Lame created the mosaic to find his missing son. It took him his entire life. On the day it was finished, he went blind. And then died of grief. How appropriate. How delicious. Even a single piece of the mosaic is able to reflect the inherent truth of the spoken word. Just imagine if someone spoke the true name of—oh, I don’t know—light. Was that what you were going to say? That would make quite a blaze, yes indeed. Recall, Severan, our unfortunate encounter in the university. You almost unmade me when you destroyed the mosaic. It was a painful moment. Thankfully, though, you don’t know the true name of light. You never were that good of a student. Besides, there's no one alive who knows the true name of light.

“That’s all of them, I trust?” The Silentman retrieved the last of the tiny stones and tucked the lot into his pocket. “Now, on to other things. Shall we discuss how I’m going to kill you all? I could indulge in tradition and flay you alive with a knife. Or, I could resurrect the thirty-three rat corpses in the walls of this inn and have them gnaw you to death. That might take too long. I could, of course, eat you myself. That’s the solution I’m leaning toward, as there’s obviously knowledge in your minds I could use. Thought, I’m not sure in your case, young man. You look familiar, but you don’t look all that intelligent, so perhaps I’ll just cut your throat. Now, so we can all enjoy this more fully, for I do enjoy the sound of screaming—there we go.”

He snapped his fingers again and time resumed. Lena’s heart thumped back into beat. Air whooshed into her lungs. Severan’s mouth closed. His face looked gaunt and gray. The young man stepped past him, his sword raised. The Silentman smiled and opened his hand. A spot of darkness stained his palm. It drew everyone’s eyes as if there was nothing else to look at in the room. It was the only thing that existed. The flames in the wall sconces and the fire on the hearth flickered and bent over, leaning toward the Silentman’s hand, leaning and lengthening and thinning until the fire gave no light but was only a gray, dying thing. Everything seemed to be sliding toward that spot of darkness. It grew and spread out from the Silentman’s hand. Lena could feel her chair inching across the floor. She tugged at her bonds, whimpering. There was no telling what would have happened next if something rather unexpected hadn’t happened.