A Sellsword's Valor Page 8

  “We don’t know where Boyce Kevlane is,” Aaron said. “The man changes faces more than a noblewoman changes shoes, May. Shit, if you weren’t so pissed off, I wouldn’t know for sure that you weren’t him. Don’t you understand? That bastard could be anybody.”

  “And if you somehow survive this,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken, “a thing that seems damned near impossible to me, then when does it end?”

  Aaron frowned. “What?”

  “I asked you,” she said, “that if you are somehow victorious, what will happen next? Will you then challenge the gods themselves? Or maybe jump in the ocean, see if you can’t find some sharks to wrestle?”

  Aaron sighed. “That’s ridiculous, May. It’s not like I have a death wish.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Aaron felt the anger rising in him. Thanks to his bond with Co, it was always there, lurking beneath the surface of his thoughts. “No,” he said, “this has to be done, May. You know that as well as I do. Just as you know what happens if Belgarin attacks and we don’t have the troops from Avarest.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I do know, and I understand that it has to be done. I can even understand why you think you have to be the one to go—after all, it’s the only thing that I can think of that would have made Hale and Grinner stay. Either way it comes out, they’ll be satisfied.”

  “If you know all of that,” Aaron shouted, his anger getting the better of him, “then why are you giving me all this shit?”

  “I’m giving you all of this shit, as you call it,” she said, her voice calm, “because despite the fact that you understand the importance of your mission’s success, despite the fact that you know that without you returning with proof that Belgarin intends us harm, we are defeated before the battle even begins, you decided—without talking to anyone else, I might add—to go alone. You didn’t even consider asking for help.”

  Aaron frowned at that, his anger dampened somewhat by the truth of her words. He’d grown accustomed over the years as an orphan and then a sellsword to not asking for anyone’s help, to solving problems on his own.

  “You are not alone anymore, Silent,” May said as if reading his thoughts. She sighed then and laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll never be alone again.”

  Aaron nodded slowly. “But, May, it won’t be safe to—”

  “Never mind what’s safe and what isn’t,” she interrupted. “We’re not children to be protected, Aaron, nor are we some pampered nobles to be coddled and assured while our homes burn down around us. We are your friends, the gods help us. And besides, in case you’ve forgotten, we’ve got just as much riding on the success of this mission as you do. It’s not as if Belgarin or Boyce Kevlane will stop if they kill you. This is about everyone’s lives, Aaron. Not just yours.”

  Aaron frowned, considering.

  She’s right, you know, Co said in a satisfied voice.

  I know she is damnit. “I’m sorry, May. You’re right—I should have asked.”

  May stared at him for a moment then nodded in apparent satisfaction. “Perhaps not a total fool, after all. Now, when do you leave?”

  “Tonight,” Aaron said. “The sooner the better, as we’ll lose a month in travel, at least.”

  “And I’ve heard that Leomin is coming along.”

  “He is.”

  She grunted again. “I’m not sure whether that makes me feel better or worse. Still, the man knows how to talk himself out of just about anything. And what of this other one you told me of, this Tianya?”

  I don’t think she’ll be happy about it,” Aaron said, shrugging, “but what can she do?”

  May frowned, “I wouldn’t dismiss her so quickly, Aaron. Such a woman like that will be used to giving orders and having them followed. She won’t appreciate being ignored.”

  “Sounds like somebody else I know.”

  She snorted and started for the door. “Just be safe and make sure that you all make it back in one piece.”

  “All of us? I told you, May, it’s just me and Leomin.”

  She smiled. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I guess we’ll see.” She winked then, and was out the door before Aaron could ask her what she’d meant.

  “Damnit,” he muttered, “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  High Clerk Evane was scared. The realization had come slowly as it was not an emotion he was accustomed to, but he’d had some time to consider it since receiving his master’s summons the day before. He’d finally come to know that sinking, fragile feeling in his stomach for what it was. Fear.

  Up until a few weeks ago when the man, Caldwell, had come to him with his offer, Evane had led a double life. During the day, his existence had been normal enough. Normal and boring. He’d served as a clerk in the merchant’s guild. A safe, secure position that, though it would never make him rich, had made him enough money, to afford a decent house and clothes. His parents, had they still been alive, might even have been proud, might even have celebrated his achievement, his demonstration of responsibility. Not that such things mattered.

  He’d learned long ago that it was better not to be noticed at all. Better to be a quiet, awkward clerk, the man who ate his lunches by himself and spoke only when necessary. The man who never went out to taverns with his fellow clerks, and was never seen with a young woman on his arm. They thought him harmless enough, if a little strange, and that was alright. That was just fine.

  The Clerk Evane of the daytime was a skittish, nervous man, a man who spent his days in boring drudgery, checking and balancing accounts, taking payments from customers when payments came due, and, all in all, keeping to himself. Just another boring soul in a city full of them.

  He was invisible, not worth attention, and that was just the way he liked it. For while Evane’s colleagues knew him as a shy clerk, it was no more than a mask he wore. He’d learned to wear the mask at an early age, the first time his mother had caught him with some dog he’d found in the street. The mongrel was wounded and had only three working legs, which made it easier as it couldn’t run or fight back when the blade went in, searching. He didn’t know what he was searching for at the time, only that each carving cut he made into the howling beast’s flesh drew him a little closer to it, that each hot sluice of blood over his hands brought him nearer to that indefinable reward toward which he worked.

  He was eight years old at the time, and the dog was not his first, though it was the first time with an animal quite so large. He wasn’t ready when the tortured beast found some last burst of strength and tore away from his bloody attentions, darting up the cellar steps, howling and screaming in pain, leaving a bloody trail behind it that his mother would later force him to clean up.

  He chased after the wounded animal, but three legs or not, it made good its escape, though not before his mother—come home early from the market, saw the dog pass her by with its bloody, torn flesh. In his haste to capture the animal—his experiment, he called it as he called all before it—Evane had forgotten to put down the knife he’d used, and he rushed out the front door only to freeze at the sight of his mother standing there.

  She took in the bloody clothes he wore—clothes he’d intended to change long before she got back from the market—and noted the short, cruel knife he held, the blade bloody and matted with fur. For a moment, she looked at him as if seeing a stranger; that was the first time he understood what it meant to do the things he did, that the hunger somehow set him apart from other children, other people. Then, her face seemed to regain some of its normal expression, and she nodded slowly. “Put down the knife, Evi,” she said, “and help your mother with this.” He took one of the baskets she’d been carrying and helped her inside, his hands leaving bloody prints on the wicker basket. She made him go bathe in the river and scrub himself clean, and he had, thinking that would be the end of it.

  It wasn’t though. When his father got home from a day—and most of a night—s
pent drinking, he came into Evane’s room. He did not speak, only jerked his son out of his bed and commenced beating him with his fists until Evane couldn’t even make out his own cries for the dizziness that overcame him. It was a week before he could walk without a vicious pain tearing through his body. A week spent lying in his bed while his mother spoon fed him thin broth—real food having proved too much to keep down—and told him in apologetic but justified tones that he had to learn, he had to learn his lesson. And he did learn a lesson, though not the one they wanted.

  He learned that it was better to keep that part of himself, the hole inside of him that could only be filled with the blood, the suffering of others, secret. It was a lesson he learned well and when he was fifteen and a burglar broke into their home, killing his mother and father, the guards who came to investigate saw nothing but a frightened, crying boy with blood on his hands from where he’d tried to rouse his dead mother and father.

  The guards saw nothing of the smile that hid beneath that tortured expression, heard none of the laughter that bubbled just beneath the surface of his cries; and that was as it should be, for that was his day-time self, the mask he wore to show to the world. But at night, when the sun was down and the shadows hid the truth of things behind a veil of darkness, only then did he take the mask off, only then could he really and truly breathe.

  It was a good enough life, he supposed, if a bit stifling. As the years passed, he found that his needs grew more pronounced. Once, small animals had done the job but that had passed quickly enough. Only a few years after his parents’ “murder” he began to experiment with people—there was no shortage of experiments available in the poor district. Men with no wives and no children, no one to miss them when they were gone. Women, alone in the world, who sold their bodies to feed their flesh. They weren’t as strong as the men, but they were less trusting, more suspicious and so presented their own challenges when he chose one for his experiments.

  There was a time when one or two a year had been enough, but his hunger, his need had grown, and now he found himself prowling the streets at night in search of prey at least once a month if not more. It wouldn’t be long, he knew, before people began to take notice.

  And even more troubling, he’d found his daytime mask seemed to grow tighter and tighter even as his nighttime need grew more prominent. He found himself looking at those people at work or those customers who came in to make payments on their loans, found himself imagining them screaming, imagining how their blood would feel on his hands.

  Such thoughts were dangerous, he knew, but the Evane of the night had always been stronger than the Evane of the day. Now, he was growing increasingly worried, sure that one day or another he would not be able to silence the voice inside of him. Sooner or later, the mask would slip off, and they would all know the truth, would come to understand that they were sheep and a wolf stalked among them, picking out one of their flock as their backs were turned. Once discovered, he knew his life would end at the blow of some headsman’s axe, and he’d been seriously considering leaving the city when the man, Caldwell, had approached him.

  He’d approached him in the darkness while Evane had been following a young woman of the night. She was nineteen, twenty at the most. Old enough to have that used up, hopeless look that so many of her kind seemed to have, but not so old as to be as suspicious as many of her counterparts. Oh, she was old enough to have heard the stories, old enough to know the dangers for women such as her, but she was not quite old enough, he thought, to believe it.

  Evane was following her through the streets of the poor quarter, always sure to keep his distance. She’d be heading home, he knew, as he’d followed her on other nights. Home, to where no one waited for her, no family or friends, not even a cat or a dog to keep her company. He was reveling in anticipation of the night’s fun when a figure stepped out of the alleyway in front of him, blocking his path.

  The man wasn’t much bigger than Evane himself, and his blood was up, ready for violence and the relief it would bring. Still, he did not make a move on the man, did not draw the crude, short blade he kept in the pocket of his trousers. This, he thought, is no sheep. A wolf, after all, knows another wolf when he sees it. “Hello, Clerk Evane,” the man said, and those words sent a shiver of fear running through Evane’s heart, such a feeling as he had not felt in a very long time.

  The man knew him, knew his name and his profession both, neither of which was supposed to happen. He’d taken great pains, always, to disguise his identity, going by different names, even staining his normally light blonde hair with soot to make it appear black in the darkness. He shifted his stance, ready to run or fight—he wasn’t sure which—but the man only smiled, his face looking somehow twisted and wrong in the moonlight. He turned to glance at the departing woman who was oblivious of how close she’d come to being the night’s experiment, leaving his back to Evane, apparently unconcerned by what the clerk might do.

  Finally, the woman disappeared around a corner. One more turn, Evane knew, and she would reach the small shack she considered her home. When she was gone, the man turned back around, eyeing Evane in the moonlight. “Not a bad choice, I suppose, if a man is in the market for such things. I suspect she’d scream loud enough. Bleed too.”

  “What do you want?” Evane asked, his voice sounding strange and alien to his own ears. It wasn’t the voice of the daytime Evane, quiet and subservient, nor was it the voice of the nighttime Evane that was confident and sure and always seemed on the verge of laughter. Instead, it was an odd mix of the two.

  The man’s grin widened. “My name is Caldwell. And I’ve got a job offer for you…”

  The man brought the promise of not having to hide his true self any longer, of being able to glut himself on the pain and suffering of others, maybe even enough to fill the hole inside him once and for all. And, of course, Evane had said yes.

  So far, he’d seen only a fraction of what the man had promised him, but it was enough. He’d been sent out nearly every day of the last month in search of men and women who showed exceptional abilities. Men and women who were known for their speed or their strength, their cruelty or their anger, some quality that set them apart from normal people. He spent his days, when not working, running other errands for Caldwell and his true master, King Belgarin himself. Otherwise, he was sitting in taverns, talking to the patrons there to hear any rumors about people who had somehow set themselves apart—never a hard thing that, as ale and liquor had a way of loosening people’s lips.

  Evane did not know what Caldwell and the king did with these people when they were taken, knew only that they were to be used in experiments. Ones, perhaps, like those he himself performed. Now, though, he had received the king’s summons to the castle, a thing that had never happened. He was excited and scared at the same time. He’d once asked Caldwell if he could see the experiments himself, but the man had made it clear that Evane was reaching beyond his bounds and that he should only concern himself with his own role in things.

  Evane had agreed, partly because he was satisfied. Watching the fear, the terror in those he chose as they were taken held a satisfaction all its own. And, of course, there were sometimes others among those who were taken who by necessity, had to be killed. Mostly, though, he hadn’t asked again because of Caldwell himself.

  There was something wrong with the king’s advisor, something off. The man hid it well, when he wanted to, but as another who did not share any true similarities with the ignorant sheep that filled the city, Evane recognized that wrongness. He did not understand it or know what it meant, but he saw hints of it from time to time. He had decided that whatever set the advisor apart, whatever madness—for madness it was, he had no doubt—he held within him, Evane would rather not see it. Even a wolf, after all, knew when to bow its head to another, knew when it was time to put away the teeth and claws and lay down on the ground digging its muzzle into the dirt. After all, there was always a bigger wolf.

  Eva
ne thought that today might be the day he learned the truth of the “experiments”, the first time that he met his true master, the king himself. No wonder, then, that he was nervous. If Caldwell was a bigger wolf, then what was the king? Not a wolf at all, surely. A lion, perhaps. Still, nervous or not, he couldn’t help the thrill of excitement that ran through him at the prospect of seeing the true nature of his work, and he found his steps growing faster and faster as he made his way through the castle, following the directions he’d been given.

  The guard at the dungeon entrance frowned as he approached, and Evane felt a new wave of fear wash over him at the man’s attention. He’d spent his entire life—his daytime life, anyway—doing his best to avoid the attention of such men. What if he’d been wrong? What if he’d somehow confused Caldwell’s directions, or if the man himself had given Evane false information intentionally, setting him up? No, he told himself, you are a wolf, not a sheep to scatter at the first sign of trouble. Do not be a fool. “State your business here, stranger,” the guard said, and Evane couldn’t help but notice that one of the man’s hands had drifted toward the sword at his side.

  Evane swallowed hard, drawing himself up as tall as he might and meeting the guard’s eyes. “My name is High Clerk Evane, servant of His Majesty, Belgarin, and I have come as summoned to attend him.” He heard the breathless whine in his voice and hated himself for it. Yet as foolish as it was, he couldn’t dismiss the notion that the guard would, at any moment, draw the sword at his side and either take Evane into custody or cut him down where he stood. The guard studied him for a moment, and Evane felt his hands begin to sweat.

  After what felt like an eternity, the guard finally bowed his head, “Pleasure to meet you, High Clerk. The king’s advisor told me you’d be stopping by. Follow me, and I’ll show you to where he waits.”