Kosar saw shapes flitting through shadows without traversing the lit spaces in between. Wraiths. They were there in the daytime too, but sunlight negated them.
At the junction of two streets there was a band of militia smoking fledge pipes. They were muttering to one another, moving on the spot to keep warm. There were six of them, the dregs of law-keeping in Pavisse, many of them more criminal than some of those they sought to catch. Kosar knew that these men ran protection rackets, whoring houses and drug circles, and although they provided something of a ceiling above which crime was not allowed to stretch, it was a sad irony that they initiated much of it. They would have questions for the two of them, especially A’Meer. Fighters and mercenaries were not wholly uncommon, although their existence was grudgingly accepted rather than welcomed. But a fighter moving through the streets by night… yes, they would have questions.
Kosar and A’Meer backtracked and found an alternate route around the militia. It meant crossing the river, but they stole a small rowing boat and paddled over silently, the water tarry across the bow. The river smelled much fresher by night than it did in the day, as if darkness could bleed it of refuse, shit and the stink of animal corpses thrown in from sheebok farms up in the mountains. Unseen things made splashes but nothing troubled them, and they reached the far shore in a few minutes.
Within a hundred steps of leaving the river, with dawn bleeding across the mountaintops to the east, A’Meer paused and raised her hand. Kosar bumped into her and held her arms, his thief’s scarring finding succor on her cool bare skin. He could hear nothing untoward, see nothing, smell nothing unusual. A’Meer did not move for a few long moments, but then she started backing up, forcing Kosar back as well. The two of them kept moving like that until they came to a house doorway, where A’Meer fumbled with the handle, drew something from her belt, knelt and popped open the lock in the matter of a dozen agitated heartbeats.
She opened the door and hustled Kosar into a stranger’s house. It was only after she closed and locked the door behind her that she spoke, pressing her mouth to his ear so that it was more a breath than a word, unmistakable from a sleeper’s sigh.
Monk.
Kosar backed away from the door but A’Meer held him fast. He saw her sense. They were in an unknown room, whose confines and layout were uncertain in the dark, and any movement could tip a table and send its contents tumbling to the floor.
He glanced down at A’Meer just as she looked up at him, and her eyes reflected weak lamplight from the street outside. They were wide and terrified. He put his arm around her shoulders and his hand on her chest. He could feel her heart racing as if trying to outdistance the moment. She shivered, her skin slicked with a cool sweat, and she pressed close.
They heard a noise outside. Footsteps, slow and methodical, but with no attempt at concealment. The Red Monk passed by the house, paused and carried on along the street, and then A’Meer began to shiver even more. She was shaking her head, breathing heavily, and two of her blades clanged together.
Kosar held her tight and buried his face in her neck, whispering inanities to calm her, warming her cold skin with his breath. She clasped his hands where they held her, pulled him tighter, and he realized with sudden shock that he had let her tale cloud his judgment. She was a Shantasi warrior, a trained fighter, but that did not mean that she was unafraid. In fact, he suspected it gave her more to fear. And those things she had not told him, could never tell him. .. perhaps they were even worse.
“It’s gone,” he whispered in her ear. “We should go too.”
She turned and held him tight so that they did not need to talk above a whisper. “It came from the direction we’re taking. They may have the boy already. He may be dead!”
“Only one way to find out.”
A’Meer let go of Kosar, knelt and unlocked the door.
They were out in the dawn again, hurrying along streets, through alleys and across courtyards to put distance between themselves and the Red Monk. Kosar had come to know Pavisse well during his short stay here several years before, so now he navigated easily in dawn’s early light, picking out landmarks and listening for familiar sounds. They followed the course of the river for a while before turning into the heart of the town, heading for the hidden districts. The name was a misnomer-everyone knew the places were there, just as most who knew of them stayed away-but they were much more than slums and home for criminals and outcasts. The hidden districts held hidden knowledge. In that respect at least their name held water.
That’s where he’ll be if anyone has him, Kosar thought. That’s where I’d take him to keep him safe. The journey to Rafe’s uncle’s house had already taken on a doomed feel, perhaps initiated by the Monk’s appearance. If the boy was indeed as important as A’Meer suggested, the idea that he may still be there with his relative seemed naive. Rafe’s very existence had brought Red Monks to Pavisse, and his potential had urged one of Kosar’s best friends to revert to her warrior birthright. Rafe could hold the future of the land in his hands, or its eventual downfall. He had rapidly turned from a simple farm boy into someone both great and terrible.
Kosar steered around the outskirts of the hidden districts, and even here there were many old machines incorporated into buildings and street constructions, lending themselves as a skeleton around which Pavisse had grown and petrified since the Cataclysmic War. He saw one that he recalled from his previous time here, a great hollowed globe smashed in several places like a skull cleaved by an axe. It was buried deep in the rocky ground so that only half of its circumference protruded. It had once been used as a shelter by those who had no homes, and as he passed by Kosar smelled the familiar stenches of fledge, rotwine and waste.
Daylight was bringing the streets to life. A’Meer hurried along behind him, and when Kosar glanced back he saw that she was self-conscious of her new appearance. She looked utterly formidable, and the hint of mystery that had always surrounded the Shantasi added to the effect. And yet she was uncomfortable with her new apparel. He wondered just how intense her training in Hess had been, how long ago
… and how much of it she would recall after so long.
They arrived at Rafe’s uncle’s house, a straw- and mud-walled building with an old iron fire pit in a lean-to on one side. It looked unused, and Kosar guessed that the boy’s uncle had not shod a horse in many dozens of moons.
“It’s quiet,” A’Meer said.
They stood in the shadow of a building opposite, trying to make out whether there was anything to trouble them in or around Vance’s house.
“It’s early. Maybe they’re still sleeping.”
“No… the whole place is quiet. Pavisse is waking up, but not here. Listen.”
Kosar listened. In the distance he made out an occasional shout, traders urging their mules to the best-selling pitches. Blackbirds and honey doves chattered across rooftops, vying for space much the same as the traders, and here and there a skull raven sat on its own, other birds too wary to settle nearby. A pack of dogs ran along the neighboring street, the subject of their pursuit letting out a solitary panicked squeal. Window blinds crashed open, people coughed and spat the night from their lungs. Wheels whispered along the dusty streets.
Vance’s house was a dead zone in a place coming to life. No birds rested on his roof, no animals prowled the yard.