Lies of Light

42

8Alturiak, the Yearofthe Shield (1367DR) First Quarter, Innarlith

You looking for something, squire?” the awful woman said. She spoke without ever closing her mouth all the way. Her brightly-painted, swollen lips never met. “Or you looking for someone?”

Willem looked at her, and his head and stomach spun in opposite directions. He staggered, his fine leather boots splashing in the greasy black puddles of the dockside street. The air stank of the Lake of Steam and the mildew that slowly ate away at the ramshackle buildings around him.

“Had a little of the grape, have we?” the woman said. She laughed, and the sound made him sicker. “Need a hand?”

Willem shook his head and staggered again. She stepped toward him and all he could do was watch.

When she put her hand on him he found his last shred of strength. He stood up straighter and was about to tell her in no uncertain terms that she was mistaken if she thought he was the sort of man who might be taken in by her and her kind, but when he tried to speak he couldn’t quite get his numb lips to form words.

Her dirty hand with its chubby sausagelike fingers prodded him. His head began to clear, and he stepped away from her and looked her in the face. She smiled wide enough that Willem could count her missing teeth.

“If I ain’t your cup of tea, squire, just say so,” she said with a suggestive leer.

Willem shook his head, but then his eyes found her hand. He saw a little length of string or twine dangling from her closed fista fist not quite closed enough. Her hand could easily have hidden his coin purse.

He drew his dagger and the woman backed away from him. The look in her eye was one part fear and one part resignation.

“You’ve had blades pulled on you before, haven’t you?” Willem asked.

She forced a smile and said, “No worries, squire. No worries at all.” Her eyes darted back and forth, up and down the long, dark, empty street. She couldn’t keep the disappointment from reading in her eyes. They were all alone. “Just you be on your way, and we’ll forget the whole th-“

He cut her facenot too deep, just with the very tip of the knife.

She gasped. “Don’t you dare.”

“Easy now,” she whispered. She started to shake and backed away farther, until her back came to rest against the rough plaster wall of some dockside establishment closed for the night. “Easy does it, squire.”

“Don’t you dare,” Willem repeated. The drink and the outrage made it hard for him to move his tongue, so his voice sounded alien in his own ears. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

She turned to run, and he kicked her feet out from under her. She fell sprawling onto her face with a grunt.

“Don’t you dare try to take from me,” he said, then kicked her hard in the side.

She squealed and coughed, a wet, phlegmy sound.

“Don’t you dare try to get away,” he growled, so low he wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear him, but he didn’t care.

She crawled to the end of a dark alley. Willem didn’t understand why she thought she’d be safer in there. She drew in a breath to scream, so he kicked her hard again, forcing the air from her lungs.

“Don’t you dare try to scream.”

She reached for something in the folds of her grimy weathercloak. Willem watched her fumble out the knife. It was just an ordinary kitchen knife, but Willem wondered how many men she’d castrated with it.

“Don’t you dare pull a knife on me,” he said, and stomped down on her hand.

The bones made a crinkling sound, and the knife slid a few inches away. She gruntednot a very feminine sound.

“You lousy, Second Quarter son of a” she snarled.

But she stopped when he kicked her in the face.

“Don’t you dare,” he said, kneeling down in the dark alley next to her, “call my mother a bitch.”

She shook her head, which succeeded only in rubbing her face in the mud and muck on the alley floor. He cut her on the back of the neck while she was still lucid enough to feel the pain, to know what was happening to her.

“Don’t you dare live,” he whispered, then he took off his cloak and went to work on her.

The whole time he was killing her, he thought about that day in the hearing room. Had Salatis done the same thing to Devorast? Had they all done that to him? Had they killed him? Had they taken his life in that very room, one cut at a time?

The whore at least had the decency to defend herself. She’d tried to talk her way out of it. She’d tried to get away. She’d even tried to fight back. Devorast had done none of those things.

After washing the blood off his hands and face, he put his cloak back on, drawing it tight around his neck to hide the blood that had soaked into his tunic. He wiped the blood from his dagger and put it back in the sheath at his belt. The sound of footsteps alerted him to someone’s approach, and he stood in the dark alley over the bloody corpse until she passedanother streetwalkerthen he darted into the shadow of another alley across the street.

He went straight to the tavern he’d been on his way to when he was so rudely distracted. The building leaned a bit to one side and contained a permanent haze of pipeweed and wood smoke, and the lasting stench of stale beer and vomit. Over the past few months it had become one of his favorite places.

The sailors and dockhands who frequented the place never even looked at him twice. They all minded their own business.

He sat at a table in the corner, in the dark, and the woman who worked therefour hundred pounds if she was an ounce, and easily Willem’s mother’s agebrought him a flagon of ale and a tin cup with some kind of distilled spirit they made out back. He didn’t have to ask for it anymore.

He lifted the tin cup and held it out to the empty chair across from him.

“Halina, my love,” he whispered to the shadows.

He downed the fiery liquid and grimaced. A tear came to his eye.

Would you still love me, he thought, if you knew who I really was?

He turned the tin cup over and set it down on the table.

Would Phyrea love me, he asked himself, if she knew who I really was?