Path of Bones (11 page)

“
The Dream Witch,” Dane replied.

“
Impressive.”  The boy gave him a questioning look.  “So, do you need help unloading your cargo?”

“
No.  I’ll only be here for a short while.”

“
A short while?” Tolliver asked.  “Where are you from?  Ebonmark?  Raithe?”

“
You ask a lot of questions,” Dane said.  “I need to meet someone, and then I’ll be on my way.  If you want to help, you can give me some information.”

“
All right,” Tolliver smiled, and he held out his hand.  Dane shook his head, reached into his belt pouch and fished out a Den’nari gold coin. 

“
How’s this?” he asked.

“
It’ll do,” Tolliver said, even as he eyed the coin suspiciously.

“
Don’t worry, it’s real,” Dane said.  “First question: what’s the worst tavern in this part of the city?”

“
What do you mean by ‘worst’?” Tolliver asked earnestly. 

“
Worst, as in the one with the most gambling, the most fights…”

“
The most whores?” he asked.

“
Sure,” Dane said.  “Those, too.”

“
Then you want the Scarlet Lair,” Tolliver said knowingly.  “It’s run by the Phage.  Anything you want, you can get it there.  You know about the Phage, right?”

“
Are you an only child?” Dane asked.  “Where is it?”

Tolliver pointed to a road sloping up from the dock to the shadow and smoke-filled streets above. 

“Up this street, left on Blackrock Lane, two blocks down.  Any other questions?”  Tolliver held his hand out in anticipation of another payment.  Dane gave him a look and dropped another coin in his hand.

“
This blacksmith’s shop,” he said.  “Is it abandoned?”

“
Usually.”

“
Good enough,” Dane said, and he motioned for the boy to leave, but Tolliver just stood there.  “What?” Dane demanded.

“
You still owe for me helping you with the boat,” Tolliver smiled.

“
You did it out of the kindness of your heart,” Dane said.  “Get out of here.”

Tolliver muttered a curse and moved up the street, eying Dane as he went.  Shadows moved in the smoke up the road.  Dane stood by the boat, watching the tarp to make sure Kruje hadn’t moved.  Crewmen from the ironclad came and went from the deck, and the sound of their raucous celebrating drowned out the drunken song and breaking glass up above.  Dane caught Tolliver still standing at the end of the street, scouting for more ships and doing a terrible job of spying on Dane.  Eventually Dane got tired of the game and started after him, and Tolliver scurried off into obscurity.

Goddess,
he thought. 
It’s going to be a long night.

Tolliver didn’t appear again, and the deck hands on the passenger vessel finally turned in.  The men on the ironclad were replaced by a wiry young sailor who curled up in the crow’s nest with a bottle of wine and didn’t even look in Dane’s direction. 

He glanced around.  The air was heavy with mist, and though the pier was busy there wasn’t a moving ship anywhere nearby.  The ironclad granted their stolen vessel plenty of cover from the bay except for a narrow sliver of space that was only about ten yards wide.  It had been nearly an hour since they’d docked, but it was time to get Kruje indoors. 

Dane focused his mind and reached into a realm of cold shadows.  His heart slowed, its beat sounding like thunder in his ears.  His breaths turned shallow.  The raw touch of death crept up his veins like grisly iron smoke as he Touched the raw power of the Veil.  Dane held it for just moments, long enough to send invisible sparks across the water. 

A fire erupted out near the entrance to the docks, big enough that heads started turning in that direction but not so large that it would cause any real damage.  Thick smoke plumed from the blaze, a Veilcrafted liquid set alight like an oil slick.  A few drunken and panicked voices rang out.

“Kral,” he said quietly.  “Voorak.”

Kruje pushed his way out from the under the tarp and let out a low moan.  Dane imagined the giant’s muscles must have been as stiff as boards.  The Voss stretched and lumbered forward, using the tarp to cover his body. 

“Voorak,” Dane said again.  Kruje had to hurry while eyes were temporarily distracted.  If he were a Bloodspeaker Dane could have wrapped the giant in a cloak of shadows or even altered his appearance so he seemed to be human-sized, but Veilwardens and their ilk were incapable of such subtle manifestations. 

The pier creaked loud as Kruje set his weight on it, and for a moment Dane was afraid the wood would collapse beneath the giant’s great mass and send him plummeting into the water. 

This is insane.
 

He watched for any sign of trouble.  It was only twenty yards from the end of the pier to the blacksmith’s shop, but even though Kruje covered a great distance in a single stride the trip still seemed to take forever.  Dane kept imagining a call of alarm ringing out and the Phage descending on them.  Worry gnawed at his gut.

He led Kruje to the front of the shop.  The window was covered with grime, but Dane glanced through a crack and saw a room littered with dust and debris, a cold forge and anvil and some long unused tools.  He shouldered open the large door and found the inside quiet and still. 

Kruje reached the shop.  The fire raged out on the harbor and the men above were laughing, but the tavern was positioned too far back for anyone to see down to the pier unless they stood right at the edge of the upper walkway, a dangerous proposition for anyone drinking.  The giant was able to duck low enough to fit through the wide entrance.  Dane pulled the doors shut, sweat pouring down his face.  He checked to make sure Kruje was all right and then stepped back outside to look around.

There was no easy way of knowing if anyone had seen them, but he thought it unlikely.  The man on the crow’s nest was deep in his bottle and didn’t even seem to have noticed the fire in the harbor, and the sounds coming from the tavern hadn’t changed.  Dane stepped around the corner and glanced up the fog-filled street.  Though he saw shadows moving he couldn’t make anything out clearly, and he felt certain the same would go for anyone looking back in his direction.  It seemed they were safe, at least for the moment. 

And if I’m wrong, we’ll know soon enough.

It was risky to hide Kruje in the city, but the giant had made clear his desire to come with Dane on his search for “the woman”, and Dane decided Kuje would be much better off in an abandoned building than lying cramped for a few more hours in the confines of their boat.  Part of Dane wondered if they shouldn’t have skipped the city altogether, but it was too late now. 

We need supplies, and I’ll need clues if I’m
going to find her.  And I
am
going to find her
. 

The notion of not continuing the search wasn’t even an option.

Dane stepped back into the troglodytic blacksmith’s shop.  Kruje moved around slowly; he seemed grateful to finally have enough room to move, even if the giant was able to do a complete circle of the interior of the smithy’s in a matter of seconds.  The forge looked to have been cold for years, and the cooling buckets were cracked.  The bellows were layered with dust and calcified soot, and various implements of the trade – tongs, hammers, chisels, half-finished swords – lay scattered about the open room, many of them chipped, rusted or broken.  The air was dark, and motes of dust swam in the light which spilled in through small holes in the roof. 

The place clearly hadn’t been used for some time, at least not by a blacksmith.  Tracks on the dusty concrete floor indicated where a pair of tables near the center of the room had recently been pulled from the corners, and bone dice and loose coins were scattered everywhere.  Kruje tested the boards over the windows, and Dane double-checked the doors.  It was possible it had just been sailors or street rabble who’d moved the tables, but there was no way to determine whether or not they’d come back. 

Kruje seemed satisfied after doing his rounds, so he sat down in the corner.  His black skin was covered with sweat, and his pale eyes glowed in the dark.  His thick muscles tensed as he set his enormous war-axe on one of the nearby tables, and he pulled in his thick legs so he sat hunched against the wall.  He was easily the size of a hearth.  Kruje had already removed his thick armor plate – it lay in pieces in the boat under another tarp – and now sat bare-chested, his chiseled torso layered in blue-black runes somehow darker than his midnight skin.  Kruje surveyed the room, tapped his enormous fingers on his knees, and looked at Dane.

“
Food
?” he asked.  His voice was thick and hollow.

Dane inspected a door to a back room, only to find little more than a washbasin and an empty bedchamber, neither of which appeared to have been disturbed in quite some time.  He returned to the front main room and peered through the grimy window.  They’d extinguished his Veilcrafted flame, and life seemed to have returned to normal on the docks – ships drifted through the archway on the far side of the bay and business at the taverns and shops carried on unabated.  It was dark inside, a permanent night.

Kruje flicked an ancient pile of ash.  He looked up at Dane. 

“
Food
?” he asked again.  “
Please.
”

Dane conjured some gruel for them, thick and tasteless porridge the consistency of warm oatmeal they spooned into bowls from Dane’s pack.  It was the best the Veil could offer.  They ate it wordlessly, listening for any sound of alarm or for someone approaching the door. 

“Rorg lok nik?” Kruje asked a few minutes later.  Dane was tired and his eyes were raw, but he knew he still had a long night ahead.

“
Go…you go?” Dane said out loud as he translated the question.  “
Yes
,” he answered in Vossian.  “
I go search.  You…stay.  Hide
.”

Kruje nodded, looked around the room, and shrugged.

I know
, Dane thought. 
This is my worst idea in a long string of bad ideas.  But I’m not sure what else to do. 
Dane gave Kruje a nod, then pulled his cloak tight and stepped out through the side door, closing it shut behind him.  He was off to find the Scarlet Lair.

Twelve

He dreams of wolves.  Silver moonlight shines on sharp fur as they swarm across the plains in a tide of hunger and need. 

The moon is enormous and bright, and the night twists around it like a shadow-clad dancer.  The deep sky is full with the sounds of rending flesh and braying song.

Blood runs in rivers and pools.  He hears the father of the wolves in the distance, sleeping in a den of rock and human hides.

He’ll kill the father.  Then the others will be his.

Thirteen

Marros Slayne was slow to wake.   His head pounded.  The small room in the inn slowly bled into view, incandescent blues and greens which peeled back to reveal the skin of the whore he’d taken to bed.  Carlotta, he thought her name was, and he’d picked her because of the dragon tattoo on her lower back and her stark silver hair.  She had jade eyes and dark skin that felt like flower petals beneath his calloused fingers, and being with her had filled him with a sort of serenity, a calm deep in his soul.

The calm didn’t last long.  It never did.

Slayne ran a hand through his short pale hair and over his scarred face.  His senses were still dull from Den’nari brandy, and he was sure that was as much to blame as anything else for the strange dreams he’d had.  He reached for the bottle and took a long drink, all but draining it. 

His eyes ran over Carlotta’s smooth naked body.  She was a tigress.  His back still ached from fucking her so hard, and he felt wounds where she’d clawed him.  He ran his hand across her thigh, causing her to stir. 

Bedding whores wasn’t something he normally did, intoxicated or no.  He’d actually slept with only a few women over the course of his cursed life, and in fact tended to avoid them whenever possible, though he wasn’t really sure why. 

But for the past week or so things had been different…
he’d
been different.  He craved sex and drink in a way he rarely had before, even in his youth.  He wasn’t sure what had come over him but he’d been utterly ravenous, to the point where he was foregoing sleep or training with his Black Eagles so he could seek out women and alcohol. 

As leader of the Black Eagles – a small band of assassins who performed questionable services for the White Dragon Empire – Slayne was well paid, and since material possessions meant little to him he had money to spare.  He had no permanent residence, and owned very few belongings beyond his exotic weapons and memorabilia.  He sent most of his pay to his daughter: just because she’d chose to ignore the fact that he existed didn’t mean he didn’t feel obligated to take care of her, and making sure she was provided for seemed the least he could do.  Slayne had coin to spare even with the meager portion of his pay he kept for himself, and this week he’d decided to spend it all on whores.  It had been worth it.