Vaudin grunted and carried her away, out of sight. Her laughter filled the hall and the sound lashed Ren’s mind. He cupped his mouth to stifle a groan. What power was this? What had she done to him? He stumbled the other way, hoping there’d be no door. He ran into someone and tackled him to the ground.
“Forgive me,” the man said. He gurgled and spat blood on Ren’s face.
Ren pushed away from him and rubbed his face with his sleeve. His small knife had gouged the man’s side, right into the lung. He wasn’t dead but stared wild-eyed in that shifting light. Then, as if the goddess hated Ren, the sconces all lit, and an alarm burbled.
He scrambled away toward where Vaudin and the woman had been and found her veil, a fine bit of cloth with barely any shape to it, like a sliver of mist. He ran back to the now-dead man and dropped the veil near his hand. They’d think he deserved death. The blade was small, like a priestess might use.
Desperate, he summoned shadows, but they quavered. He was exhausted. Ahead, a servant turned the corner with a tray bearing two glass tumblers and a bottle of amber liquid. Then the man kicked at the wall and the latch clicked. He pushed through and disappeared with the tray.
Ren waited for twenty breaths and followed.
His vision tunneled as he pushed past servants and knocked over trays. No one noticed him, still shrouded, and as far as they knew, just another servant. Then, as if favored by every known god, he stumbled out into an alley. He didn’t stop.
Alarms blasted, now. Guards ran across the west side of the alley. The other side of the alley faced Velkamas with its dark, looming towers. He bolted that way, crashing through shrubs, leaping over fountains, marble benches, through a puul grove, and tottering over a chasm. He leapt along the edge until he found a place he could step across to the other side.
It was only when he made his way back to the sanctuary to change his clothes that he noticed a long strand of pulsing white hair stuck to his hand. It must belong to the woman he’d seen with Vaudin.
“Goddess above,” he said weeping. “How lucky can I be?”
He placed that one in a new envelope. It was the most precious thing he owned.
“More leverage,” he said as he cleaned up in the fountain. He’d save it for a day when his master was furious. He imagined that stern face brightening. On that day, he just knew everything would change.
This hair will buy you everything you want, he thought.
He tossed the uniform and stolen badge into a chasm and headed home to the Lows.
34
Beyond the pristine stone of the great estates, white-lacquered and pretentious, wreathed by the crater’s black stone, were the dank, dark alleys of the city that Taul had never cared to learn about. Outside Vaidolin’s gates—those hallowed gates—was Outer Halkamas. The outer city was further divided into upper and lower. The lower, beneath a hundred-foot ridge, was a morass of half-breeds, whores, laborers, fieldhands, debtors, the houseless, and the destitute. There, amidst winding alleys and dark shacks piled atop each other, snarled the wounded and forgotten, the poor and indentured.
Daushalan had no tolerance for such things, and pressed its poor into work gangs far from the crater and stored them in longhouses. Hosmyr had not yet decided what to do with its poor. Or it had merely forgotten.
Taul pulled on his coat collar and drew the hood down to his eyes. He’d borrowed the long coat from one of his overseers, but his boots were finer than anything walking down the alley. They drew looks, disdain. This was their world, and he was the foreigner. He had the feeling, sinking and sad, that just to mention his house would earn him a shank in the gut.
In the valley, there was a dampness which usually pleased him, reminding him of the life that flowed through the orchards. Here, it reeked of waste, beasts, and grime. How did the mysterious lord know about a place like the Blue Wolf? He dared not ask. Wealthy houses needed workers; a master must know every corner of his land to govern it. He knew so little of his own house beyond the goings on within the estate walls and the upper market shops. The chits exchanged there could buy and sell the street he walked on.
How could he find a child here? And of what quality? With each step, he seriously considered turning back.
At the end of the alley, occupying half the side of a small square, sat the Blue Wolf. Its roof sloped and sagged like a crooked smile. Two chimneys filled the air with the thick, black smoke of yellow fires. Shapes and shadows milled about still. It irked him they were not out working, making use of the gifts the goddess had given them. Were he a more courageous man, more dutiful, he might stand up to them and demand they do something useful. The Mornae of his grandfather’s time would never allow such lassitude. He shouldered through them.
The tavern was full despite the hour, but the patrons spoke in low voices, whispering to each other or quietly sipping the last bit of their valley ale; for some, the only hearty meal they may have that day.
The barkeep watched Taul closely as he wiped down the counter.
“What’ll you have?” asked a youngish man with close-cropped brown hair and a mottled pink and gray face.
It took Taul a moment to acknowledge him. “Brandy,” he said.
“Right,” the lad said with a crinkled nose. “Closest we got is apple wine.”
“I’ll have that then,” Taul said.
“As you say, milord. Take any seat you like.”
Taul removed his coat, but then reconsidered. Everyone else looked well bundled, concealing everything they were about. Eyes looked up surreptitiously as he crossed the tavern to a table away from the door.
The tavern, lit by yellow light, swam a little before his eyes as they adjusted. A fireplace still roared at the far end. The heat was stifling, but he kept his coat on.
“You never get used to it, not really,” said a voice from behind him. “Take the next booth, more shadowed, more comfortable for you, milord.”
The man said milord with a hint of ridicule. Taul frowned, irritated the man lumped him in with those demanding the foreign title. He was not superior because his house employed others. Calm yourself, he thought. It was a joke they could both share.
“Of course, milord,” he replied with a laugh.
The man behind him chuckled and took a seat.
The server brought Taul his apple wine in a small, murky tumbler and Taul set a silver bit on the table. The server palmed it.
The man before him was not like the gutter folk of outer Halkamas. His eyes were pale blue with silver flecks, and his hair, though close cropped, clearly held goddess-light. His skin was deep gray and youthful, without the crisscrossing white lines of age he expected from an agent of a high born Mornae.
The server set a golden-brown liquor in a clean glass for the agent, who smiled and nodded to the server.
An awkward minute passed while Taul opened his coat and loosened his tunic.
The agent downed his brandy.
“Well then,” he said. “I hear you need a child. Matron having a hard time?”
