The Way of Shadows
Page 8

There was a long pause as they stared at each other, neither saying a word. “You saw the rat,” Azoth said.
An eyebrow lifted.
“You cut me where I cut it. You were showing me that you’re as much better than me as I am better than the rat.”
A hint of a smile. “A strange little guild rat you are. So smart, so stupid.”
Azoth looked at the shiv—now magically in Durzo’s hand—and felt ashamed. He was stupid. What had he been thinking? He was going to threaten a wetboy? But he said, “I’m going to apprentice with you.”
Blint’s open hand cracked across his face and sent him sprawling into the wall. His face scraped against rock and he landed heavily.
When he rolled over, Blint was standing over him. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” Blint said.
Doll Girl. She wasn’t only the answer to Blint’s question, she was Azoth’s weakness. She was where Rat would strike. A wave of nausea swept over Azoth. First Jarl and now Doll Girl.
“You should,” Azoth said.
Blint raised an eyebrow again.
“You’re the best wetboy in the city, but you’re not the only one. And if you won’t apprentice me and you don’t kill me, I’ll train under Hu Gibbet or Scarred Wrable. I’ll spend my life training just for the moment I have my chance at you. I’ll wait until you think I’ve forgotten today. I’ll wait until you think it was just a dumb guild rat’s threat. After I’m a master, you’ll jump at shadows for a while. But after you jump a dozen times and I’m not there, you won’t jump just once, and that’s when I’ll be there. I don’t care if you kill me at the same time. I’ll trade my life for yours.”
Durzo’s eyes barely had to shift to go from dangerously amused to simply dangerous. But Azoth didn’t even see them through the tears brimming in his own eyes. He only saw the vacant look that had come into Jarl’s eyes and imagined seeing it in Doll Girl’s. He imagined her screams if Rat came and took her every night. She’d scream wordlessly for the first few weeks, maybe fight—bite and scratch for a while—and then she wouldn’t scream anymore, wouldn’t fight at all. There would just be grunting and the sounds of flesh and Rat’s pleasure. Just like Jarl.
“Is your life so empty, boy?”
It will be if you say no. “I want to be like you.”
“No one wants to be like me.” Blint drew a huge black sword and touched the edge to Azoth’s throat. In that moment, Azoth didn’t care if the blade drank his life’s blood. Death would be kinder than watching Doll Girl disappear before his eyes.
“You like hurting people?” Blint asked.
“No, sir.”
“Ever killed anyone?”
“No.”
“Then why are you wasting my time?”
What was wrong with him? Did he really mean that? He couldn’t. “I heard you don’t like it. That you don’t have to like it to be good,” Azoth said.
“Who told you that?”
“Momma K. She said that’s the difference between you and some of the others.”
Blint frowned. He pulled a clove of garlic from a pouch and popped it into his mouth. He sheathed his sword, chewing.
“All right, kid. You want to get rich?” Azoth nodded. “You’re quick. But can you tell what your marks are thinking and remember fifty things at once? Do you have good hands?” Nod. Nod. Nod.
“Be a gambler.” Durzo laughed.
Azoth didn’t. He looked at his feet. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”
“Ja’laliel beats you?”
“Ja’laliel’s nothing.”
“Then who is?” Blint asked.
“Our Fist. Rat.” Why was it so hard to say his name?
“He beats you?”
“Unless you’ll . . . unless you’ll do things with him.” It sounded weak, and Blint didn’t say anything, so Azoth said, “I won’t let anyone beat me again. Not ever.”
Blint kept looking past Azoth, giving him time to blink away his tears. The full moon bathed the city in golden light. “The old whore can be beautiful,” he said. “Despite everything.”
Azoth followed Blint’s gaze, but there was no one else in sight. Silver mist rose from the warm manure of the cattle yards and coiled around old broken aqueducts. In the darkness, Azoth couldn’t see the Bleeding Man freshly scrawled over his own guild’s Black Dragon, but he knew it was there. His guild had been losing territory steadily since Ja’laliel got sick.
“Sir?” Azoth said.
“This city’s got no culture but street culture. The buildings are brick on one street, daub and wattle the next, and bamboo one over. Titles Alitaeran, clothes Callaean, music all Sethi harps and Lodricari lyres—the damn rice paddies themselves stolen from Ceura. But as long as you don’t touch her or look too close, sometimes she’s beautiful.”
Azoth thought he understood. You had to be careful what you touched and where you walked in the Warrens. Pools of vomit and other bodily fluids were splattered in the streets, and the dung-fueled fires and fatty steam from the constantly boiling tallow vats covered everything with a greasy, sooty sheen. But he had no reply. He wasn’t even sure Blint was talking to him.
“You’re close, boy. But I never take apprentices, and I won’t take you.” Blint paused, and idly spun the shiv from finger to finger. “Not unless you do something you can’t.”
Hope burst into life in Azoth’s breast for the first time in months. “I’ll do anything,” he said.
“You’d have to do it alone. No one else could know. You’d have to figure out how, when, and where. All by yourself.”
“What do I have to do?” Azoth asked. He could feel the Night Angels curling their fingers around his stomach. How did he know what Blint was going to say next?
Blint picked up the dead rat and threw it to Azoth. “Just this. Kill your Rat and bring me proof. You’ve got a week.”
7
Solon Tofusin led the nag up Sidlin Way between the gaudy, close-packed manses of the great families of Cenaria. Many of the houses were less than a decade old. Others were older but had been recently remodeled. The buildings along this one street were qualitatively different from all the rest of Cenarian architecture. These had been made by those hoping their money could purchase culture. All were ostentatious, trying to rival their neighbors by their exotic design, whether in builders’ fantasies of Ladeshian spires or Friaki pleasure domes or in more accurately articulated Alitaeran mansions or perfect scale imitations of famous Ceuran summer palaces. There was even what he thought he recognized from a painting as a bulbous Ymmuri temple, complete with prayer flags. Slave money, he thought.
It wasn’t slavery that appalled him. On his island, slavery was common. But not like it had been here. These manses had been built on pit fighters and baby farms. It had been out of his way, but he’d walked through the Warrens to see what the silent half of his new home city was like. The squalor there made the wealth here obscene.
He was tired. Though not tall, he was thick. Thick through the stomach and, mercifully, still thicker through the chest and shoulders. The nag was a good horse, but she was no warhorse, and he had to walk her as often as he rode.