Duskfall (8 page)

The man shouted. Knot saw a form streak across the room and slam into the woman. Knot fell to the floor, the blanket suddenly as ordinary as it had ever been.

He wriggled free and swung his right arm around, blindly connecting with the man who held the sword. He didn’t know what force had come to his aid, but he’d take advantage of it. Knot followed with a sharp jab to the man’s face, then pinned his sword arm against the wall and kneed him in the groin.

The sword clattered to the ground. Knot slammed his forehead into the man’s nose. From there, it was a matter of reaching around the disoriented man’s head and twisting, sharply. The act was simple, and it filled him with satisfaction.

Knot turned back to see the candlestick he’d thrown earlier flash towards him in the moonlight.

* * *

He awoke to more darkness.

Beneath the sound of his own breathing, which he tried to keep even, and his pounding headache, Knot almost missed the faint footsteps on the wood floor. He heard a soft trickle near the washstand, and then the near-silent footsteps came back.

Knot remained still until the footsteps stopped behind him. Then he sprang off the bed, around and behind his assailant, his hands wrapping around their neck.

Knot’s arms wrapped around nothing, and he stumbled forward.

“There are some advantages to being short,” said a voice in the darkness. “Although being unnaturally quick helps, too.”

Knot reached the window and threw it open, allowing moonlight into the room once more. He blinked in the silvery glow, eyes adjusting.

“Sorry, I prefer to work in the dark,” the voice said. “If I’d thought you would wake up this soon, I’d have lit a candle.”

Knot heard the scrape of flint on steel, and then there was a lit candle in the middle of the room, in the same candlestick that had knocked Knot unconscious. Held by a young girl.

“Who are you?” Knot asked. His throat was dry.

But before the girl answered, he knew. Silvery-blond hair, bright-green eyes. Brighter now, if that was possible. They almost seemed to create their own light.

It was the girl who had tried to pick his pocket on the street earlier that evening.

“I thought you’d recognize me,” the girl said with a grin. She motioned towards the bed. “Lie down. I was just cleaning that nasty cut on your forehead when you decided to go crazy on me.”

Knot could only stare at her.

“And you should probably close that window,” the girl said. “Not many places have a good view into your room, but you don’t want to risk anyone seeing the bodies.”

Suddenly flashes of the fight that had taken place flooded Knot’s mind. He’d snapped a man’s neck without a second thought.

And part of him had enjoyed it.

He felt sick. He didn’t know these people. Why would he hurt people he didn’t know? Why would he hurt anyone?

Because they were trying to hurt you. That’s the way of it. Kill or be killed
.

The thought brought him no pleasure. He felt like an unwitting passenger in his own body.

The man who’d attacked him lay in a corner, his neck bent at an unfortunate angle. The other body, the woman, Knot assumed, was too mangled to recognize.

“What business do you have with Nazaniin high-ups like that, anyway?” The girl nodded at the bodies. “Acumens and telenics aren’t easy to come by.”

Knot wasn’t sure what confused him more. The girl who couldn’t have seen more than nine summers with glowing eyes, who talked like she was thirty. The strange words she used—Nazaniin, acumen and telenic?—those
did
resonate in Knot’s mind, he was sure of it, although he couldn’t put any images with the words. Or that there were two bodies in the corner. People he’d never met before, but who had tried to kill him. They’d called him Lathe, just like the attackers at the wedding. Was that his name? His
real
name? It meant nothing to him.

Also, things had been floating. Knot wasn’t comfortable with that.

“What in Oblivion is going on?” he mumbled to himself.

The girl bounced onto the bed, facing him. It was difficult to look at anything other than her eyes. They seemed to draw him in.

“You’re asking me?” The girl snorted. She motioned, again, for him to come towards her. “Come
on
. We really should get out of here before dawn. Get over here and let me take care of that cut.”

Knot frowned. He felt an odd desire to trust the girl, but there was a problem.

He didn’t trust anyone.

Slowly, he walked towards her. There was hardly anything she could do that would threaten him. Then he hesitated. The woman hadn’t torn
herself
apart. Knot was missing something.

“It’s okay,” the girl said. “I won’t bite.”

Then Knot knew. The thought lit up a corner of his mind.

Ventus
.

“You’re a vampire,” he said. He sat on the bed next to her.
If she is what I think she is
, he realized,
I don’t have a chance, whether I run or not
. Some part of him wondered if he wasn’t under-reacting. Vampires were thought extinct, if they ever truly existed at all. But, with all Knot had experienced in the past few days—in the past few minutes—he didn’t think he was in a position to question the girl’s existence. It explained how she’d torn from his grip so easily on the street, how she could see well enough to strike flint on steel in darkness.

The girl—the vampire—gave him an annoyed look as she raised a wet cloth to his forehead.

“Kind of you to notice. I’m flattered.”

She didn’t sound flattered.

Knot quelled his body’s desire to flinch as she dabbed the cloth at the swollen wound on his forehead.

“You’re helping me,” he said, remembering the blur that had shot into his room when there’d been a sword at his throat.

“Are you always this astute, or am I just special?” The girl raised her eyebrows. The bed creaked as she shifted to her knees, looking closely at his forehead.

“Why?”

“Direct, too,” the girl muttered to herself, dabbing again at his wound. “Everything I adore in a man. Canta must have
finally
heard my prayers.”

Knot said nothing.

“Okay,” she said, springing up. “Good as new. Now let’s get out of here. Dawn is in an hour or so, and—”

“Why hasn’t anyone come in?” Knot asked. “You broke the bloody door down. Someone had to have heard it.”

“Who says they didn’t? A vampire has got to eat, you know.”

Knot swore. “Why them and not me?”

The girl sighed, her shining green eyes rolling. “Canta’s bones, I didn’t
eat
anybody. That was me being funny. Nobody
gets
that anymore.” She shrugged. “I just… incapacitated some people, that’s all. They’re still alive, and they’re all still human.”

Knot narrowed his eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that. I may be a daemon, but there are daemons even daemons fear. Pray to your goddess you never encounter
them
.”

Knot frowned. Nothing in the Sfaera said it was safe to trust her. And yet there was something about her, something Knot didn’t understand, but…

“You don’t want to be here when people start realizing what happened. We need to leave. Now.”

The girl extended her hand. Her left hand. “I’m Astrid, by the way.”

A vampire
, Knot thought. He rubbed his shoulder, which still ached from the fight.
Canta’s bloody bones
.

Then Knot gripped her hand with his own. No other options.

“Knot,” he said.

He didn’t ask her why he should trust her. She had saved him, and for now, that was enough.

“B
OTH DEAD
? Y
OU SURE
?” Nash asked.

“My connection with their acumen is gone,” Kali said.
Why can’t anyone just obey orders? Why is that so hard?

“She didn’t run out of frost?”

Kali shook her head. “Not unless she has the shortest susceptibility of all time. She only took it five minutes ago.” They were in the Nazaniin’s Cinestean headquarters, but the local group of operatives—known as a
cotir
within the Nazaniin—was nowhere to be seen. As an acumen Kali could form a mental link with other acumens, and the link she had formed with the acumen in the Cinestean
cotir
had just been severed. Kali felt the resonance of it in her mind, like the vibration of a lute string that had been cut.

Nash sighed, blowing out his cheeks. “Variants,” he said.

Kali scoffed, but eyed Nash with a frown. He stood up, closing his eyes. He was stressed; Kali knew the signs.

Kali lounged against a large desk in one corner of the room. Their lacuna, Elsi, stood nearby, staring blankly. Nash was now pacing in front of the door. Kali sighed.

They were in an office of sorts, but they had already scoured the headquarters and taken anything useful. A half-dozen frost crystals, a disappointing amount of money—this particular
cotir
obviously didn’t get much work—and a bunch of nightsbane. The nightsbane surprised Kali; the herb was rare, particularly in the north. How that pair came across such a prize was beyond her comprehension.

The fools hadn’t even left a note.
Dear actuals
, Kali imagined them writing.
Gone to get ourselves killed in the vain hope of glory. Don’t wait up.
The glaring display of inadequacy was an unfortunate metaphor for the Nazaniin as a whole, lately. An organization of assassins that had once been feared throughout the Sfaera was now hardly more than a spy network, and an inept one at that.

Kali stood, closing her eyes. Her head still rang from the severed link.

“I can’t say I’m disappointed,” Kali said. “I wasn’t particularly looking forward to working with another
cotir
. Especially a pair of variants.”

Kali didn’t care for variants. They were inferior psimancers, after all. Variants required a terribly dangerous drug to manifest abilities that actuals—people like Kali and Nash—could use innately. Variants were unreliable. And most variants Kali knew used their limited psimantic ability as an excuse for incompetence.

“Why can’t everyone be more like me?” Kali said. Joking, of course. For the most part. “I obey orders. I make smart decisions. Why is that so hard?”

Nash snorted. “You’re on the other extreme,” he said with a smirk. “All business and logic. There’s no artistry to your methods.”

Kali’s frown deepened. “Obedience doesn’t require artistry; only competence.”

Nash laughed, but Kali wasn’t bothered. They’d had this conversation many times before, and both were set in their views. Of course, that was what made them such a good team. As long as they agreed, anyway. Kali wondered what would happen if their differences ever got the better of them.

“We should change our approach,” Nash said. “If the Cinestean
cotir
really has been eliminated, we need to be careful. Lathe is too dangerous to underestimate.” He said nothing of variants, which didn’t surprise Kali. He, too, thought them deficient, but he would never say so out loud. Another difference between them.

“The fools couldn’t wait a day or so?” Kali wasn’t interested in dropping the subject quite yet. “Hours, really. That’s all we needed.” Nash was right, of course. They
would
have to be careful. Lathe had always been dangerous, but even more so since he’d become so damn unpredictable.

Nash shrugged. “They didn’t know how close we were,” he said. “They took a risk. It didn’t pay off.”

Kali raised an eyebrow. “You’re defending them?”

When Nash didn’t respond, she felt a sliver of guilt. This was no time to argue. “You’re right, we need to change our approach. If Lathe killed them, he’s probably already left the city. We’ll make a pass at each gate on the off-chance we can catch him.”

“What about the tiellan quarter?” Nash asked.

“Good point. He has some connection with the elves. I’ll check the gates. You check the elven quarter.”

“You have to call them that?”

“Do I have to? Of course not. But I’ll do as I damn well please, and a horse is a horse, a fish is a fish, and an elf is an elf.”

Nash shrugged, and said nothing more.
Damn right
, Kali thought. Kali was no Kamite, not by any stretch. She had met tiellans who were good, intelligent, capable. But she had other reasons to hate them. Grudges that would not be forgotten.

“
Voke
me if you have any trouble,” Kali said, fingering the voidstone in her pocket. “I’ll do the same. Otherwise, meet back here at second watch.”

Nash nodded, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Kali sighed inwardly, but walked over to him. She placed her hands on his temples, rubbing gently.

“We have our orders,” she said.

“I know. That’s what bothers me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she truly was. Almost sorry enough to regret trying to start an argument. “If you like, we can—”

“No,” Nash said, too sharply. Kali felt his hands on hers. “No,” he said again. “I’ll be all right. We have work to do.”

“Very well,” Kali said, holding his gaze. Then she leaned forward and kissed his forehead.

“Take care of yourself,” Nash said as she turned and walked away. He would follow momentarily. Best not to be seen together.

“Always,” Kali said.

“Y
OU THINK
I’
D APPRECIATE
the sun,” Lian said, “but I don’t. Everyone who knows anything about the north knows that clear skies make for colder days than cloudy ones.”

It was almost noon, and the sun shone high in a rare blue winter sky. Winter and Lian had finally reached Cineste. The snow had been thick and constant the past few days. White drifts shone on rooftops, balconies, and walls. The city itself sparkled like a jewel.

Shivering, Winter pulled her cloak more tightly around her.

“The cold bites through you on days like this,” Lian said, pulling his hat down to cover as much of his ears as possible. “Ignores layers of wool and fur and sinks into your bones.”

Winter couldn’t disagree. It was freezing. But she didn’t say anything. She had hardly spoken since they left Pranna. The more Lian talked—and Lian could talk a lot—the more she was aware of her own silence.