Shadow of the Father (30 page)

Pain flared across the arm, but didn’t incapacitate it. Sinch struck reflexively upward, knocking Frost’s arm away from his. His fingers closed around cloth. He pulled hard away from the wall, using the motion to press himself against it and secure his balance, even as he felt Frost’s weight shift in his paw. He turned his head to look.

The other mouse tottered on the edge, flailing to regain his footing. Sinch’s paw had caught his tunic at the black sleeve, twisted it so he couldn’t bring his arm up to grab back. The Shadow’s weight pulled more heavily as he groped for purchase with his free paw. Sinch thought of Yilon, and let go.

“You’ll die for this,” Frost hissed, swiping in his direction, but whether it was to pull himself back or to pull Sinch with him, his paws clutched only empty air.

Sinch shrank back against the wall, his eyes wide. He watched Frost topple away from him, the black shape disappearing slowly, slowly, into the darkness. An eternity later, a dull noise came from the street below, the thick impact of a body and the snap of bones breaking. Then there was only Sinch’s heartbeat and the light from the window. If not for the pain in his arm, it would have been hard to believe Frost had ever been there.

Sinch had never killed before. Even when captured by Maxon, the most dangerous situation he’d ever been in, he hadn’t even thought to throw his knife at the fox’s head or chest. The silence from the street below unnerved him, so that he had to hold his paws to prevent them from shaking. Breathe, he told himself, remembering the words he’d learned back in Divalia:
You made your choice and the deed is done. Take a moment to make sure there was no other way it could have ended. If you acted with a clear conscience, make your peace.
He’d hoped never to have to kill anyone, had only known one other thief in Divalia who had, but he’d known someday he might. Yilon talked about fighting and war so casually, about defeating enemies and hitting targets and doing what must be done, surely he would not be standing on a narrow ledge after saving Sinch’s life, worrying about consequences. Surely he would have long since made his peace.

Still, it took ages for Sinch’s heart to return to its normal pace, and in all that time, no more sounds came from below. He couldn’t bring himself to look over the edge—for fear of losing his balance, he told himself. The window, barely three feet over from him, was now closed. It astonished him that nobody had come to see what was going on outside.

But nobody did. Finally, he slid himself over to the window, and peered in through the crack. Valix was sitting there, talking to Yilon and the vixen, with Colian standing by. Their nearness excited Sinch, filling him with relief as warm as a hot mead. He drew his knife, lifted the latch, and pushed himself through the window.

 
The mouse whose name was Valix shrank back against the wall when the foxes all entered the room. It took some soothing on Colian’s part to assure her that she wouldn’t be harmed, especially since Yilon could see that she was still in tremendous pain. Colian gave her some herbs, which she looked at doubtfully until Dinah pointed out that if they wanted to kill her, there were plenty of quicker and more pleasurable ways of going about it than feeding her a small quantity of poisonous herbs. Yilon thought this was going too far, but it did convince Valix to chew the plant.

By that time, Yilon was reasonably sure that she had been one of the mice who’d distracted them during the theft of the crown, scent or no scent. He’d guessed that she and Sinch had gone to the sewers to hide or retrieve it, but he didn’t dare say anything about the crown, and she stuck to her story that Maxon had knocked her unconscious, she’d woken in the middle of Dewanne, she and Sinch had escaped from Maxon when he wasn’t looking (she refused to admit to any knowledge about the knife Sinch had thrown, even when Yilon told her they knew about it), and she’d led Sinch to a sewer grate which they’d jumped into to escape. Yilon asked twice if she were looking for something in the sewer, but she just shook her head and said, “I told you the truth.” That was when they all heard something outside that sounded like a whisper. Yilon, remembering the threat of the Shadows, hurried to the wall next to the window where they were all now looking. Dinah and Colian simply nodded as he closed the shutter, but Valix visibly relaxed.

“Do you remember anything that might help us figure out what Maxon was doing with you and why he was after Sinch?” Yilon asked, sitting next to her.

She flinched, but he didn’t move, though he did carefully curl his tail away from her. “No,” she said. “He just said he wanted us to show him something, but then he knocked me out and didn’t tell me what. And I don’t think Sinch knew either. He said he was just stalling ‘til I woke up.”

Which might or might not be true. Yilon had spent a good deal of time with Sinch and his family, and Valix reminded him of them: stubbornly loyal to family and friends, not deceitful for the sake of deceiving. He suspected that if she were lying at all, she would be lying to protect Sinch. Which made him feel warm, that Sinch had made himself that close a friend in so short a time.

“I’m Sinch’s friend too,” he told her. “I came here with him from Divalia.”

She had just opened her mouth to reply when the shutter crashed open and a small shape came hurtling through the window.

Yilon leapt to his feet on the bed. Colian jumped for the door. Valix jerked back and then let out a squeak of pain. And Dinah moved fastest, pinning the body down before it had stopped moving, one paw across its throat, the other raised in threat, teeth bared. “Who are you?” she barked.

“It’s me!” squeaked the shape.

“Sinch!” Yilon jumped from the bed and pushed Dinah aside, though she was already sitting back. “You’re bleeding.”

“What?” Sinch looked genuinely startled. Yilon touched his arm, where the cloth of his tunic was stained red. “Oh, that. That’s nothing, just as scratch. I’m fine.” He wrapped both his arms around Yilon’s chest.

Yilon heard Corwin saying, “Just don’t be a public embarrassment.” It took him a moment to decide that Dinah, Colian, and Valix were not enough to constitute a public, and then he hugged Sinch back. “How did it happen?”

Colian was already kneeling, parting the cloth and looking at the arm. “This is more than a scratch,” he said. “Come over to the bed and sit down. I’ll bind it.”

“And Valix, you’re awake.” Sinch looked as though he might cry. “How are you feeling?”

She grimaced. “Like someone stabbed me in the back. It’s better than it was, but it still hurts when I move.”

“You shouldn’t be moving,” Colian said, lifting Sinch’s tunic off. “An inch or two to either side, an you’d be incapable of movement. Or speech. Or thought, for that matter. Your body has probably not been through anything this violent before in your life. You need to relax.”

“You’re the ones who had me sit up.”

“Sitting is fine,” he said, reaching into his bag and pulling out the long razor. “But sit perfectly still. All this looking around and jumping is not going to help.”

“I didn’t arrange for Sinch to come barreling through the window like the Lost Cave Miner.”

Sinch held his arm out while Colian shaved the fur around the wound. “What’s the Lost Cave Miner?”

“Old fairy tale,” Dinah said. “What happened to your arm?”

Sinch turned toward Yilon, his ears flattening. “I had to do it,” he said. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Yilon’s mind turned immediately to Maxon’s mysterious absence. His neck prickled. “Did what?”

“He was going to kill you.” Sinch leaned forward.

Colian muttered an oath under his breath and pulled the mouse back. “Sit still, unless you want a matching slice above this one.”

“Who was? Maxon?”

Sinch shook his head. “Frost. The Shadow.”

This time, Dinah sprang to the window, holding it shut while she fumbled at the latch. Sinch’s entry had knocked it somewhat askew, but not broken it, and with some fiddling, she managed to get it into place. Valix, meanwhile, had jumped again and was now staring at Sinch as best she could through eyes teary with pain. “You… killed…”

Sinch winced, though that could have been from Colian swabbing at the now-visible angry red gash with a cloth. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“A Shadow?” Dinah was gaping at him.

Yilon looked around the room, finally figuring out what Sinch meant. His skin crawled at the thought of the assassins outside, focused on him. He dropped to his knees so he could look Sinch in the eye. “Why did he want to kill me?”

Valix shook her head. “Oh, you’re in trouble. You need to get away, back to the Warren, or further. They’re going to get you now.”

“Revenge for tonight,” Sinch said. “But I don’t think they know who you are.”

“They can’t get him,” Dinah said to Valix. “He killed the Shadow.”

“Why would they want to kill me if they don’t know who I am?”

“They work in pairs,” Valix said, just as Sinch told Yilon, “You look important.”

In the ensuing silence, Colian held a clean cloth out to Sinch. “Bite down on this,” he said. “I’m going to sew up the wound.”

Yilon and Sinch stared at each other. “So they’re after both of us now,” Yilon said. Sinch’s muzzle screwed up in pain around the cloth as Colian drew the needle through his skin, quickly and efficiently.

“Looks that way,” Valix said, perhaps emboldened by the weight given to her words. “Say, no offense meant, your noblenesses, but is there another room you could go attract Shadows to?”

Yilon stood. “We’ll go to the top room.”

“I was kidding. The other won’t do anything right now. He’ll come back with a partner, but probably not tonight.”

“How do you know so much about them?” Dinah still had a paw on the window. Her voice was higher than normal, her eyes a bit wide.

“I grew up hearing about them,” Valix said. “How did you manage to kill one?”

“He’s good,” Yilon said, because Sinch was still holding the cloth clenched between his teeth.

“They’re better,” Valix said.

Colian tied off the thread and dabbed something else over the wound. He took the cloth gently back from Sinch. “Done,” he said.

Sinch raised his ears and looked determined to show it didn’t hurt. He looked right at Yilon. “I threw a rock at him from the third floor. Then I jumped down and he swung at me. I grabbed his arm and pushed him. He fell.”

“Are you sure?” Dinah’s voice still sounded high-pitched. Colian turned his ears toward her, pausing in his ministrations of Sinch’s arm.

“Yeah,” Valix said. “If you didn’t poke the dead body…”

“He didn’t move,” Sinch said. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“You should’ve stuck a knife in his throat,” Yilon said. “Then there’d be no doubt.”

He’d hoped to reassure Dinah, remind her that she was capable of dealing with enemies, and break the tension in the room, but the remark had the complete opposite effect. Her ears flattened to her head and her eyes widened further, showing whites. Her tail, already down, curled between her legs.

Valix, looking at Sinch rather than Dinah, started to say, “Hah. Only way he’d do that is…” She got no further before Dinah bolted from the room. Colian sighed. He got to his feet, giving Yilon a reproachful look.

“She didn’t enjoy that,” he said, and left the room after her, leaving Yilon alone with the two mice.

“I didn’t…” Yilon started after the nurse, then stopped. He spread his paws, facing Sinch. “I didn’t know.”

“Know what?” Sinch asked.

Briefly, Yilon told them about Kites. Valix said, “Nobody likes killing. When it comes to it.”

“Have you ever killed anyone?” Yilon asked.

She shook her head. “Hope I never do. That’s for the Shadows to do.” They all looked at the window. “Maybe you would have made a good one,” she said to Sinch. “You throw a good knife.”

He shook his head. “They hate foxes,” he said.

“Ah.” She settled back on the bed with a grimace. “So this is the friend you were hoping to get money from.”

“You need money?” Yilon asked, and Sinch, with some reluctance, told him what had happened with Balinni, wrapping up the story quickly as Colian led Dinah back into the room.

Her ears were down. Nobody talked until she said, “I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath and then let it out. “I’ll be okay now.”

Sinch moved before anyone else, walking over to her. “I never killed anyone before either,” he said. “You have to remember that you made the right choice. There was nothing else you could have done, right?”

“I said, I’ll be okay.” Dinah was trying her best not to look at the mouse even though he was right in front of her.

“It’s kind of you to say so,” Colian said.

He touched her arm gently, brown fingers resting just at the border where her russet fur shaded into dark brown. “You have to make peace,” he said. “You can’t change what happened. You have to learn from it.”

“So,” she said, sounding forcibly courteous. “You’re Yilon’s friend from Divalia.”

“More than friends,” Valix said.

Yilon could have strangled her. The situation with Dinah and the lordship was confused enough without introducing Sinch into the mix. But Dinah, strangely, perked at that comment and looked over the mouse’s head at Yilon. “Is that true?”

Now Sinch was looking back at him, and Yilon couldn’t lie in front of him, no matter how little he wanted to tell the truth. “In a manner of speaking,” he said.

“But that’s wonderful.” Dinah clapped her paws together.

Yilon stared at her. “I really don’t understand females,” he muttered.

“You don’t want to marry me!” Dinah said. “I don’t know why you didn’t mention it before. So you’ll be a lord, and we won’t have to get married.”

“I can’t…” Yilon gestured vaguely toward Sinch. “He’s a mouse.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Dinah said. Colian gave her a reproachful look, but didn’t speak.

“And anyway, I have to get married. I have to have a legitimate heir.”

She weaved at the floor and ceiling. “This house came into my family because my great-grandmother was the mistress of the Lord. He gave her this house and they stayed together for twelve years, until he died. And she kept the house after that. Just build a house on the edge of the Warren.”