Shadow of the Father (33 page)

That was what he was meant for, wasn’t it? He didn’t belong with the nobility like Yilon, nor with the mice here. He ran back through the list of enemies he’d made in two short days: Balinni, Maxon, the Shadows…

And there he paused. He’d made an enemy of the Shadows, but he’d fought back. He’d protected Yilon by killing one of them. He’d gotten away from Maxon, throwing a knife that had gone exactly where he’d aimed it. He’d even thought he’d gotten the better of Balinni, until this moment, getting Valix to come at least partly around to his side after hiding the crown.

He aimed a kick at another of the bags, sending it flying into pieces across the room. His paws clenched into fists, he stalked back and forth across the cellar, grabbing pieces of old leather and tearing them. He had his knife, he had his legs, he had his wits. The gash on his arm barely hurt him anymore. If he wanted to protect Yilon, he still could. But he would have to get the crown back.

Blood flushed his ears, pumping through him. He shut out the smells of the cellar, squeezing his eyes shut to think. It was Balinni, he was sure of it. The bastard had had one of the other mice follow him—not Valix, she would have told him (wouldn’t she?)—and that other mouse had taken the crown. So he would have go to confront him. He would confront him, and he would not be afraid, and he would get the crown back.

The decision felt good. It was scary, for sure. But he reminded himself of what he’d done under pressure. Why not, then, take the same initiative now? It helped that he had no more appealing choice.

He fingered the knife at his waist. If he went back to Valix, he could get some token or word to assure Balinni that she was all right, and perhaps use her as leverage to get the crown back. Of course, if he were going to do that, he didn’t really need a word or token at all. The mere fact of his presence without her would force Balinni to listen to him. If he could make it to the Warren without being stopped.

One more time, he looked around the cellar, at the wreckage of the sacks he’d torn apart. The leather might not be valuable, in its rotten state, but it didn’t look any worse than some things he’d seen mice scavenging. Carrying an armful would give him camouflage moving through Dewanne on his way to the Warren. Nobody was likely to look twice at a mouse carrying a load of something that smelled that bad.

He ripped two more bags apart, hurriedly and without much difficulty—they almost came apart at the touch of his paws. With an armful of leather, holding his breath as best he could, he made his way back up the stairs and peered through the tattered curtain. He had to wait until a few foxes passed by for the street to be clear, and then he stepped out, hunched over his load as though protecting it, even though it smelled terrible and had spiders crawling over it. Twice he had to stop to shake them off his paws, but even when he did that, the foxes in the street ignored him.

He made his way easily back to the trench they’d used to cross the plaza, this time walking right past the guards, keeping his head down. Now, when he passed the dark, forbidding holes the filth drained into, he moved quickly past them, knowing what else was down there and why Valix had insisted on silence. Two other mice with lighter loads passed him, just as quiet, tails curled tightly around themselves as they half-ran. Sinch wanted to go faster now that he was mostly under cover, but he didn’t want to lose his footing and fall, and he needed to keep his load at least until he reached the Warren.

Mice stood at the top of the trench, dumping their barrels of filth in. Two who noticed him waited until he’d passed. He nodded acknowledgment to them, dodged the shower of filth from the less polite ones, and hurried on. The trench led around the plaza, along the west side, to a narrow set of stairs at the edge of the Warren. Sinch climbed up, surprised at how relieved he felt to see the familiar ramshackle buildings and grimy streets. At the first narrow street that led deeper into the maze of buildings, he dumped the rotting scraps of leather on the first barricade he came to and hurried around it. He turned a corner and stopped.

The huge pile of detritus he’d had to clamber over was gone, now spread into two long piles. Was this the right street? He took two steps down it, uncertain, then strode forward. He would have to trust his sense of direction. After all, piles of garbage could move around—and apparently did. The next street he turned onto was also rearranged; only the large puddle of water was exactly where it had been, now larger.

With more confidence, he joined the stream of mice navigating the obstacles and made his way deeper into the Warren. Nobody stopped him, nobody attacked him, and within half an hour he was standing outside Balinni’s house.

Cal and Mal were on duty when he walked in. “Hey, been waiting for you,” one of them said.

“All day yesterday,” the other said, standing.

“Waited for you and Valix.”

“Boss said you wouldn’t come back with the money.”

“He said Valix would come back with your corpse.”

“All right,” Sinch said. “I need to see Ba—the boss, right now.”

The first one—Sinch decided to call him Cal—laughed. “Boss is busy.”

“Important meeting,” his brother said.

“No disturb.”

“He’ll want to talk to me,” Sinch said, “if he wants to see Valix alive again.”

That shut them up. They looked at each other, back at Sinch, then back at each other.

“You go tell him.”

“You go.”

“What if he’s lying?” Mal indicated Sinch.

“His problem.”

“You know the boss.” They turned to Sinch and said, in unison, “Are you lying?”

Here was the first test of his new resolution. What would Valix do in this situation? How would Whisper handle it? For Yilon, he breathed, for Yilon I can be like them.

He drew his knife in one fluid motion and backed Mal up to the wall, placing the blade to his throat. He turned to Cal, who was just getting to his feet. “Go disturb him,” he said. “Or I’ll throw your brother’s head in there first. You think that will disturb him?”

His heart was racing, energy coursing through him. All the anger, all the frustration of the previous day was trembling in his arm. Mal must have been able to feel the knife twitching against his throat, because he called in a high-pitched voice, “Go! Go!”

Cal stared at Sinch and then bolted through the doorway inside. His high, scared voice was broken by the low, measured tones of Balinni, and when Cal spoke again, he was a little less scared. Sinch kept the pressure of the knife to Mal’s throat, the other’s wide, scared eyes staring into his own. He felt an urge to apologize, to tell Mal that he had nothing against him personally, it was Balinni he wanted to have under the blade of his knife, but then it occurred to him that it was likely either Mal or Cal who’d followed him, who’d told Balinni where the crown was, and that gave fresh life to his anger.

Certainly, if Mal knew anything about the crown, he wasn’t revealing it in his expression. So perhaps it had been Cal who’d followed him, or else Mal was just overwhelmed by the terror of being threatened in his own house.

“Let him go,” Cal said from the doorway.

“Can I go in?” Sinch said without moving.

“Yes, yes.” Cal stepped forward, then stopped, one arm half-raised as though trying to pull his brother to safety from a distance.

Sinch dropped his arm. He felt Mal sag against the wall in relief, but didn’t see it, already shouldering past Cal and into the inner chamber.

It had only been a day ago that he’d sat on the other side of this desk, intimidated by Balinni, wanting desperately to help Yilon without giving away the game he was playing. Now, Balinni was almost pathetic to him compared to the Shadows, compared to the soldiers in the sewers.

“The boss” must not have been in a real meeting, or else the others had left through the back door, because he was alone behind the desk.

The package that contained “Kishin” was sitting on one edge of his desk, the rest littered with papers and an ink pot. He looked up at Sinch ears perked in interest, eyes slightly narrowed. “I admit,” he said, “I did not figure you for the temperament of a fighter. I’d rather thought you were a thinker.” He shrugged, but Sinch saw the twitching of his whiskers and knew the affected disinterest for what it was. “Apparently I was mistaken on both counts. Where is Valix?”

Sinch put both paws on the desk, one still holding his knife, and leaned close. “Where is my prize?” A sharp scent tickled his nose, but he ignored it.

Clearly, that was not even within the realm of possible remarks Balinni had considered. The mouse’s eyes widened, then creased in annoyance. “It’s safe. I assume you are proposing a trade?”

“You filthy lying rodent!” A tall figure sprang into the room from the back door, seizing Balinni by the shoulder and throwing him to the ground. “You said you didn’t know where it was!”

“I… thought you’d left…” came the feeble response from the ground. Sinch backed up two steps, holding his knife at the ready. The figure was a gaunt fox, wearing a cloak whose wood was thrown back over his shoulders.

“Thank Canis I didn’t. Clearly His paw held me here to see your treachery.” The fox kicked the chair out of the way and drew a slender knife from his belt, holding it point down over the prone mouse. “I should dispatch you here and now.”

“No!” Sinch said impulsively, more out of a desire to see no more killing than to specifically spare Balinni.

The fox shot him a venomous look, and Sinch felt a bolt of recognition—the same muzzle looking at him from over a crossbow for two weeks, on the trip from Divalia. “I’ll deal with you presently,” the fox said.

“You’re our guard!” Sinch burst out.

“And you’re the pretender’s sex toy.” He looked down at Balinni’s gasp. “Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, when you make a practice of lying to others, you can hardly expect them to tell you the whole truth. Yes, this fierce puppet over here bedded down with the pretender lord every night on our journey out here. And he still has more dignity than you.” The fox kicked out, eliciting a muffled cry. “He begs for your life. Well, you may yet have some use.”

“Who are you?” Sinch demanded.

“Oh, we’ll come to that presently.” The fox faced Sinch across the desk. “Balinni told me that you were behind the theft of the crown, but that he didn’t know where it was at the moment. He didn’t tell me that right
away
.” He kicked out again.

“He had me followed!” Sinch said. “I went back to find it and it’s gone. He has it somewhere.”

He wouldn’t have thought the fox’s eyes could narrow further, but they did. “Is this true?” he said, with a sharp glare at the mouse on the floor.

“No, no!” Balinni cried feebly. Sinch felt a moment of pity, and then fear at what this fox might represent that had reduced Balinni to such a pathetic state. He quelled the fear. For the moment, the fox was respecting him, at least to his face, and if he were to show any sign of weakness…

“Then what happened to it?” he yelled across the desk.

“I don’t know!” Balinni called. “Ow!” The fox had kicked him again.

“Who else could have followed me?” Sinch found himself getting angrier at the frustration of being so close without getting his answer.

The fox had turned back toward him. Their eyes met as they both realized the answer at the same time. “You little fool,” the fox snarled. “You’ve given the crown of Dewanne to the Shadows.”

Sinch’s arm sagged, the knife point almost touching the table. “I didn’t give it to them.”

The fox pointed his knife at Sinch. It gleamed in the light. “You come in here, new in town, try to steal the crown. You have no idea how things work here, no idea what you’ve set in motion. No matter how fortuitous your ignorance may have been—”

“Balinni set it all up,” Sinch said.

“And you turned it on its ear.” The fox shrugged, his muzzle curling upward in a humorless smile. “Then you are going to have to go and retrieve it from them.”

Sinch forced the knife to stay level with the fox’s. “I can’t.”

“You have very little choice.”

“They hate me.”

The fox laughed. “You have barely been in town for two days. What could you possibly have down to incur their wrath?”

“I killed one of them.”

The room grew so silent that he could hear Mal or Cal in the other room saying, “Did he just say he killed a Shadow?”

Sinch kept his own expression neutral, watching the fox’s eyes widen, the smile vanish. His ears kept perfectly still, and now Sinch could see the grey edging up their black sides. “Surprised him from behind no doubt,” he shrugged. “I do not think—”

“We were on a second-story ledge,” Sinch said. “He cut me in the arm. I threw him to the street.” He pointed to his bandage, his confidence increasing with the respect he saw in the fox’s eyes.

“Then you should have no fear to go back there and demand the crown from them.”

Sinch looked steadily at him. He could detect the bravado in the fox’s voice. “What’s your name?”

“I don’t owe you anything,” the fox said.

Sinch shrugged. “I can walk out that door right now,” he said. “And it won’t be too much trouble to find out who you are.”

The fox sneered. “You’re going to ask Maxon? Who tried to leave you behind at the inn? I’m certain he’ll be anxious to answer your questions. Or you could ask this pathetic wretch on the floor. But he wouldn’t dare answer.”

Sinch studied the fox’s narrow, fierce muzzle. He knew Balinni, so he must have lived in Dewanne and then left to go to Divalia. And Maxon had brought him back.

He said there weren’t any good foxes around since Dewry left.

“Maybe he’s already told me… Dewry.”

The fox’s jaw snapped shut. He stared at Sinch. “What else did he tell you?” he demanded.

Sinch did his best to hide his inward glee. “Why don’t you ask him?”

“He would have told me,” Dewry said to himself, rubbing his muzzle. “But who else would have known? Did this lying thief tell you after all?” He kicked Balinni again.

“Please,” the mouse’s ragged voice came from behind the desk. “I didn’t tell him anything. I wouldn’t betray our trust.”