Chapter One

I WATCHED Myghal Tren as he stood naked, looking out the open window. The moonlight caused his skin to glow as if he were a river wraith, and the smoke from the calmstick in his fingers curled around his head, adding to the illusion. The years had added little weight to his tall, powerful frame, and his ass was as magnificent as always. If gray threaded his ash-blond hair, it was well camouflaged.

“I’ve heard rumors about you,” he said, not turning around.

“Oh?” I shifted slightly on the bed, the mattress lumpy and hard, straw poking me through the cheap linens. If I were the one paying for the room, I’d complain to the innkeeper. Perhaps Myghal would voice a threat before leaving. Or perhaps he hadn’t noticed the poor bed, seeing as he’d mostly straddled me.

After taking a few drags from the calmstick, Myghal turned away from the night-bathed city. I couldn’t read his expression. “I hear you’re working for the raff and rabble now. Taking their pitiful coins to chase after their wayward children and straying spouses.”

“I have to put meat on the table somehow.”

“You’re looking quite thin, actually.”

“The raff and rabble don’t pay as well as the Crown.”

The moonlight played on my skin as well, although to lesser effect. I am thin—always have been, even in more prosperous times—and life has marked me with scars large and small. My coal-colored hair, although shorn close to my skull, shows the silver quite ably. But vanity has never been one of my vices, and anyway, Myghal liked the look of me well enough to fuck.

“You would have been a lieutenant by now,” said Myghal.

“Or even a captain, like you.”

“Perhaps. And your purse would be full, Daveth. You’d have yourself a pretty apartment in the Silver instead of—where do you live?”

“In the Low,” I replied with a shrug. I’d always lived in the city, and for all but a brief time, I’d made my home in the Low Quarter. The river Tangye, which flowed through the city and gave it its name, flowed through my veins as well.

He took a final draw from the calmstick before tossing it out the window, and I stood and began to dress: oft-repaired chausses, dun-colored tunic, leather knife-belt, and an unadorned black cloak that contrasted starkly with the scarlet and vermillion capes the city guards wore. My boots were plain black leather, but they were well made. One thing I don’t skimp on is my footwear, even if it means I go hungry for a time.

Making no motions toward his own fine clothing, Myghal watched me. “What will you do when you get old?” he asked. “You haven’t any family to support you.”

“I doubt I’ll have to worry about that.” I tied my cloak more tightly around my neck but didn’t move to the door. It was difficult to leave with Myghal still nude, leaning against the wall.

“You’re not so young now, Daveth.”

I smiled. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“I remember when you first joined us—green as spring grass and ready to take on the world. Eager to please as well,” he added with a sardonic twist of his lips. “What happened?”

What was the correct answer? Time happened. Life happened, each little sorrow and stumble adding to my burden like pebbles added to a sack, until I grew stooped and slow. Someday the sack would be too heavy for me to bear. But that’s how the world turns, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar or a fool.

“I want more ale,” I said to Myghal.

He dressed with movements more graceful than mine, and once he’d laced his gaudily decorated boots, he snapped another calmstick to life. Then he followed me out of the room, through a dark hallway, and down a narrow flight of stairs. I momentarily considered stopping in the common room, but while I can tolerate bad drink, the customers conversed too loudly for me and the lanterns burned too brightly. I didn’t look behind me to see whether Myghal followed, but I heard the solid thunk of his bootsteps across the wooden floor and then, when we got outside, on the cobbles.

The buildings in this neighborhood leaned close together, blocking the moonlight, but I knew my way. Myghal caught up to me and we walked for several minutes. Even this late, we weren’t alone. Beggars, drunks, and trance-dreamers slept in doorways; weary messengers trudged past on their employers’ errands; lovers embraced in alcoves and alleys. Soon the street merchants would fetch their wares and begin to push their carts about. But not yet.

The Green Dragon was not my favorite tavern, but it was nearby and suited my mood. Only a few other men and women—clutching their tankards tightly—sat in ones and twos at the scarred tables. The fire had died to a mellow glow.

The landlady limped over as we took our stools near the back. She was a large woman with burn scars across half her face and gray hair hacked short. I’d never learned her name, but then, she didn’t know mine either.

“Four briquets,” she barked, hand outstretched. She was looking at Myghal, since his purse was obviously heavier, but her scowl conveyed her opinion of the city guard. He dug for the coins and dropped them into her palm.

“Charming,” he said, looking around after she’d walked away.

“I’ve been in worse.” Much worse, as a matter of fact.

Myghal had finished his calmstick as we walked, and now he pulled out the silver box where he kept them. He offered me one, but I shook my head. It was too expensive a habit for me to take up.

“It’s almost as if you wallow in your poverty,” he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke for emphasis. “Like you enjoy it.”

“You’d rather I cry over it instead?”

“You could do something about it. Better yourself.”

I barked a laugh. “You suppose there are so many opportunities for a man like me? The son of a whore? A disgraced former guard? Perhaps my sparkling personality will win people over.”

“You could get a position as a private guard to a merchant or minor nobleman. I’d recommend you.”

“Would you, now?” I regarded him for a moment before shaking my head. “I’ve had enough of being ordered about. I may be poor, but at least I decide which jobs I accept. I choose when to work and when to drink.”

As if on cue, the landlady arrived to plop our tankards down. She left without a word.

“Do you even care what happens outside the Low?” Myghal asked.

“Why should I?”

“Because, Daveth, shit rolls downhill. And the Low is at the bottom of that hill.”

I laughed into my tankard. “Maybe some shit from the Silver or the Royal would improve the smell in the Low. Ours stinks.”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “It all stinks. The queen is old, the crown prince is useless, the Great Council has their heads—”

“Doesn’t this gossip violate your oath of loyalty?” My sarcasm was pointed. Amongst themselves, the guards often complained about the nobility, but none of them would dare to say these kinds of things to outsiders. And I was very much an outsider.

Myghal snarled and looked away.

We drank and Myghal smoked, and although we looked at each other, neither of us spoke. I was remembering a youth who idolized a slightly more seasoned colleague—until my blindness had cleared and I’d seen reality. I don’t know what Myghal was thinking about.

I was swallowing the dregs of my third tankard when Myghal addressed me again. “You do have other options, you know.”

“I could jump off Tangate Tower and hope I grow wings before I hit the ground. I could steal a ship and sail off the edge of the world. I could—”

“Always too quick with the mouth. That’s what’ll kill you someday—mark my word.”

“But I’ll die with the last word,” I responded with a grin.

“And if you don’t, no doubt you’ll come back as a ghost to deliver it.” He set down his ale and drew the back of his hand across his lips. That was distracting—I recalled what those lips had been doing earlier in the evening. Now, though, they just thinned as he considered me.

“What if I could offer you a position?” he asked.

“You already did. Several, in fact. I’m going to be sore in the morning.”

“An employment position. One that pays well enough to get you out of whatever rathole you’re living in. You can buy some decent clothes and decent food. Attract a string of lovers to your door.”

“Like the girls and boys who come to yours?” I’d heard rumors about those who were willing to pay with their bodies to make sure a captain of the city guard looked away at opportune times. Not that I blamed them. Scrabbling for a living is a little easier if you now and then neglect to pay the Crown some taxes or if you mix in a bit of contraband with your legitimate sales.

“I never mind a little company,” Myghal said, smiling. “Even when it comes with an acid tongue.”

He sparked his last calmstick and leaned back in his chair. He knew at what angle to hold his neck to show his square chin and flared cheekbones to best advantage. He looked as if he were posing for a portrait.

At the table closest to us, an older man had collapsed face-first onto the tabletop and begun to snore. I envied his deep and untroubled sleep. I never seemed to find that myself, no matter how much ale I drank. But Myghal blew a cloud of smoke toward the man and shook his head.

“A nobleman of my acquaintance seeks someone to convey packages about the city,” Myghal began.

“I’m a little old to be a messenger boy.”

“But just right for a guard. These packages are valuable. Jewels and coins most often, but sometimes artwork or precious books. He collects things. Some of the people and places he collects from can be quite… unpredictable. He’d need your services only once or twice a week, and you could spend the rest of your time as you please. Drinking or whatever.” He gestured with his calmstick at my empty tankard. “He’ll pay generously.”

Either Myghal was manufacturing this opportunity on the spot, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, or he’d deliberately sought me out that evening, only pretending that he bumped into me on the Royal Bridge by accident. I crossed that bridge often; with his connections it wouldn’t be difficult to discover that. Either way, I couldn’t discern his motives—I rarely could when it came to Myghal—and that disturbed me. “I told you already. I’m content as I am. I’m not looking to better myself.”

Myghal flicked the butt of his calmstick toward the sleeping man. It bounced off his neck, making him twitch, but he didn’t wake up. Myghal chuckled. “I hoped you’d become more reasonable with age, but it seems you’ve only grown more stubborn. You choose dirt when you could have gold instead.” He shook his head. “I’ll never understand you.”

He must not have been trying very hard. I’m a simple man.

The landlady studiously ignored us. No doubt she would prefer a few hours of sleep to delivering more ale. So I stood, stretched, and resettled the cloak on my shoulders. “It was good to see you again. Good to fuck one more time—you’ve improved at it.”

“Reconsider. You know where to find me.”

“In the posh part of town, with the line of youths at your door.” I gave him a small salute, a deliberate corruption of the one I’d used as a guard, and turned on my heel.

Sickly morning light illuminated the scraps of sky between looming buildings, and the air reeked of human waste from recently emptied chamber pots. I tried to avoid the worst puddles as I made my way home. Most of the people I passed near the Green Dragon were tradespeople on their way to workshops. Many gnawed on bread rolls as they walked, and although their clothing was plain and practical, their eyes didn’t carry shadows of desperation.

That changed when I got nearer my home in the Low Quarter. As the streets grew narrower and more crooked, the buildings became more decayed, the shops and taverns dingier, the gutters more foul. And the people were ragged, with even the children appearing ancient and wizened.

Myghal wouldn’t have feared this neighborhood, because he wore a guard’s scarlet cape and carried the trademark heavy sword. But most other residents of Tangye avoid this area whenever possible—for good reason. All that remained here were the city’s forgotten and discarded, the lunatics, the diseased, the outcasts.

And me. I was born here, dropped squalling from a whore who used her earnings to buy trance-drops from the local witch. When she wasn’t working, my mother was dreaming, and she told me nothing about where she’d come from and who her people were. As for my father, he could have been any man in Tangye.

The Low Quarter had been my cradle and my playmate. I came to know every hidden nook and every shadowed cranny. My neglectful mother died when I was young, and if I hadn’t grown up knowing how to fight, I wouldn’t have survived my childhood. When I saw the city guards’ fine uniforms and shining weapons, I wasn’t repulsed, as most others in the quarter tended to be. Instead I yearned to become one of them.

And briefly I did, before hopes turned to dust and I returned to the Low.

Now I had two rooms on the ground floor of a four-story building that looked in perpetual danger of tipping over. I kept the front room for my work and the back room for sleeping, and when I was feeling especially flush, I paid for a spell to keep the roaches and rats away for a while. I hadn’t felt flush in several months, and as I unlocked my door, a rodent strode boldly out as if I were its servant.

I went inside and bolted the door. Without bothering to light a lantern, I made my way to the back room, where I unlaced my boots and hung my cloak on a hook. Then I lay down on my miserable mattress, pulled up the blanket, and waited for the nightmares to begin.