Lament (Scars of the Sundering Book 2) (34 page)

“Why? We did his job. He doesn’t
need anything from us.” Kale dumped the sizzling bangers onto a plate and slid
it onto the table.

The drak shrugged and turned his
head to glance around the room. “It’s not my place to question the boss. He’s
coming here around midday. You’ll be here if you know what’s good for you.”

“Fine.” Kale found he had little
patience for Boss Steelhand’s thuggery this morning. He spat a ball of fire at
the drak’s feet. “Get out.”

The drak squealed and hopped from
foot to foot to avoid the conflagration. He scampered away as the flames
flickered out.

Kali chuckled as she grabbed a
sausage. “You should do that every time one of those creepers comes around.”

“I wonder what he wants this
time. I don’t want to work for some crime boss.” Kale’s teeth pierced his
sausage with a snap as he bit down.

“Tell him no, then. I’ll back you
up.”

“I know you will.” Kale was glad
to be fortunate enough to have someone watching his back. He didn’t want to
wander too far from home while waiting for Boss Steelhand, as midday was not an
exact hour. Although he gave fleeting consideration to run errands and have the
minotaur wait outside an empty house, in the end, Kale chose to not antagonize
him.

While they waited, Kale and Kali
busied themselves with cleaning decades of dust and grime from the bookshelves
and stairs that led to the moon gate chamber. Reluctant to touch any of the
tomes for fear of damaging them, he used a small brush he acquired from one of
the local merchants to whisk away the dust from the spines of the books.

Together, they finished the top
third of the staircase by the time they heard someone knocking on the door.
Kale placed his cleaning gear on a nearby shelf. “At least he knocks.”

“He’s polite for a crime boss.”
Kali, closer to the top of the stairs, beat Kale to the door. Boss Steelhand
smiled and bowed when the draks opened the door.

“You didn’t have to clean for me,
little draks. I’ve been in far dirtier places.”

Kali stepped aside to let in the
hulking minotaur. “We weren’t doing it for you.”

“How did you hot foot my
messenger, by the way?” He leaned against the counter to keep from scraping his
horns on the ceiling. “I assume it wasn’t magic because that would make you a
renegade.”

“I can breathe fire, like a
dragon. It came with the wings.” Kale crossed his arms over his chest. “What do
you want?”

“Huh. I want to hear that story
someday.” He held up his hand to stifle Kale’s retort. “That’s not why I came
here. I have a proposition for you.”

“No.” Kale made up his mind
before the minotaur.

Boss Steelhand laughed. “You
haven’t even heard it yet.”

“We don’t need to.” Kale looked
at his mate for confirmation. Kali hooked her arm in his and nodded in
agreement.

The minotaur rubbed his chin.
“Won’t be any risk to you, and you won’t have to do any work to get paid.”

No work and get paid?
Kale was
forced to admit the concept piqued his interest. He glanced at Kali. Her eyes
darted under raised brows to meet Kale’s.

“All right. I’m curious. What’s
the proposal?” Kale pointed at the minotaur. “I’m not saying yes!”

Boss Steelhand chuckled. “I know
you’ve been talking to Jairo, so I don’t know why he came to me instead of you.
His cousin is a limner and needs to set up shop. Jairo doesn’t have room, but
you”—the minotaur gestured to the empty storefront—“you have plenty of room.”

“What’s a limner?” At first, Kale
thought it must be someone who made or sold lims, but he didn’t know what those
were, either.

“Have you seen those fancy books
with gilded pages and pretty pictures in them?”

Kale shook his head. The lexicon
his sister had was little more than a list of words, and her grimoire gave him
a headache whenever he looked at it. Books were in short supply in Drak-Anor.

“You mean like nobles and priests
are always cooing over?” Kali cocked her head.

“Yeah, well, a limner does all
those fancy decorations. They call it ‘illuminating.’ People pay good money for
that. Jairo’s cousin does the work here, deals with the customers here, and
pays you rent.”

It sounded mundane and harmless.
Kale narrowed his eyes. “What’s the catch?”

Kali grunted. “The catch is Boss
Underhand here gets a cut and keeps an eye on us.”

Boss Steelhand chuckled.
“Underhand… never heard that one before. I do get a cut, from his profits. Not
from you. I needed a vacant space, and yours was the first one to come to mind.
Of course, if you’re planning on actually doing something with this storefront,
well, that’s another conversation we need to have.”

“We need to think about it.” Kali
nudged Kale as he was about to respond.

“Fine. Don’t take too long. I’ll
send someone by tonight to get your answer. If you haven’t decided by then,
I’ll find someplace else.” Boss Steelhand bowed as low as the cramped
storefront allowed and then let himself out.

Kale locked the door behind him.
“It sounds too good to be true.”

“It’s not free money.” Kali
watched Boss Steelhand stroll away through the cloudy window. “He’ll have an
inside drak watching us the whole time the shop is open.”

Kale didn’t understand Boss
Steelhand’s interest in him. It was yet another item to add to the list of odd
occurrences revolving around the draks and minotaurs in Muncifer.

* * *

Gisella stood watch in the smithy
with Lady Aveline while Pancras entered Piotr’s home. Like many merchants,
Piotr lived in rooms built above his workshop. She heard Pancras’s hooves clop
on the stairs out back as the minotaur ascended to the living quarters.

Lady Aveline leaned against one
of the support columns in the smithy and wiped her brow with a rag from one of
her pouches. It felt as hot as an oven to Gisella.

“What brings a slayer and a
bonelord to Curton?” Lady Aveline stuffed the rag into her pouch. “What trouble
is brewing in my town that requires the two of you to travel together?”

Gisella shook her head. “We’re
merely passing through. We have mutual affairs in Vlorey.”

“Passing through on the way to
Cliffport, then?”

“That’s right.” Gisella decided
to indulge her curiosity. “What leads a northerner to become a guard in
Curton?”

“Captain of the City Watch, and
that’s a long story.”

Gisella glanced up at the
ceiling. It was quiet in the smith’s home, but she supposed that was to be
expected. Dignified deaths were often quiet. “We appear to have plenty of
time.”

The left corner of Lady Aveline’s
mouth turned upward. “I have no desire to open myself up to a transient. You
come, you cause some trouble, and you go, never to be seen in these parts
again.”

The Golden Slayer regarded Lady
Aveline for a moment and clenched her jaw to keep her mouth from falling open.
She didn’t think of herself as a transient, but the guard captain was right
about one thing: it was likely Gisella would never return to Curton. Her reply
was cut short by the arrival of another guard.

“Lady Aveline!” The stocky guard
panted to catch his breath. Wisps of unruly black hair poked out from under his
helm. “Trouble in Danica’s Den!”

Lady Aveline pushed herself away
from the column and ran her fingers through her hair. “What sort of trouble
requires you to race across town to seek me out?”

“Danica says she found a dwarf
cheating, and there was something about a fiendling, and the whole place is up
in arms. I think they’re going to lynch her!”

Gisella felt her heart leap into
her throat. “A dwarf and a fiendling?”

“Friends of yours?” Lady Aveline
ushered the guard out of the store. Gisella moved to follow, but the guard
captain extended her hand and stopped her. “We can handle this. I’ll be back to
check on Piotr, and if I hear anything other than there was a positive outcome
here, I will hunt you all down. Understand?”

“Of course.” Gisella placed a hand
on her chest and bowed. She watched the guard disappear into the marketplace
crowd. Her first duty, of course, was to ensure Pancras made it to Vlorey.
Running off to check on two people who may or may not be Qaliah and Edric did
not further that aim. She passed the time by perusing Piotr’s wares and prayed
to Aurora that the people in trouble were not the dwarf and the fiendling she
knew.

* * *

With a trembling hand, Piotr
pushed open the door to the bedchamber. The acrid tang of urine assaulted Pancras’s
nose as a breeze passed through the open window. The room was bare, save for a
bed pushed against the wall under the window. The bedsheets, whether discolored
due to age or by the person under them, stirred. A thin, gnarled hand reached
out.

“She likes to look out the
window.” Piotr stepped into the room and held the door for Pancras.

Pancras held the maul low, at
arm’s length. Thus far, Piotr had not tried to take it from him again, but he
saw no reason to remind the smith that the weapon he held was the one for which
he had not paid. The minotaur stooped to keep from brushing his head against
the low ceiling and stepped toward the bed. The stench worsened as he came
nearer, and he noticed an overflowing chamber pot peeking out from beneath the
bed.

“What’s her name?” He pointed to
the chamber pot. “Is there a reason the chamber pot is overflowing?”

“The boy’s supposed to empty it.”
Piotr slammed the door. The shape in the bed yelped at the loud noise. “Mama’s
name is Nika.”

“What is her affliction?” Pancras
reached out to pull back the sheet, but the bony hand snatched the edge away
from him. He chewed his lip and stared for a moment. Finally, he pushed some
dirty rags under the bed with his foot in order to kneel on the floor.

“She complained of her bones
hurting. Mama’s always been strong, tough. But she’s old. Old folks hurt in
their bones on cold, wet days. My wife and the boy feed her. Change her
bedding. I work. Make money to pay for the food and medicine from the
apothecary… for all the good it does.”

Pancras felt blessed not to have
to live with that sort of pain, but encountered many minotaurs with similar
complaints in their advanced years.

Piotr continued. “She got to be
hard of hearing. Then she couldn’t see. Started getting lumpy and twisted, like
old, knotted wood, except hard, like rock. Healer didn’t know. Couldn’t fix
her. Someone cursed her. I know it. It’s an evil spell.”

Pancras grabbed the sheet and
pulled it down. The top of the woman’s head was covered in silvery-grey hair,
thinned around the bulbous growth of the top of her forehead. Additional
growths in her cheekbones squeezed her eyes shut, and she breathed through two
holes that were once her nostrils. She wheezed a groan of agony through swollen
lips. The minotaur shuddered at the grotesque countenance that turned to regard
him.

He pulled his rod from his belt.
He still needed it to summon arcane power since he had yet to attune himself to
the weapon, though he wasn’t sure that was necessary now. Tendrils of blue
smoke swirled as he tried to sense sorcery at work. There was nothing, although
his concentration intensified the sensation of power he felt in the maul.

“I sense no magic at work here,
but this is unlike anything I’ve ever encountered.”

“Dwarf magic. She was always fighting
with dwarfs.”

Pancras doubted Piotr’s
conclusion. He slid his rod into its loop and shifted his grip on the maul. His
stomach fluttered as his mind raced. Pancras placed the maul, head down, and
gripped the shaft with both hands as he lowered his head. He felt his horns
brush against the sheets, eliciting another groan from the woman.

He concentrated on the warmth he
felt in the maul, the power of Aita. It felt different than that to which he
was accustomed, though intellectually, he reasoned it was the same.
I have
no idea what I’m doing here.

The warmth, the power, flowed
into him. He heard Piotr gasp and felt the maul twitch in his hands. A warm,
gentle breeze carried the fragrance of honeysuckle. Pancras opened his eyes and
found himself standing on hill overlooking Curton. A woman stood near a row of
red-flowered shrubs. He recognized her silvery-grey hair.

“Nika?”

The woman turned to face him.
Tears welled in deep-set, piercing, steel-blue eyes as she regarded him. “Who
are you? Why are you doing this to me?”

“I am Pancras, a Bonelord of
Aita.” Pancras bowed to her. “Your affliction is nothing I have caused.”

“It hurts. I can’t move. I can’t
see. I can’t hear. Everything hurts.” She buried her face in her hands and
wept. Pancras approached her and put his arm around her heaving shoulders.

“Piotr says the healers can do
nothing. He hates to see you suffer.”