Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [157]
Feir cursed. He could break an obscure cipher in another language, but he couldn’t count to three. Great.
The signal stick turned yellow—something it had never done before. “Vürdmeister Lorus report…”
Oh, no.
The stick flashed, “Why… going… south?”
Feir blanched. So the signal sticks didn’t just communicate, they transmitted his position. That wasn’t good.
“Punishment will… when you return.” My punishment will be decided when I return? “… Lantano… rumored to be near you. Any sign?”
Feir wanted to grab his own ignorance by the neck and shake the life out of it. What was rumored to be near him?
“Vürdmeister? Lorus? Failure to respond will…”
Feir threw the stick away and scurried backward. Nothing happened. A minute passed. Still nothing happened. He was beginning to feel silly when the signal stick exploded with such force that it shook snow from the trees for a hundred paces.
Well, that’ll wake the neighbors.
The neighbors. That wasn’t a pretty thought. And Lantano? The name sounded familiar.
Feir climbed a rock hill nearby to get a better view of his surroundings. He almost wished he hadn’t. Four hundred paces to the south an army was camped, with perhaps six thousand men. The usual camp followers added perhaps four thousand to that: wives and farriers and smiths and prostitutes and cooks and servants.
The army’s flags bore a stark black vertical sword on a white field: Lantano Garuwashi’s sigil. That was the name, Feir remembered: a general who’d never been defeated, a commoner’s son who had won sixty duels. If the stories were to be believed, sometimes he fought with wood practice swords against his opponents’ steel to make things interesting.
The neighbors had definitely heard the noise, and a knot of ten horsemen was riding toward Feir right now. At least a hundred others followed.
53
Kylar opened his eyes in an unfamiliar room. It was getting to be an all-too-common occurrence. This rendition was small, dirty, cramped. The bed smelled as if the straw hadn’t been changed in twenty years. His heart raced as he prepared himself for whatever might come next.
“Relax,” Momma K said, coming to stand near his bed. It was a safe house doubtless, on the north side of the Warrens by the smell.
“How long?” Kylar asked, his voice a croak. “How long have I been out?”
“Nice to see you, too,” Momma K said, but she smiled.
“A day and a half,” a man’s voice said.
Kylar sat up. The speaker was Lord General Agon. That was a surprise. “Well, looks like the huge new wall around the city isn’t the only thing that’s changed.”
“Amazing what the bastards can do when they try something constructive, isn’t it?” Agon said. He had a crutch and moved like his knee pained him.
“It’s good to see you, Kylar,” Momma K said. “The rumors have already started about how the Night Angel killed Hu Gibbet, but the only people who know that it was actually you are my guards. They’ve been with me a long time. They won’t speak.” So his identity was safe, but Kylar wasn’t going to be distracted. He’d come too far, too fast, and given too much with only one thing in mind. “What do you know about Logan?”
Momma K and Agon looked at each other.
“He’s dead,” Momma K said.
“He’s not dead,” Kylar said.
“The best information we have—”
“He’s not dead. Jarl came to tell me, all the way to Caernarvon.”
“Kylar,” Momma K said, “the Khalidorans found out who Logan was yesterday. As best we can tell, he either was killed by another inmate because of it, or he threw himself down the Hole to avoid what the Godking would do to him.”
“I don’t believe it.” Yesterday? While I was sleeping? I was this close?
“I’m sorry,” Momma K said.
Kylar stood and found a new set of wetboy grays piled on the foot of the bed. He began getting dressed.
“Kylar,” Momma K said.
He ignored her.
“Son,” Agon said, “it’s time to open your eyes. No one likes that Logan’s dead. He was like a son to me. You can’t bring him back, but you can do some things that no one else can.”
Kylar pulled on his tunic. “And let me guess,” he said bitterly. “You