Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [36]
Both men cursed, but they weren’t too bright. They jumped up and started running after the girl again, once more closing ground rapidly. This time, Kylar tripped one into the other one. The men went down in a tangle of limbs and began cursing and hitting each other. By the time they got up, the girl was gone.
Kylar lost sight of the girl and the last hoodlum. He leapt up to a roof and sprinted after the girl. As he ran, he dropped his invisibility so he could use all of his Talent for speed. After flying across several more rooftops, he caught sight of Golden Hair again. She was a block away from the only house in a dim alley that had a lantern burning in the window. Doubtless it was her home.
Then Kylar saw the last hoodlum, coming down an intersecting alley Golden Hair would have to pass. The man caught sight of her and sank back into the shadows.
There was no time. Kylar was still more than a block behind them. He sprinted to the edge of a building and leapt unseen over Golden Hair, drawing Retribution before he landed in the little alley, right in front of the hoodlum.
The man had drawn a knife and in an instant Kylar saw from the pools of darkness in his eyes a deep, unreasoning hatred spawned from some perceived slight. The man had murdered before, and he planned to murder Golden Hair tonight. Kylar didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. And seeing that darkness that demanded death, it came to him that he’d seen it before. He’d seen it in Prince Ursuul’s eyes. Only afterward had he decided he must have been imagining things.
There was a moment of stunned silence as hoodlum and Night Angel stared at each other.
“Mother? Father?” the girl called out as she passed the alley.
The hoodlum attacked and Retribution darted out, punching through the hoodlum’s solar plexus, driving the air from his lungs and pinning him to the wall.
Around the corner, a door was flung open and Golden Hair was ushered inside in a storm of blubbered apologies and forgiveness and tears. Kylar gathered that she’d fought with her parents about something none of them remembered and had stormed off.
The hoodlum twitched. He was straining to breathe, but he couldn’t because Retribution had crushed his ribs and pushed them hard against his diaphragm. His legs were completely limp. Kylar must have at least partially cut his spine, because the only thing keeping him standing was the sword pinning him to the wall.
The man was already dead, he just hadn’t figured it out yet.
Damn me, what have I done? Kylar pulled Retribution back and the hoodlum fell. Dispassionately, Kylar stabbed the sword into his heart. He was committed now. He couldn’t leave the body here. It was unprofessional, and its discovery would certainly wreck the tenuous happiness he could hear through the open windows. There was a little blood on the wall, so Kylar blotted it up with the hoodlum’s cloak, and then scrubbed dirt over it.
Inside, it was all joy and reconciliation. Mother served a kettle of ootai and clucked about how worried they had been. The girl was telling her story of how she’d been followed and run away and been so terrified and somehow the men kept falling.
Kylar felt a surge of pride, followed by disgust at how sweetly domestic it was.
But that was a lie. He wasn’t disgusted. He was moved. Moved and profoundly lonely. He was left outside, in the streets with the dead, alone. He kicked dirt over the blood on the ground, and stuffed rags into the corpse’s wounds.
“Praise the God,” mother said. “Your father and I have been praying for you the whole time.”
That’s me, Kylar thought as he hefted the body over his shoulder, the answer to everyone’s prayers. Except Elene’s.
“Why would anyone destroy a ka’kari, Neph?” The Godking was pacing in one of his state rooms.
“The southrons are frequently illogical, Your Holiness.”
“But surely these heroes who supposedly destroyed the ka’kari—Garric Shadowbane, Gaelan Starfire, Ferric Fireheart