“Is it so wrong,” the clerk said, not in the stumbling, weeping voice he’d used a moment before, but in a calm, relaxed tone that seemed to say that he was in charge here, despite all appearances, and had no concern about his own safety, “to seek greatness?” His smile widened. “You, in your ignorance, would deem my actions with those great talents of the world a crime, would call me a murderer. But I am a scientist, perhaps the world’s greatest scientist, for while others tip toe around in fear of those who would stop their quest for the truth or—and if you ask me, more likely—in fear of the truth itself, the one they might discover if they gave a genuine attempt, I do not. I seek the truth by any means necessary, and if that requires one or two talents to sacrifice their lives in the process, well then, that is a small price to pay in the pursuit of greatness.”

  Rion was so shocked by the abrupt change in the man’s demeanor that he hesitated a moment before responding, but he took a slow breath, gathering himself and reminding himself also, that Darl stood only a few feet away with his spear leveled at the man’s face. “The pursuit of greatness, you call it,” he said. “One worthy of any sacrifice.”

  The man nodded his head. “Just so.”

  “I wonder if those who are forced to ‘sacrifice’ their lives for your experiments would agree.”

  The man shrugged casually. “What difference whether they agree or not? My colleagues in the scientific community—such as they are—” he said with a sneer, “never stop to ask the rats they experiment on for permission, nor the other animals which give their lives in the quest for knowledge, for understanding.”

  “Meaning you believe human lives of no more value than those of rats or beasts.”

  “Do you claim otherwise?” the clerk asked, as if genuinely curious. “I am a clerk, as you say, and in my role I have seen the worst that humanity has to offer again and again. Men and women without enough to eat forced to pay interest they can’t afford to their creditors or else have what little they have taken from them at swordpoint by guards who claim to be doing justice.” He gave a small, soft laugh. “We spread across the face of the world like a plague, destroying animals and plants, anything that gets in our way as we seek—secretly or not—to sate our appetite for destruction and gain. We are cruel, ambitious, conniving creatures that care nothing for how our actions might hurt others except in so much that we might be blamed for them. No, even rats are not so evil as that.”

  Rion wanted to argue with the man, but many of the points he made were similar to thoughts of his own. Far too similar, perhaps, to be coming out of the mouth of a man directly responsible for at least a dozen murders and instrumental in no fewer than a hundred more. Ed sat there watching him with a small smile on his face, as if he knew Rion’s thoughts, and that made him angry. “Rats do not sing,” he said. “They do not strum harps or lutes, bring nothing of beauty to the world.”

  “No,” the clerk agreed, “they do not. And so I must, by necessity, perform my experiments with humankind.”

  “But why?” Rion demanded. “To what purpose? If you love music as you seem to, why destroy those who create it?”

  The man shook his head, sighing heavily. “You do not understand—and how can you? I do not seek to destroy that greatness. Far from it, in fact. I seek to preserve it, to discover how it is made so that I might make more, so that the world might be filled with it.”

  “You’re a fool then,” Rion said flatly. “Only the gods can create life. Now, enough of this. I don’t care to hear anymore of your lunacy. I want to know the names of those who hired you to kill the man, Carlen, and the names of any of those who accepted the task.”

  Ed laughed. “And you think that I would tell you?” he asked. “That it would be there, knowledge waiting only for the asking?”

  “You can tell me now,” Rion said, “or you can suffer beforehand. To be honest, Ed, I think I’d rather you hold out a bit. Hurting you won’t do anything for those you have killed, those who have suffered because of you, but it might just make me feel a little better about it.” He shrugged. “Sometimes, a man has to take what he can get.”

  Another laugh. “You’re wasting your time,” the man said. “No amount of begging or trickery, no amount of torture will make me tell you. There is no chance.”

  It was Rion’s turn to grin then. “Chance, is it? I know something of chance, Ed. More than most, I’d wager.” He reached into his pocket with one hand, withdrawing a coin—Javen’s coin—and tossing it onto the table in front of him. The coin made a clinking sound as it struck the wood, spinning awkwardly, wobbling as if it might fall. But it did not fall. Instead, the coin came to rest, perfectly still, on one of its edges as if by some trick of magic. Which, Rion supposed, considering that it was a coin of a god, wasn’t far off the mark.

  The clerk’s arrogant disposition faltered as he stared at the coin. “That…that’s impossible,” he breathed.

  “Not impossible, Ed,” Rion said. “So very few things are, after all.” He reached to his belt, withdrawing a knife and setting it on the table beside the standing coin. “There is no chance of me making you tell me what I want to know, isn’t that what you said?” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know much about music, Ed, not like you. Oh, I like it well enough, but I haven’t made a study of it. What I do know about, though, is chance, and there’s something you should know.” He leaned forward, eyeing the rattled clerk who had to force his gaze away from the coin. “There’s always a chance.”

  Chapter Six

  All around them, the night was alive with the sounds of howling, though the Broken detected no movement in the shadows of the trees on all sides. He felt trapped, pursued. And in truth, he had to admit that the creatures might have been there, lurking in the darkness, shadowing their footsteps, and he would likely not have seen them anyway.

  The fight with the bandits, though brief, had sapped what little reserves of strength his wounding had left him, and it was all he could do to put one plodding foot awkwardly in front of the other, a simple task which would have been beyond him had the girl not been walking beside him, one of his arms draped across her shoulders. His vision, too, was suffering and had continued to grow dimmer until he seemed to be looking through a tunnel surrounded by darkness. Even the ground beneath his feet was little more than a blurred smudge, and it was an act of fate to continue to put one foot in front of the other, for he could not have said for certain what he trod upon.

  The Broken had always thought of himself as a predator, a lonely hunter making his way through the world. Now, though, he knew what it was to be the prey, felt what the wounded deer must feel as it struggles vainly to escape while its pursuers dog its heels, the scent of blood driving them on.

  He glanced at the girl at his side. If their circumstances frightened her, she did not show it, did not weep or cry out as others might have. What was it, he wondered, that kept her moving so, that made some continue on when others might throw up their hands and give up?

  For the Broken, that thing had always been his skill, and he had traveled bravely only because he knew that his skill would protect him against all but the greatest of dangers. The girl, though, possessed no martial prowess to rely on, had no blade with which to demonstrate that skill even if she had. He wondered who, then, was the braver of the two of them, but he did not do so for long. It was easy enough for a man to step into the darkness surrounded by lights, wielding weapons that might drive it away, but it was quite another for him to step into that night with no way to defend himself, doing it because he believed it necessary. Because he believed it right.

  The girl possessed a strength he could not truly understand, but if he managed to, he believed that it was a strength which would make all the difference. “We…must find a place,” he said, “to hide. And soon.”

  “Okay.”

  No wasted words, no asking if he thought they would survive. Okay. Just that and nothing more, her voice slightly strained not from fear but from the burden of his weight on her.

  “They will find us, if we do not,” he said. Likely, the creatures would find them even if they did discover a shelter, but he saw no reason to worry the girl with that knowledge while she carried so much already. “It is only a matter of time.”

  She nodded, glancing around. In the light of the pale moon, the world surrounding them was indistinct, a place of shadows and the trees grim specters marking their progress. After a moment, she pointed off into the darkness. “I think we should go that way.”

  Up to now, the girl had seemed content to follow his lead, the two of them sticking close to one of the forest trails, as doing so granted them far easier passage than they would have achieved fighting their way through the forest undergrowth. He had believed it more important to put as much distance between them and the camp—and the sweeping patrols that would no doubt have been sent from it—than to risk the deep woods and what dubious concealment they provided. He was surprised, then, to hear her suggest a direction, and he looked the way she indicated, seeing if he could discern some reason for her choice.

  Perhaps because of his failing sight, the direction the girl indicated looked much like any other to him, and he considered. Stepping off the path was dangerous. For one, what drove the nightlings’ hunt was not their vision, but the senses on which most predators relied—namely, smell and sound. Traveling into the undergrowth would slow him and the girl down, giving their hunters more time to track them, to hone in on the scent of blood his wound left behind them. Their trail would likely be easy enough to follow, not even considering the noise they would make pushing their way through the maze of brambles. But as dangerous as they were, the nightlings were not the only threats present in the deeper parts of the forest where more mundane beasts such as bears and wolves made their dens. More mundane, perhaps, but that would matter little to a man or a young girl should they find themselves clamped in the jaws of such a beast.

  Still, the expression on the girl’s face appeared resolute. “You are sure?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Not really.”

  He still preferred the idea of the path, would have chosen it instead of the girl’s suggestion. But then, he thought, the choosing of your own path is what has brought you to this place, to this darkness. And if that were true, perhaps it was best that he not trust his own decisions. Besides, it was likely they would die in the next few hours, whatever choice they made. “Good enough for me,” he said, and when the girl looked up at him, he offered her the best smile of which he was capable. “Lead on, little sister,” he said.

  A strange expression flitted across the girl’s face then, one that seemed to contain equal parts sadness and joy. “Alesh used to call me that,” she said. “He’s always been like a brother to me.” A thought seemed to occur to her, and she met his eyes. “Why did you try to hurt him?”

  He hesitated for a moment, thinking, then shook his head slowly. “Truly? I don’t know.”

  “You should, I think,” she said, with no recrimination in her voice or tone, just a simple statement. “For something like that, you should know. Shouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I should.”

  She nodded. “Come on, Tarex.”

  They started through the underbrush, and if anything their progress was even slower than he had feared. Dense bushes guarded the path as if jealously protecting the inner forest’s secrets, and thick roots lay hidden beneath a layer of leaves, making footing treacherous. More than once, Tarex slipped on some unseen hazard and would have fallen had the girl not caught him, displaying a strength surprising for one so small.

  They had been at it for nearly half an hour with barely any progress—Tarex could still see the path they had left in the distance, largely but not completely occluded from sight by the dense bushes and limbs—when he heard a howl that was far closer than any which had come before it. Looking behind him, he also noticed that those brambles and vines which they had passed through were coated in his blood—a lot of it. He was surprised that he had any left, but that wasn’t what was important, not now. The trail of blood would serve as good as a sign pointing the pursuing nightlings directly at him and the girl. Nightlings which, judging by the distant howls which were growing closer by the second, would be on them soon enough.

  It was finished then, or nearly so. Tarex had known his end was coming for a long time now had, in many ways, sought it, and what regret he felt was not for himself but for the girl. He, after all, was a Breaker, had become one in his grief. He had not meant to be, had thought the elders of the Ekirani fools when they’d labeled him as such, marking his flesh with the tattooed script so that anyone who saw it and knew it for what it was would also know him for what he was, or, at least, what they had believed him to be. In the end, he realized, they had been right. His had not been a quest of redemption or justice but of vengeance—crimson, bloody vengeance—not against those who had wronged him but against the world itself. A quest he had been bound, always, to give his life to, and it was no surprise to find that the debt collector had finally come to settle accounts.

  He had pictured this moment, the moment of his death, a thousand times, a thousand ways. He had thought himself at peace with it. Somewhere, deep down in the recesses of his being, those recesses which so few men can plumb—and fewer still would care to even if they could—he had longed for it. But in none of those imaginings, no matter how vivid, how real, had the girl been present, and her presence changed everything, made of his end not an inevitable conclusion to a bloody quest but a tragedy, the impact of which would reverberate to unknowable lengths, immeasurable in the way that the ripples of a stone tossed into a pond could not be measured.

  “Sonya,” he said wearily, his voice little more than a whisper, “I will remain here, you mu—”

  “There,” the girl said breathlessly.

  Ahead of them, the undergrowth continued for a few dozen more feet, promising fresh scratches and nicks along their skin when they attempted to push their way through and more wasted time. But beyond that, barely visible to his failing sight, a hill rose on their left. And at the base of that hill, outlined in the faint moonlight as if the gods themselves had marked it for his and the girl’s finding, was a small cave, perhaps five feet in height and near the same width.

  There was no telling how deep the cave might go, and he thought it all too likely that one of the forest’s more mundane predators such as a wolf or bear would likely have made use of such space, might well be waiting inside to pounce on anyone foolish enough to use it for shelter. But the howls had grown closer as they tarried, so close the Broken could practically feel the breath of the nightlings on the back of his neck. He shot a glance behind, half-expecting to see an army of them lined up in the darkness, their shapes little more than vague, menacing shadows, their malevolent eyes glowing in the night as they watched their doomed prey, savoring the moment. There was nothing, however, only the underbrush they had crossed through minutes before, and the path in the distance.

  True, the cave might be occupied—in truth, the Broken would be surprised if it wasn’t—yet he knew that they were running out of time. The nightlings might not be on them, not yet, but they soon would be—of that he had no doubt—and then there would be no escaping. Not for him, but more importantly, not for the girl either.

  “You have done well, Sonya, to find this place.” He thought to ask how she might have known it was here, to question what impulse had sent her in this direction when one had looked much like the other, all of it little more than a vague, shadowy blur, but he did not. The how of it did not matter. Cave or no cave, they were doomed, but at least when he made his final stand he would not have to worry about the nightlings getting behind him or to his sides. The narrow opening of the cave would ensure that only one or two of the creatures could come at him at once.

  Their only hope, then, was to make for it, to imagine that he might somehow be able to stand against the creatures until light came, driving them back to the shadows. A vain hope, of course, for it was all he could do to keep his feet under him now, and the god-blessed weapon hanging strapped at his back felt like an impossibly heavy weight, one he could not imagine picking up, let alone wielding in combat. But he was reminded of an old saying he’d heard long ago, one of the Ferinans’, or so he had been told. A man in the desert must drink what water he finds. A vain hope, maybe, but vain hope was better than none at all.

  “Really?” she said, looking up at him hopefully as if seeking his approval. He might have told her, in another time, another place, that it was not she who should seek approval from him, but he from her. Yet, he did not. Each moment they spent here was one they would not get back, and he was certain that the nightlings would not be so idle.

  “Yes,” he said. “Come.”

  More minutes were squandered fighting their way through the brambles and the bushes. Branches and roots contrived to trip him, threatening a fall that he would likely never rise from. He pictured himself fallen, lying there as the roots and branches of the forest grew up and over him, swallowing him whole.

  Fanciful thoughts, ones he told himself were brought on by delirium caused by blood loss, that and nothing more, yet with each passing minute, they became more and more real, and no amount of rationalization could make them disappear. For in the night, in the darkness, where the light and the sun are only vague memories, little more than dreams in truth, there is no place for logic or rationality. There is hardly a place for thoughts at all save those animalistic drives which seemed ingrained in the body of a man—holdovers, perhaps, from the ancestors before him, those who first discovered fire and learned that it was good, that in its light a man might find shelter from many of the night’s terrors.