Prologue - Waiting

The night was still and cold, and the identical shadows of nearly identical buildings fell flatly across the unblemished expanse of the road. The figure crouched on one of the upper-story window housings, blowing on his fingers for warmth while peering across the street into the narrow alley between two abandoned buildings. There was nothing there; he didn’t expect there would be, but here he was, all the same.

Winter was getting too cold for this sort of thing. Already Sleth could see his breath in the night air, and his lighter jackets weren’t quite enough anymore. It hadn’t snowed yet, but it would probably start soon. He had done winters before, but that was when he had known he was doing work that would pay off eventually, work that would get him something more than just due payment. This – this was a facade, an elaborate pretense. The man he was looking for wasn’t in the alley – wasn’t anywhere near here, if Sleth had to hazard a guess. At this point he should be well on his way to a certain storehouse on the northwest side of Harish, but Sleth figured that if he started following before midday tomorrow he would catch up. They couldn’t have that.

Sleth fished a packet of cigarettes and a book of matches out of his jacket and lit one. He didn’t smoke while he was working, but the longer this dragged on, the less it seemed like work. He could have just fabricated the reports, of course – sitting here freezing wasn’t strictly necessary, and he could have gone to bed hours ago. Still, there was something in him that despised that simple fabrication even more than the fraud he was committing – he might be something of a con-man, but damned if he wasn’t going to put in an honest day’s work. Night’s work. Whatever. Besides, he kept having the paranoid suspicion that if he wasn’t where he said he would be, than against all odds something would happen, and that against all odds his employers on the other side of the country would find out about it before he did. It was always happening – the moment you turned your back on something, it all went wrong.

He aimed a glare at the alley across the way, daring it to do something unexpected, and then spared a glance at the room behind the window at his back. It might not hurt to take a couple hours off, after all. Claiming eight hours when it was really six was less of a lie than fabricating all of it. Not that it probably mattered anyway – they didn’t pay him hourly in any case.

He took one last sweeping look at the road, and then flicked some ash over the edge of the alcove so that when it fell it would mar the perfect starkness of the road below. Then he unlatched the window and climbed back into the room.

Dropping lightly to the floor and quietly shutting the window behind him, he took a quick survey of the small room out of instinct. He habitually left one and only one candle burning before he moved to his nightly perch – not bright enough to be seen from the outside, but bright enough that there were few lurking shadows within the room itself. The candle was burning low; he felt some vindication in the fact that he would have had to come back sooner or later to light another. Besides the flickering candle, there was only a bed and a small dresser – these inns catered to zioref, commoners, and they didn’t provide much in the way of luxury. It was convenient for Sleth; it provided some anonymity, and he had no use for fancy accoutrements in any case.

His gaze halted abruptly on the ground in front of the door. The latch was still in place, but while he had been out on the ledge, someone had slipped a note under it.

Cautiously, he moved forward and picked it up. There was nothing one could do to a note to make it harmful, that he knew of, but he was equally sure that someone somewhere had found a technique, if only to prove him wrong. This one held no nasty surprises though; in fact, the grain of the paper had a familiar feel to it. It turned out to be a letter, addressed to him, sealed with the insignia of Nidoref, the city under the mountain.

Still, he considered it doubtfully. While improbable, it was possible to imitate both the seal and the unique paper-making process. There was, however, one sure way to tell the origin of the letter. Sleth broke the seal and unfolded the paper within, but not bothering to read the writing inside. He held it up to the light of the dying candle.

It was no great and mysterious magic, he was sure of that. It was probably one of those things that is ridiculously simple once it occurred to you; but it had never occurred to him to find out how they did it. He trusted this not because it was a difficult technology, but because he was sure that no one else had ever felt that such a thing might be useful – that and few outside of Nidoref took the initiative to make their own paper. He stared at the thin sheet, and the previously hidden image of a falcon stooping upon its prey glowed darkly against the white paper lit eerily in the half-light; the same as the symbol on the seal. They called it a candlemark, because it revealed itself only in a candle’s fickle illumination.

Satisfied, at last, that the letter was real, he turned it properly to read the message. As with most of the communication he maintained with his employers, it was short and to the point.

2126 CR Shunri Cuzentha

Fy Sleth,
We are respectfully cutting this month’s term short. We wish to reassign you to a job better fitting to your acknowledged abilities. We request that you return to the mountain at your earliest convenience for review.
Regards,
Zy Olifar Rimen Nidorefne

The Zy stood for Zioyan. Lord? What a pretentious bastard. Still, the signature did have a humorous ring to it – virtually anyone unfamiliar with the nidorefne would have dropped it like a hot poker, for Zioyan Nidorefne meant “Lord of Hell” in colloqial speech, Nidoref itself referring not only to the land below a certain mountain, but also to the land below all lands. Perhaps it was just Zioyan Olifar having himself a private joke, after all.

Well, if they were cutting his time short, they must have at least sent up his due pay along with the letter. He wondered how long the poor messenger had sat outside the door waiting for him to find the note and appear.

Several hours, at least, from the look on the poor kid’s face when he opened the door and came out. “So nice of you to wake up, Fayan” he drawled in a distinctly southern accent – straight from Aidea, if Sleth was any judge – turning the semi-polite title into a slur with his tone. He held out a small bag full of coins.

“I was working, Fasaf,” Sleth replied, using an actual insult, because he could, and he had a rather short temper at the moment. But he smothered his cigarette out of habit – he had learned that people weren’t fond of the habit and it tended to smudge the reputation he tried to cultivate around Harish and Jesurya. He took the bag, and opened it, counting the coins that he tipped into his palm. He counted again, and tossed one of them to the waif.

“Na-uh,” said the kid. “They raised the rate from 15 to 30 last week. Didn’t you hear? Gimme another one.”

“No they didn’t,” said Sleth. “At least, they haven’t changed my rate, and the rest of this is mine. If they didn’t put enough in the bag, that’s something you need to take up with Foreth.”

The kid grumbled something about the unfairness of life and slouched back down the hallway to the exit. The messengers always tried to weasel their way into more than their fair share, but Sleth was used to their tricks by now, especially having gotten a rundown from Foreth, the man responsible for hiring them, several years ago.

So, back south, was it? He wondered if the next task would be quite as useless as this. He fervently hoped he’d get stationed in Jesurya – he had plenty of unofficial work to do there anyway, and he had connections that made doing anything there much easier than in Harish. Harish was overrun with mobsters – they controlled everything from the carefully manicured streets to the gambling scene. At least they hadn’t insisted that he lose every game to their boss. Someone at least still knew what a good game of poker was all about.

He shut the door and locked it again. He’d sleep the rest of the night, and get a ride down to Jesurya in the morning. He was no longer being paid for this task, and damned if he was going to do any more work for it. Sleth would take Rimen at his word, even if it wasn’t meant – at his earliest convenience meant after he’d been to visit a few friends he hadn’t seen in a few weeks, and to monitor the situation in his city of choice. The review could damn well wait.

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