House of Shadows(43)

But he knew very well that the chance of such an easy escape was purely illusory. If the conspirators were not confident they had a leash on him, they would not have let him go.

Besides, if he fled Lonne tonight, he would never know whether he might, after all, have struck a sharp blow against the Dragon of Lirionne. Though in some ways… in some ways, in fact, never having to know the answer to that question was a greater temptation to flight than getting away from Miennes. Or even from Ankennes.

But regardless of the pull of the sea, how could he leave Lonne without at least considering whether he might rather comply with rather than avoid the demand Miennes had set on him?


Taudde allowed Benne to drive him back to his rented house, but he found he could not bear its close confines. Not tonight, of all nights he had spent in Lonne. He opened the shutters of his window and stood gazing out into the night. It seemed to him he could hear the ceaseless murmur of the sea, though this far from the shore no sound of the waves should have been audible.

Though he was bone weary, Taudde found himself unable to be still. His flute was in his hand, though he had no memory of reaching for it. He hesitated a moment to recover prudence, and another moment to try at least for good sense. But then, he had a murder to arrange… at least to consider arranging. He had every reason, indeed nearly a requirement, to dispense with good sense.

So he allowed himself to lift the flute to his lips. He played himself into the shadows and the night breeze and the mist. He did not trouble overmuch with subtlety. If he would test Ankennes’s protection, why not at once? So when he clambered out the window, he did not fall, and when he reached the cobbles of the street at last, his boots on the stone made no sound. Turning away from the house, back into the dimly lit streets, he strode toward the sea.

As Taudde walked west toward the sea, the streets became gradually narrower and rougher, and the residences that lined them smaller and more crowded. Wealth ran like water down from the mountains toward the sea, so the people of Lonne said, growing shallow as it neared the docks. Taudde bent his steps north of west, not quite toward the sea but toward the Niarre River.

By this time of evening, the candlelight district had come to graceful life. Aika establishments had hung out blue paper lanterns shaped like flowers and silver ones shaped like crescent moons, and theaters were lighting the elaborate candelabra fixtures that arched over their doors. One restaurant after another was putting back its shutters and setting out lanterns—plain ones—to illuminate its sign, and the keiso Houses were alight with round, white porcelain lamps.

In contrast to the flower world, the Paliante was somnolent. Nearly all the traffic across the bridge was moving toward the candlelight district and the residential areas of the city farther south. But Taudde thought there were as yet enough late travelers through the streets of the Paliante that his presence there should go unremarked.

Taudde found the shop of oddments and instruments with less trouble than he’d expected, for all he’d been there only once. It was closed and locked. More than locked: shut fast with some magecrafted spell that wove back and forth across its entire façade. For a moment, Taudde considered trying to unweave the guarding spell. But it was complex and powerful. He suspected that any attempt he made in that direction would fail of Ankennes’s injunction in favor of “continuing discretion.”

Instead, Taudde coaxed open the simpler lock of the neighboring tailor’s establishment with the merest whisper of melody and stepped in among racks of finished clothing and bolts of cloth. The shutters at the front of the shop were closed fast, so he felt it should be safe to play a soft fall of moonlight through the tailor’s shop—enough to find his way among the racks to the back of the shop. Here, he paused and studied the wall that separated the tailor’s shop from the neighboring shop of oddments and instruments.

The wall was plaster, painted a pale bird’s egg blue. Laying a hand upon it, Taudde let his awareness settle into and past the paint and the plaster. He found no web of magery within the wall, only timbers and stonework, and then on the far side more plaster. Taudde withdrew his awareness and paused again, considering. He might yet leave the Paliante—return to his rented house, even make a real attempt to slip the conspirators’ chain and get out of Lonne entirely.

Instead, he took out his flute once more. From it, he drew a music that melted through the plaster and wove among the interstices between the stones of the wall, that made at last a way through the solid wall that he might follow. Then he stood for a time on the other side while the sorcery faded, until he could remember how to move muscle and bone.