FIVE

Most traps are simple, Colin thought. It’s why they work.

Delia Huerc’s apartment had seemed simple. It had been reoccupied since her death, so he’d had to wait until the current owner—a Khajiit rug-seller named Lwef-Dim—was gone. It was an old place, full of shadows, once-weres, and might-have-beens, and so opening his spectral eyes was easy enough. And there she was, a slip of a ghost, still waiting. Ghosts usually moved on, except in locations with the power to hold them and feed them, but this place had given him hope—and it hadn’t disappointed.

But then he saw that it wasn’t Delia. It wasn’t even a ghost. It was something left to deal with the likes of him. It contorted in his overvision, a chimera that refused to settle on a shape, then bloomed fully into Mundus, the world, and brought harm to him. He failed to dodge its blow, but whatever hit him still wasn’t actually matter; it was worse, traveling though his arm, through every layer of muscle, every vessel of blood, the bone and spongy marrow, leaving detailed and unbelievable agony behind. At first he thought the arm was actually off, but then he saw it was still there, a mass of spasming muscle.

He tumbled away without thinking and drew the blade from his belt as reflexively, his training working well below the level of thought. The thing came for him and he cut at it with the translucent weapon. The apparition shivered and made a sound he hardly heard, so high-pitched was it, but the windows of the apartment shattered.

So it didn’t like the blade, which was good. He’d brought it in case he had to fend off a ghost, and luckily whatever this was, it was at least offended by the consecrations bound into its crystalline metal.

But he wasn’t sure if he’d actually hurt it, so he backed away, trying to focus on it, to forget the feeling of death eating at his arm and understand what he was facing.

It came again, and this time he noticed a sort of center and stabbed at that. He felt resistance, and it made the sound again, but this time shudders of pain that weren’t his own racked through him, so he thrust again, and then again. A yellowish mist whipped at his head, he felt something like a razor pass through his brain, and colors exploded, seemed to spill out of him. He couldn’t feel his limbs, and realized he was in a jumble on the floor.

The presence loomed over him.

Feeling oddly detached, Colin closed his eyes against the thing and reached into the middle of himself, where his little star was, the tiny piece of him that had come from beyond the world and even Oblivion, from Aetherius, the realm of pure light and magic.

As pain and then cold gripped him, he made the star a sun.

The force and light of it blew his eyelids and mouth open, and radiance shredded through the specter like a high wind through smoke. This time it didn’t manage to make a sound, but was instantly and utterly gone.

Colin lay there then, watching the slight rise and fall of his chest, unable to remember what he was supposed to be doing. He didn’t recognize where he was either. And he couldn’t move.

He ought to have panicked, but he was too tired.

Across the room, a woman he did not know was watching him, silent, unmoving.

He remembered being a boy in the city of Anvil, tarring boats and staring out to sea, dreaming of distant lands. He remembered his mother, her back permanently bent from her work scrubbing clothes.

He remembered killing a man. He hadn’t known his name. It was on a bridge, and the man was looking out across water at a light. The man had seen his knife and tried to fend off the sharp blade with his hands. He tried to beg, but Colin had stabbed him until all of his life spilled out.

He remembered that was his final test before becoming an inspector.

As his memory returned, so did the feeling in his legs and arms. It was as if a million needles had been thrust into them.

By the time he could push himself up, he knew where he was again. He faced the woman, who still hadn’t said anything. She was a Redguard, with tight, curly hair and a strong, handsome face. She was probably about fifty.

“Are you Delia Huerc?” he asked.

Her eyes moved at the sound of her name, but otherwise she didn’t react.

Some ghosts remembered everything, some nothing. Some didn’t even know they were dead.

“You went to Black Marsh, with Prime Minister Hierem. Do you remember that?”

Her head turned a bit. She looked down, and her hand came up a little.

He followed the gesture and saw she was pointing at one of the baseboards. He went over to it and found it loose. In a hollow in the wall he discovered a soft leather bag, and in that a book.

“May I look at this?” he asked.

Her hand dropped back to her side but she didn’t answer, so he opened it. It was written mostly in Tamrielic, with some asides in Yoku, which he had passing knowledge of. It was a journal, and flipping toward the end, he found several pages of entries about Black Marsh. He’d only read a page when he heard steps in the hall and realized he’d been on the floor most of the day.

He went out the empty window, taking the book with him. Delia watched him go without objection.

There wasn’t much sun left, but he wanted to be in it, to try to forget the thing in the apartment. He went through the Market District and bought apples, pork pies, and lemon water from street vendors, then found a good place on the roof of a building overlooking the alley behind Arese’s house. There he ate and read the journal, stalked by pigeons trying to get at his scraps.

Huerc described the preparations for the trip in detail, and it became clear to him that she thought the Emperor, at least, was aware of the trip. Hierem had explained that the secrecy and misdirection were to avoid any of the Emperor’s enemies learning what he was about. She hadn’t been privy to the meeting with the An-Xileel, but worked out that some agreement had been reached. She’d been led to believe that Hierem was there to propose an alliance against the Thalmor. But he was vague about what the negotiations actually entailed. Most interesting, the agreement involved Hierem performing some sort of ritual at the City Tree.

She had written:

He read on, but the only other passage of interest to him was one in which she began to question whether the Emperor had authorized or was aware of their trip, and she had determined to ask Hierem about it.

He read the final few sentences with a little chill:

Colin thumbed back through earlier parts of the book, but it was dark now. He settled against a chimney, watching Arese’s unlit window. Neither moon was in the sky, but there were no clouds, and the stars were glorious. He rested there, letting the fall of night ease into him; first the swifts, then the fluttering of bats, the lonely imprecation of a barn owl. Tree frogs chirped and insects whirred. A dog barked somewhere in the Market District and was answered nearby, which set off a chorus of canine comment from all quarters of the city. A couple argued not far away about what the proper price of the cockles for dinner might have been, and the strains from a lute drifted along in the breeze.

Arese would be with her sister now. He had a few more hours to wait, a little more time to decide what to do, whether to show Arese the journal or not. Was she really an agent of the Emperor?

He’d been assigned to find Prince Attrebus. The prince had gone, against his father’s wishes and in secret, to find and fight the menace of the flying city. He hadn’t gotten far; Colin had found his entire bodyguard slaughtered—and it seemed, at first, the prince, too. Attrebus, it turned out, was a careful creation of his father and his ministers. All of the battles and duels he had won were set up that way, and the bards and authors who sang and wrote of him were heavily subsidized by the court. The prince himself hadn’t known this; few outside his guard had. Whenever the prince decided to go off on some sort of adventure, his right-hand man Gulan always reported it to the office of the Prime Minister, and it had been handled.

But not this time—or at least not the way it usually was. This time the prince had been ambushed. That was what had led Colin to investigate Arese; he knew Gulan had gone to her, as usual. He discovered that she had set up the attack on the prince herself, and later followed her to a house where—as he listened—she killed the crime boss who had facilitated it, along with all of his guard and household. He still didn’t know if she had summoned something or transformed into the nightmare that had turned the house into an abattoir.

And yet, Arese had admitted this to him. She had offered an explanation for it.

Most traps are simple.

He sighed, ran his hand through his hair, felt the breeze on his face.

He heard a faint noise that seemed somehow out of place and opened his eyes.

Fifteen yards away he saw the shadowed figure of a man, dressed in the black quilted jerkin so many of the Dark Brotherhood affected these days. The fellow was in profile, kneeling on the roof of the building across the alley. As Colin watched, he slipped like a spider down a rope too dark and thin to make out from his vantage point. He settled, still like a spider, on the casement of Arese’s window. After a moment Colin saw the window reflect starlight as it swung open, and then, a few heartbeats later, shut again.

The breeze picked up. It felt cool, and Colin realized he was sweating.

Someone wanted Arese dead.

He hesitated long enough to feel ashamed, trying to sort out what the smart thing to do was. If she died, he could step out of this whole thing.

But then he would never know what was going on, and maybe he would have to watch the Empire collapse knowing he might have done something.

But it was more than that. There had been something about her, brittleness, vulnerability …

He recognized her, he understood in that moment. She was what he might become after a few years of this. He had seen, however briefly, the hollow place in her, the weariness. He still wasn’t sure if he believed her or if they were on the same side.

But he didn’t want her to die.

He looked back up at the sky. Almost time for her to come home, of course. The assassin would know that, too, wouldn’t he?

He didn’t have any rope or cord. He could make the jump to the window, maybe, but the odds were against it, and it wouldn’t be quiet. But he could jump to the next building, get to her front door before she did, and avoid the whole confrontation.

But then he saw light in the window—not in the room itself, but diffuse light, coming from another room.

Muttering a curse, he stepped back a few paces, assessed the distance, and leapt.

His toes hit the window ledge and he curled forward, elbows over his eyes. Glass panes shattered but the wooden frame did not, and so he bounced back, spine toward the street thirty feet below. He kicked a foot through one of the broken panes and managed to hook it on the wood, which swung him back and smacked his shoulders into the brick. Gasping, he jerked up, tightening his stomach muscles, and drew himself up to the window.

By the time he got it open, of course, someone was coming for him.

He dove past and to the side of the dark blur and rolled toward the lantern-lit room farther in, drawing his knife. He absently noticed that his hands were slick with blood.

A knife thudded into the floor next to him as he scrambled up, and the assassin was close behind; he had a dark blade in his left hand and was drawing a bright one with his right from beneath his jerkin. Colin’s breath rushed in, and for an instant everything slowed and golden light seemed to infuse the room. His arms moved but he seemed outside of it. The next thing he knew, he hit the wall hard, pain trying to make him scream as he fell, but his throat wouldn’t open to let it out.

His attacker was leaning against a bookcase across the room. He made a sort of snarling sound and took one, two steps toward him. With the third step his knee kept bending and he slammed face-first into the floor. Colin could see the bloody point of his knife standing out between the downed man’s shoulder blades.

Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet, feeling them wobble beneath him. Under his breath he said a little prayer to Dibella, but he couldn’t tell if she heard. He wasn’t sure how long he could stand. He made it to the fallen man, though, and took the black knife from his hand. He stuck it in between the first two vertebrae below the skull and wiggled it. Then he had a look at himself.

His arms were cut up from the window, nothing so deep as to be dangerous. The assassin’s other knife had driven through the pectoral muscle where it stretched up to meet his shoulder. The feeling of the impact came back to him, and he realized the blade must have hit a bone and skipped up instead of slipping through to his heart. In any event, if the dagger hadn’t been poisoned, he was probably going to survive.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a second man, coming from the direction of the window, and he tried to turn, far too slowly.

But there was a clap like thunder, and the man went staggering back, and in the next instant something appeared, something horrible. Colin had a glimpse of slits of green balefire, scales, and claws like sickles. The man almost managed to scream before his lungs and viscera were spattered across the room. Then the thing turned on Colin, snarling.

“Stop!” a voice shouted, and the daedra stopped, panting.

Arese stood behind him, her eyes wider than he had ever seen them. It made her look very young. The sleeve of her white shirt was soaked in blood, and a red patch on her temple and eye would probably soon prove itself a bruise.

“Hunt and guard,” she told the daedra, and it turned and reluctantly slouched back toward the window.

“How did you—” Arese managed. She was breathing so hard and shallowly it worried him.

“Come here,” he said. “Are you cut anyplace else?”

“I never saw him,” she said, staring down at the body. “Never heard him. I didn’t have time to do anything.”

“Let me look,” he said. “You got your arm up,” he remarked, examining the defensive wound on her wrist. It wasn’t deep.

“I heard a crash, like glass breaking. I guess I threw up my hand when I turned, but he was there already.”

“The crash was me,” Colin said, searching for punctures anywhere vital.

“I don’t understand.”

“I was waiting on the roof across the alley. I saw him come in.”

“He came to kill me.” Her breath was still too quick, and her skin was hot, much hotter than it should be.

“That seems obvious,” he said.

“They would have killed me if not for you.”

“Well, that second guy would have had me,” he said.

“Divines, you’re bleeding everywhere.”

“Nothing serious,” he said. “But speaking of bleeding, your arm—”

She looked at it, then back at him. He realized he had one hand on her shoulder and another on her stomach. He felt her belly quiver, and something happened to her eyes.

Stupid, he thought. This is stupid.

Her skin felt almost molten. She gasped when their lips came together, as if trying to get the air from his lungs. He smelled something like burning cloves and felt a shock of energy race through him like nothing he had ever known before, filling the emptiness left in him from two hard fights with impossible strength. She buried her face in his neck and he in hers, and they went down on the rug in a tangle, both wrestling furiously at ties and buttons.

Slick with blood, the salt from their sweat burned his wounds, but not enough to matter.

Later, much later it seemed, he lay back while she cleaned his wounds, first with warm water and then with a white ointment that left a pleasant warmth behind it and smelled a little like mustard. It did more than feel good; he could see the flesh draw together almost as if stitched. They had moved to her bedroom, where she had laid out a thick cover over her sheets and let him rest stretched out. She sat on the edge of the bed, the skin of her throat and breast like pearl in the moonlight—except for where the streaks of dried blood still clung. “Feel better?” she asked.

“Much,” he said. “Although I have to say, I didn’t feel it that much a little while ago either.”

She looked down. He thought she seemed embarrassed.

“Reaction,” he offered. “When you realize you’ve almost died, sometimes—you know.”

She shook her head. “When I summon daedra, I have to touch them with my mind. I have to be strong enough to keep them from turning on me. Daedra are—violent, passionate. Sometimes I feel something of what they do.” She looked away. “I think—” She shook her head and dabbed at the cut on his chest. “It’s also been a long time, for me. I haven’t felt I could trust anyone enough to—do that. I haven’t felt secure enough.”

“And you trust me?”

She smiled. “No. But—” She smiled. “Reaction. And there is something about you.” She cocked her head. “You’ve no reason to trust me either, I know. I’ve given you every reason not to. But I’m just trying to get through this. Alive. And sometimes it doesn’t seem worth the cost.”

“Cost?”

“This isn’t a life, Colin. I’m thirty-one years old. I’ve been a spy in Hierem’s ministry since I was twenty-one. I’ve been with one other person in that time, and it was a disaster. I work, and I fear, and sometimes I do awful things. I have drinks with my sister for an hour or two most evenings and come home. I can’t talk to her about what I do. She stays out, gambles, goes for rides in the country, has affairs. I’m careful. I protect myself. And now I’m going to die anyway.”

“They failed,” he pointed out.

“But someone sent them, probably one of my rivals or Hierem himself. They’ll send more. I’ve made a mistake somewhere—probably to do with those two on the island. They know.” She lifted his hand and kissed it. “You’re very young,” she said. “You can get out of this. You should. I won’t stop you.”

“Are you giving up?” he asked.

“No. No, I can’t do that. But I don’t have to pull you down with me.”

He sighed. “I was in this already,” he said. “I have to—I have to do something right. Do you understand?”

“You did something right tonight,” she said. “You saved my life. Can’t that be enough?”

“Not if you die tomorrow.”

“We all die. You gave me at least a day more than I would have had. And not a bad one.”

“It’s not enough,” he said.

“Why?”

“It’s just not.”

“Don’t get angry,” she said.

“I’m not,” he replied.

“You sound it.”

“Okay,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m not, though.” But he was, wasn’t he?

She didn’t say anything, but then he felt a tender kiss, just at the edge of his lips.

“It doesn’t have to be rough,” she said. “I can be gentle.”

He thought of the two men she had killed on the island, of the many who had perished in that house he had followed her to. He thought about the assassin he had just slaughtered, and realized he felt nothing.

He kissed her, and outside the night birds sang as if everything were normal, quiet, and in its place.