Shadowbane (The Shadowbane Series Book 2) by Erik Scott de Bie

Author:Erik Scott de Bie
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780786959358
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2011-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

26 KYTHORN (HIGHSUN)

WHEN KALEN RETURNED TO THE DROWNED RAT, THE SUN was high. The gang ruffians were mostly there, bragging of conquests that night or keeping a low cloak to hide their failures. Toytere took his leave to take care of one thiefly matter or another. Any other day, Kalen might have considered watching him, but at the moment, he had another goal.

Eden. Manipulative, scheming, dangerous Eden.

Eden, who had let slip no opportunity to frame him for stealing food, to add rotted rats to his stew, or to put live spiders in his bed.

Eden, who had ever hated him for reasons he could not name.

Despite all this, he’d loved her after a fashion—really, he’d had little choice. Their mother had scarcely known his name most of the time.

Kalen had been very young at the point their mother drank and drugged herself to death. Rather than stay to care for a brother she’d never loved, Eden had charmed and slept her way into an adventuring party and turned her back on Luskan. Kalen, then only a lad of six, had fallen in with a harsh crowd, including Toytere with his filed teeth. If he hadn’t met Cellica—Toytere’s compassionate and sensible sister—he might have become just as bad as Eden.

That Eden had returned and now ran the greatest of Luskan’s Five troubled him to no end. The fact that her gang held a semblance of respectability about it made resisting them all the harder. The Eden he’d seen today, with her protestations of reverence in “the Lady,” crossed his earliest memories of her. Perhaps she’d truly changed.

Perhaps.

“Her Majesty said what?” one of the Rats shouted.

Kalen turned his attention to the bar. There, Flick engaged one of the Dead Rats in a battle of will.

“You’re to take these here turnips and things down to Old Shim’s at the dock,” Flick said. “Them youngins is low on food, what with the plague and all.”

“But—but them’s our rations!”

Rations. Kalen’s stomach growled even if he didn’t feel hunger. He welcomed the reminder to eat. Flick had taken charge of the larder—a better quartermaster Kalen had never met outside the Guard.

What caught his attention, however, was what Flick said next.

“Orders of Her Majesty,” Flick said. “You take this food and you share it, understand? And you don’t demand no payment, neither.”

The Dead Rat stared at her as though she’d grown a second and third head. Kalen couldn’t blame him. Generosity? From the gang?

“Now get.” Flick shoved the crate into his arms. “Before I gets me cudgel!”

The man ran, crate bouncing against his chest. Flick gave a contented smile, which evaporated as soon as she saw Kalen watching. “Bah!” she said.

“I’ll be godsburned,” Kalen said. “She really did it.”

Myrin had spoken of taking a stand—of teaching the Rats to do the right thing—but he’d never dreamed she could actually do it. He felt a lightness in his chest, stirred by Myrin’s own perseverance. Was it truly possible?

Then he remembered Eden.

He had to get Myrin out of the city soon.

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