Beneath an Opal Moon by Eric Van Lustbader

Author:Eric Van Lustbader
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497654914
Publisher: Open Road Media

Water’s Edge

Calle Córdel was deserted when he arrived.

It was just before midnight, he judged, squinting up at the smudge of moonlight. This, too, was fast disappearing as the cloud cover thickened. He sniffed, could smell it now.

The storm.

He pulled his Daluzan cloak tight about him but the rising wind plucked at its edges, exposing the silken lining.

Had this been one of Milhos Seguillas’? If so, he knew it was a singular honor that the Senhora had given it to him. She was so much a lady—

He looked around him. Shuttered doorways and darkened windows. Only a few flickering night lanterns for company.

Where was Chiisai?

He glanced upward reflexively again but now all traces of moonlight had left the sky. In the distance, he thought he could hear a rolling boom of thunder.

A thin gray dog with a matted coat padded down a side street, stopped, regarded him for a moment, then lifted its leg and urinated against the side of a building. The dog turned and sniffed it before mooching slowly onward, nose to the ground for any trace of something to eat.

The trees whispered their enigmatic sighing song; they bowed slightly.

Past midnight now.

Where was she?

He turned abruptly at a sharp sound. Boots against cobbles. For a moment, they stopped and he turned away. Then they resumed. He turned back.

A woman came into view, tall and long-necked. Her face was in shadow. She stopped when she saw his bulk, tentative now but unafraid.

He saw that she carried a weapon in her left hand, at the ready.

“Who are you?” he said.

She said nothing but continued to stand in the center of the street. There was no one else around. He moved a step closer. The shadows made it impossible for him to tell anything about her. This he did not like.

The knife with the triangular blade was lifted so that he could see its explicit threat.

“Come no closer,” she warned. Her voice floated to him eerily on the night.

He felt the change in atmospheric pressure and the rolling crack of thunder was unmistakable. He stared from the black pool of her face to the knife-blade. With a start, he saw that it was dark and shiny. Blood. This woman had but recently been in some kind of fight.

“Are you in need of help?” he asked.

She stood as immobile and silent as a statue.

“Are you hurt?”

“I am unharmed,” she said after a time. “Will you leave willingly or—” The blade moved a fraction higher.

“I am here to meet someone,” he said. “A friend. I will not move.”

Now she took a step forward, partially into the aureole of light from a nearby lantern, swinging in its cage as the rising wind tossed it. “You are not Daluzan.”

“No.” He saw her face for the first time. Long and narrow and attractive. A strong face, full of character. He wondered who she was. Then it occurred to him that she would be asking herself the same questions. “I am Moichi Annai-Nin of Iskael.”

This statement seemed to quell some of her suspicion and he saw her relax somewhat.

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