Aldric Thornmoor's Arc

Chapter 12 of 16

Aldric kept his hand on the knife. Corwin Nightshade did not move from the wall. Wanda stepped between them, palm already warm. The vampire watched her hand the way a man watches a candle in a barn full of hay. "The eye that marked you belongs to a councilor I have hunted for other reasons," Corwin said. "Your old clan bought favors from him for a hundred years. I want the ledger of those favors. You want the hall before the crowd goes home." Aldric wrote on the stub. WHY HELP ME. "Because you are moving anyway," Corwin said. "And because the winged eye will reach the hall before you do on those legs. I can be faster. You cannot be seen." He drew a bundle from under his coat and dropped it at Aldric's feet. A patched cloak, mud-colored, stitched from a dozen dead garments. It smelled of smoke and other people's sweat. "Beggar's cloth," Corwin said. "The guards at the steps look past beggars. Wear it over your own. Keep the hood low. Go through the east market. I will retrieve the eye before it whispers your face into the chamber." Wanda picked up the cloak and shook it out. "He goes where you say, and you go where?" "To the rafters above the council floor," Corwin said. "That is where the eye will nest. I take it. He speaks. Neither of us waits on the other." Aldric looked at Wanda. She met his eyes. "He gains if you reach the door," she said. "That is a reason I trust more than a promise." Aldric pulled the beggar's cloak over his dark one. The patches hung crooked. His own hood disappeared inside the larger one. He tucked the knife against his ribs. Corwin was already at the wall. "If the eye reaches the chamber first, they will bar the hall and you will never speak inside it. Move." He went over the stones without sound. Wanda took Aldric's arm. They walked the east market at a beggar's pace. He kept his head down. A woman pressed a crust of bread into his palm and he took it, because refusing would have named him. Guards passed. None looked twice. The council hall rose at the end of the square. Torches were lit along the steps. A small crowd still lingered from the obelisk's broadcast, waiting to see what he would do next. At the top step, Aldric turned back. High above the hall's roof, something small burst against the dark. Orange drips fell and went out before they hit the tiles. The winged eye was gone. The great doors stood open in front of him. No guard raised a hand. He stepped inside the council hall with the beggar's rags still on his shoulders and his written proclamation folded against his heart.