Chapter Two
Two
The Kingdom of Shadows
The woman set down her drink with a clang. She’d drunk enough courage. She was ready now.
Dread scratched at Shadach’s stomach as that woman and her courage stumbled towards him from across the Knitting Widow tavern, her long dress sweeping up the dirt on the warped floorboards.
The wall-mounted candles made her eyes glimmer.
Eyes that saw not the barmaid trying to shuffle past her to fulfil orders, nor the two men that had just entered, covered in dirt and sweat from a long ride on horseback.
She saw only Shadach behind the bar.
He knew what she saw in him, what they always saw in him.
A temptation, a thrill, with rich hair of midnight and enough strength in his tattoo-soaked body to quell any fight, any dispute.
He could afford to be nothing less. He was the owner of the Knitting Widow in the slums of the Emperor’s City, the capital of the Kingdom of Shadows.
To not be perceived as the scariest thing in the room would have been a death sentence.
Although Shadach didn’t feel particularly intimidating beneath the voracious eyes of the woman stalking towards him.
Wisps of darkness hung in the air like a venomous mist, as if trying to shroud Shadach from her.
The wisps failed. Not that they had really been trying.
The Shadows were no friend of Shadach’s.
They were no friend of anyone’s. They blighted the tavern with darkness, immune to the roaring fire in the hearth.
They did not shiver or shake as the woman passed through them.
Instead, their tendrils grazed her clothes and hair as she passed.
Inspecting her. Tasting her. Seeing if there was much in her to mock and jeer.
They must have found something, for they trailed after her.
The woman ignored them, as most in the Kingdom of Shadows ignored them.
They were a constant fixture in the Kingdom, had been for centuries, and there was no point in acknowledging them anymore.
Shadach prayed to the God, in all his forms, that the woman would lose her courage before she reached him. The drunker they were, the harder it was to politely decline. And decline Shadach would.
He always did.
Busying himself, Shadach made drink after drink for his customers.
The place was awash in laughter, in banter.
The clatter of glasses and shouts of jokes well-told was a cacophony of beautiful chaos.
It had taken ten years and a great deal of blood, sweat, and sweet-talking for Shadach to turn the Knitting Widow into the heart and soul of the slums that it was today.
“C-canigetanotherone?” The woman stumbled into the bar, her smile lopsided, her eyes blinking as if she were seeing one too many of him.
In her drunken state, her border accent was as thick as syrup.
Shadach had never been to the border separating the kingdoms of Shadows and Tears.
Getting there required crossing far too many cities, towns, wetlands, mountains, and every other manner of peoples and terrains.
Nonetheless, the accent was unmistakeable.
“Another drink coming right up.” Shadach reached behind the bar, filled a pint glass with water, and a sprig of herb for flavour, then set the glass in front of her.
The woman fumbled with her coin purse.
“On the house.” Shadach pushed her coins back to her.
“Oh.” She smiled. Swayed. Drank the water down greedily. “Isthisanewcocktail? Rumourhasityou’reworkingona—” she stumbled, righted herself, “newone.”
“I’m always working on a new one. But not one that’s ready to sell yet.” Shadach pulled a rag off his shoulder and wiped up the water the woman had spilled on the bar. He turned to leave. She grabbed his arm.
Uncertainty laced with fear flashed through her eyes. She looked at her hand, where her body met his. Hesitation, and then, courage.
“That’swhyyou’rethebest.” She pulled him closer and Shadach was thankful for the bar between them.
The closest she could get to him still left them a few feet apart.
“Youmakeus … you. Make. Us.” The woman coughed, straightened herself.
Willing herself to be sober so she could say her next words.
“You. Make. Us. Finerdrinks. Than. Theposhbastards. In the capital. Get. Yousowonderful.”
“I do my best.”
“Yousucceed.”
A crash. A shout. It came from somewhere among the throngs of people. A single angry note in a sea of laughter. Shadach glanced around for where it had come from, but couldn’t see.
He refocused on the woman, keeping his voice light. “Do you need someone to take you home?”
“Areyouoffering?” She stumbled into the bar in her attempt to jut out her breasts.
“I was offering to have one of the barmaids take you home.”
Another shout. Louder this time.
“WhatifIwant … you. To. Do. It?” The woman flushed, a sober moment making her realise how forward she was.
Then the liquid courage sloshed deeper into her blood and she no longer cared.
Shadach studied her, trying to recall what she’d been like before she’d started drinking that evening.
His recollection of her blended with a thousand other customers and he couldn’t remember who she’d been prior to the drink loosening her inhibitions. Still.
She had touched him, been brave enough to do it when most were not. Even when drunk.
Shadach let her pull him closer, his eyes steady on her face. “Doesn’t it worry you that I’m a Halcin?”
The woman swayed on her feet, her drunken smile fading, her gaze meeting his eyes.
For all her looking, she’d mostly avoided his eyes.
Selat peoples usually did. Not that Shadach blamed them.
Of all the aspects of Shadach that made him intimidating, it was the eyes of his people, the Halcin, that were feared the most: black as night irises encased in a rim of ice blue.
Eyes that could see what others could not.
“I-it wouldn’tworryme. At all.”
That’s when it happened. The lie. The Shadow. Its devilish tendrils sprouted from the back of the woman’s neck. This new Shadow was veil-thin and coated in crimson. It made no sound as it wormed into the world with quiet vitriol.
The truth the Kingdom knew, but preferred to deny, was that Shadows were human-made. Each time a lie, a manipulation, a half-truth was spouted, a Shadow was born. When a Shadow was first created, it was light, airy, undetectable to human eyes. Except the eyes of a Halcin. Some of them, at least.
As time went on, the Shadow grew weight, became thicker, darker, until it was perceptible by all.
By then, no one could tell from whom the Shadow had come nor what type of lie it had been.
The type of lie this woman had told was a half-truth.
The crimson, the lack of sound, it told Shadach hers was a lie tangled up in truth.
The woman looked over her shoulder. Nervous.
Probably sensing her own half-truth, wondering if a Shadow had been made and if Shadach could see it.
All Halcin had the blue and black eyes, though not all could see Shadows being made.
In ancient times, every Halcin had possessed the gift, but that was a very long time ago.
It was a topic of much debate at the tavern: if Shadach was a Halcin that could see Shadows, or a Halcin that couldn’t.
It was also a secret Shadach would never tell.
Another shout. Louder. Where was it coming from?
“Honest,” the woman said, trying to lean closer, failing because of the bar. “I’mnotlikethat.”
Another Shadow. More crimson. More truths suffocated by lies.
Shadach gently peeled away the woman’s hand. “I’ll get someone to help you home.”
He turned before she could protest, making another customer a drink. By Shadach’s head, the Shadows the woman had made floated past him, taking a spin around his shoulders. Teasing him. Taunting him.
Her worry wasn’t why he had rejected her. Shadach was Halcin. There was a great deal of rumour, history, and reputation that went with that. Not to mention the prospect of him knowing every time she was lying. It was enough to make even the most reasonable people hesitant.
What bothered him was the lie itself. The Shadow. He could not trust a person with Shadows. The problem was that everyone had Shadows. No one was to be trusted.
“Maire.” Shadach stopped one of his barmaids as she shimmied past him. The space behind the bar was never big enough, it seemed. “Can you make sure that woman gets home? Take Adin with you if—”
“Give me back my money, you soulless bastard!”
The words crashed as loud as thunder through the tavern.
A table smashed to the floor, glasses shattering.
The crowd parted, steering clear of the man who’d yelled as if avoiding a pit of sinking sand.
The proverbial pit contained two men. One was a man of the Xana people.
His fists were clenched, rage poisoning his blood.
The other was a man of the Selat people.
His jaw was cinched tight, eyes ready for a brawl.
From the crowd, there was silence. Out of the cracks in the floor, from the rat holes in the walls, and from the air itself, the Shadows weaselled their way closer.
Eager to witness human folly.
Shadach swore under his breath, hurrying out from behind the bar.
The crowd made way for him and he reached the pair just as the Xana man began to throw a punch.
Shadach grabbed the man’s forearm mid-punch and thrust him back.
The man stumbled, growling, wild for a fight.
Seeing Shadach was as good as a bucket of ice being thrown on his head.
He looked around, as pale as death when he realised the whole of the tavern was watching him.
Shadach turned to the Selat man that had nearly been punched then nodded to a wooden sign hanging above the bar. “Can you remind our friend here of the rules?”