Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Twenty One: Gods

Blane was not a superstitious man. He had his faith, but he wasn't devout. There were some days he simply went about his business as always, and others, like when his wife had fallen ill with a childbed fever, where he prayed a little more than usual and paid a few more visits to the chapel. He thought his view was fairly balanced, in the grand scheme of things.

Until he had seen two siblings who were barely more than children fall through a gaping hole in the sky, that was.

He wasn't going to call it a breakdown, what he had had after seeing that. He was sure many others were just as shaken up by it as he was. But where their faith was strong enough to steady them in their shock, his had fallen from under him like rotten timber and he had had an altercation...with himself.

It was only a sorry coincidence that the sergeant had seen it happen.

He sighed and slipped up his visor, looking around him. It was almost dark, despite the daylight hours having barely begun. The streets he patrolled had a sad, faintly neglected air to them, though most of the houses were occupied, and by people who didn't mind gawping rudely out of their front windows as he marched past.

Kona was primarily a residential quarter, the closest it came to the slums of Shadow's Reach without actually being in the slums – which were, incidentally, just across the river in walking distance. It was not a promotion from the Merchants' Quarter, nor was it quieter or less stressful, no matter what the sergeant said. It was simply stressful in a different way, and mostly due to the gang of almost-useful idiots he was in charge of in the Kona guard post.

One of those idiots was trailing behind him, whistling and dragging his feet so that the metal sabatons screeched on the cobbles. No wonder people were staring.

"Do you have to whistle quite so loudly?" Blane asked, letting his visor slip back down again and glowering through the slits. "People will be reporting you to me for antisocial behaviour at this rate, boy."

His companion, a pimply young man whose name Blane had already forgotten – if he had ever known it – offered him a grin with a mocking edge.

"Yessir." He punched an arm across his chest.

"Yes what?" Blane asked, not recalling that he'd said anything requiring an affirmative, and then gave up.

"Quiet tonight, sir," his companion said, unperturbed. They had taken a turn into one of Kona's main streets, which followed the river all the way to the city's outer limits. The place was deserted; curfew had ended an hour ago, but people grew more uneasy the shorter the light hours were and stayed inside as often as possible. Kona was so close to the mountains that demon attacks were more frequent than elsewhere. Blane pretended he hadn't noticed the fact that he hadn't passed any Unspoken on his patrols today.

The curfew was little more than a formality, in practice. As the dark season approached, and it became harder to tell where one day ended and another began, the religious houses in each quarter would light their candles before the time where nightfall should have been, as a warning for people to get back behind the safety of their walls. The city guard didn't punish those who chose to stay out after curfew, but demons often did.

"Barely past curfew," he said, squashing a rising sense of unease. They should have passed at least one of the Hooded Men by now. He didn't like them much himself, but they represented safety, and there was precious little of that to be found in Nictaven. "People must be stopping in today."

The young guard didn't seem to have noticed anything amiss. His stride was as jaunty as ever.

"Don't blame them," he said, "Cold as balls today."