Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Twenty Nine: A Hunter's Burden

"Are you angry with me?"

No answer.

"He was already there when I opened the window. I haven't talked to him since..."

"I know."

Jordan closed his mouth.

The streets around them were quiet, ominously so for how dark it was. It was even harder to find his way whilst wearing his cloak than it had been during the day; Yddris's cloak was black and blended with the shadows, making it impossible to follow. He had been reduced to following the sound of his tutor's footsteps and the smell of pipe smoke.

He said again, "Are you angry with me?"

Yddris said nothing, and Jordan sighed, giving up on that line of questioning. He didn't know where they were, or what Yddris had planned. He couldn't stop thinking about what Arlen had said; but Grace would tell him if something like that had happened.

Wouldn't she?

He jumped as a horse and cart rattled by, so distracted by his thoughts that he hadn't heard it coming. Yddris pulled him out of its path at the last moment, murmuring a greeting and an apology to the driver.

"Look where you're going, boy."

"I'm trying." He scowled. "It's difficult."

Yddris sighed. "We're almost there."

"Almost where?"

No response. Jordan clenched his fist at his side to remind himself not to punch him.

"Look, I've already said..."

"We're here."

Jordan stopped, blinking, and looked up. They were standing at the foot of a bridge, the Aven murmuring darkly all around them. Candlelight glittered on the water, but there were no boats on this stretch of the river and the lights on the other side were much sparser. Yddris led the way across, his footsteps loud on the stone path. In places the balustrade had broken away or crumbled and been patched up with wire fencing.

Something moved on the far bank. In his efforts to pretend the expanse of rushing water beneath them wasn't there, Jordan's fixation on the other side of the bridge meant that his brain registered the movement several seconds after he saw it, and when it did he stopped dead. His skin crackled at his alarm. Yddris's suppression of it was like a bucket of icy water over his head, much more jolting than it had ever been before. He gasped, and Yddris grunted an apology.

"Don't want it to know we're here," the man muttered, "Don't need you going up like a beacon on the bridge."

"What is it?" Jordan breathed, shaking himself out. The pricking sensation lingered, in the tips of his fingers and over his scalp.

"A demon," Yddris said. He didn't say it as though it was obvious, even though Jordan had realised it was the moment the question left his lips. "I believe it's a type of Wight, though it's hard to tell which from this distance."

"They come in varieties?" Jordan said, voice stilted. He had a vivid mental image of acid yellow eyes and vertical lids, blinking at him through the sockets of a skull that was not its own just before the magic ripped its way out of him...

Yddris nudged him, bringing him back to the present, but if the Unspoken knew what Jordan was thinking he was tactful enough not to say it. "There are five types of Wight. All you need to know at this stage is that they're all similar in size, all hunt in packs, and they can all be killed the same way."

Jordan's eyes travelled back to the far side of the bridge. There was no other movement, but the river seemed louder somehow, ringing in his ears like static.