Stalking Darkness

braying cough.
    “Poor old fellow.” Seregil patted the animal’s neck. “You’re better than I could have hoped for. We’ll have to send a drysian to look at him.”
    “What do you think this spy of yours is up to?” Alec asked as they continued at a walk.
    Seregil shrugged. “Hard to say yet. Eirual thinks this fellow Rythel has some documents that he shouldn’t. I want to see if she’s right.”
    “Do you think he’s a Plenimaran?”
    “Too soon to say. At times like this it’s best to keep an open mind until you have hard facts. Otherwise, you just run around trying to prove your own theory and overlooking important details that may turn up in the process. It could be there’s nothing to it at all, but it’s more interesting than anything else we’ve seen in the last few weeks.”
    Well-dressed, slightly intoxicated lords heading down to the lower city for a roister were of little concern to the guards at the Sea Gate. The sergeant-at-arms waved them through with a bored look and returned to the watch fire.
    At the bottom of the Harbor Way they rode east along the waterfront past the custom houses and quays into a moderately respectable street lined with tenements.
    A few lights showed behind shuttered windows, but most of the neighborhood was asleep. A dog howled mournfully somewhere nearby, the sound carrying eerily through the streets. Seregil’s horse twitched its ears nervously, then let out another rattling cough in a jingle of harness.
    “Here’s Sailmaker Street,” said Seregil, reining in at the mouth of an unmarked lane. Unclasping his mantle, he threw it to Alec and shook out the mantle he’d brought from Eirual’s. It belonged to a captain of the White Hawk Infantry and bore a large, distinctive device.
    “Who’d you steal that from?” Alec asked, watching him put it on.
    “Borrowed, dear boy, borrowed,” Seregil corrected primly.
    Alec peered up and down the poorly lit street. “That must be the house there,” he said, pointing to one at the end of the lane. “It’s the only one with a striped lintel.”
    “Yes. You hang back and be ready for trouble. If it comes to any sort of a chase, I’d better ride double with you. I don’t think poor old Cloudy has much run left in him.”
    Seregil emptied the last of the wine over his mount’s withers, bunched the mantle awkwardly over one shoulder, and pulled one foot loose from the stirrup. Settling into a loose, drunken slouch, he nudged the horse into a walk. Riding up to the door, he kicked loudly at it.
    “You! In the house!” he bawled, swaying precariously in the saddle. “I want the leech, damn him. By Sakor, send out the bastard son of a pig!”
    A shutter slammed back just above his head and an old woman popped her head out, glaring down indignantly.
    “Leave off with that or I’ll have the Watch down on you,” she screeched, swinging a stick at his head. “This is an honest house.”
    “I’ll leave off when I’ve got his throat in my hand,” Seregil yelled, kicking the door again.
    “You’re drunk. I can smell you from here!” the old woman said scornfully. “Who is it you’re after?”
    Just then, the grey jerked its head down in another racking cough.
    “There, you hear that?” Seregil roared. “How in the name of Bilairy am I supposed to explain this to my commander, eh? Your leech has ruined the beast. Gave him a dose of salts and half killedhim. I’ll run my sword up his arse, that pus-faced clod of shit! You send out the leech Rythel or I’ll come in after him.”
    “You whoreson drunken mullet!” The old woman took another swing at him with her cudgel. “It’s Rythel the
smith
that rooms here, not Rythel the leech.”
    “Smith?” Seregil goggled up at her. “What in the name of Sakor’s Fire is he doing dosing my horse if he’s a smith?”
    Lurking in the shadows at the mouth of the street, Alec shook with silent laughter. It was as good a performance as any he’d seen at the theater.
    “Half the men on the coast are called Rythel, you fool. You’ve got the wrong man,” the old landlady sputtered. “Smith Rythel is an honest man, which is more than can be said for you, I’m sure.”
    “Honest man, my ass!”
    “He is. He works for Master Quarin in the upper city.”
    She disappeared and Seregil, no doubt with knowledge born of long experience, reined his horse out of the way just as she emptied a chamber pot over the sill at him.
    Seregil made her an ungainly bow from