Arrow on the String: Solomon Sorrows Book 1 by Dan Fish (no david read aloud TXT) 📕

intentional, as well. Oray didn’t know her because Oray didn’t need to know her.

“Who’s the archmage of Hammerfell Tower?” Sorrows asked.

Jace smiled.

“Not Oray.”

✽✽✽

THE MONTH HAS been more difficult than you’d predicted. You thought it would provide ample opportunity to prepare for your next target. Instead, this close to realizing your goal, the month off has been torture. Slow, agonizing torture. You begin to doubt yourself. You begin to suspect they have figured you out. Paranoia is something you had not predicted. Why would you, when things were going so well? You begin to question the age of your targets. Does it have to be twenty-seven? You question the event. Is the Maiden’s Dance necessary? You question the method of the kill. You question the time of day it occurs. You question everything.

You breathe. Slow breaths, in through your nose, out through your mouth. You answer your own questions. Yes, twenty-seven is necessary. It marks the maturing of the gods-bond. Any earlier and the soul would be too young, too fragile. Yes, you need the Maiden’s Dance. It facilitates the method of the kill. Yes, the method of the kill will continue to suffice. It is elegant, inspired. It is the right way to kill a dwarf while manipulating the soul. And yes, the time of day is important. The guests have gone home, but the house is still alive with excitement. Distracted. The daughters are flushed from a night of celebration and dancing. And now the Mage Guard is there, watching the halls, the doors. Soon they will be stationed in the room. And, though it pains you to admit it, the challenge of the timing is important. It keeps things interesting. Without the challenge, boredom threatens, and boredom leads to mistakes.

And that’s a problem because you are bored. There’s nothing to gain by denying it. You still have three weeks until the next Maiden’s Dance. But possibly more than three weeks until one of eighty-three potential targets chooses to be next. She doesn’t know you. None of them do. You can’t influence their decisions. What if the next target doesn’t appear until the end of the month? Seven weeks. The thought is terrifying. Yet your hands are tied. The decision is not yours. There is nothing you can do. Or is there?

A hint, an offhand suggestion. Influence can occur in the most innocent of ways. And it’s worked well for you thus far. You decide you will involve yourself in choosing the next target. The risk of boredom is effectively the risk of discovery, anyway. Thus, you are not adding risk, but rather controlling it. You realize this is the right thing to do. You will turn seven weeks to three or four. Four weeks is still significant, but you’re no longer bored.

On the contrary, you have a party to plan.

Chapter 16

IVRA JACE LED Sorrows back down the winding corridor to the second door on the left. This showed Sorrows two things. First, Oray’s room was close to the door leading to the entrance hall of the tower. Second, Sorrows had been disoriented by the spiraling hall. Gods-shunned dwarf magic. Jace walked him across the polished floor to the heavy oak doors and out into cold air beneath bright stars. Spheres of glowstone hung from black iron posts six paces tall and spaced twenty paces apart. The pots stood on either side of the road but staggered so that each north lamp filled the gap between two south lamps. Each produced a uniform pool of pale light that the two walked through, light then dark, light then dark. Jace’s hood was up, and her cheeks had grown flushed from the cold. The color brought the red out in her lips. She looked good. Sorrows started thinking of other ways to bring color to her cheeks. Maybe ways that didn’t require a cloak, or much else.

Gods, Sorrows, get it together, he thought. He cleared his throat.

“Weaver?” he asked.

“I know a few,” she said.

“I mean, are you a Weaver?”

Jace turned, smiled. “I suppose so, yes.”

“Is that why you look like you do?”

“How do I look?”

“Forget I asked,” Sorrows said. Some arrows were better left in the quiver.

Jace smiled, said nothing for a breath, then asked, “Where are we going?”

“The Quarry.”

She slowed a step. “Why there?”

“Seph are like any other vermin. You’ll find one here or there, but for the most part they infest the areas of a city people don’t care about.”

She nodded, turned forward, said nothing.

Hammerfell was bright and bustling with crowds of fur-clad dwarves. Sorrows turned off the main road onto a side street that slowly climbed the side of the mountain. The crowds thinned. Goblins appeared among the dwarves, then half-born, then no dwarves and few goblins. Fur-lined cloaks became wool cloaks. Wool became canvas. Canvas became canvas with holes. The stone-paved road gave way to coarse, gray gravel that crunched beneath his boots. The glowstone lamps ceased. The landscape changed. Sorrows trudged downslope into a shallow basin that stretched along the side of the mountain like a long, crooked wound.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Jace asked.

Her voice was calm, but she’d moved closer to him, pulled her hood up a bit further. Her arm brushed against his.

“No,” he said. “But I’ll know it when I smell it.”

They kept walking. Jace had turned heads on the main road. Sidelong glances from discreet dwarves, open stares from less discreet goblins. In the Quarry, all eyes were on Sorrows and the bow strapped to his back. Beauty faded, but an arrow left a lasting mark.

Jace put a hand on the back of his arm, leaned close.

“Is that what you’re looking for?”

It was.

They crunched and scattered gravel as they crossed the road, navigating discarded remnants of stone pavers, piles of refuse, bodies huddled together for warmth. A long, flat building lay in front of them. An amalgamation of scrap lumber and stone, coated with enough tar and black paint that any minor imperfections in slab and plank