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

down his body, lingered on his chest, his stomach, his legs.

“Like what you see?” he asked through a yawn.

She nodded. “Very much.”

She took a step toward him. He held up a hand, mustered some sort of resolve. Realized he wasn’t ready to give up on Mig. Not yet.

“Wait outside. I’ll get dressed and join you in a minute.”

She hesitated, said nothing. Her hair was done up in thin braids piled on her head. The style made her neck look long, slender. Inviting. An ideal neck for lips. Maybe his lips. Maybe he’d start at the curve of her jaw. Maybe he’d work to the spot where her throat and collarbone met. He felt his resolve weakening.

“Go,” he said.

He managed a dismissive wave. She went. The door closed. He swung his feet onto the floor and sat. Signaled with his fingers.

Mig didn’t show.

Chapter 23

DAVROSH HAD PILED a mountain of bacon onto her plate. Brown and crisp and glistening with fat. Sorrows stared at it over the table, smelled it in the air. Looked down at his eggs and cakes, at the moat of syrup surrounding them, at a spoonful of yellow butter slowly drifting. It was a good breakfast. Hearty, sweet, warm. Problem was, it wasn’t what he wanted. He looked again at Davrosh’s bacon.

“You going to eat all that?” he asked.

She took a piece with her fingers, bit it in half, chewed with exaggerated zeal.

“Yes,” she said.

She hung on the word until a fleck of bacon flew out her mouth, landed on the table. Her face reddened. She wiped it away, went back to her bacon.

“Gods, you two,” Oray said. “Stay focused. Today is Shealu Hallovel. Then four tomorrow. Let’s talk strategy.”

Sorrows shrugged. “Hallovel will use her Great Room. You’ll have two mage guards there, I’ll be there. If the killer shows up, I’ll stick an arrow in his head. See how he likes it.”

“I’d prefer to keep him alive,” Oray said. “Question him. Get an idea of why he did it.”

“Can’t promise anything,” Sorrows said.

Oray sighed, looked at Sorrows. I want to be done with you, he was saying. Sorrows didn’t blame him. He wanted the same thing. He offered a belated grin to Oray, and Oray shook his head, sighed again. But he looked awake today. Like the progress they were making was helping him sleep at night. The wolf lingered in his gray eyes. Sorrows hadn’t seen the wolf since he arrived in Hammerfell. It made Oray look dangerous. But dangerous was good when you were trying to catch a killer.

“Try to keep him alive.”

Sorrows shrugged, said nothing.

Oray turned to Ga’Shel. “How’s next week’s list?”

“We should be able to see another dozen families today,” Ga’Shel said. “Only two refusals yesterday. Shemlock and Davers.”

“I’m doing Shemlock’s mask,” Davrosh said. “I’ll keep working on them.”

Sorrows thought of Mishma Valinor, alone in her stone cradle, a mask of holly and flowers on an unrecognizable face. An eternal reminder of the night she was killed.

“If the killer gets to her, the mask will haunt them,” he said.

Davrosh looked at him like it was an odd thing to say. She frowned, furrowed her brow, took another piece of bacon, and studied him like he’d said something unexpected. Something that didn’t make sense. She didn’t know he’d visited Mishma. Didn’t know he’d passed through her grieving mother. Didn’t know he’d seen Davrosh’s painting unbroken on withered skin. Sorrows ignored her, reached across the table, snatched a piece of bacon off her plate. She didn’t try to stop him. Looked at him for a moment longer, then turned back to her breakfast.

✽✽✽

JACE WALKED WITH him along the main road. The Feast of Nine had passed, its decor had been cleared from shops and lampposts. Pumpkins, cornstalks, and hay bales had been replaced with evergreen boughs and red ribbon. All of Hammerfell looked ahead to the Eve of Silversong. Cities were like that because people were like that. Quick to forget what was, quick to embrace what would be. Sorrows and Jace passed by a butcher’s shop with slabs of beef and cured meats hanging in the window. A week ago, it had been filled with turkeys stripped of their feathers and dangling by their feet. A week ago, crowds of dwarves had gathered ale and meat and sweet breads. Today they emerged from shops carrying bundles of wool and silk and lace, bags of tobacco, bottles of whiskey.

“It’s been some time since you carried your bow,” Jace said.

She had her hood down, her hair tied low and loose. She’d pulled it forward, and it spilled down her left shoulder onto her chest, over her gray cloak cinched tight. Like sunlight on stone. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed with cold. She caught him staring and smiled. He turned away, shrugged.

“Other things to worry about,” he said.

“What about the Seph?” she asked.

“I’ve got time. He hasn’t left, yet. Probably wants to flee but feels the pull of the Grimstone.”

“It’s that strong?”

Sorrows nodded. “Both ways. Longer we stay close, the stronger it grows. Another month and I’ll be able to find him with my eyes closed. Another month after that, and he might come looking for me.”

“It works every time?”

“Every time.”

Jace stepped close, reached behind him, pulled an arrow from his quiver. She brushed a thumb over the fletching, stared down the shaft, pressed the point into her finger.

“Then you shoot him and free the soul in the bow,” she said.

“Something like that,” he said.

“What does it feel like, I wonder?” she asked.

“For the soul? I don’t know that she’ll feel anything.”

Jace smiled softly. “No, I mean to be shot by an arrow.”

Sorrows tensed. Felt the echo of pain in his right shoulder, his right leg, his stomach, the left side of his chest.

“Hurts like all hells,” he said. “Some places worse than others.”

“You’ve been… shot?”

Sorrows laughed. “Once or twice. Shot, stabbed, sliced, bludgeoned, burned, drowned. Bear chewed off my left hand a couple hundred years ago. Took four years to grow