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

for the tower to find. The mage guards are, in every conceivable aspect, the wrong people. They will ask, most assuredly, the right questions.

And that leaves you with a problem. A dilemma. A question of two numbers. One so basic and yet so difficult to solve. You know you want more. The memory of the blade passing into flesh is alive in your hand. Your fingers ache to grasp the dagger, to thrust it forward, to feel the pressure build, then yield to its point. You’ve developed a taste for the kill. You long for it. You hunger as the blade hungers. Thirst as the blade thirsts. Lust, as though the craving for flesh was your own. Nisha Davrosh is seven long days away. Seven, the first number.

You need to know the second number. Is it one? It can’t be. Not now. Two? If two, why not three? Why not more? What is the second number?

How many could you kill in seven days and still be safe?

✽✽✽

“WHY A BOW?” Davrosh asked. “Or a sword or dagger or—what was the one you just mentioned? A hammer?”

“Halberd,” Sorrows said.

“Right. Why a weapon at all? Why wouldn’t they all be sprites?”

“Spirits.”

“Right. Why not all be those?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

They sat back to back with a door in between. Like they had for Nimola Kravel. Like they had the next night for Chira Grenski. And the next night for Ilmae Worwold. Word spread quickly in Hammerfell. The stigma of Mage Guard presence had been weakened by the death of Zvilna Gorsham. Tradition yielded to desperation and necessity. The stigma vanished entirely when a prominent daughter, Olevi Dweld, claimed she would invite Master Ostev Ga’Shel into her chambers. Insinuations were made, rumors spread. Dwarves will be dwarves. Not only was it acceptable to have a mage guard sitting watch in the bedroom, the daughters now preferred it. And the mage guard you invited became equally important. A matter of status. It all led to Sorrows sitting in the dark and talking to Davrosh through a door while Evenlee Horchild snored softly across the room. He didn’t mind. He’d suggested the approach weeks ago. Had been dismissed with a laugh. But perspectives change, sometimes in a matter of days. Sometimes overnight.

His bow was strung and resting on his lap, an arrow nocked. His eyes roamed the dim glowstone haze of the room. A trunk at the end of the bed; a mirror standing in the corner; drapes hanging in waves against the window. His mind drifted to thoughts of Jace and hesitation. He’d shot friends during the war with the Seph. Never a lover. Would he shoot if given the chance? Would she give him the chance? Would they talk? What would she say? What would he say in return? Would she kill with him in the room?

“Which is better?” Davrosh asked.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Weapon or spirit.”

Sorrows frowned in the darkness. Weapon or spirit. A trapped soul or a wandering soul. Neither was good. A spirit could haunt, could harm. But a weapon meant a Seph. Which meant hunting. Which was dangerous as well.

“Weapon,” he said after a moment.

“Why?”

“Seph.”

“You really hate them, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What are they like?”

Davrosh shifted against the door. He felt it in his back.

“You’ve never seen one?” he asked.

“In pictures and weavings. Never in person.”

“They’re monsters,” he said.

She snorted. It sounded like a soft cough through the door.

“I’ve been through the training,” she said. “All mage guards have seen the same drawings. And Oray wove a couple images from memory for me when I first joined his team.”

“Is he a good Weaver?”

“The best I’ve seen. One of the Seph he showed me had three arms, two heads. Looked like a monster.”

“They are monsters,” he said. “They find human bones, pull them from the ground, crypts, tombs. They piece them together the best they can. But they don’t know orcpiss about humans. Don’t always know to have two legs instead of three or eight. Don’t always know to have five fingers on a hand instead of one or twenty. They find whatever flesh they can, animal carcasses mostly, and bind it to the bones until they can move. Sometimes they look normal enough from afar, hidden beneath a cloak. Sometimes, nothing can hide their deformity.”

“Each one is like that?”

“Every time.”

“What about the orc that night in Huvda?”

He sighed. “Except that time. I don’t know. Never saw that before.”

“And you think there’s one of those in Hammerfell?”

“I know there is.”

“Where? Something like that would get noticed. The Mage Guard would get called in.”

Sorrows shook his head. “You’d be surprised at what hides in the Quarry. Think about the half-born that killed Utuur.” Where were you?

Davrosh said nothing for a spell. Evenlee shifted in her sleep, kept snoring.

“Brochand still isn’t talking,” she said.

“She will, eventually,” he said. “Just needs time.”

The bow glowed faintly on his lap. He ran his thumb along the curve of the top limb, thought of Julia, taken by the Seph, killed by the elves. Thought of her body when he found her. Thought about his own years spent in silence.

“I can see the sky turning gray behind the mountains over here,” Davrosh said.

“Still snoring on this side,” Sorrows said.

“Looks like we made it.”

“Looks like.”

They were through the fourth night. They had three days until Nisha Davrosh.

✽✽✽

“I DON’T LIKE IT,” Ga’Shel said.

Davrosh looked up from her bacon. Sorrows put his coffee down.

Oray sighed, stared at Ga’Shel. “You don’t need to like it. But you need to do it. The women are safer this way.”

“Easy enough for you to say. You’re always outside the room. Oleva invited me into bed half a dozen times last night.”

“You should’ve taken her up on it,” Sorrows said. “Sure helps pass the time.”

Davrosh coughed, grabbed her coffee, took a drink. She shook her head.

“He’s joking,” she said. She glanced at Sorrows. “You’re joking?”

Sorrows grinned, winked at Davrosh, stabbed his fork into a stack of cakes. She looked at him, said orchole with her