Blood of the Red

Chapter 31 - Shallo

Chapter 31 – Shallo

Blood Guard spilled into the street below and Shallo pressed herself to the stonework. The Cloister's lack of ornament made it a difficult building to climb. Her fingers held to the edge of a large granite block. Between each block Shallo found enough room to fit her fingertips, a nail's depth and no further. Four fingertips to carry her weight, while she reached up for the next groove. Her feet could find no purchase and already exhaustion trembled in her arms.

"Damn him," she whispered the words to the stone.

Shouts rang out in the street. A captain ordering his men in threes to search the alleys. "Keep an eye to the roofs and the shadows. Stannith is a dangerous man - one of our own."

Damn him! Shallo hung from her fingertips, cold against the granite. In the dark of the moon the chance of her being seen might be slim enough if she hung still, but if she fell...

Ingold Stannith, I should have slit his throat that first night.

She had her chance. In the small hours when the songs ran out and the Glorsa folk found their way home; she could have killed him then. She fled the bard's song, but she had stayed close.

Shallo let the memory take her away from aching fingers, Blood Guard, and the hungry fall below. She had been pressed to cold stone then as well. Huddled in the doorway of a smithy across from the Oak Tree. The tavern's puddled windows gave her glimpses of the warmth and merriment inside. Always on the outside looking in. The anger kept her warm. She would do as the Black asked, no watching, no waiting, no seeking angles. The bard had revealed his true colours, taunting her with the old tune her father would whistle in the dark of the moon. Five notes bound Ingold Stannith to his death. She had killed her father for his crime – she would kill Ingold without hesitation.

Deep in her pocket Shallo's fingers had polished the handle of her kill-spike. When the lights were gone, when the tavern slept, she would enter. She would find her way to the bard's chamber. It would be her hand on the door-handle. Her spike that pierced him through. Her victory. They would find him dead in his bed, with no explanation. Perhaps she would wrap a sheet about him.

The people departed the Oak Tree in ones and twos, then in droves as the landlord's wife shouted time in a voice like a watchman's horn. The street felt empty without the babble of conversation from the tavern. It had been empty all along, but now Shallo felt alone. The cold reached her at last. Then, muted but unmistakable, she heard lute song. The lights died to a glow behind the windows and still the bard played, a mournful tune, running by turns through indecision and resolve, then walking the edge between sorrow and anger.

At last the tavern door opened and Ingold stepped into the street. He looked up at the stars, hugging his arms about him. Shallo's hand tightened on the hilt of her spike. To come from behind and kill him now would be a simple matter. She could drive the spike into his eye and carry him down as he thrashed. Perhaps she'd whistle for him as he died.

Shallo reconsidered. The bard had her in a mess. A killer is cold, she calculates the odds, passion has no part in a clean kill. Shallo recited the creed. In her years at the Sister-Halls the Mothers praised her above all the trainees for her clarity. Mother Agen, as evil an old hag as Shallo ever knew, told her,

"Walk the path cold, girl. You have ice-water in your veins, Shallo. Women like you built this order. Now it's all rich girls sent by their fathers to learn how to slit a throat at court. To be a Taker though, to be a Taker you must be cold to the core. You will be a Taker. If you survive my classes. Walk the path cold."

Under Mother Agen's tender tuition Shallo came closer to death than she had come before or since. She graduated as a Taker, the first in five years. As mothers, women give life. Who better to take it?