Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Fifty Eight: Haunt

Hot wine and a pair of slippers were a luxury when one served in Lord Harkenn's city guard.

The former captain of the guard posts in both Kona and the merchants' quarter was trying very hard not to think about how he had earned them.

Blane settled lower into his chair. His wife was upstairs somewhere, doing whatever mysterious things she usually did when he wasn't there, and he was enjoying the quiet. If only his mind would stop replaying his conversation with the sergeant last week, he might have called himself content.

We can't have the men in charge having nervous breakdowns at the posts, captain. Why don't you take a couple of weeks off and rest?

Blane knew what that meant. He was being put away, and when he returned he would be quietly tacked on to the lowest rung of the ranking ladder so he could be monitored. Nervous breakdown, indeed. Anyone who had seen a dead Unspoken would be shaken up, and that was if it wasn't followed by weeks of meetings and correspondence with the Guild of the deceased, a near-miss with a Fleshmonger, and a cadre of useless new recruits to train up.

Blane thought his response had been perfectly reasonable, all things considered.

At least he was getting paid. His wife might not have been half as patient with having him at home if he wasn't.

He sighed and drained the last of his wine. Despite the fire in the grate, the front room was cold. He'd have to go and get more timber soon; their ration was running low. Blane was sure it was colder than it had been in previous years, but perhaps his sense of time had been skewed by being off duty. There was a rime of frost on the windows, creeping over the lattice like feathery fingers. If he squinted his eyes just so, he thought he could make out the outline of the rune he knew was on the glass, but when he blinked it vanished again. He probably hadn't seen it in the first place. Maybe it was another symptom of his nervous breakdown.

He got up. The cold seeped into his bones and made them stiff. At first he had thought that a couple of weeks off duty would be good for his health, but it only made him feel old, only drew attention to the ever-increasing protests his body made as it aged. Whenever one of the younger members of the city guard hurried past the window, Blane got the most childish urge to throw something after them and make it clang off their helmets.

Maybe he was just going senile.

His wife was tidying in the bedroom, so Blane veered down the hall to his daughter's old room instead. She had left home a few years ago, married a tailor's apprentice and was already pregnant, which left the best view in the house free. Her window overlooked a courtyard which his house shared with several others arranged in a square. Laundry dried stiff and cold in the open space above the yard. Their direct opposite neighbour had left a blanket out too long; it swung in the breeze by the pegs, flexible as a wooden board.

"Going out," his wife called. At some point she'd gone downstairs, but Blane hadn't noticed.

"Fine. Be safe."

He fumbled in his robe for his pipe. It was an old habit, one he'd abandoned when he joined the guard, but being at home was terribly boring.

He would never admit that he was secretly quite glad he wasn't patrolling during the dark season, but staring out at the relentless gloom, he indulged it a little. During the dark days, city guard patrols worked in close proximity to the Unspoken, and squadrons in the quarters nearest the mountains all had an Unspoken with them at all times. The demons were bad enough by themselves. Blane respected the demon hunters – rather them than him any day – but preferred to work at a healthy distance, not least because the Unspoken were always closest to where the demons were.