Tara K. Harper - Wolfwalker 7 - Wolf In Night

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Books by Tara K Harper
Tales of the Wolves
--7 Wolf in Night (2005)
SPECIAL THANKS TO
Prologue
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Epilogue
Author’s Note
Tales of the Wolves
--7 Wolf in Night (2005)--
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Wolf in Nightis a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2005 by Tara K. Harper
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in theUnited
States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random
House, Inc.,New York , and simultaneously inCanada by Random House of Canada Limited,Toronto .
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.delreybooks.com
eISBN 0-345-48191-7
SPECIAL THANKS TO
My neighbor Karen Castro, who graciously let me pace irritably in her living room while ranting and
writing out loud;
Ed Godshalk for our annual midnight-to-dawn discussions of bayonets and kings (our spouses are
saints);
Tamara Hanna, for letting me paint whatever I wanted on her living room walls (talk about a big canvas),
and then for saying she loved it;
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Detective Amber Lewis, of the Portland Police Department, for excellent advice and suggestions, and
for correcting my misconceptions;
My brother, Detective Kevin L. Harper, of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, for pointing out all those
pesky flaws, and for helping define the intrigue;
My father, Dan Harper, for the new computer, without which this story would not have been completed;
Peter Honigstock, of Powell’s Bookstore at Loehman’s Plaza (formerly the store at Progress, later
known as something else, and now known by a completely different name that I’ve never figured out), for
finding me marvelous, exactly-what-I-wanted books, although our wood floors are starting to sag
because of the excessive weight of my library;
Artist Paul Missal, who lent me his cabin to write in during a fine coastal storm, and who helped me
understand the first writer’s block I’ve ever experienced;
Dr. Karen Gunson, Medical Examiner,Portland,Oregon , for helping me refine the plague; Chief
Engineer Mike Roset, of the SSIndependence, for unexpected information about steam engines; and Dr.
Ernest V. Curto, for the moons;
My readers Doug Hartzell (who gets killed off at the end, to his own great satisfaction); Rich Wilson,
who pinch-hitted in a most excellent manner; Mike Fitzgerald, whose insight was invaluable; and
Stephanie Castro, who never lets me down;
Cindy Bertelman for a completely unexpected and amazing book of old formulas for metal oxides, tints,
and what have you;
My editor, Shelly Shapiro, who was more than gracious in not overpressuring me;
Sandy Keen, for friendship far above and beyond;
And my husband, Richard Jarvis, who rebuilt, rewired, reconfigured and restored everything I broke,
fried, crashed and destroyed during the course of writing this story.
For my beloved niece, Anne, who was brave enough
to go canoeing with me atmidnight and
who loved forging through the big waves at dawn.
Wolf in darkness
Wolf in night
Wolf in shadow
Wolf in light
—fromResist the Mist
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Prologue
South, on the coast, in a city called Sidisport . . .
The dark-clothed man watched the black, glistening bay with the patience of an oldEarth Job. His gaze
flicked toward each movement in the dark, and his body was poised against the cold seawall with
deliberate negligence. His well-trained ears were tuned to the slapping of water on the rocks and wall
below, to the couples who strolled behind him. To the soft laughter and murmured words as lovers pried
at shuttered hearts beneath six of the glowing moons. He noted and discarded each couple automatically
as they passed the wall where he waited. Not them, and not those two. Not that couple, either . . . It was
a constant mantra, a steadying of his heartbeat in the dank spring air. It wouldn’t be long now. An hour at
most. The Tamrani woman liked dancing enough to stay late, even if she was with the dandy, but she was
almost always home by two. He glanced at another couple who stepped up onto the waterfront. Too tall
and thin, the hair too light . . .
His small boat waited in the slick water below. He had no worries that it would be seen. It was just
another smudge against the seawall, a thicker edge in inky shadow cast harshly by the hovering moons.
The only thing to draw the eye to his boat was the sea ladder that stretched down the stone wall. The
ladder rungs glinted faintly, but since there were ladders all along the wall, no one paid attention. This one
was even darker than the others. He’d sanded it himself to make sure his slide would be smooth, then
had darkened it again with blackwash. No metal splinters there, though he’d have to watch his footing on
the rocks near the boat. He could still get scraped up, and one didn’t go into the water with wounds. Not
near the shore, anyway, not after the spring currents shifted. The parasites that bred in the bay would eat
a wounded man alive, leave him screaming, begging for the death that could be days, even ninans away.
He’d seen it before. It was a classic lesson-killing, to dip a slashed man in the bay.
A closed carriage pulled up to the left, waited a moment, then took two couples away while the
Haruman stared out at the water as if lost in thought. No one spared him more than a glance. It was
understandable. His coat was well cut but of chancloth, not of silk. His boots were shined but neither rich
nor new. His gloves were white and spotless, but cut in last year’s style. Everything about him said
acceptable but unimportant, not someone to notice. Even the city guard had done no more than nod as
they passed him twenty minutes ago. They wouldn’t be back for an hour. It was a good time for the
Tamrani to show. There were few people left on the waterfront to watch or interfere, and those he saw
were drunks, not paladins. That was another luck of the moons. The first thing his father had taught him
was how to avoid the eager heroes and blend in with the drunks and darkness.
Soon, soon. Footsteps faded off to the right: a gentleman walked quickly, nervous in the night, his thick
cloak flapping in the chill marine air. The Haruman dismissed him with a glance. The Tamrani lady, she
was out with someone like that: slender, aesthetic, concerned with his clothes. Fentris the Fop, they
called her dancing partner. Rumor said he’d killed his older brother in an alley, stabbed the man in the
back with his own knife. The word was that the fop had backed away from every challenge he’d
received since then. Gossip also had it that the fop was lucky the Tamrani’s brother hadn’t caught the
two of them together, but that if the brother had, the fop would have run like a hare before worlags. A
coward like that would be no trouble.
The Tamrani lady, now, she was a different piece of work. He’d have considered negotiating other
terms for her, but the Tamrani were powerful, they protected their own, and her House wasn’t one in
decline. He had no wish to bring that down on his head. Quick kill, quick silver, that’s what his father had
said, and his father had managed more than four dozen targets before he was taken down. Whatever the
lady knew that had bought this kill tonight, it would die with her in the dark.
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In the distance, a carriage let another couple off on the elegant waterfront and drove away. In the night,
the Haruman glanced their way and felt himself tense. Ah, there were the two he sought. He turned back
to the bay and made himself breathe slowly, softly as he heard them strolling toward him. He timed the
steps and the soft murmur of her voice. His heart rate was up, but it made him poised, not skittish. Fast
heart, fast reflex; fast hands, fast catch. His father had known all the old sayings.
They were almost on him when he sighed as if bored, straightened, and turned. “Excuse me,” he
murmured, and made as if to step past them. The knife in his left hand came out of its sheath like a silent
snake. His arm moved smoothly, swinging up as he turned, and the razor steel slid into her heavy clothes,
unopposed and unseen, like a needle through layers of lint. And in, in, cutting the bodice, the tip on her
ribs, starting to sink in, slick as sweat, so easy, so fast, and the woman made no sound. She stiffened like
a doe caught in light. He didn’t look, but he knew her eyes had shocked wide as the tip slid into flesh. He
started to press the thrust in and out to cut through her lungs as he slipped past—
Something clamped around his wrist and jerked before the steel could sink in halfway. There was a sting
on his arm, and his body reacted before thought was formed. He tried to twist the blade out to rip flesh
as much as possible, but he couldn’t hold on to the hilt. Sloppy. Too much blood; his fingers were
nerveless. He went for his other knife. Then he choked out a scream. His left hand was half severed at
the wrist. It was the Haruman’s blood that spurted out, not that of the Lady Jianan.
Lamplight bleached the motion like a black-and-white drawing. The fop slashed the Haruman’s upper
arm like a flash of light, then back-cut across his neck in the other fraction of a second. The carotid vein
split like an overripe plum. Rich, red blood arced out. Kerien staggered back, clutching the hand that
dangled by a strip of tendon and flesh. Gods—the fop? The fop was cutting him again, shoulder, arm,
chest. He kicked out desperately, twisted and flailed back in defense, slashed hard and fast, but it was
already too late.
With one steel hand on Jianan’s arm, Fentris jerked her out of the way and side-kicked the other man’s
knees. He back-slashed at the blader’s arm even before the man started to fall. Then he spun Jianan
back and hilt-punched the Haruman’s face as the blader began to drop. Bones splintered; the assassin
screamed again.
Jianan’s green eyes were wide and frozen, and she was sagging onto his arm. “Jianan,” he snapped. He
dragged her back farther. The assassin was on his knees, crawling, his good hand pressed over his
carotid. Blood washed out in pulses from between the man’s fingers, but he could still be a danger. It
would be seconds before he was fully unconscious, minutes before he was dead.
Fentris cradled Jianan, his hands over hers to keep her from jerking the knife free. “Leave it,” he said
urgently. “It has to stay. Let the healers take it out.”
“It . . . hurts,” she whispered.
“I know. I’m going to set you down now and try to stop the bleeding.” The knife hadn’t gone all the way
in, but she was a slender woman. It could have pierced her heart.
“Assass . . . sin.”
“A robber,” he soothed. “A second-rate blader. Don’t talk.” He yanked his handkerchief from his
pocket and wadded it over the wound. He looked quickly around. “Help us,” he shouted. “Guards,
anyone!” The two couples in the distance didn’t even glance back.
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Jianan cried out as he shifted her, clutched his black jacket weakly. “Not . . . robber.”
“We’re on the boardwalk, late on a Pendian night, strolling around like anyone’s prey.” His handkerchief
was soaking through. Her dress was silk and useless as tissue for stopping the blood. He said sharply,
“And if he isn’t just a robber, what could you possibly have been doing to make yourself a target?”
“Don’t be . . . angry,” she whispered. She was having trouble seeing. And cold. She was icy cold. She
forced her lips to make the words, but they came out at a great distance. “Did you . . . hurt him? Is . . .
he dead?”
He glanced at the other man’s body. The assassin was weak enough now that his left arm lay limply
across the sidewalk, and his other hand barely covered his neck. “Yes.” There was a cold note in his
cultured voice. “I’d say he’s well on his way to the moons.” He shrugged quickly out of his jacket and
rolled the tailored garment into a pillow for her head.
“Oh, gods,” she gasped as he shifted her. “Hurts.”
“Lie still, love. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
“You’ll ruin . . . jacket.”
“It’s for a good cause.” He tore the sleeve off his shirt and folded it into a thick pad over the
handkerchief. “Dik-spawned streetscum,” he cursed, not quite under his breath. “I’ll see him rot in the
seventh hell.”
Jianan almost fainted as he pressed the pad down on the wound. She barely had breath to speak.
“Fentris, he was an assassin. Not . . . robber. Have to know . . . who hired him. Find out. It’s important.
Promise.”
He packed the cloth tightly around the blade. “If he was an assassin, I’ll find out.” His usually calm face
hardened. “You can trust me on that.”
There had been no bubbling in the blood on her chest, and she wasn’t bleeding from her mouth, but it
could be free-flowing inside. He looked desperately around. There was a carriage in the distance, but it
had turned away down the street, following the path his own carriage had taken to the lot where it would
wait. The waterfront businesses were closed, and the few apartments over them were dark. Four blocks
away, the city guard had just stepped around the corner as they circled the blocks farther and farther
away. “Guard!” Fentris shouted. “Help us! Guard, she’s been stabbed—”
The two men looked his way, seemed to peer through the dim light, then finally broke into a run as he
waved urgently with one arm. One stopped for a moment at the lamppost to release a warning bell, and
the peals clapped out across the stone streets like the pulse of the gods of the dead.
Jianan’s fingers clutched his wrist weakly. “Fentris. Listen. Papers, notes,” she breathed. “Secret place.”
He felt a chill. “The lockbox in the courtyard?” If she was hiding something important enough to kill for,
that was the worst place to put it. He himself could count six people who knew which bricks to move.
But she surprised him. “Bedroom,” she whispered. She breathed raggedly for a second. “Closet . . .
door.”
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He stared down at her. They had talked once of hiding places. He’d been twenty-five, he remembered,
two years ago. The month before his brother had died, the month before he’d become an outcast in his
own family. He recalled every detail of that time with the clarity of glass. It was only in the two years
since that he’d ceased to care about remembering anything.
Two years ago, they’d been in the courtyard, and Jianan had showed him the lockbox hidden in the
bricks beneath her window. He’d scoffed and said that if he had something to hide—papers, letters,
deeds—he’d put them someplace obvious. Inside something that everyone looks at but no one sees. The
closet door, perhaps. Or inside a handle. People look into the spaces beyond such things, not at such
things themselves. He said lightly, “You have six closets, Jianan.”
She couldn’t smile. “Fourth closet, fourth door. Lift it . . . off the tracks. Hollowed out from the bottom.
Papers there. Take them to . . .” But each breath she drew in was a blast of crushing pain. “Oh, it hurts.
Fentris, it really hurts.”
By the moons, how long did it take two men to run two hundred meters? The lights had gone on in an
apartment over a milliner, and in the distance another pair of city guards appeared. “Get a healer,” he
shouted at the first two. “For moons’ sake, get a healer.” He didn’t ease off the pressure on her ribs.
“The pain is a good sign,” he told her firmly. “It means you’re going to be fine.”
“How . . . would you know?” She smiled weakly. “You’ve . . . never been . . . stabbed.”
He had—twice—but it wasn’t something he spoke of. “I’ll find the papers,” he said instead. “Stop
talking now.”
“Feels like . . . being crushed.”
He hid his unease. That could be a sign of heart damage. “Help is coming. You’ll be with the healers
soon, and everything will be fine.”
“Listen,” she whispered. “Get the papers to my brother. No one . . . else. Promise me.”
“To Ero? He’s at sea. It would take me months.”
She started to shake her head, went bone white even in the pale lamplight, and barely managed, “Con.”
Crap on a stickbeast, Fentris cursed silently. Condari Brithanas had been one of his brother’s best
friends. Brithanas had been out in the western counties for the past two years, but he would have heard
every story and rumor before he left Sidisport again. The man’s one day in town had been short enough
that Fentris had easily avoided him. Fentris had already sent his secretary ahead to listen in on the Ariyen
councils, just so he wouldn’t have to face the other man. After all, according to everyone down to the
tailors and the cooks in the poorest homes in town, he’d murdered Condari’s best friend. To seek him
out deliberately, after Jianan had been stabbed in his care?
“I don’t think—” he started.
“Yes.” Her nails dug in. “Promise. Catch him . . .Deepening Road . Stay with him till he . . . gets to
Shockton. Fentris.” She clutched him weakly now. “Keep him safe.”
It was Fentris, not Condari Brithanas, who would need safety. Fentris looked down at his bloody
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gloves. He said flatly, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I’ll . . . do it myself, then.”
She struggled to sit up, gasped, and he barely had to press her down before she collapsed back onto his
jacket. “Don’t be an idiot,” he snapped.
“Promise.”
“I swear, by the rust on a silk hat, you’ll be the death of me.” He looked skyward for a moment.
“Alright, I’ll do it, though after your brother finds out how I’ve left you, I’ll come back as a ghost, not a
man.”
“You’ll . . . go tonight.”
His lips tightened as he felt the heat of her blood.
“Sw-swear,” she whispered.
“I swear on the seventh moon I’ll ride out as soon as you’re safe in the hospital. Now shut up, love.”
A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “Not your love.”
“Might as well be after the way we were dancing tonight. We shocked Lady Seigan like two
mudsuckers in her sink. We’ll have to do that again.”
Jianan choked out a laugh, gasped at the pain, and fainted.
Fentris was left pressing his white-gloved hands into her bright red blood while the city guard came
running.
I
A wolf doesn’t choose his wolfwalker,
He can’t help being drawn to your side;
There’s a tiny place in his brain and yours
Which seeks the other’s mind.
It’s a need, a desire, a hunger in both,
An addiction that pulls like a chain,
It resonates between you, like the sun
Blinding and swamping your thoughts,
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Like the wind rising and falling, falling,
Like the packsong calling, calling.
It binds you like two halves of a knot
That cannot come undone.
—excerpt fromWho Hunts the Wolves
Afternoon, just west ofWillow Road . . .
The wolf watched from the shadows with a predatory sense, an animal tang of hunger. Evening was
approaching fast, when color would shift into shades of grey and the air would grow cool with danger.
The young wolf knew what would come with the darkness. He was a year old, experienced enough that
the hunt was no longer fearsome, but still young enough that it was something he eagerly sought. This
time, he hunted alone.
He hunched beside the roots with a waxleaf tickling his fur. He flicked his ears absently. The yearling
liked the weak warmth of spring. Deep winter was hard hunting, especially since it would be two more
years before he came into his full strength. Spring meant creatures weak with hunger or heavy with their
young. It meant easy running in soft earth, not deep drifts of snow. He inhaled quickly, trying to catch the
scent of his prey. From the shadows, his golden eyes stared unblinking, seeking even a blurred glimpse of
movement, but the thick hedge remained impenetrable to his gaze.
Overhead, dark vines climbed along the spiny barrier bushes. The vines here were old enough that they
stretched up into the arch of trees that hung over the man-made trails. They were two wide streams of
white, those man-trails, made of wood so firm it was hard as stone. He’d run on such trails in winter
when their wood-warmth kept them from freezing. At night, they glowed like the moons, and the humans
used them like highways, clattering this way and that. They didn’t seem to care that any hunter could hear
them. They didn’t care about scents, either, for dozens of strange, nose-clogging odors clung to that long
line of movement.
It was hard to separate out the things from which the odors came. Some were forest smells carried along
with the man-things, like the smell of the danger-fang, the tano, and that of the tiny, venomous weibers.
Others were strictly man-scent: sharp smells, unpleasant ones, metal grease and oils. Then there was the
smell of the spiny barrier that the yearling crouched behind. It was a man-thing, too, planted deliberately,
according to the pack elders. It stank to keep the beasts away and wouldn’t harm the wolves.
Unpleasant, yes, but the other side meant safety.
The yearling’s ears flicked again at an impression of motion much closer to his position. He was not
mistaken. At the base of the bushes, slow blue flowers closed their soft, hungry mouths on the gnats that
fluttered nearby. Everything was thickening and strengthening, not just with spring, but with the coming
dusk.
On the other side of the hedge, the behemoths rumbled, unaware, unflinching, unstoppable. Rishte could
hear little over their noise, but he knew his prey had moved beyond him. He scanned the roadside
fruitlessly. He could feel the creature like the prickling of fur when one steps up to a trap. It was waiting,
faintly wanting him as much as he wanted it. Calling for him to approach. Like an itch just under the skin,
it clawed at his consciousness.
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摘要：

BooksbyTaraKHarperTalesoftheWolves--7WolfinNight(2005)SPECIALTHANKSTOPrologueIIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIIIIXXXIXIIXIIIXIVXVXVIXVIIXVIIIXIXXXGeneratedbyABCAmberLITConverter,http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlXXIXXIIXXIIIXXIVXXVXXVIXXVIIXXVIIIXXIXXXXXXXIXXXIIXXXIIIXXXIVXXXVXXXVIXXXVIIEpilogueAuthor’sNote Tale...

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