Nightsworn | The Whispering Wall #2

Seventy Seven: The Poisoner

"I am not sure about this." Each word came out firmly except for the last, which wobbled and hung in the air between them in the ensuing silence. Arlen's mouth ticked up at one corner as he glanced sidelong at his apprentice.

"Good job it isn't your decision, then, eh?"

Even so, Arlen hesitated before he led on. The building outside of which they stood didn't look sturdy enough to live in even by dead quarter standards, but this was the address Callan had given him and he had no reason to think it was wrong. The Poisoner did favour hiding holes that no one would expect to enter, let alone make camp in. It suited the line of work.

"It looks like the front's going to fall off!" Jordan protested in a harsh whisper, but when Arlen kept stubbornly on towards the front door, he followed.

"Never known him to live in one place more than a month," Arlen replied without looking back. "So as long as it's held well enough for that, he won't care. Do you have everything I told you to pack?"

"Aye," came the sullen response, and Arlen glanced down as Jordan patted his coat and revealed a glint of metal. They both wore as many weapons as their belts would hold. He knew it had made Jordan more nervous, not less, but as far as Arlen was concerned, the more weapons they had the safer they were. He had the failed assassin fresh on his mind when he had given the instruction, but it was also a storage issue. Darin's single room had absolutely nowhere he could hide weapons, and the idiot wouldn't let him take up a floorboard to make a space. He wasn't about to leave them unconcealed in Darin's care; the landlord had a habit of dropping in, and he didn't trust Darin not to throw them out while he was gone.

Sharing a room with his ex-brother had been pretty similar to how he had always pictured the Pit. When he had shown up on Darin's doorstep, he had fully expected to be turned away. To his surprise, Darin had conceded to the request, but not without a whole list of damnably inconvenient restrictions; his group of Devils had to meet elsewhere, he wasn't allowed to smoke inside, and he'd had to agree to wash every night and bathe every week. The sheer audacity had stirred him up to a boiling rage, but the look on Usk's face when he had stormed out and declared he was going home had stopped him in his tracks.

"You can't," the Varthian had said, wincing as if in anticipation of the blow around the head Arlen wanted to deal him. "We found someone else lurking around outside your window. Some fucker dressed the same way, same sort of weapons. Jes ran across him on his way to yours."

And so Arlen had had to swallow his pride and turn right back around, and Darin had looked far, far too smug about it.

He pulled himself back to the present. He could stew about it later, when his apprentice wasn't standing all his hair on end with that dark-damned nervous magic-leaking habit he had.

"Why do you smell like soap?" Jordan muttered, and stepped back when Arlen rounded on him.

"Just shut the fuck up and follow me. No more dumb questions." He scowled, certain he heard an echo of Jesper's laughter on a neighbouring roof. "Come on."

The entryway to the questionable dwelling stank of damp and rot. The floorboards felt alarmingly soft under the questing end of his walking stick.

"Mind your step," he muttered to Jordan. "This feels like you could put a foot through it."

"The floor is literally squishy and this place is suitable to live in?" Jordan replied incredulously, but shut up again at Arlen's warning glare.

There was no illumination inside. The stairs ended halfway up in a toothy maw of splinters and blackness. In the dim evening light still coming through the front door Arlen could make out a hallway stretching ahead of them, though not where it ended. Jordan lit a small green fire in one palm, lighting the mouldy walls with an eerie shade of emerald and giving the small leggy creatures hiding in the corners grotesque shadows. The floor looked even worse than it felt; black and crumbly, and so damp that bits which had broken away were turning black. Even for Arlen, who had spent over a decade in the dead quarter and was far from fussy about the integrity of the buildings in it, this particular specimen seemed a brave choice.