PROMISE

CHAPTER 8

The streets of Echo stood soulless as the pair made their way across the haven toward the Keep. Driftwood torches danced in place at each crossroad, their flames gushing grey smoke that clogged the air with a chemical tang.

As they approached the Keep, Hain sighted two Empees standing watch–one wide and tall as a draft horse, the other stick thin, and both still as moss wrapped statues beneath mottled green and black cloaks. Matching scowls shadowed their eyes and turned their mouths toward the uneven cobblestones underfoot as they watched him and Lilith approach. Hain felt his back go tense at the sight.

"Blessed is the End Day," he and Lilith said in unison as they approached the Keep.

The Faith's greeting was barely palatable in Hain's mouth, but he said it all the same. In a haven of the Faithful, such things couldn't be helped.

"Sneaking in after curfew, eh?" said the broad shouldered guard, skipping the proper response to their hail. His lips formed a leering smile over a wide face. "I ought to make you sleep in the street, coming in this late."

Hain's expression darkened beneath the blue firelight. He knew this man–had seen him escorting the Bishop whenever the snake deigned to slither from his Sepulcher and into the haven's streets.

"It's a saint's feast so the curfew's off," Hain said, forcing irritation from his voice. The man might not have any real power over them, but considering all that had happened in the last day, Hain wasn't eager to draw more attention to themselves. "Besides, we were at the mass."

"And I'm He Who Returned." He gestured with the butt of his spear at Hain's grime streaked leathers. "The Bishop would have had you out on the street looking like that." He snickered. "If he let you sit mass at all, which he wouldn't." He shifted the spear toward Lilith. "And we both know his feelings about this one."

"Quit being an ass, Rangel," said the other Empee, his hairless chin betraying a boy barely become a man. Hain didn't recognize him. "Why do we care what they're doing out so long as they got those?" He pointed to the sigil of crossed blades and waving flames of House Echo pinned to their chest. "Let them through and let's get on with the night."

The first man, Rangel, shot the younger an evil look.

"You know who these two are?" His face swung back toward Hain and Lilith. "The Regent's bastard nephew, and the Cat demon."

Hain watched the color flood from the younger man's cheeks.

Hain knew that look. He'd seen it a thousand times from a thousand faces about the haven. He could almost read the man's thoughts, as though being so close to this half-blood Viajero was poison.

Amusement glittered in Rangel's eyes as he drank in the shock spilling off the younger man. "Nothing to say to that then?" He leered again at the two friends. "Way I figure it, these two are barely better than the Vrai. Ought to sleep in the street where they belong."

Fear crept into Hain's chest. The man had no cause to stop them. Hain knew it. But the aggression tensing his roped muscles, and the light glinting off his spear, made Hain's guts feel loose.

"Or maybe," Rangel said, hunger moving behind his eyes, "I let this one stay the night in my bed. She looks old enough, don't she?"

Hain looked away, and hated himself as he did it. This man ought to pay for speaking to Lilith like that, and Hain ought to be the one collecting, but the fear that had stolen into his heart made his body useless.

The same fear that had driven him to flee that night in the woods. The same fear that had killed the Boy.

"What do you say, Cat girl?" The guard took a step toward Lilith. "Bet you could give the boys in the barracks a night they'd remember."