Free The Dread Hammer by Linda Nagata Page B

glass.
    Smoke didn’t bother to knock. He slipped into the world-beneath and a moment later he was inside a large room stacked full of bolts of cloth, bags of grain, leather goods, and iron works. A counter bisected the store, separating front from back. A woman stood at the counter, working by the light of a three-candle chandelier as she measured the yardage of some lovely blue silk.
    It was the sound of rainwater dripping from Smoke’s coat that made her look up.

    Still half-asleep, his eyes squeezed shut against the candlelight, Seök listened to his sister’s voice softly counting aloud as she measured and cut an order of silk fabric. Rain still hammered down, and he sent another prayer of thanks to Koráy and the Dread Hammer.
    Then a new sound came to him, of water dripping. Not a distant pattering drip of rain falling from the eaves, but something much closer that made a sharp tick-tick .
    He opened his eyes.
    From where he lay, he could just see past the end of the counter. He could see Yelena’s shadow at the counter’s other end, and halfway between the counter and the door there stood the figure of a man, with rainwater dripping from the hem and hood of his long leather coat.
    It was no surprise that a man should come in dripping on a morning like this one, but how this man had come in at all was a mystery Seök could not explain, given that he had locked and barred the door himself last night.
    Two years on the road had enforced the caution Seök had learned as a soldier. So he stirred not at all, feigning sleep as he eyed the phantom visitor.
    The stranger was tall, but lightly built. His hood was pulled low over his face so Seök could see nothing of his features except for the glitter of his eyes. Within the lightless shadow of his hood, the stranger’s eyes sparkled faintly green with their own light . . . as no man’s should.
    Seök bit hard on his lip to keep from crying out, but surely this stranger could hear the hammering of his heart?
    “Oh, hello, sir!” his sister Yelena exclaimed. “I didn’t hear you come in. Welcome, welcome—though it’s early, no?” She caught her breath. “Ah, sir! You’re one of the Hauntén. You honor me! What service do you seek on this dark morning?”
    The stranger laughed—a warm laugh, full of humor—yet it chilled Seök’s heart. Fear flooded him, made worse when words followed. “I’ve come to buy pretty silks and soft flannels, and warm woolen cloth and a sack of flour.”
    Seök did not need to see this stranger’s face. He knew Smoke’s laugh, his voice. How could he forget? He’d encountered the Bidden youth only once, but the memory would haunt him for as long as he walked in the world.
    It had been two years ago, just before he’d left the army. All that summer war raged throughout the borderlands. It was Seök’s task to lead a small and stealthy company of archers in ambush against the southerner’s supply wagons. Late on a broiling midsummer morning, with the weather so hot and dry Seök had feared the woods would spontaneously catch fire and burn, his company heard from afar the screams of women and children. They rode after the sound, thinking to come in stealth on a company of the enemy, but it was Smoke they discovered. His sword was bloody and though he was on foot, he moved with uncanny speed. Every inhabitant of the village was cut down by his onslaught. Not just the small company of Lutawan soldiers garrisoned there, but every woman and every child, hacked into bloody ruin. Seök’s troops had cried out in bitter protest, but another Koráyos company was there, under the command of a chieftain who forbade Seök’s men to interfere.
    Smoke had been but sixteen that summer, his first season on the battlefield.
    When the slaughter was done, the village livestock was taken for the use of the army, and the bodies were burned along with the houses. Afterward, Seök had watched Smoke as he crouched beside a stream to wash the blood