Free Assassin's Shadow (Veiled Dagger Book 2) by Jon Kiln

what amounted to a battlefield. The floors were a treacherous clutter of books, dishes, cups and broken furniture, dotted here and there with puddles of vomit.
    Rothar had eventually resorted to tying Allette down to his bed, in an effort to prevent her from injuring herself or him. The madness that the woman had shown in the street when she caught the sent of Obscura had redoubled when she realized that Rothar would not be feeding her habit. And each hour that passed without the drug, Allette had become more ill and crazed.
    Finally, late on the third night, it was as though a fever of the mind broke within the woman, and she spoke lucidly for the first time since Rothar had found her.
    She looked around the room as though she had never seen it before, then she looked at her bindings, and at Rothar. She no longer fought against her restraints, but she began to weep softly. Rothar brought her water and soup and she ate and drank with enthusiasm for once. When he was confident that she was sufficiently over her madness, Rothar untied Allette, and she got up to walk unsteadily about the room.
    As she walked, she began to speak to Rothar. She said that the last thing she remembered was the night of the riots. She had been smoking with a group of working peasants for two days straight, when they suddenly realized they were out of “the ladder,” as she called it.
    They went out into the village to try to seek out more, only to find that nobody had any. Like them, everyone had used it all up. Allette told Rothar that that was the point when things started to go awry in Witherington. As users began to discover that there was no smoke to be had, they became despondent, desperate, and angry.
    It was rumored that someone in the King’s City had some stashed away, but they were demanding a premium price for it, more than anyone in Witherington could afford - especially those who had been spending their days smoking in dark hovels instead of plying their trades.
    Allette did not know where the looting started or who started it, but she said that before she knew it, she was running with a crowd of townspeople, breaking into any place that they could and taking what they could carry. The spree was eventually pushed out of Witherington by the intervention of the King’s men, but Allette and her group took the chaos right to the King’s front door.
    The idea, ostensibly, had been to rob the castle of items of value, which could be sold to pay the high price for the fabled stash of Obscura. The looters, of course, had been driven away by the sentinels, but Allette had fallen from the wall and injured her ankle, that was the last thing she remembered.
    Rothar filled her in about how he had found her, and everything else they had endured together since that morning.
    She was sitting now, and looking more human, and more weary.
    “I must know something,” she said. “Why did you help me?”
    “Because you needed help,” he answered simply.
    “But there are so many who need help right now, the… what did you call it? Obscura? It is making people worthless when they have it, and mad when they do not.”
    Rothar thought for a moment.
    “Yes,” he said, “and I will also help them. It is my sworn duty to do so. But I came across you in your time of need, and had I left you there then you would be in the castle dungeons now, and that is no place for a young woman.”
    The answer seemed to appease Allette.
    “How will you help them, Rothar?”
    Rothar had not given the woman any indication of who he was or what he did, and he would not reveal his true vocation to her.
    “Honestly, I have been hoping that you might be able to help me with that,” he answered. “Can you tell me about how you first came into contact with the Obscura?”
    Allette looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember.
    “It was as though one day, it was just there, all of a sudden,” she began. “I am sorry that I can not say where it came from, I just know