Free The Return of Nightfall by Mickey Zucker Reichert Page B

took the bait. Nightfall again saw movement near the end of the king’s bed. With wary slowness, the chest’s lid lifted in increments.
    Trained to caution, Nightfall barely noticed the pain cramping through his injured leg, the protest of sinews too long in one place. He kept his gaze locked on the activity, scarcely bothering even to blink.
    At length, a head poked cautiously over the lowest edge of the chest to peer inside it.
    Stock-still in the shadows, Nightfall now held the advantage. His eyes had adjusted to the scant moonlight funneling through a window set nearer to the stranger than himself. He watched as a darkly gloved hand settled onto the edge of the chest, and the other man’s head tipped downward to study the contents more closely. The profile gave Nightfall an image of shaggy, short-cut hair, a pointed nose, and a scraggle of beard.
    His attention wholly on the stranger, Nightfall freed one of the throwing daggers at his wrist. The other man shifted, raising his head to sweep the room with a glance. Apparently blind to the lurking danger, he returned to his task. One hand dipped into the trunk to rummage through Edward’s personal effects.
    “Be still,” Nightfall said.
    The man made a graceful leap onto Edward’s bed. Nightfall threw the dagger. It grazed the fabric of the stranger’s breeks, just short of the inner thigh, then embedded in the wall with a satisfying thunk. Before it did, Nightfall snapped another hilt into his hand. “A finger’s breadth higher, you’re a eunuch. An arm’s length, you gurgle. Want to take your chances I missed on purpose?”
    The man froze. His position now fully revealed him as a stranger: a young man only just mature enough for the beard. His gaze slipped toward the window, measuring.
    Nightfall wanted to dare the boy to test his quickness against Nightfall’s, but he held his tongue. He had already pressed to the edge of his character. Instead, he moved his hand slightly to allow moonlight to gleam from the second blade. That would serve as warning enough. “What are you doing here?”
    The boy licked his lips with nervous flicks of his tongue. He said nothing.
    “Look,” Nightfall started, watching the other for the slightest tensing that might betray an attempt at escape. “I’m usually a tolerant man. But the folks in the common room won’t tell me anything, and I’m going to get answers one way or another.”
    The stranger swallowed hard. “I . . . I . . . don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    It was a lie, and Nightfall knew it. As always, he read the unspoken nuances in expression, gesture, posture, and movement as well as word. That skill had kept him alive every bit as much as his natal talent for weight shifting. “What happened in the He-Ain’t-Here tonight, and where is my master?”
    “Your-your master?”
    The boy was stalling, and Nightfall had no patience for it. “King Edward of Alyndar.” He added a deliberate knife edge to his voice. “Where is he? You’ve got to a ten count to answer.” He started immediately. “One. Two . . .”
    “Wait!” the young man said with soft force. “Stop counting.”
    “Three. Four . . .”
    “All right!”
    Now, Nightfall did stop. He gave the youngster a two count for throat clearing and fidgeting, then continued, “Five!”
    The words tumbled out in a squeak. “There was a big fight here. I thought . . . I thought I could take some things without anyone noticing.”
    Though a plausible explanation, it was nonetheless untrue. Nightfall sensed the deception as easily as breathing. “You work for the killers!”
    “No!”
    “What do they want from King Edward? Where did they take him?”
    “I don’t know.” The stranger’s gaze gave him away, divided between Nightfall and the window. “I don’t know anything.”
    The similarity between his claim and those in the common room clinched the connection. Nightfall’s free hand tightened, and he willed himself calm and in