Sundown was tending a small, smokeless fire when Chane finally awoke.
“Hello,” he said with a yawn. “Is it morning, or evening?”
“Evening.” She did not look up from the fire.
“Ah. How long was I out?”
“A day,” she said. Then, “Pardon me if I’m a bit short. I had to burn quite a bit of blood to haul you away from the jail and get us somewhere safe.”
He looked around, and saw they were in an abandoned stone house without a roof, deep within some kind of bramble. By the light of the fire, he could see Sundown had somehow acquired a marven, which lay on its stomach just outside the crumbling stone doorway. It flattened its ear feathers when he looked at it, and he got the sense Sundown had not been the only one hauling his bulk the past day or so.
“Thank you.”
“Of course.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have any food?”
She pointed at the fire where he could see a small pan. “Sausage. Bread and cheese in the packs. Good?”
“Good enough.” He tried to rise, but pain shot through his body and he fell back to his side.
“Here,” Sundown said, pulling his blanket over him.
“No, I want to sit up,” Chane said. “We have to discuss terms, and I’m not doing it lying down.”
“Suit yourself.” She sat back and watched him, almost challenging him.
He managed to prop up on one elbow, then got his legs underneath him and---and noticed he was wearing pants. Only pants.
“You dressed me? And…and did you give me a bath?”
“I didn’t feel like hauling a naked, bloody giant around the countryside. I just got your clothing and other belongings from the jail.”
He breathed through his nose. His wife would not approve of this escapade. Not that she would do much about it, but she might give him the silent treatment for a few days.
“Terms?” Sundown prompted.
“Yes. You said something about it being complicated.”
“It is. I’ve lost my shadow.”
Chane frowned. “Uncommon. You surviving, that is.”
“I’ve been told.” She seemed flippant, as though she didn’t fully grasp the situation. Which was likely.
“You do realize you’re on a tight schedule, don’t you?”
She grew somber. “I know what happens. I’ll ‘slip out of existence’ at the next Evernight if we don’t get it back.”
“Sundown,” Chane said. “You’ve lost your shadow. Your soul. Your connection to the material plane. Every dark secret, every memory you’ve buried, every love or hate you’ve harbored or prayer you’ve uttered—they’re all under the control of gods know who or what. You do realize this is serious, don’t you?”
“To be honest, I haven’t really noticed much difference. Hard to stay warm. I don’t feel as much anxiety as I used to. Don’t feel much of anything except…cold. And lights shine through me like I’m some sort of geist. Not as distressing as you might think. Aside from the diagnosis of dying.”
Chane wanted to lecture her about the importance of shadows, but he could tell she wouldn’t be able to appreciate it. Possibly precisely because she had lost her shadow.
Instead he said, “There aren’t many things that take shadows and leave their victims alive. My guess is a Thaelun.”
She puzzled over his diagnosis. “The Immortal? That kind of Thaelun?”
“Only one kind. Problem is, they’re difficult to hunt, being magical, undying creatures and all that.”
“Oh. So you don’t think we can get my shadow back?”
“I didn’t say that. Just that it’s going to be difficult, dangerous, and may take some time.” He smiled in spite of himself. He loved a good hunt.
“I’ve only got three weeks until the next Evernight,” Sundown said. “What’s the first step?”
“Finding the Immortal, which is simple in everything but execution. Then we worry about getting your shadow back.”
“Will we be able to reconnect it?”
He nodded. “There will probably be…side effects.”
“Is death one of those side effects?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll deal with it. Sausage is done.”
She pulled the sausage off the fire with a fork and put it on a small tin plate, then sliced bread and cheese onto the plate and handed it to Chane.
“I’m going to need seconds,” he said, cradling the plate in the palm of one hand.
She sized him up. “Oh. I’ll put more on, then.”
“Meanwhile,” he said, “let’s formalize the terms of payment. I get you your shadow back as payment for getting me out of prison?”
“And we go see the seer Aalyndr,” Sundown said. “He has the rest of my payment for freeing you.”
“Aalyndr?” It was Chane’s turn to be puzzled.
“Problem?” Sundown asked.
“No, it’s just, of all the people I would have guessed to have hired you to break me out, Aalyndr was not on my list. I know the man, but we aren’t exactly friends.”
“Funny, that’s what Aalyndr said, too.” Sundown turned the sausage. “I’m agreeable to the terms if you are.”
“Just one last term.” Chane took a long drink of water from his canteen, which was the size of Sundown’s head. “How much blood do you have on tap?”
She closed her eyes, as though taking an internal stock of her blood levels. “I’m down about seven ounces from the past two days. Why?”
“Could you spare a few ounces about once a week?”
“Why?” she repeated with concern in her voice.
Chane pursed his lips. There wasn’t a good way to say it.
“I need blood.”
Her eyes widened. “Regularly?”
“Regularly.”
“Do you just…suck it out of my neck or something?”
“I prefer a cup, actually.”
“No fangs?”
He lifted his lips, revealing well-maintained, normal, teeth. “You can’t believe every story you hear. And it isn’t a curse or anything. It’s a…quirk of my bond with some of these shades.”
He gestured to the tattoos on his chest and arms, various animals and beasts in stylized form covering his body, as well as a blackout tattoo covering the whole of his right arm from elbow to fingertips.
She didn’t change externally, but her voice sounded different when she spoke next.
“Are those your shades? The people you’ve…harvested shadows from?”
“Animals, mostly. I like harvesting free shades. Taking them from something still alive is…messy.”
“I’d imagine.” She looked away.
“I’m not a monster,” Chane said, recognizing exactly how hollow that sounded. “I don’t kill unless I have no other option.”
“Really. And the Hendrguards back at the prison don’t count?”
“To be fair, they spent the better part of a fortnight trying to kill me. And they would have killed you for freeing me. So, you’re welcome.”
“That makes me feel almost as good as you wanting some of my blood.”
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With the conversation deteriorating rapidly, Chane decided upon a direct approach.
“Alright. I’m a murderer. I steal the souls of people and beasts. I won’t pretend it’s a noble business, or a pretty one, but it’s what I do.”
He leaned forward, his smile gone, towering over Sundown even in a seated position.
“I’ve killed and harvested hundreds of shadows. I’ve killed Immortals. I’ve taken enough shadows to make a Great Shade jealous. I can hold my own in the middle of an Evernight. I have held scores of shades from among the most dangerous beings in the world, including humans, and I’m not afraid to use them. I am Chane Vespers, and I am a shadow hunter.”
His eyes turned black, just briefly, but it was enough to make Sundown flinch.
“And?” Her voice was steady, even though her hands shook.
“And you enjoy the unique position of having me in your debt.” He sat back and spread his hands. “You need someone who can hunt down a shadow. You need someone not afraid to get his hands dirty, even to face down an Immortal. You need someone dangerous.
“Despise me if you must, Sundown, but I am exactly the man you need. If you didn’t think so, you wouldn’t have broken me out of jail.”
She pulled the sausage off the fire, which had slightly burned on one side, and she went through the motions of making up a plate for each of them before she spoke.
“Why do you need my blood? If it’s not a curse, what is it?”
“If I don’t provide the shades a bit of life force every week, they’ll consume mine.” He shrugged. “Wearing them under my skin has its benefits, but it also has its cost.”
He was bending the truth quite a bit, but he was betting on her not knowing enough about shadentheurgy to call him out.
Sundown studied his bare chest and arms. “You keep your servants inside you. Your tattoos are your shadowbox?”
“Harder to steal skin than a shadowbox or a totem. And the shades are quicker to respond to my commands.” He held up a hand, and a dark shadow crept out of it and stood up like a globule of pitch, white eyes glinting in the firelight. “This one belonged to a veilbat. Comes in useful when I need short bursts of flight.”
“Impressive,” she said, though she had leaned back. “How many do you have?”
“It isn’t the number that matters. But I have anywhere from ten to twenty on my person at any given time.”
“And they consume a lot of life force?”
“Not too much. I don’t need much blood, just a few ounces once a week.”
Sundown considered in silence.
“Alright,” she said at last. “But it will cost you two scythers a drink.”
“One,” Chane counter-offered.
“Two.”
“One, and I’ll cook you something special to recover your stamina each time.”
“Hopefully it’s only one time. Three weeks is the maximum. I’m hoping it takes less than that.”
“Do we have a deal?”
She nodded. “Deal, if it’s your own food. You better be a hell of a cook.”
He shook her hand. “I have to admit, you’re taking this better than I thought you would.”
She shrugged and looked down. “I’ve done worse than this for money.”
“Ha! Haven’t we all.”
He decided then that he liked Sundown. Reserved, brave, and resourceful. Excellent qualities that would make her a perfect companion to work with.
It would be a shame if he ended up having to kill her.
They moved on at first light, traveling towards the place Sundown had lost her shadow. Chane was still recovering his strength, from what Sundown gathered, but he didn’t make a fuss about it, except the occasional grunt or wince. He did seem to be recovering faster than normal from his extended stay in the prison.
He wouldn’t talk about what he had done to break out of his chains. This did little to improve her trust in him.
They would have traveled faster, but the marven proved belligerent. It did not appreciate carrying two people’s sets of belongings. Actually, it didn’t seem to appreciate moving in general. Even Chane moved faster than it did.
“Couldn’t you have picked a younger beast?” Chane asked Sundown.
“It’s what I could steal.” Sundown tugged on the bridle to encourage it. “If you want a better mount, steal one yourself.”
The marven clacked its beak at Chane whenever he got close, so he had settled into a pace behind them.
His positioning unnerved Sundown. She would rather have kept him where she could see him at all times.
“You know you could be hung for marven-rustling,” Chane said.
“I can count on one hand the number of marven-thieves I’ve seen hung. They won’t bother with chasing down a twenty-year-old steer.” Sundown glared back at the beast. “I think they might even be glad to be rid of it.”
They traveled in this fashion for two full days. Word had spread quickly about Chane’s escape, and they had to hide his face behind a plague-cloth. Sundown thought it was more distracting than him simply shaving his beard to change his appearance, but Chane had a bit of a taste for fashion, and wouldn’t touch his beard except to groom and maintain it. She had the urge to comment on how out-of-fashion a plague cloth looked covering his mouth and nose and—ironically—his beard, but she kept it to herself. Men and their vanity…
Sundown was in the middle of wondering if they would move faster once Chane had his full strength back and they could ditch the marven, when Chane spoke from behind her in a tone that made her stomach clench.
“Don’t turn around, and don’t panic.”
This of course only made her tense up. “What?”
“We have a shade following us. It’s been after us for the last mile or so.”
“What kind of shade?”
“It’s a hound, I think.”
Sundown groaned and stopped walking.
Chane caught up to her. “You know this shade?”
“Wait here. I have some business to take care of.”
She put the marven’s reins in his hand. It gave him a look, and he took a step back from it.
“I’ll be right back.” She left them and approached the shade.
It was little more than a shadow on the ground, but as she approached it rose up into an amorphous mass with glowing white eyes.
“Hello, Founder.”
The shade looked at her, and almost moved past her.
“It’s me. Sundown.”
The shade took another look, and seemed confused. A shadow grew from it and pointed at her feet.
“I lost my shadow. Probably why it took you a little while to find me again.”
The blob nodded, then held out an appendage that looked like a hand.
She dug into her pocket and pulled out a small leather purse. She counted out five bronze coins with a crescent moon image on them and gave them to the shade.
The coins encountered no resistance from the shade and dropped straight into the darkness, disappearing entirely.
The shade retracted its arm, then extended it again.
“I just gave you your scythers, Founder.”
It waved its hand.
“Two months?”
It nodded.
“The terms are for—well, I guess it is almost next month. Fine, but I’m keeping track. You aren’t getting a single pith more from me until Friar’s Day.”
She only had four more crescent coins, and had to count out five piths, iron coins with a seed stamped in the middle, to make up for the missing scyther.
After it accepted the coins, the shade tilted its head, looking past Sundown at Chane and the marven. It made a hissing noise.
“Tell me about it.”
The shade retreated to the ground, where it became nothing more than a dark shadow in the general shape of a hound.
“Wait, tell me news. Is Courtesy still in school? Has Lathe left the home yet?”
The shadow did not respond, and simply slid away down the road.
She clenched her jaw, a flare of anxiety finding its way to her chest. Founder always set her on edge.
“Everything alright?” Chane was standing right behind her, and she jumped at the sound of his voice.
“Fine. Let’s keep moving.”
Chane caught her arm as she passed. “Are you in trouble?”
“Not if I keep current on my payments.”
“Wait, that was a debt collector? They used a shade to track you down for payment?”
“It was that or pin myself to one location while I pay it off. It’s nothing, let’s go.”
Chane looked disgusted. Somehow this lightened her mood.
It was good to know even someone as foul as a shadow hunter despised debt collectors.
They reached the spot she had lost her shadow at the end of the second day. The light was already fading in the western sky when Sundown led the group off the road to a small covert of trees.
“This is it,” she said, waving her arm ceremoniously.
“This exact spot?” Chane asked.
“One of these trees. I don’t remember. Maybe that one?”
She didn’t know that it mattered, but Chane seemed to think it did. He walked to the tree and knelt to examine the shade it cast in the dying light.
“Darker than most,” he muttered. “Penumbra seems ragged. Contrast is too stark. Inward tilt is—Great Shades, is that right? Ten degrees?”
He stood and shook his head. “Sundown, if you knew even the barest of details about shadentheurgy, you wouldn’t have stepped within a mile of this grove. The shadows here are so twisted that you can see it with your natural eyes.”
She held up her hand. “I don’t need a lecture; I’m not interested in learning about what you do. Just tell me what it means.”
“It means someone or something has been performing a lot of shadentheurgy here. It means we’re definitely in the right place.”
Sundown took a look at the shadows. They looked normal enough to her. Then she took a deep sniff of the air and something sharp and pungent stabbed through the cold.
“Well, we certainly aren’t sleeping here tonight,” she said. “Blood was shed nearby.”
“You smell blood?”
“You notice it when you do sangremancy for a while.”
“And how long have you been doing sangremancy?”
“A while,” Sundown said. “I’m smelling a lot of blood. Probably a predator made a kill nearby.”
“Not good,” Chane said. “You think whatever did it will come back?”
“No, I’m just thinking a bloodgeist will be raising a clamor tonight. I’d like some sleep.”
“And I’d like to keep my shadow,” Chane said. “I saw a town not far down the road we just left. We’ll stay there tonight.”
As she turned to go, however, Sundown felt something. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she swore she could see something moving in the dark.
She burned a little bit of blood, just enough to enhance her sense of sight and smell, but nothing stood out from the darkening shadows of the trees.
The feeling followed her back to the road, and down through to the town, where it lingered just beyond the border of the cobblestone streets.
Despite Sundown’s instincts letting her know something watched her, she noticed nothing with her physical senses. Either it was just her nerves, or this threat was something better at hiding than Sundown was at tracking. And Sundown’s gut had never led her wrong before.
Sundown decided to do something foolish: she ignored the mystery in the darkness. Whatever it was, it was tracking her for now. It would not attack until it was ready.
Which meant she had a chance to learn about it before it struck.
