Snowtear Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Book One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Book Two

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Snowtear

  by S.B. Davidson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by S.B. Davidson

  All rights reserved, including right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For Kristi, my wife, who loves me almost as much as I love her.

  Book One

  Chapter One

  Fidgeting with the hood of her cloak, the nanny ascended the dithering staircase to the third floor of Wicked Delight. At the top, a sweaty man with a belly like a wine barrel leered at her through the shallow crack in his door. Jillian Dumay tugged tighter at her hood, as much to hide her face from the brute as to shelter her nose from the stench emanating from his darkened room.

  Feeling the unnerving stare trail her, Jillian made her way down the balcony, stopping at the door the crotchety madam downstairs said belonged to Riken Snowtear. Her gawker’s door eased shut. She exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

  After taking a moment to compose herself, she rapped lightly on the door. A muffled growl and the sudden thunk of something thrown against the wall gave her pause.

  “Morning, Hagatha, you simp,” came a slurring voice from inside the room. “I’m paid through till morning. See any sunlight? Nay. Get the bloody hell away from my door. It’s my door till morning.”

  Jillian heard a few other vulgarities, but couldn’t make them out. Not that she wanted to. Even before something else shattered against the wall, she was second-guessing her rationale in coming to a place like this. But after retreating halfway down the creaking balcony, she stopped. Sage needed help, and she’d been told that Mon Snowtear was the man to see. Begrudgingly, she returned to the door. She knocked a little more forcefully this time, meeting the same uncouth opposition.

  “I don’t know of this Hagatha you speak,” she said. “My name is Jillian Dumay, and I’m in need of your…assistance.”

  She heard a moan, then whining floorboards. The man on the other side of the moldy wall cursed a few more times for good measure, and from the noise, Jillian figured he toppled a few pieces of furniture before inching open the door.

  “What?” the man snapped.

  She could only assume this was Riken Snowtear. The foul aroma drifting through the crack in the doorway offended her nostrils. She tried not to show it. She needed this man’s help. Sage’s life might depend on it.

  “My name is Jillian Dumay.”

  “Said that already.”

  “Aye, well…I’m in need of your…”

  “Said that, too.”

  Flustered, Jillian asked, “Are you Riken Snowtear?”

  “Depends who’s asking.”

  “I already told you…”

  “I’m he.”

  Jillian had the burning desire to reach through the flimsy door, snatch him by the neck, and wring every last ounce of arrogance out of him. For Sage, she fought the urge, but it took some doing.

  “May I come in?” she asked.

  The crack in the door slowly widened, and Jillian stepped through, clanging together a collection of empty bottles strewn on the floor. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the startlingly frail, completely nude man standing before her.

  She gasped. Her hand went to her mouth. The man smiled at her loss of composure and walked around her to a table next to the bed. He lit a candle and sat down on the edge of the mattress, mercifully crossing his legs.

  The dim, orange glow of the candle provided a shadowy view of his emaciated features. Standing, he would’ve been maybe six feet tall. His dirty blonde hair – emphasis on dirty –drooped in straight, oily strands on his face and to his sharp shoulders. Emerald eyes rested just above a small, thin nose. His bare torso looked like someone had draped sheer skin over a skeleton. Women of lesser standards might deem the man’s face attractive in an aloof sort of way, but his sunken cheeks, pointy jaw, and dark-circled eyes did little to bolster such a claim. She didn’t care for his mischievous smile.

  “What can I do for you, Min?” Snowtear asked, his voice deeper than she would’ve imagined for a man of such diminutive stature. His height was the only thing big about him.

  The air of confidence he exuded as he sat across from her, discomfited not in the least by his nakedness, didn’t mesh with his sickly look. Jillian had seen folks on their deathbeds that looked healthier.

  Before she could answer his question, she heard a moan from the other side of the bed. She looked past the man and frowned at a mess of blonde hair spilling from the sheets behind him.

  “That’s just Gretchen,” Snowtear said.

  Another whimper followed. Not from the same woman.

  “Don’t mind Pollo either,” the man said, his grin widening.

  Before there could be any further interruptions, Jillian spat out, “The girl I care for, Sage Ullimar, has gone missing. I want you to find her.”

  “Human or Sophci?” the man asked, taking a half depleted herb roll from the table and lighting it with the candle.

  “What could that possibly matter?”

  “I’m assuming, of course, that she isn’t Liechen.”

  “Nay, but…”

  “Sometimes, Min, it matters,” Snowtear said, blowing blue smoke through his nostrils.

  “Fine. She’s Sophci?”

  “What phase?”

  Jillian narrowed her eyes at the man. When his gaze didn’t falter, she answered. “Sage is in her Second New phase.”

  “When?”

  “When, what?”

  “When did she go missing?”

  “Last night. I put her in bed around nine of the dial, checked in on her at midnight before I retired myself. When I went to wake her this morning, she was gone.”

  “Less than a day?”

  “Aye. So?”

  “Children have ways of getting lost for longer spells than that in a city this size. Many exciting things to do here, you know. Winter Moon can be quite the feast for the senses, believe me. Most find their way back to their mummas and papas in a few days, hardly worse for the wear for their brief time of frivolity.”

  “If you knew Sage, you wouldn’t say that,” Jillian said.

  “I don’t know Sage, so…”

  “I think she’s been taken.”

  “By whom?”

  “I don’t know,” Jillian said, dejected.

  “Then why assume?”

  “Her parents are very wealthy.”

  “Lot are in this city. Wealth, fortunately or not, is something of a surplus in Winter Moon.”

  Jillian’s chest grew tight, hot. Why was she wasting her tim
e with this miscreant? Gretchen or Pollo, she couldn’t tell which, made another low, hungry noise from beneath the stained bed sheets. Suddenly, she very much wanted to be out of this rank room. Surely there were others who could help her.

  “One lyn a day,” Snowtear said, tapping the ash from his roll onto the floor.

  “You’ll help then?”

  “For one lyn a day.”

  “My thanks, Mon Snowtear. Truly. I’ll inform Sage’s family at once.”

  “Grand,” Snowtear said. “In the morning, we’ll work out all the details. Until then, I have other more pleasant business to attend to. Good evening, Min.”

  Jillian Dumay exited Wicked Delight’s luxury suite to the sound of Riken Snowtear smacking Gretchen’s bare bottom. Or Pollo. Possibly both.

  Chapter Two

  Riken Snowtear woke with fire in his mouth. He didn’t mind. He liked the fire. It meant he’d had a good time last night, even if he couldn’t remember the majority of it.

  Gretchen and Pollo were gone, no doubt off to find customers who had more than lint left in their pockets. He could still smell them on the bed, sweet like peaches in cream.

  He rolled from the musty bed, stretched his spent muscles with a yawn. A pair of brown, woolen trousers and a dirty overshirt hung haphazard from the ancient chandelier over the bed. He retrieved them and struggled into each. Only able to locate one of his boots, he left the room barefoot in search of food.

  Wicked Delight’s great room was alive with early morning clientele. A thin sheet of multicolored smoke hovered over the proceedings. In the far corner, a minstrel strummed a soft but lively tune on a three-string, while a dozen men ate eggs and steak, drank watery ale, and perused the selection of ample maids.

  Riken headed for the bar.

  “Nay, Snowtear. No coin, no food. Ain’t running a shelter here.”

  The speaker was a brusque, plump woman by the name of Hagatha Minear with a surly disposition and the face to match. She’d owned Wicked Delight since her husband of three cents had died the previous winter, and she ran as tight a ship as any Riken had ever seen. He didn’t much care for the madam – she smelled permanently of cooked cabbage and stale smoke – but coin went further in her establishment than any other of like accommodations in the city.

  “By the Father, Hagatha,” Riken sighed, taking a seat on a dust-covered barstool. “Just saw a lady last night about a job. You know I’m good for it. Just want some eggs.”

  “Take your bony ass and whiny voice out of here until the kyn’s in your pocket,” Hagatha said, the cabbage smell intensifying as she drew closer.

  “Hold on. Didn’t I pay for breakfast last night?”

  “You did, but then you ordered a second girl.”

  “Ah.” Pollo had been well worth an empty stomach.

  “Now go,” Hagatha said, “or I’ll fetch Hog.”

  Her idiot son, more brawn than wit, poked his freckled face through the kitchen archway at the mention of his name. Riken waved the boy off dismissively.

  “That’s how you treat a good customer then?”

  “A good customer’s one with coin, you little ferret.”

  “Fine,” Riken said, then noticed a fat, grey rat sniffing about the other side of the long bar.

  Navigating his way through the cramped tables on the way to the exit, he heard Hagatha let out a piercing shriek as the rat scurried under the hem of her dress and up her pudgy leg. A beaming smile spread across Riken’s face, until a mountain of a man stepped in his path and erased it with a fist the size of a cantaloupe.

  Riken fell hard to the floor, and his head smacked against the wood. He felt warm blood gushing from his nose. Before he could do anything about it, the mountain jerked him off the floor and dangled him in the air.

  “Morning to you too, Uther,” Riken said, finding it hard to speak with two massive paws choking his neck.

  “Eleven kyn you owe me,” Uther Penent said.

  “Just on my way to see you, Uther.”

  “Really.”

  “Well…nay,” Riken said, and sensed his error when the grip on his neck tightened.

  “Now, Riken.”

  “Can’t very well pay you from up here.”

  Uther lowered him to the ground, but the hands remained firm on Riken’s windpipe.

  Uther had a pleasant, trusting face that didn’t match the rest of his mammoth body in the least. His shoulders looked like they could hold up a house, and his arms and legs were slightly smaller than tree trunks. Riken had enjoyed a rousing game of cards with Uther and a few of his buddies a couple nights back at The Well. He’d lost, as usual. Uther’s forgiving nature had allotted Riken a few days to get the coin to him. Time, it seemed, that had just expired.

  Riken patted his pockets. “Down here doesn’t seem much more promising at the moment.”

  Uther frowned, almost looking sad. “I don’t want to, Riken,” he said.

  “Just get it over with, so I can go about my day.”

  In spite of his immediate pain, Riken almost laughed. A day? When Uther got done, he’d be lucky if he could walk by the end of the week. And that was only if the giant didn’t kill him outright. Not too likely, though. It would hurt Uther’s feelings to have to kill him. A sound beating, he could live with.

  Riken clenched his eyes shut, wishing he hadn’t previously engaged the rat.

  “Let him go, Uther,” a perturbed voice called.

  “He owes me coin,” Uther said.

  “Drop that little weasel and come over here,” Hagatha said, frowning at the poor rat whose head she’d just squashed beneath her heel. “I’ll cover the debt.”

  The iron grip loosened, and, once again, Riken toppled to the floor. Choking and sucking air through his shrunken windpipe, he pushed himself up. As he dusted himself off, he watched Hagatha counting out coins and dropping them in Uther’s hand. Funny, she wouldn’t feed him, but she’d save his life.

  Always the savvy businesswoman, that one, he thought. Dead men can’t be counted on for future income.

  Smiling to himself, Riken turned and opened the door. On the stoop, he drew in a deep breath of the crisp morning air. How he loved Winter Moon’s cold, clean atmosphere, leagues superior to the oppressive heat of his Western homeland. The day was looking up already.

  A damning swipe of Uther’s hand to the back of his head offered an opposing viewpoint. Riken fell headlong into a shallow patch of muddy snow. This time, he didn’t get up.

  Minutes, possibly hours, later, a supercilious voice and a nudging toe roused him.

  “Mon Snowtear.”

  Riken rolled onto his back, looked up at the woman standing over him with her hands on her hips.

  “Ah, Min Dumay,” he said, tasting mud on his lips. “You couldn’t have chosen a more opportune time to call. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask for the first day’s pay in advance.”

  The estate of Mon and Min Ullimar, the missing girl’s parents, was slightly less immense and luxurious than some castles Riken had seen. It held court in a cul-de-sac on Saffrom Row, along with a half dozen other such impressive manors. The row was aptly named – saffrom being the rarest and most expensive fabric in all of Cryshal. It held the boastful title with a certain opulent style. All the houses had third, and some fourth, stories. Their roofs boasted multiple peaks and wooden shingles. Winter Moon being prone to seasonal bouts with heavy snow, all the porches were elevated about fifteen feet. Most of the windows were stained-glass, huge and multihued, and the exterior walls were fine, sturdy stone. Even the homes one row down – by no stretch economical – had to suffice with wood facades. None of that shoddiness for the exalted denizens of Saffrom though.

  Riken looked down at his disheveled attire, wondering if it would hinder his admittance into the home. At times, he’d had better dress, but his inexpert card-playing abilities tended to leave him with little coin as an evening drew on. When you had a guaranteed winning hand, a fine silk shirt was hardly a risk. When
that guaranteed hand lost, you had one less fine silk shirt.

  “Least the boots are new,” Riken said aloud, admiring the dyed leather footwear he’d purchased earlier with a portion of the salary Min Dumay had already paid him.

  Back in Wicked Delight’s great room, he’d sat down to discuss the job with the plain but deceptively fetching woman. Through mouthfuls of a delayed breakfast of poached eggs and steak, he’d rustled enough information from her to ascertain the legitimacy of the job. With what little in the way of evidence or clues Min Dumay could give him, Riken had determined a visit to stately Ullimar Manor would be in order. Even with the priggish woman’s constant huffs and sighs directed toward his lack of appropriate dining manners, the steak and eggs had been delicious.

  The double redwood doors fronting the Ullimar estate stood ten feet tall. A majestic scene of a giant moon overlooking the city had been intricately carved into their faces. How long that must’ve taken to complete. Riken hoped the artist had been properly compensated for his beautiful work, but he doubted it. Rich folk had a way of getting a lot for not much. He supposed that talent was what kept them rich.

  Tapping at the solid gold knocker summoned a tall, lean man dressed in a simple, black robe.

  “May I help you?” the manservant asked, aloof in tone and demeanor. Riken thought the same tone might be employed when regarding a mangy dog.

  Just because you’re paid by them, doesn’t mean you have to act like them, friend, Riken thought, but said, “Kyn for the poor, master? Kyn for the poor?”

  Without comment, the man began to swing the door shut. Riken caught it with the palm of his hand.

  “Got an appointment with the master of the house, friend,” he said, flashing the manservant a toothy grin.

  “You cannot be Mon Snowtear.”

  “Why?”

  “Why, what?”

  “Why cannot I be Mon Snowtear?” Riken asked, mocking the man’s haughty timbre.

  If looks were fire, the manservant would’ve reduced Riken to a messy heap of ashes on the elevated porch. Since that didn’t work, he merely stepped aside with a wave of his arm, allowing Riken passage.