Shadow's Son by Jon Sprunk Read Free Book Online

gave him a simple choice: lose his skin or do one small favor for
his debtor in exchange for wiping the books clean.
    All he had to do was kill a man.
    That job changed him forever-the apprehension as he stole into
another man's home in the dead of night; the tingling of his skin as he
found his quarry abed, oblivious to the doom looming over him; the
euphoria that surged through his veins when he drove the knife into that
soft belly. His victim's death moan had been a paean of rebirth, setting
him free from all the constraints that had been ingrained into him by a
society blind to his needs, apathetic to his desires. That night he had
stepped into a world where the power over life and death rested in his
hands. He had never looked back.
    Ral followed Markus through the old Forum with its afternoon
strollers out for their constitutional amid the rows of vendor stalls. The
shouts of hawkers punctuated the susurrus of the crowd. Markus strode
straight ahead like a charging bull, never glancing to his left or right.
Complete obliviousness to the city's dangers, great or small-that was the
prerogative of being an officer in the Sacred Brotherhood. Markus's stride
didn't even slow to the sound of cracking whips.
    Ral slipped behind a stack of cloth bundles as a band of men in
bloodred robes burst from a merchant's tent. Their scourges split the air
as they flung the object of their ire onto the dirty pavestones. The man
was dressed in the tattered remains of a fine suit. His round cap rolled in
the dust. The Flagellants surrounded him-Ral could now see he was the
owner of the stall-and proceeded to beat him without mercy while a scrawny woman, possibly his wife, wrung her hands and sobbed in the
tent's doorway. What had been the man's crime? Ral couldn't guess. It
could be almost anything, from cheating his customers to failing to display a proper image of the prelate within his establishment. Like the
Brotherhood, the Flagellants were a law unto themselves, answerable only
to the Church.

    Ral skirted the scene. He found his quarry on the other side of the
forum and followed him into the Temple District. A few streets farther,
Markus entered the Pantheon, a converted pagan temple. While the prefect entered the stolid building through the front via a set of immense
bronze doors, Ral went around to a side entrance located in a constricted
alley. Avoiding piles of garbage, he wedged the tip of a dagger into the
keyhole and snapped the simple lock. The door accessed a crowded storage
room. The deep tones of choral singing filtered through another door on
the other side of the room. Ral took a moment to rummage through a varnished wardrobe, selected a white cassock, and pulled the garment over
his head. A red stole stitched with circles in gold thread went around his
shoulders. Smiling, he slipped through another door.
    The Pantheon's circular walls bowed over the main worship chamber
of the church. The building was an architectural masterpiece, dating back
to imperial days when Nimea had enjoyed an era of magnificence
unmatched by any nation in the world. The ceiling was open to the sky,
another sign of its pagan origins. Prayer mats formed orderly rows on the
floor's red-and-white checkerboard flagstones where priests and trains of
dutiful acolytes walked among the faithful, swinging pots of smoking
incense and murmuring prayers.
    Ral pulled up the robe's hood and slipped behind a gaggle of old
women in black shawls, their eyes downcast as they walked the stations
around the perimeter of the great chamber. He slowed as they stopped
before a hollow niche inhabited by the gray stone statue of some saint. So
pious, they made him sick as they whispered fervent prayers over clenched
fists. If any of them dared to raise their eyes high enough, they would see
the marble base of the original statue that had adorned this shrine before
the advent of the True Faith. Perhaps it had been the likeness