The Listener in the Shadows

The owner of The Tipsy Lizard had a heavy boot and a short temper. I felt both as I was shoved through the swinging doors and onto the wet cobblestones of Predymesh.

"And stay out, you sewer-rat!" he bellowed, his voice thick with the same cheap ale that stained his apron.

I didn't argue. I didn't even look back. I am used to the taste of the curb. I picked myself up, brushing the grime from my coat, and took a deep breath. The air smelled of coal smoke, horse dung, and—my favorite—the sweet, fermented tang of beer. I loved that smell. It was the smell of secrets being loosened by the glass.

I lingered near the foggy windows, a shadow among shadows. Through the glass, I saw them all. The drunk man in the corner swearing his lungs out at a god who stopped listening years ago. The young fool singing the worst possible version of a tavern ballad, off-key and proud. The girl in the back booth, her face buried in her hands, crying for a lover or a lost coin.

And then, I saw her. Willare.

She sat at the bar like a dead woman waiting for a funeral that wouldn't come. She didn't cry. She didn't sing. She just stared into her glass as if the amber liquid held the face of a monster. I recognized that look. It’s the look of someone carrying a secret too heavy for their bones.

She stood up, her movements mechanical, and headed for the back. Not the exit. The roof.

I followed. Not because I cared, but because the heavy-hearted always have something to say to the sky.

I sat in the deep shadows near the chimney, my back against the soot-stained brick. The woman—the lab assistant—didn't see me. They never do. They come up here to be alone with their ghosts, thinking the heights make them invisible. She was shaking, her voice thin and ragged, like a worn-out violin string.

I didn't move. I didn't even breathe. I just listened.

She spoke of white rooms and red wheat. She spoke of a sequence that broke and a girl who died in a slum attic. She spoke of the Touch of Rose as if it were a curse from the gods, but then she gave it a name. Her name. Frindjen.

The girl thinks she has emptied herself. She thinks that by shouting her crimes into the rain, she has washed them away. She walked toward the ladder with a smile that was as fragile as glass, thinking she had found peace.

She is a fool.

She hasn't emptied herself; she has only filled my hands. Secrets like this don't stay on rooftops. They crawl down into the dark, where I live. They become leverage. They become power.

The 'Touch of Rose' finally has a mother. And now, it has a witness.

I watched her disappear down the ladder, my eyes catching the light of the dying city. The rain usually tastes of copper and ash. Tonight, it tastes of opportunity.