CHAPTER FOUR

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

RILTANA BOUNDED FROM WALL TO ROOFTOP, FROM FLOATING mote to suspension bridge, and from stone spire to empty air itself. The gossamer breeze swept her upward, all the way to her favorite look-over point on the northern cliff wall. The tempest in her soul called to the wind, and wind answered.

She laughed, and clutched her prize to her chest.

Finally, she had the damn scarf.

Her mark had looked as strange as he’d been described, with his skin nearly the color of chalk. His narrow face had looked at her with surprise so complete she laughed again.

She had not been told the man named Demascus was a member of the Firestorm Cabal. Usually the Cabal didn’t accept humans into their ranks, but her mark’s white hair showed that at the very least he wasn’t genasi. Cabal members had gulled most of Airspur with their crap about being noble vigilante defenders of the city. What a joke. She, at least, was wise to their lies.

And now one liar was light one scarf. She studied the length of fabric, wondering at its significance.

Riltana’s client, a hooded fellow with carrion breath, had specified to the hour when she could expect to see the white-haired man leave the pawnshop. Quite a prediction to make, considering it had been made about four years ago.

She’d sniggered when her client had first laid out the timeline for the job, thinking it was a joke. In response, the hooded man hissed. Apparently he wasn’t someone who made jokes.

Riltana had asked why, if Demascus was to pick up the scarf in the pawnshop, she couldn’t just go into the shop right then and steal it; why wait? Her client hissed again, louder and with more resonance than before. Not really the best explanation, but she’d decided not to press the issue.

Four years was a long time for even the best divination to go awry, but she’d been happy to accept the generous retainer. It provided a sum of coins large enough to ensure the lease on her loft for three full years plus change.

And today she’d shown up several hours before the specified time, crouching over the shop to await the appointed hour. The promised payoff had been too sweet to not see the commission through to the end.

Excitement tingled through her when she’d recognized her mark in the dingy courtyard. She’d had a moment of worry when drunks from the pub had intruded. She’d almost intervened then, but in the end she hadn’t had to. She watched him enter the shop following the fat human.

When he’d exited, he’d produced an appropriately shocked expression when she’d plucked the pale length from his hands. Shocked, and a little sad.

She smiled down on the wrap in her hands, then sniffed it; it smelled like parchment and library glue. Its knit was fine, but pliable. Probably woven with enchantment. Of what sort? She twisted the scarf and gently pulled at its length. Probably it contained a minor glamor that protected its wearer from cold, as was fashionable among the well-to-do. Whatever its nature, the thing was valuable to her client, which made it valuable to her.

To claim her payoff, she was to rendezvous with the hooded man just after midnight at the Sepulcher.

Once the Sepulcher had been the lair of goblins and orcs, before they were driven out by genasi settlers. Then it became home to shifty deals best made as far as possible from official notice.

She considered making her way to the meeting immediately; it wasn’t an easy place to reach, and required some time to navigate its approach.

But no. She’d been out for half the day, anticipating and preparing just the right place to fleece her target, then get away clean among the hanging earthmotes crowded with city architecture. She could use some down time. Besides, maybe today was the day Carmenere would return …

Riltana rolled the scarf into a ball. Her slim leather gloves tingled, and the bundle fell into the pocket dimension the gloves were keyed to. They were the perfect tool for keeping things safe. And, of course, the perfect tool for a thief as accomplished as herself.

She pulled off her mask, reached into the nothing again, and switched the mask for the signature blue and white robe of the Airsteppers Guild. She’d discovered long ago that city dwellers mostly ignored the scores of messengers bounding up and down Airspur’s cliff levels, whereas her stylish black bodysuit and mask would draw attention in full light. It’s easier to be invisible by blending in than by trying to physically hide.

Riltana pulled on the robe. Then she leaped into empty air, arms and legs wide as she plunged toward the bay that lay between the cliffs far below. Her left hand caught the pliant support wire of a suspension bridge that hung between two earthmotes, and her trajectory snapped outward, away from the cliff. She spun through the air, and came down easily on a roof of the next lower mass of drifting city, already running.

She dashed across rooftops, leaped gaps between buildings with impunity, and swung between motes, disdaining the city streets and bridges. She finally came to rest on a spire overlooking the Plaza of Leaping Fountains.

The open square hosted a dozen fancifully carved sculptures spouting water into the night air, which caught the light of hundreds of surrounding lamps that spiraled away from the square along the surrounding walkways. Revelers drifted along the cobbles touring the glittering theaters, cafés, shops, taverns, and other entertainments lining the streets. Many were singing, laughing, and sipping spirits shipped from exotic locales north and west of the Sea of Fallen Stars.

The Plaza of Leaping Fountains occupied a massive citymote that served as the central causeway between the facing cliffs. If something of note happened in the city, it frequently occurred at the Plaza. Which was why Riltana spent so much every month to secure her dwelling on it.

She jumped. Touching down only on the tops of iron lamp enclosures and roof tiles, Riltana traversed a quarter of the length of the citymote in a dozen heartbeats. Her path ended on the slanting roof of Barnard’s Tomes and Charms. A ladder ascended the side of the building from street level, but Riltana couldn’t even remember the last time she’d used it.

Her loft, which she rented from Barnard, was a large renovated attic that once stored a mishmash of moldering tomes. Riltana convinced Barnard a far better use of the space would be as an apartment, once it was cleaned up and refurbished with proper amenities. Barnard agreed, and spent some serious coin making the loft into a modern and comfortable dwelling.

Then he’d happily charged her an arm and a leg for the rent. Of course, he probably could have charged some noble’s son double what he asked her. After all, wasn’t the place perfect?

Riltana unlocked the oak panel door and entered her home.

Tiny wisplights woke to her presence, revealing a living space of hardwood floors, high ceilings, and overstuffed chairs scattered around a fireplace. It was perfect, save for one glaring absence.

Carmenere wasn’t there.

Riltana walked to the tiled table that rested along one wall of the modest “great” room. The message she’d scrawled for Carmenere remained as she’d left it eight hours earlier. As had all the messages she’d penned for Carmenere over the last three months. All unread, and tossed into a drawer.

It was stupid to keep writing them. Carmenere was never coming back.

Riltana sighed and brushed the last note into the same cavity where all the previous pleas to lost opportunity waited in the dark. When she’d started writing them, they’d given her some measure of relief. Each one was like casting away a stone laden with sadness. Eventually, she thought, her burden of sorrow would be lightened.

But months had passed, and her unhappiness seemed just as sharp as ever. She wondered if the daily scrawl had become its own burden. Had the notes transformed from something therapeutic into a behavior that prevented her from moving on?

She uncorked a half-full bottle of red wine and poured a generous amount into a crystal goblet. She dropped into a high-backed chair and sipped. Not bad, especially for a bottle that’d been open for three days already. But she’d better finish it soon before it turned; she hated to waste good wine.

Riltana swirled the glass. Images of her and Carmenere sharing drinks in her loft crowded around, as they always did. No one could laugh as loud as Carmenere, or make Riltana laugh back.

She had no one to blame but herself. She grimaced, wondering at her idiocy for the thousandth time.

Ego and pride has a price: loneliness.

Riltana downed her glass, stood, and snatched up a quill. She quickly dashed a new message to Carmenere, telling her how she was going to meet a client in the Sepulcher for a lucrative payment for services rendered. Thinking about the coin that would soon cross her palms gave her a jolt of satisfaction.

Looking forward to such a large payout was nearly enough to make her forget her troubles. Nearly … but not quite. But for now it would have to do.

Riltana changed back to her black jumpsuit and mask, and swept out of the loft.

The night was farther along, but the Plaza remained active. She sniffed the evening air, redolent with smoke and sea water, then raced across the roofs toward her destination.

The Sepulcher was concealed beneath Akanawater Falls, which surged into Airspur at the city’s westernmost limit. Observation points along the facing cliffs offered city dwellers and visitors alike one of the most beautiful sights in all Faerûn; so claimed a group of ebullient traders from Veltalar she’d once overheard. She supposed that by daylight the crystalline water crashing down the series of stony steps was impressive, especially when coupled with the body-shaking thunder that accompanied the panorama.

By night, the falls were not so beautiful; they were a roaring darkness of watery mouths leading to vortices capable of pulling a windsoul to her death by drowning if she wasn’t careful.

Many ne’er-do-wells in Airspur also knew the falls hid an entrance to an elaborate underground labyrinth that led to the Sepulcher. The Sepulcher hosted occasional illegal deals and chancy trades too dangerous to occur anywhere else. However, to reach the Sepulcher, one had to dive beneath the falls and swim past the vortices. Even then, brute strength or agile skill wasn’t always enough to win free of the grasping currents.

Riltana wondered how many would-be thieves had lost their lives trying that route. It was kind of a test; were you stupid enough to dive beneath the falls, or think twice? Would criminal masterminds subject themselves to such a risky path every time they wanted to unload a shipment of haepthum? No, of course not. Common sense dictated there had to be a way into the labyrinth that didn’t involve rushing water.

She eventually reached the alley she sought, midway up a switchback on Airspur’s north cliff face. A secret door concealed behind stacked flagstones provided entry into a dank cellar. Long abandoned, the cellar’s sole purpose was as a way in, one of three Riltana knew about, into the old tunnels that wound through darkness behind the cliff.

She snapped her fingers and produced a sunrod. She shook it, and yellow light spilled from its translucent length. Holding it before her, she entered Airspur’s labyrinth.

A complex of twisting tunnels and dead-end caves riddled Airspur’s cliffs. Some were natural caves and corridors, but others were obviously remnant delvings from a previous age, which included the sprawling Catacombs. The Catacombs had housed the Chessentan dead for centuries, and for fifty-plus years, genasi bones too.

Riltana detoured around the cemetery tunnels, which were lightly guarded by a detachment of peacemakers. She was looking for the farthest reaches of that expanse, some of which had been converted into malodorous routes for sewer runoff, despite that the ultimate destination of most of the black corridors remained unknown. Diverting the effluvia underground saved the bay between the cliffs from being the depository of the city’s waste.

Riltana had heard some of the corridors eventually opened into wider subterranean spaces. Crystal caverns, sunless seas, and fungus forests hung with sentient, carnivorous vines. She’d always assumed the stories were just that; tales told by thieves to frighten each other. Still, as she walked the tunnel, ignoring the many lesser ways and cave mouths that gave off the main passage, she wondered.

She passed one of the tunnels converted to sewer flow. The rancid, thick fluid rushed in a series of miniature brown rapids across her path. The odor of chamber pot was no less disgusting despite the fact that she’d been expecting it.

She continued onward for nearly another half hour, until she heard the muffled thunder of the Akanawater Falls vibrating through the rock. Had she been on the surface, the moiling roar might have deafened her. Down there, it was merely oppressive. She was close.

A dozen paces farther, and the dank smell of rotting fish made itself known. It overlaid the aroma of sewer … mostly. Another light, brighter than her own, glowed ahead. She doused her sunrod and stowed it with a pass of her gloves, then moved forward.

Riltana paused at the entrance of a large chamber. Several openings, including a few on the ceiling, provided entry into a cavern. The smell and humid air filled her mouth with a bitter tang. She stifled an urge to gag.

The light emanated from a crust of fungi coating the walls and ceiling of the cavity. By the horizontal lines staining the wall, it was obvious that the cavern had spent much of its past history partly and even completely submerged.

It was the Sepulcher. She’d only been there a few times before, once to fence an astral diamond, and another time to deliver a parcel. That second time she’d become lost on her way out, and had decided to avoid the place thereafter.

Then Kalkan had contracted her. Her earlier meeting with him had been in a café on the south face. She hadn’t been thrilled with the plan of handing over the scarf in the Sepulcher, but the coin was too good to squelch the deal.

Riltana entered the chamber, and saw several people had preceded her.

A brown-skinned man played alone at dice. A tiefling woman was engrossed in each throw the man made, her eyes squinting in concentration. And … orcs! Two orcs loitered along the far wall, apparently bickering over the contents of a ratty bag.

She’d seen orcs, of course, but hadn’t ever seen the beastly humanoids up close before. With their overlarge mouths, tusks, and grisly trophies dangling from their armor, they seemed like ghastly, ferocious parodies of true people.

She saw no sign of her original foul-breathed employer.

The man, an earthsoul, glanced up and saw her.

Riltana affected a jaunty wave. “I’m here to see someone,” she said.

Everyone turned and stared at her. The tiefling woman grinned.

The silence stretched, and Riltana’s stomach sank.

She said, “Do you know who I’m talking about? Did someone in a hood send you to meet me, or are you all here for some purpose of your own?”

Great. Her client had skipped out. Something must have happened to him in the last four years, and—

“Yeah,” said the earthsoul, whose szuldar lines somehow managed to appear dank as they curled across his skin. “We’re here to meet someone, on behalf of our employer. You must be the thief with the parcel.”

The tiefling woman laughed. It was the laugh of an imbecile, and not a friendly one.

“Perfect!” said Riltana, forcing confidence into her tone, choosing to ignore the appellation; she hated being called a thief.

She continued, “Hand over the coin I was promised, and the package I was hired to deliver is all yours.”

A sound behind Riltana made her glance back. Oh, this was getting better and better; a third orc had emerged from a side passage and stood in her exit tunnel.

Again the idiot laugh.

“Will you shut it?” Riltana snapped at the tiefling.

The orcs near the wall allowed their guttural argument to lapse, and fixed their hungry eyes upon her. One shuffled closer.

Riltana raised one hand and said, “All right you freaks, everyone stay where they are, or I’m gone, and your boss is out one fashion accessory.”

A familiar voice sounded from above, “Don’t be hasty, Riltana. My hired hands are overeager, is all.”

Riltana glanced up and saw that one of the openings to the cavern, no more than a hole in the ceiling really, was occluded by the shape of a man. A man in a hood.

“Is that you, Kalkan?”

“Indeed. Now—did you meet the pale-skinned fellow I hired you to find? Did you take Demascus’s Veil?”

“Yeah, I met Demascus. Briefly. Do you have my payoff?

Kalkan held up a satchel and shook it. The sound of coins clinking was evident even over the background rumble of the Akanawater Falls.

The hooded man said, “And the Veil; let me see it. I wouldn’t want to be swindled.”

The tiefling chortled. Something was definitely not right with her.

Riltana ignored the woman and produced the scarf from glovespace with a hedge-wizard’s flourish. “See?”

The man hunched over the hole to stare at the length of fabric, then nodded.

Riltana hid the scarf away again with a snap. She said, “It’s yours once that satchel purse is slung over my shoulder. Until then, I’ve banished the … what’d you call it, the veil? I’ve put it in a place only I can access.”

The man said, “Clever. But ultimately irrelevant. You see, Riltana, I don’t really want the wrap; my aim was only to deprive Demascus of it at the appointed time.”

“Uh … What? I don’t understand.”

“Your understanding isn’t required. What is required is your eternal silence.”

Son of a piss-pickled leech. The deal had gone bad.

Riltana flipped up and backward, spinning over the head of the third orc she’d guessed was probably closing in on her. She swept out her short sword even as she landed and stuck the orc in the kidney. It gurgled and collapsed.

A fourth orc she hadn’t anticipated emerged from behind a boulder and shoved her. She stumbled back toward the cavern’s center, tripping on the feebly moving body of the creature she’d just dispatched. She landed on her side. Impact slapped through her and made her lose her breath.

The tiefling woman crowed, and tried to kick Riltana in the face.

She grabbed the foot, twisted and pushed. The tiefling hopped backward, directly into her advancing earthsoul ally, causing a minor pileup.

Riltana spun off the ground and into her element. The air bore her up over the heads of her foes. Time to go!

She arrowed toward the aperture in the ceiling where Kalkan watched the proceedings, short sword straight over her head. Why deal with the hired help if she didn’t have to? She’d toss the double-crossing bastard down that stinking spy hole—

Kalkan said, “I think not,” as he raised a gloved hand. The world seemed to twist. Fire woke behind Riltana’s brow, and the wind let her go.

She spiraled back toward the cave floor, toward the waiting swords, axes, and daggers of her client’s goons.

“You quailing coward!” she screamed, the pain in her head fueling a red anger that competed with the fear burrowing in her gut.

Riltana ducked an orc axe that nearly intersected her downward trajectory. Then she touched down, using the earthsoul’s head as a step, and bounded over and away from the group in a high arc.

She landed near the far cave wall, her breath coming quick. In her haste to put some distance between herself and the massed might of the mercenaries, she’d jumped away from the exit. Her foes lay directly between her and easy escape.

An orc’s axe toss drew sparks from the stone next to her head. She returned the favor; in a single practiced motion she drew one of the daggers sheathed in her clothing and threw. Her aim proved more accurate. Another orc went down, that one grasping vainly at a dagger protruding from his eye.

Riltana tested the air, and found it unwilling to bear her again so soon. “Bugger!” The temperamental nature of the wind really pissed her off sometimes.

The sellswords rushed her, spreading out in a rough curved line to prevent her from slipping around them.

She braced herself, knees bent and sword tip weaving, ready to slip past a loose defense and stab whoever proved stupid enough to reach her first.

Predictably, it was the tiefling.

Riltana caught the angled cut of the woman’s long sword on her blade, shuffling away from the angle of attack as she did so. Then she spun in place, kicking out with the back of her left foot, and smashed the idiot grin from her foe’s face with her lashing heel. The tiefling collapsed on the floor like a sack of potatoes. That was three down.

“Hold!” thundered a voice from above.

The earthsoul and remaining orcs paused to look up at their employer.

Had her client lied when he said he didn’t really want the scarf? Maybe he was having second thoughts about trying to take it instead of paying her. She’d been lucky so far, and maybe he worried her luck would hold long enough for her to dispatch the remaining three.

Her gut urged her to run while the others were distracted, but the promise of that fat coin purse made her linger.

“You’re a poor substitute for real muscle,” the hooded man said, even as he backed out of sight.

“We’re just warming up!” the earthsoul yelled up at the gap.

“I doubt it,” came the reply, muffled by the intervening rock lip. “At this rate, she’ll kill you before I reveal my surprise.”

Surprise? That was enough for Riltana. She bolted, trying to dash past the largest gap in the skirmish line her enemies formed, between the earthsoul and a remaining orc.

But the orc stepped into her path, forcing her to pause to defend against a whistling axe strike.

The sound of metal on metal screeched from above.

The rumble of the Akanawater suddenly redoubled.

The earthsoul’s eyes went wide. He screamed, “Run!” He dropped his hammer as he dashed full out toward the far wall. The orcs looked confused but chased after their leader.

Riltana gasped, “Shit, shit, shit …” as she dashed after the earthsoul in turn.

A moist wind preceded the foaming wave that smashed into the chamber from one of the other openings. It caught the earthsoul and orcs in a twinkling, knocking them from their feet, and dragging them down a circular hole in the floor. Their screams were lost in the water’s roar.

Riltana hurdled the wave front, and this time the wind suffered to catch her before she dropped back into the surge. “Yes!”

She glided higher, and the flood’s white-water face followed; the room was swiftly filling.

She made for her client’s spy hole, which was empty. Maybe she could flash up and through before he realized she had escaped the initial surge, and before the air’s brief attention and grip faded.

Her client’s silhouette lurched into view. Riltana saw the hint of sharp white teeth flashing in the concealing darkness of his hood, just before an iron cover slammed down over the hole. The sound of a steel rod sliding into place scratched at her ears.

She would have screamed, but the rising water caught her feet. She sucked in a breath, a heartbeat before a violent current yanked her into the water.

Riltana was pulled under and flushed down the drowned cavity in the floor.