Once Aeron waded ashore, he followed a circuitous route, sometimes descending to the Underways, sometimes proceeding at street level, and periodically climbing to the Rainspans, a rickety network of bridges connecting the roofs and balconies of certain of the city's towers. By custom, the aerial paths were open to the public even where they linked one private residence or business to another, and a good many folk traversed them daily in blithe disregard of the manner in which they groaned, shuddered, and swayed. At that, it was arguably safer to walk over them than underneath. Every rogue in Oeble knew the 'spans afforded any number of excellent locations from which to throw knives at or drop heavy objects on a victim.
Aeron glanced around frequently, making sure no Red Axe was creeping up on him. Perhaps he was so intent on spotting Kesk's cutthroats that it blinded him to other dangers. Or maybe Selune's departure from the sky, and the deeper darkness she'd left in her wake, were to blame. In any event, he was crossing a Rainspan, one that wound among the decaying spires bordering Laskalar's Square, when two Gray Blades and a goblin seemed to pop up out of nowhere just a few paces ahead of him.
Luckily, the lawmen, one human and one who, judging from his slender frame and pointed ears, might have some elf blood, were too busy questioning the stunted, flat-faced creature they'd accosted to notice Aeron's approach. He turned to slink back the way he'd come, but then he heard the half-elf mention the Paeraddyn. The Blades were asking questions about the robbery.
If Aeron was wise, maybe that should be all the more reason to slip away quickly as he could. But he thought in the long run it might pay him to listen to what the Gray Blades had to say. So he crouched motionless, trusting the darkness to hide him.
As the interrogation proceeded, the lawmen slapped the shrilly protesting goblin around and even threatened to toss it off the bridge. Aeron didn't know the runty, bandy-legged creature. Apparently its tormentors had accosted it at random, simply because it looked shifty. From that fact, and the general tenor of their questions, he inferred that they didn't know who they were looking for.
They had a description, however, flawed but still potentially useful, and they were plainly working hard to track him down. That wasn't good.
The Gray Blades had questioned Aeron on more than one occasion, and thus he knew how to recognize when such a session was winding down. As usual, it ended with a few final threats: if the lawmen found out the goblin had lied to them, they'd make it wish it had never been born, and other remarks in the same vein.
Aeron had nearly lingered too long. If he tried to scurry off quickly, the Rainspan would surely creak and bounce, giving his presence away. Instead, he swung himself over the railing and to the underside of the bridge, where he hung by his hands forty feet above the street
The Blades released the goblin and proceeded on their way, tramping over the spot where Aeron clung. If some folk deemed the Rainspans unsafe, they should have seen that one from his present vantage point. The lawmen's passage shook loose a veritable shower of scraps of rotten wood. The filthy stuff streamed down over Aeron, a goodly portion slipping inside his collar.
First the river and now this, he thought.
Aeron feared his clothes were ruined. It made him glad that, unlike most of the honest jobs for which he qualified, thieving paid well enough that he owned several other outfits.
He waited until the Gray Blades' voices faded away, then pulled himself back up onto the walkway. He skulked on, and in a few more minutes, he reached his home.
As he'd expected, his father had waited up for him. Nicos sat struggling to pluck the strains of a ribald tavern song about a priest and a dancing girl from the strings of his mandolin. He had no real aptitude for the instrument, but with his voice ruined, it was the only music he could make.
He looked Aeron up and down and asked, "What in the name of the black mask happened to you?"
"What didn't?" Aeron replied, stripping off his shirt and tunic.
It gave him a twinge, the result of the two falls he'd taken that day, which had likewise mottled his torso with a livid assortment of bruises.
"Did you talk the tanarukk into a higher price?" his father asked.
"Not exactly."
Aeron poured water from the pitcher into the bowl, picked up the wash rag, and scrubbed the itchy grit from his skin. It felt odd to wash twice in a single day. Some people said too often was unhealthy. He hoped they were wrong.
"What did happen, then?"
"Well..."
He toweled himself dry, sat down opposite his father, dragged off his wet boots, and told the tale.
When he finished, Nicos glowered at him.
"Blood and bone, boy, are you trying to die?"
Aeron grinned and said, "When have the Gray Blades ever come close to catching me?"
"When did they try this hard? Why did you have to steal your cursed box inside the Paeraddyn?"
"Because I thought that no one would expect it to happen there, and I was right about that much, anyway. Besides, if the place had been standing in your day, you would have wanted to rob it, too, just to prove you could."
"Perhaps," Nicos sighed. "That wouldn't have made it the smart thing to do."
"Actually, I wonder if the law is hunting me with such zeal only because it was the Paer. Maybe the person who owned the box is pushing them."
"That would mean you robbed somebody rich, powerful, or both."
"Of something he valued highly," added Aeron.
"Making it even more dangerous."
Aeron shifted in his chair, trying to make himself more comfortable, and in so doing, discovered he was already stiffening up. He stretched and twisted in what would probably prove a futile attempt to forestall the process. His spine popped.
"Ordinarily," he said, "I wouldn't sweat over the Gray Blades. If they were my only problem, I could dodge them until they moved on to other matters. But avoiding them and the Red Axes at the same time ... well, at least I won't be bored."
"That's what's important," said his father with heavy sarcasm. "Still, it's a shame you couldn't reach an understanding with Kesk, though it's no wonder, after you sneaked onto his home ground and kicked two of his bravos around."
"I only sneaked in a little way, and I imagine he thinks guards who let themselves get taken by surprise deserve their bruises. But you're right, more or less. Once Tharag let it slip that Kesk planned to kill my crew and me from the start, that pretty much wrecked any hope of us making a new bargain. I didn't really even want to. Deep down, I was too angry. He must have sensed it and thought the only way he was ever going to see the lockbox was to take me prisoner and force me to cough it up. Or else kill me and pay a necromancer to wring the location out of my ghost. People say that kind of magic is possible, and Kesk wouldn't balk at it if it is."
"You're positive the bugbear told the truth?"
"Yes," Aeron replied. "I could feel it. If you'd been there talking to it, and Kesk, you would have, too."
"Mask forbid that I ever come anywhere near that demon-spawn. Say he did want to murder you. Do you think it's just because you turned down his offer to join the Red Axes all those years ago?"
"That's probably part of it. He really seemed to want me after I stole that barge-load of spices. It plainly offended him when I said no, and he's the kind to hold a grudge. But I reckon there's more to it."
"What is it, then?"
Aeron frowned, pondering, until an idea came to him.
"You said it yourself," he said. "I robbed someone rich, powerful, or both—so much so that even Kesk Turnskull is leery of his wrath. So instead of using members of his own gang to grab the loot, he hires a freelance operator he hates and plans to kill him and his partners when their work is done. That way, nobody can trace the swag to the Red Axes."
Nicos nodded and said, "That makes sense. What are you going to do now?"
"Sell the prize to somebody else. Imrys Skaltahar, maybe. They say he keeps plenty of gold on hand, enough to buy even the most valuable loot without the thief needing to wait on his coin. I think it may be wisest to dispose of the lockbox quickly, and I wouldn't sell it to Kesk even if I could figure out a way to make him deal fairly. I'm not so suicidal as to seek to kill him, but I can keep him from getting what he wants. That'll be at least a little revenge for Kerridi, Gavath, and Dal."
"Skaltahar isn't going to buy the coffer just because you promise that what's inside is valuable."
"You're right," Aeron agreed. "That's the difficulty. Warding spells or no, I have to get the cursed thing open."

Wherever he went, Kesk liked to stride arrogantly, his head bare and sneering tanarukk face on display, his battle-axe in his hand, and several of his henchmen swaggering along behind him. He enjoyed watching the common herd blanch and scurry to get out of the way, relished it when even Gray Blades chose to give him a wide berth.
By the same token, he disliked creeping about muffled in a shabby cloak and hood, and he positively despised rapping on the little twin-paneled door at the rear of the great house, as if he was some sort of tinker, peddler, or beggar.
No one answered right away, which blackened his mood still further, if that was possible. He felt a growing urge to chop down the door with his axe, which he never relinquished even on those rare occasions when he found it necessary to wear a disguise. But then the portal cracked open. A human, only half dressed, his feet bare and his tawny hair uncombed, peered down at what he likely thought a peculiar shrouded figure, taller and even thicker built than a dwarf, but shorter than an elf, waiting in the alley.
"Yes?" the servant yawned.
Scowling, Kesk lifted his head, pushed back his cowl, and finally had the satisfaction of seeing someone flinch. Since it was the only pleasurable moment he was likely to experience on his visit there, he tried to savor it.
"His nibs is expecting me," he said.
The human gave a shaky nod and replied, "Yes. Please, come with me."
At first, they traversed the service areas of the mansion. It was late enough that the servants and slaves had extinguished most of the lamps and candles, and with only a couple exceptions, they lay snoring on their cots and pallets. Kesk knew they'd rise with the dawn to resume their labors, and he experienced a swell of contempt for anyone trapped in such a dreary life. Truly, as he'd often thought, most people were no better than sheep and deserved whatever the wolves of the world cared to do to them.
Eventually his guide conducted him into the section of the house where the master spent his days. The furnishings had a fussy, delicate, pastel quality that made Kesk's skin crawl. He understood that many folk would have considered them "elegant" or "beautiful," but to the extent that he cared about such effete matters at all, he preferred clashing primary colors and bold, simple designs, a taste he shared with his orc ancestors.
The servant tapped on a door.
"Come in," a reedy voice replied, whereupon the flunky ushered Kesk into a lavishly appointed library and workroom.
The decor was of a piece with that seen elsewhere in the house. Carved crystal flowers stood in milky porcelain vases, and a fabulously expensive blackwood clock with golden hands and numerals hung on the wall, its gilded weights dangling beneath it.
Dressed in a tasseled nightcap, slippers, and a quilted satin dressing gown, the owner of all that luxury lounged on a plush velvet divan, a scroll in his lap and a glass of pale wine on the stand beside him. Though well into the afternoon of his life, the smallish human had a boyish, apple-cheeked face that flashed a smile when he saw who'd come to call on him.
"Kesk!" he said. "My dear fellow. I was just about to give up on you for the night."
"Do you have to use my name in front of the help?" Kesk growled.
The servant flinched as if he expected Kesk to reclaim his anonymity by butchering him on the spot. Actually, the idea did have something to recommend it.
"It's a little late to worry about concealing your identity," said the man on the couch. "As far as I know, you're the only tanarukk in Oeble. In any case, Cohis is discreet. Aren't you, Cohis? He'll prove it by running along before he's even asked."
The lackey hastily withdrew and the man said, "Show it to me."
Kesk felt awkward. Almost embarrassed. He wasn't used to such feelings, and it made him angry.
"We hit a snag," he said.
The human arched his eyebrows and asked, "How so? I know one of your minions made off with the prize. It's the talk of the town."
"That's the problem," said Kesk. "He wasn't exactly one of mine. He was someone I hired."
"I was under the impression that you had your own little army of ruffians to attend to such chores. Why would you seek help elsewhere?"
"Different reasons. The thing is, the bastard hasn't handed over the box yet."
"Whyever not?"
"He wants more gold than we agreed on."
"Perhaps you'd better give it to him."
"I can't let a little rat like him change the terms of a deal on me," Kesk said. "It would make me look weak."
"Forgive my selfishness, but I can't help feeling more concerned with my objectives than your reputation."
"You'll get your cursed treasure."
"Will I? I hope so, but I have the disquieting feeling there are things you're not telling me."
How right he was. But he might not appreciate hearing that Kesk had complicated the plan by scheming to seize the prize and settle an old score at the same time. Or that the tanarukk had lost his temper at exactly the wrong moment, lashing out at Aeron and scaring him off when he should have done all he could to allay the trickster's misgivings. Or ... well, quite a bit of it, really.
"Is it so bad?" Kesk asked. "The way you explained it, our victim has already squandered a lot of coin and wound up with nothing. You can still ruin him, can't you?"
"Suppose I move prematurely, and he then recovers the Bouquet? He'll survive my little coup knowing just what a committed enemy I actually am, which will surely prompt him to retaliate. That's unacceptable. I don't intend to make my play until the box is in my hands and I know for certain he's defenseless. Also, of course, the musty old thing is virtually priceless. You don't want to throw away all the riches it represents, do you?"
"Like I said, I'll get it."
"I never doubted it for an instant. Still, perhaps we can resolve the matter more expeditiously if I take an active role. What's our recalcitrant thief's name?"
"Don't worry about it. I'll deal with him."
"Please, indulge my curiosity."
"Are you going to make me say it outright?" Kesk asked, scowling.
The man on the couch cocked his head and replied, "Apparently so."
"I know I'm not the only knife on your belt. Maybe, if I give you the name, you'll find the thief without any help from me. Then you might figure that just proves you don't need a partner after all."
"What a sour, suspicious turn of mind you have. Of course I need a partner. Can you imagine me traipsing through the Underways, trafficking with your Red Axes and their ilk? Would they trust me or even take me seriously? Not without a great deal of effort on my part, and I have other, more congenial work requiring my attention. Now, please, give me the name. Otherwise, much as it would pain me, I'll have to start questioning your integrity."
"Sorry."
The human heaved a sigh and said, "Oh, very well, have it your way. I was just trying to expedite matters, but..."
As he blathered on, his hand slipped toward the pocket of his robe.
Kesk sprang forward. The man in the robe lifted his hand, stray grains of glittering blue powder leaking from his palm. About to fling the stuff, he registered the fact that the outlaw was already poised to swing his battle-axe at his neck, and faltered.
Kesk was so angry that the human's hesitation almost didn't matter.
"You'd cast a spell on me?" the tanarukk demanded.
The rich man opened his fingers and let the colored sand spill harmlessly away.
"It wouldn't have hurt you," he said. "It would merely have inclined you to trust me."
Kesk grinned and said, "Not much hope of that now."
"Come, now. You don't truly wish to hurt me. Think of that rosy future I promised you: the Red Axes doing absolutely anything they please without fear of the Gray Blades, the rest of the underworld either paying homage to you or driven out of Oeble altogether. You'll never achieve that paradise without me."
"Don't be so sure," Kesk said, but he lowered the axe.
The human smiled and rubbed his slender neck as if making sure his head was still attached.
"Thank you for your forbearance."
"No," Kesk spat, "thank you for reminding me you're a wizard. You want to help me find the Bouquet? Fine. Let's turn out your drawers and closets and see what kind of talismans you've got."

CHAPTER 5
"How much farther?" Miri asked.
Her guide glanced back over his shoulder. The wavering light of his upraised torch stained one side of his smirking face yellow while leaving the other in shadow.
"We're almost there," he replied.
"Almost where?" she demanded. He'd led her into what almost seemed an abandoned section of the Underways. No one else was prowling or loitering about, nor had anybody provided a source of permanent illumination. The stink of sewage was stronger there, and puddles of scummy water filled the low spots on the floor.
"Almost to the hideout of the man you're looking for," her companion said. "The thief who was friends with the drunken mage."
"You'd better be right."
"I am. You'd just better pay me what you promised." He tramped on, and she followed, until, without any warning whatsoever, he dashed the torch in one of the filthy pools, extinguishing it instantly.
Miri had discovered the denizens of the Underways retired to their beds around dawn, at the same time decent people were getting up. She'd reluctantly done the same, catching some fitful slumber at the Paeraddyn, then resuming her search in the afternoon. Eventually it led her to the Talondance, a subterranean tavern catering primarily to goblin-kin, lizard men, and creatures even more feral and less welcome in law-abiding towns. A menu scrawled on a chalkboard offered chops, stews, and kabobs prepared with the flesh of humans, gnomes, and elves, and she was far from certain it was a joke.
Yet even so, a few representatives of her own species had chosen to patronize the place. One of them had claimed he could guide her to the rogue she sought, only to lure her down a quiet tunnel and abruptly take away her light. Most likely he himself possessed a means of seeing in the dark.
Reacting instantly, Miri nocked and loosed an arrow. Even though she was shooting blind, the shaft thunked into something solid. A second later, water splashed.
The senior scouts of Miri's guild studied a limited system of magic in addition to their martial skills and woodcraft. She herself had only commenced that phase of her training a year before and proved to possess no extraordinary aptitude for it. Still, she'd mastered a few spells, and when she'd realized she needed to venture underground, it had been obvious which she ought to prepare for the casting.
She recited a rhyming couplet and swept her hand through a mystic pass. Motes of white light leaped from her fingers like sparks rising from a fire. Glowing without heat, they winked out after a moment or two, as new ones sprang forth to take their places. In the aggregate, they shone about as brightly as a candle.
The light sufficed to reveal her treacherous guide lying dead in the puddle beside the torch. As intended, she'd shot him before he could move off the spot where she'd seen him last. She started to relax, then glimpsed a shifting in the darkness, beyond the point where her light began to fail.
Her heart pounding, Miri thrust her sparking hand out as if it was a torch itself. The glow revealed only the earthen walls of the tunnel. Had she only imagined that something was slinking about?
No. The Forest Queen knew, the odious city and the frustrations of her search were wearing on Miri's nerves. Yet even so, she was no timid tenderfoot to start at shadows. Her guide had lured her toward one or more confederates waiting to waylay her—scoundrels who were lurking still, despite the fact that, for whatever reason, she was having trouble seeing them.
She had no intention of standing still while she tried. With the torch soaked and useless, Miri wanted to reach a place where something else shed light before her spell of illumination ran out of power. Nocking another arrow, she retreated down the tunnel. She pivoted this way and that to keep anyone from sneaking up behind her.
Then she gasped as something alien touched her mind. It was like a bitter chill freezing the inside of her head, or rather, it wasn't, but that was as close as she could come. She'd never felt the repugnant sensation before, and she knew no words to describe it.
She was still trying to shake it off when something hissed in the darkness ahead. A huge black viper, longer than she was tall, slithered into view. It was crawling directly toward her.
She shuddered. Whimpered. Recoiled a step. Her arrow nearly slipped from her fingertips and off the bowstring.
She knew it shouldn't be that way. She'd never been afraid of snakes before. The force that had pierced her mind had poisoned her with an unnatural terror, and she had to resist it.
By sheer force of will, she made herself stop retreating. She controlled her breathing, drew the bowstring back, and let her arrow fly.
The missile drove into the viper's body just behind its head, pinning it to the floor. The serpent lashed madly about, and her fear faded.
When it did, she realized that some other threat could easily have crept up on her while she was so frantically intent on the viper. Reaching for another arrow, she turned, and a cudgel streaked at her head.
Two of her foes had stealthily closed the distance. Unlike the accomplice who'd brought Miri there, neither could have passed for human. The one with the club had a manlike shape but scaly reptilian hide. Its fellow, who wielded a rawhide whip, reared on an ophidian tail instead of legs. Both were the same gray-brown as the dirt walls and floor. Somehow, this chameleonlike ability to change color extended even to their clothing and weapons, and it explained their success at hiding in plain sight.
They were yuan-ti, a race comprising a sinister blend of snake and human. Until that moment, Miri had had the good luck never to encounter the species before, but by all accounts, she could scarcely have blundered into graver peril.
She blocked the cudgel with her buckler. The impact clanged, and it stung her forearm. The whip sliced at her legs, and she tried to parry with her bow. Perhaps she succeeded to a degree, but the flexible braided leather whirled around the length of wood and stung her even so.
The bow was the wrong weapon for close quarters. She dropped it and scrambled backward, meanwhile snatching for the hilt of her broadsword. Hissing, exposing their fangs, her assailants lunged after her. She glimpsed other yuan-ti, no two exactly alike but each a fusion of man and serpent, racing up behind them. The inside of her mind went icy cold, reinfecting her with terror, and she purged it by bellowing a battle cry.
She dodged the whip and parried the club. She backed into the tunnel wall, dislodging a shower of loose grit, and knew she could retreat no farther. Fortunately, at the same instant, her sword cleared the scabbard.
At the sight of the straight, double-edged blade, her foes hesitated. In a moment, they'd spread out to flank her and work together more effectively, except that Miri saw no reason to give them the chance. She sprang at the reptile-man with the club. It swung the weapon, but she discerned the blow was going to miss and simply continued her own attack. The broadsword sheared into the yuan-ti's chest. The creature started to collapse. She yanked the blade free, pivoted—
—and was too slow. The whip lashed her sword arm, the impact painful even through her reinforced leather sleeve, and spun around it. The legless yuan-ti yanked the coils tight and jerked her forward. The creature raised its offhand, which sweated a clear slime, to grab her.
Had Miri been panicked, or simply a less experienced fighter, she might have dug in her heels and resisted. But she knew she didn't have time to play tug-of-war. If she immobilized herself that way, one of her other foes would overwhelm her. So she didn't resist the pull. To the contrary, she scrambled forward as fast as she could, and when the whip slackened, she regained the ability to wield the broadsword.
Unfortunately, by that time, she was in such close proximity to the yuan-ti that the harsh smell of its acidic secretion stung her eyes and nostrils, so near that it was difficult to bring her blade into play. The serpent-man grabbed her shield arm, and her armor started to smolder and hiss. She twisted the limb from its grasp, bashed it in the face with the buckler, then hammered the top of its head with the broadsword's heavy nickel pommel. Bone cracked, and the yuan-ti went down. She frantically freed herself from the coils of the whip and turned to meet her next foes.
At which point, she almost laughed at the futility of all her struggling, because for the first time, she had a sense of just how many of them she was facing. A dozen at least. Conceivably even more.
The yuan-ti surged at her. Poised on guard, she chanted the opening words of her guild's death prayer, beseeching Mielikki to welcome her soul into the House of Nature.
A voice cried out in a sibilant language, presumably the yuan-ti's own. The snake-men halted, though their attitude remained as threatening as before. Some reasserted their ability to blend into the background, which plainly worked best when they weren't moving. It was uncanny how much difficulty Miri had making them out, even knowing they were crouched right in front of her.
"You see how outnumbered you are," said the same voice, but in the common tongue. "You can't win, but we don't want to kill you. If we did, we'd come at you with blades and arrows instead of clubs, nets, and whips."
"What do you want?" Miri asked.
"Someone is smitten with you," said the yuan-ti's spokesman. "So much so that he put out the word, he'll pay well to anyone who arranges a rendezvous."
Miri was accustomed to plain speech, and it took her a moment to puzzle out what had actually been said.
"You're slavers?" she said. "I'm a free woman, no enemy of Oeble, and no outlaw. You have no right to lay hands on me."
Some of the yuan-ti laughed.
"I'm afraid," said their leader, "that down here in the Underways—well, anywhere in Oeble, really—we hunt whom we please, without much worrying what the rules say."
"I came into the tunnels to run an errand for a rich and powerful citizen of Oeble. He'll ransom me."
"That's nice, but in our trade, it pays to do business with folk you already know. Less is likely to go wrong. Now be sensible and throw away your sword."
"No," Miri said. "We don't do that in the Red Hart Guild."
"How brainless, when you have no hope of winning."
"But I do. I'll slay more of you before you take me down, and each of those kills will be a victory. Every one will make the world a little cleaner."
She lunged and cut. The broadsword slashed open the throat of a snake-headed yuan-ti before it even realized the battle had resumed.
She spun just in time to spy another creature—a serpent-woman—puffing on a blowpipe. Miri sidestepped, and the dart, which was no doubt drugged, flew wild. She hacked at the yuan-ti, half severing its scaly hand at the wrist. The slaver shrieked and recoiled. Miri leaped out from under an outflung net with lead weights and fishhooks attached to the edges, and then stamped on it when it dropped to the ground, thus preventing the brute on the other end from pulling it back for another cast. The slaver let go, and its limbs and torso so flexible it seemed to have no bones, it curled itself into a posture resembling a human wrestler's stance. Acidic jelly smeared itself across its hide, it pounced, and she whirled out of the way, simultaneously slamming the edge of her buckler into its spine. Evidently it had vertebrae after all, because one of them cracked.
Miri knew she'd been fortunate thus far, and that her luck couldn't hold against so many. Sure enough, an instant later, something swept her feet out from underneath her. As she slammed down on her back, she saw it was a long, lashing tail, She tried to scramble up, but the scaly member whipped back around and slashed her across the head.
The impact made everything seem quiet and far away. Dazed, she nonetheless kept struggling to defend herself, but felt she was moving as lazily as a lost feather floating down from the sky. Her foes surrounded her and lifted their weapons. After the carnage she'd wrought, their faces looked so angry that she wondered if they meant to batter her to death.
Perhaps their chief feared the same thing, for it cried, "Remember, we want her alive, and her face unmarked!"
"Fine," said one of the yuan-ti in the circle. Its speech was garbled, as if its forked tongue and long, flexible throat were ill-suited to forming words. "But we have to beat the fight out of her, don't we?"
It lifted its cat-o'-nine-tails, and a spinning steel ring flashed through the air and embedded itself in the back of its hand. Its eyes wide with shock, the serpent-man dropped its weapon.
A second chakram flew an instant later, shearing into a female yuan-ti's serpentine skull. Then a willowy, fair-skinned woman, clad in a nondescript mantle, robe, and sandals, sprang into the midst of the snake-men. It seemed she had no more weapons, not unless the bindings wrapped around her knuckles counted, but the lack didn't trouble her. Whirling, crouching, and leaping, in constant motion, she delivered devastating, bone-shattering attacks with her feet, elbows, fists, the edges of her hands, and even her fingertips. Though Miri had traveled far in her time, she'd never seen anything like it.
Caught by surprise and accordingly rattled, the yuan-ti fell back. The stranger grabbed hold of Miri's arm and hauled her to her feet. She slipped her toes under the scout's fallen broadsword and kicked it up into the air.
Miri blinked free of her half-stupor and caught the weapon by the hilt. She and the newcomer stood back to back, so no foe could take either of them from behind.
Hissing and screeching, the yuan-ti rushed in, and Miri cut and thrust. She realized she might prevail against her foes. The arrival of her newfound ally had given her hope.
Evidently it had altered the yuan-ti leader's expectations as well, because it decided to take a more active role in the battle, declaiming words that somehow made themselves heard despite the clamor of combat. Once again, the creature was speaking a language Miri didn't understand, but from the rhymes and measured cadence, she was certain it was reciting a spell.
Sure enough, a dark vapor abruptly filled the air, its stench so foul that Miri gagged. She felt dizzy, sick to death, while the reptile-men assailing her with whips and cudgels appeared unaffected.
It would have been witless to imagine that, afflicted as she was, she could continue fighting with her customary facility. If she was to endure, it would have to be by trickery. Acting as if she was even sicker than she felt—if such a thing was possible—she swayed and crumpled to her knees. She let the broadsword slip from her fingers.
Her foes took the bait. Confident she was helpless, they lunged in at her. She snatched up her blade and cut, scarcely aiming, the strokes simply as strong and as fast as she could manage.
The ploy worked. Blood spattered, and her mangled adversaries reeled backward. The noxious fumes started to thin, and her nausea and vertigo, to pass.
But it wouldn't matter if the yuan-ti spellcaster kept tossing curses around. Somebody had to stop it. Praying that it had to wave its arms or something to work magic, that its chameleon skin no longer kept it perfectly concealed, she peered about.
There, by the far wall!
It was the largest and least human of any of the yuan-ti, with only a pair of scaly arms to indicate it was anything other than a colossal rearing snake. It carried a bastard sword in one hand and was already crooking the fingers of the other into cabalistic signs.
"Got to move!" Miri gasped.
She scrambled forward. A yuan-ti with hissing serpents sprouting from its shoulders in place of arms sprang into her path. She chopped at its head, jerked the broadsword free, and sprinted on, splashing through one of the scummy pools. She glimpsed other snake-men darting to intercept her, but the stranger was there, too, punching, kicking, holding them back.
The yuan-ti leader saw Miri charging forward, and it left off its conjuring to come on guard. She believed that was good, though from the way it moved, it appeared to know how to manage its weapon.
The bastard sword leaped at her. She brushed it away with the buckler and riposted with a thrust. The yuan-ti's flexible body twisted out of the way.
At once she renewed the attack, trying to score before the serpent-man could raise its heavy weapon for another cut. Unfortunately, she'd momentarily lost sight of the fact that her opponent had other offensive options, one of which it chose to exercise. Its wedge-shaped head shot down at her, jaws spread wide, drops of venom clinging to the points of the long, curved fangs.
Committed to the attack as she was, Miri was in the wrong attitude to parry. Her only hope of avoiding the yuan-ti's bite was to fling herself down on her belly, so she did. The snake-man's snout thumped her between the shoulders like a hammer, but its teeth didn't rip into her body.
They would in an instant, though, if she didn't hold them off. She wrenched herself over and hacked blindly.
By pure luck as much as anything else, the broadsword nearly severed the yuan-ti's head from its trunk, which then flopped down on top of her.
The corpse heaved and writhed as Miri struggled out from under it. After a moment, her ally extended a hand to help her drag herself clear. The stranger's cowl had slipped back to reveal a downy pate she'd obviously shaved within the past couple days. Beyond her lay only the motionless bodies of other yuan-ti. If any of the slavers retained their lives and the use of their limbs, they'd evidently fled the scene. The fight was over.

Sefris hadn't had much trouble locating the scout. A good many folk had taken note of the ranger tramping about the Underways asking questions about the robbery in the Paeraddyn. Once the monastic found her quarry, she'd tailed her, awaiting an opportunity to ingratiate herself. The yuan-ti had provided a splendid one.
After that, however, came the difficult part, far more challenging than slaughtering a gang of serpent-men, formidable though they were. She needed to present herself as the sort of sunny, altruistic soul the guide would be likely to trust, and which she herself particularly detested. She smiled into the face of the Dark Goddess's enemy, the same face she'd seen in the arcanaloth's mirror, and bowed.
At that same instant, as if in outrage at her duplicity, the tunnel went pitch black as the guide's hand stopped shedding its luminous sparks. The ranger quickly recited words of power to renew the spell. It was quite a simple charm, though, paradoxically, one that would forever lie beyond Sefris's grasp. Sorcerers who drew their power from the unholy well called the Shadow Weave were unable to conjure light.
"There," said the ranger, as the white sparks danced anew. "Sorry about that."
Sefris grinned and said, "It's all right. Though we're lucky it didn't happen a minute or two earlier, or the yuan-ti would have defeated us for certain."
"My name is Miri Buckman of the Red Hart Guild. Thank you for saving my life."
"I'm Sefris Uuthrakt of the Broken Ones."
The Broken Ones were a monastic order pledged to the martyr god Ilmater. Though their philosophy and mission differed radically from those of the Dark Moon, their fighting arts were similar, and by pretending to membership in their company, she'd provided a plausible explanation for the unusual skills she'd demonstrated.
"Thank you as well," Sefris continued. "You protected my back as much as I protected yours."
"Maybe," Miri replied, stooping to wipe her bloody broadsword on a dead serpent-man's tunic. "But you didn't have to jump in and help me in the first place."
"Oh, but I did. I have my vows, as I imagine you rangers have yours."
"We have a code." The scout sheathed her sword, then headed toward her fallen bow as she said, "Believe me, I'm not complaining, but what were you doing in these miserable warrens, anyway?"
Sefris tried to judge if her companion was suspicious, and decided she was merely curious.
"We Broken Ones sometimes wander far from our sanctuaries, seeking to learn the lessons only the bustling world can teach. My travels brought me to Oeble, and into the Underways. I heard the sounds of strife, and I rushed to see what was happening. I would have arrived sooner, except that much of the path was dark, and I had to grope my way."
In reality, Sefris had waited to burst onto the scene until Miri truly needed her. Presumably that would ensure the fool was grateful for her intervention. The delay had given the monastic the opportunity to assess the ranger's archery and swordplay. As it turned out, she was reasonably accomplished, though nothing that would inconvenience a daughter of the Dark Moon when the time came.
"Well, bless you for it," Miri said. "I'll make an offering to the Crying God the first chance I get."
"May I ask," Sefris said, "what business brings you 'below,' as the locals say? I would have expected to meet a warrior like you in a forest glade or along a mountain trail, not rubbing shoulders with city orcs, smugglers, and kidnappers."
"I wish you had," Miri said. She picked up her bow, inspected it for signs of damage, and evidently satisfied that it was unscathed, she dangled it casually in her hand. "I've never much liked any town, and this one's the nastiest I've ever seen. But..."
She hesitated as if realizing she was speaking too freely.
Sefris inclined her head and replied, "I understand. Your business is your own. I shouldn't have pried."
"Oh, to Fury's Heart with it. It's all right, I trust you. Anyway, by now, everybody else in Oeble knows, or at least part of it. The rangers of my guild hire themselves out, if it's honest work performed for decent folk. I undertook to carry a treasure from Ormath to Oeble, and just as I was about to deliver it, a robber stole it. Obviously, it's my responsibility to get it back. It'll be a great misfortune to any number of people if I don't."
"I understand," Sefris said. "May I help you find it?"
Miri's eyes narrowed and she asked, "Why would you want to do that?"
"I told you, I'm sworn to aid others, and I seek the wisdom that only comes from immersing oneself in worldly affairs."
"It could be dangerous."
"And I confess, I'm scarcely the ablest fighter my order has produced. Others are far more competent But I did manage to help you against the yuan-ti."
"I can't argue with that," said the ranger.
"Then let me watch your back for a while longer."
"All right, gladly, if you're sure it's what you want. Why not?" Miri smiled crookedly and added, "We can't fare any worse together than I've done nosing about on my own."
"What tactics have you used?"
"I've offered to pay for information, provided it turned out to be true. But as you've just seen, these rogues would rather cheat, rob, or enslave an outsider than earn her coin honestly."
"Perhaps it's time for a different approach," Sefris said. She found one of her chakrams, pulled it from the wound it had inflicted, wiped it clean, and stowed it away in her robe. Later, when she had the leisure, she'd take a hone to the edge. "If you aren't squeamish, we could ask questions in a less gentle fashion."
"Surely the creed of Ilmater doesn't allow for torture," Miri said, peering at her quizzically.
"We Broken Ones are more practical than people give us credit for. Of course, we would never torture a prisoner in the truest sense of the word. We are, however, allowed to intimidate him and cause some brief discomfort, when it's absolutely necessary to further a worthy cause. But perhaps your own code doesn't allow for such tactics."
"It's a gray area. I've never liked it much, but. . . I'm sick of these Oeblaun vermin trying to swindle me and sniggering behind my back. By the Hornblade, this lot are yuan-ti, and they meant to enslave me. I think I could rough up one of them, and live with my conscience afterward."
So, gentle Mielikki's servant had a streak of ruthlessness. The implicit hypocrisy stirred the contempt that was central to Sefris's nature, but she made sure no hint of a sneer showed on her face.
"So be it, then," the monastic said.
"The problem may be," Miri said as she surveyed the fallen reptile-men, "that none of them is capable of answering questions."
Sefris smiled.
"That's one advantage fists have over blades and arrows," she said. "Often, they merely stun instead of kill." To be precise, they stunned when she wanted them to, and in the fight just concluded, intuition had prompted her to leave a couple of the yuan-ti alive. "We just need to wake somebody up."

CHAPTER 6
Aeron met the Dead Cart on Balamonthar's Street. As he would have expected by late afternoon, the mule-drawn wagon carried several corpses, which were starting to smell, and was heading to dump them in the garbage-middens southeast of town.
Hairy and dirty, his limbs twisted out of true by illness or an accident of birth, Hulm Draeridge leered down at Aeron from the seat.
"Hop in the back," he said. "Save me the trouble of lifting you up and chucking you in."
Aeron snorted and said, "I'm not ready to take that ride just yet."
"That's not the way I hear it."
"It doesn't matter if people are looking for me, tanglebones, not as long as my wits are sharper than theirs. It's all part of the sport. Speaking of which, if anybody asks, you haven't seen me."
He tossed the driver a silver bit, and Hulm snatched it from the air.
"I've already forgotten you," the driver said, "as completely as will everyone else ten minutes after you're dead."
Keeping an eye out for Red Axes, Gray Blades, and female rangers, carrying the saddlebag hidden beneath his cape, Aeron strode on into a little cul-de-sac crammed with various commercial endeavors. A tinker's grindstone whined and spewed sparks as he sharpened a hoe. A small-time slave trader cried the virtues of his half dozen shackled human and goblin wares, who sat around his feet in apathetic misery. Hooded falcons stood on their perches, the bells on their feet chiming when they shifted position. The Whistlers, one of the city's smaller and less successful gangs, had stolen the birds at midsummer and were still trying to dispose of them at bargain prices. Unfortunately, the average citizen of Oeble didn't know how to hawk and had no interest in learning.
Aeron, who likewise lacked any experience with the fierce-looking raptors, playthings of noblemen and merchants with lordly pretensions, crept past the perches a little warily, slipped into a tower, and climbed a corkscrew flight of stairs. Somewhere in one of the apartments, a baby cried. In another, bread was baking. The appetizing aroma filled the shaft and made Aeron's mouth water.
Burgell Whitehorn lived on the third floor. Aeron tapped on the gnome's door, then positioned himself in front of the peephole. After a while, three latches clinked in turn as someone unfastened them. The door swung open, and Burgell frowned up at his caller.
Skinny and flaxen-haired, his skin walnut brown and his eyes a startling turquoise, Burgell stood half as tall as Aeron and had to climb up on a stool to look out the peephole. Like most habitations in Oeble, that particular tenement had been built for humans, and smaller residents coped with the resulting awkwardness as best they could.
But at least the relative largeness of the apartment gave Burgell room to pack in all his gnome-sized gear. The front room was his workshop, and it contained a bewildering miscellany of tools: hammers, chisels, saws, lockpicks, tinted lenses, jeweler's loupes, and jars of powdered and shredded ingredients for casting spells. A fat gray cat, the mage's familiar, lay curled atop a grimoire. It opened its eyes, gave Aeron a disdainful yellow stare, then appeared to go back to sleep.
Despite the jolly reputation of his race, Burgell's welcome was no warmer.
"What are you doing wandering about, in broad daylight, no less?"
"Hulm Draeridge more or less asked me the same thing," Aeron said, "but I won't get any business done hiding in some hole. Can I come in?"
"I don't think so. Look what happened to the last wizard who helped you, and that was before you angered the tanarukk."
Aeron sighed and said, "I'm sorry about Dal, but he knew the risks. I'm not asking you to take the same kind of chance. I just want you to do your usual kind of job. You won't even have to leave home."
"Why not do it yourself?"
"Because it's not my specialty, and this particular chore calls for an expert."
Aeron had had enough of discussing his business in the stairwell. He pushed forward, and the little gnome had little choice but to give ground. Aeron shut the door.
"All right," Burgell said. Irritation made his tenor voice shrill. "Do come in by all means. But you know, I don't work cheap."
"So I recall, from all the times you've bled me dry," Aeron replied as he extracted the steel case from the saddle bag. The gray metal gleamed in the sunlight streaming in through the open casement. "Whatever's inside this is valuable. I'll cut you in for one part in twenty."
"One part in five."
"Greed is an ugly thing."
"You'd know."
Aeron grinned and said, "I might at that. One part in ten."
"Done, but I'll need some coin on account. Just in case the box turns out to contain something you can't sell."
"Trust me, whatever it is, I'll find a way to turn it into cash. But if this is what it takes to stop your griping and set you to work ..."
Aeron opened his belt pouch and extracted several gold coins. In so doing, he nearly exhausted his funds. It was a strange thing. Though no gang chieftain or lieutenant, he was a successful thief by most standards. Yet the profits refused to stick to his fingers, and it wasn't only because his father's pain-killing elixirs and poultices were so expensive. Maybe he spent too many nights carousing in the taverns, bought the house too many rounds, "loaned" too much gold to needy friends who never paid him back. Yet why risk his neck stealing coin if not to enjoy it once he had it? When it ran out, the solution was simply to steal some more.
Burgell bit one of the coins, a Cormyrean dinar, then dumped the clinking lot into the pocket of his shabby dressing gown. He gestured to a stubby-legged work table that, like the rest of the furniture, was sized for little folk, not men.
"Put the box down there," the gnome said, "and tell me what you can."
"It was in this saddlebag when I first laid hands on it. I was invisible at the time, but even so, the pouch screamed a warning and painted me with light."
"Faerie fire."
"Whatever you call it. Anyway, it hasn't done that since, so I guess it was a one-time spell. But when I tried to pick the lock of the coffer itself, it boomed like thunder. The noise actually hurt."
The wizard nodded and muttered, "Layered protections. Never a good thing."
"Truly? Is that your expert opinion?" Aeron teased. "Look, here's where we stand. I don't know if the thunder will sound a second time or what other wards may lie in wait behind that one, but I need you to dissolve them all."
"Any sign of purely mechanical traps? Spring-loaded poison needles, finger-snipping pincers, or the like?"
"I didn't see any, but I wouldn't rule anything out."
"All right," the gnome said. "Stand back."
Taking his own advice, Burgell muttered a cantrip then he pointed his finger at a brass key lying on the workbench. The yellow metal oozed in a way that baffled the eye, as if changing shape and size from one moment to the next. The key floated up into the air and inserted itself in the strongbox's lock. It jerked, trying to turn, but evidently it couldn't shift the tumblers.
Thunder crashed, painfully loud in the confines of the flat. Aeron couldn't help flinching, even though he'd known what to expect. A framed diagram, depicting the interplay of the primal forces of the cosmos or some such gibberish, fell off the wall. The gray cat leaped off the spellbook, dashed for cover, and vanished behind a wooden chest.
"The sonic ward is still active," Burgell said.
"Is that the only way you had of finding out?" Aeron asked. "I could have done that. Come to think of it, I did."
"You're lucky you didn't shatter every bone in your arm. Noise can hit like a mace, if properly focused. That's why you need someone who can manipulate his tools without touching them to do the poking and prodding."
"Just try to poke more quietly."
"Why is it that folk go to the trouble to hire a master, then insist on telling him how to practice his art? Hush, and let me work."
"Fine."
Aeron sat down on a divan. It was where he customarily sat when consulting Burgell, but as usual, he heeded the impulse to lower himself cautiously and make sure the miniature couch would still bear his weight
The gnome stuck a jeweler's loupe into his left eye and examined the lockbox from every angle. Eventually he drew himself up straight, slashed his left hand through the air, and rattled off a string of words Aeron couldn't understand.
Magic blared like a dissonant trumpet fanfare. Blue light pulsed through the air in time with the notes. The strongbox jumped, spun like a top, and crashed back down on the table, still closed. The brass key popped out of the lock.
"Shadows of Mask," Aeron swore when the commotion had run its course. "Quietly, I said. What in the name of the Nine Hells is wrong with you today?"
"Nothing. You brought me a special problem. I'll solve it, but it's likely to put up a bit of a fuss in the meantime."
"Then let's at least muffle the ruckus as best we can," Aeron said as he rose and headed for the window.
"I'll have to light the lamps," Burgell said with a frown. "It's a waste of oil."
"One of the coins I gave you will keep you in fuel until spring."
"It still doesn't pay to be a spendthrift. But all right."
The gnome waved his hand, and the various lamps lit themselves. Aeron closed and latched the casement.
After that, the human had nothing to do but return to his seat and watch the mage work. Burgell spent interminable minutes peering at the strongbox through various colored lenses, periodically muttering strings of mystical words at it. To no effect, as far as Aeron could see.
In time, having watched the master cracksman work before, Aeron grew puzzled.
"Aren't you going to use any of your pigments or powders?" he asked.
"If I think it necessary," Burgell said.
"It's just that I remember when you opened that priest's wardrobe for—"
"Do you want to reminisce about old times, or do you want me to crack the box?"
Aeron shook his head, slumped back on the couch, and tried to dismiss the unpleasant feeling gnawing at his nerves. He couldn't believe it was legitimate. He and Burgell had worked together a score of times, and the gnome had always proved trustworthy. Yet, watching the little wizard stare and mumble just then, comparing his ponderous caution to the energy with which he'd attacked other locks, traps, and spells of warding, Aeron couldn't quite shake the suspicion that something was wrong.
He thought maybe he shouldn't be trying to shake it. An outlaw, after all, survived by heeding his instincts. Perhaps he was only striving to ignore them because he'd just lost Dal, Gavath, and Kerridi, and it pained him to think he might lose Burgell in a different but no less final fashion.
"Burg," he finally said, "did someone get to you?"
The gnome blinked and asked, "What nonsense are you talking now?"
His turquoise eyes, brilliant even in the soft lamplight, glanced down and to the left as he spoke. Aeron was fairly certain it was what gamblers called a "tell"—a sign Burgell was lying.
"It occurs to me I've never known you to work with the casement open," said Aeron. "You usually don't want folk peeking in at your business."
"We're on the third floor."
"Someone could spy from one of the upper story apartments in the tower across the way. But let's say you wanted someone to know I'd shown up here. Then the open casement would help you signal."
"Did you see me wave a flag or write a note and fling it out?"
"No, but you triggered the thunderclap, and that kind of clumsiness isn't like you, unless you did it on purpose. You followed that up with more noise and flashing light, and since then, it looks to me like you've just been stalling, waiting for somebody to burst in through the door you didn't bother to relock."
Burgell backed away from the work table and snatched a scrap of ram's horn from his pocket. He lifted it above his head and jabbered words of power.
Aeron leaped up from the couch, charged, dived across the low table, and slammed into Burgell, presumably spoiling his conjuration. He hurled the gnome to the floor, dropped on top of him, and poised an Arthyn fang at this throat. Despite the circumstances, and his own anger, the human felt an irrational flicker of shame for manhandling someone so much smaller than himself.
"Get off me," Burgell panted, "or I'll turn you into a beetle. I'll boil your blood."
"Don't talk nonsense. You're no battle mage, and even if you were, you'd need a demon's luck to get off a spell before I cut your throat. Now, who turned you against me?"
"The Red Axes."
"Well, at least it wasn't the law. Do the Axes have a crew watching the place?" Given that Kesk had all of Oeble to search, and his normal business affairs to manage, that seemed unlikely. "Or just a beggar or streetwalker who'll carry word to the gang?"
If the latter was the case, Aeron might have an extra minute or two in which to make his escape.
"I don't know," answered the gnome. "They didn't tell me."
Aeron's anger clenched tighter inside him.
"Curse you," he said, "why would you do this? I thought we were friends."
"We are," the gnome replied. "That's why I tried to shoo you away from my door, but you wouldn't have it. Once you bulled your way in, I had no choice."
"That's a load of dung."
"No, it's not I didn't like betraying you, but I have my own neck to worry about. I can't afford to anger Kesk Turnskull. Please," the gnome said, his voice breaking, "anybody would have done the same!"
"And anyone would do what I'm going to do now."
But just as Aeron was about to drive the dagger in, his rage abruptly twisted into sadness and a kind of weary disgust.
"Or not, apparently," Aeron said, "unless you try to get up, call out, or throw another spell."
He rose. Burgell stared at him as if he feared the human was only feigning mercy, toying with his victim before he made the kill.
He shouldn't have worried, if for no other reason than Aeron plainly didn't have time for such an amusement. He stuffed the strongbox back in the saddlebag, then scurried around the workroom, snatching up a selection of Burgell's tools. When he ran out of room in the pouch, he stuck them in his pockets and inside his shirt.
Next he opened the casement and peered outside. He didn't spot any bravos striding through the little marketplace below with obviously hostile intent. That didn't necessarily mean they weren't there, but it was marginally encouraging even so. Above him, the blue sky was unobstructed, which was to say, it didn't have a Rainspan cutting across it, connecting Burgell's spire to another. The only way to effect a departure above ground level would be to crawl across the slanting roofs and leap from one to the next. It would be slow, dangerous, and sure to attract attention in broad daylight.
All things considered, Aeron thought he'd take his chances in the street. He pulled up his hood. Many folk would go without on such a warm, pleasant autumn day, but even so, a covered head would likely be less eyecatching than his red hair.
As he opened the apartment door, it occurred to him to demand his gold back from Burgell. But even if he hadn't been in a hurry, he wouldn't have bothered, wouldn't have wanted to talk to his false friend any more than necessary, and so he simply ran down the steps. The infant had stopped wailing, but the stairwell still smelled of warm, rising bread.
Aeron hoped to reach the exit before any of the Red Axes appeared to block the way, but when he peered over the second floor landing, he saw that he hadn't been that lucky. The door below him opened, and two figures, Tharag the bugbear and the peevish human who'd lost to the hulking goblin-kin at cards, appeared in the bright, sun-lit rectangle. The Red Axes exclaimed at the sight of their quarry and scrambled up the steps.
Aeron retreated to the far end of the landing, drew his largest Arthyn fang, and settled into a fighting crouch. At first, the Red Axes advanced on him with cudgels in their hands. Then they caught sight of the saddlebag tucked under their intended victim's arm, realized they didn't need to take him alive to discover its whereabouts, and readied their own blades.
Aeron waited until they were nearly in striking range. Then he stuck his knife between his teeth, planted his hand on the railing that bordered the landing, and vaulted over.
At least he didn't have as far to fall as when he'd jumped off the parapet at the Paer. The landing jolted him, but he weathered it, and when he looked up, he discovered that his gamble had paid off. The Red Axes weren't so keen to kill him that they were willing to leap after him and risk breaking their own bones. They were scrambling back the way they'd come, which meant Aeron would have no difficulty reaching the door ahead of them.
Grinning, he charged out into the sunlight, only to trip and fall headlong. Something bashed him across the shoulder blades.
He flopped over onto his back. The paunchy, tattooed Whistler who'd been selling falcons stood over him, swinging one of the perches over his head for another blow. It was a clumsy sort of improvised quarterstaff, but it would do to bludgeon a man into submission.
Aeron wondered fleetingly why that particular rogue was meddling in his business. Maybe Kesk had bribed or intimidated the Whistlers into joining the hunt. Or perhaps the wretch was acting on his own initiative. He might want to curry favor with the Red Axes and move up to membership in the more successful gang.
Either way, Aeron had to deal with him quickly, before Tharag and his partner ran back out the door. He tried to twist himself around into position to strike back, but didn't make it in time. The perch hurtled down, and the best defense he could manage was to catch it on his forearms instead of taking it across the face. The blow crashed home with brutal force. Aeron gasped at the pain, and some of the folk in the crowd laughed and cheered the Whistler on. As far as the thief knew, they had no particular reason to favor his assailant over him except that the vendor currently held the upper hand, and the citizens of Oeble tended to enjoy watching a bully administer a good beating.
The perch jerked up into the air. Aeron finished swinging himself around, pulled his knees up to his chest, and lashed out with a double kick. His heels caught the Whistler in the knees, something cracked, and the gang member stumbled back and toppled onto his rump. Aeron hoped he'd crippled the poxy son of a whore.
Alas, he couldn't linger to find out. He had to keep moving. He scrambled to his feet and pivoted this way and that, trying to see what was going on. Squealing, people recoiled from the dagger in his hand, and in so doing, somewhat impeded the advance of the pair of shaggy, long-legged gnolls shambling in his direction.
The hyena-headed Red Axes with their glaring yellow eyes and lolling tongues were blocking the mouth of the cul-de-sac. Aeron had at most a few heartbeats to find another way out of the box. He cast about, looking for a passable alleyway between two of the surrounding spires. He didn't see one.
His only option was to bolt into another of the buildings surrounding the dead end. He dashed toward a doorway, and something smashed down on the top of his head. He collapsed to his knees amid a scatter of clay shards, dry earth, and withered stalks, and he realized someone had leaned out an upper story window and dropped a flower pot on him.
A second such missile shattered beside his right hand and jarred him into action. Shaking off the shock and pain, he scrambled on into the tower.
The building had shops on the ground floor, an ale house to the left and a cobbler to the right. Since their windows opened on the same cul-de-sac he was trying to escape, they were of no use to him. He ran on down a hallway, past the stairs twisting upward and several closed doors that likely led to apartments, seeking a rear exit into the next street over.
Alas, the corridor was a dead end, too. And when he spun back around, the gnolls, Tharag, and the human Red Axe were coming through the entry at the far end.
Aeron tried one of the doors. Locked, and he had no time to pick it or try to break it down. He tested a second.
That one was open. He scrambled through, barred it, and looked around.
As he'd expected, he'd invaded someone's home. The boarder, a haggard-looking, red-eyed woman still dressed in her night clothes, sat at her spinning wheel, performing the labor that likely kept her housed and fed. She gaped at him in fear.
"Sorry," he said, then sprinted toward the one small window.
Behind him, the door rattled, then started banging. The woman gawked for another moment, then she rose and scurried toward the entry. She might not understand what was going on, but she knew she didn't want her door battered down. Aeron almost turned back to restrain her, then he decided his chances would be better if he just kept running.
He squirmed out the window onto a narrow, twisting lane that, like the cul-de-sac, connected to Balamonthar's Street. He dashed to the major thoroughfare, then strode onward through the crowds, no longer running—that would make him too conspicuous—but hurrying. After a few minutes, he permitted himself to believe he'd shaken his pursuers.
He reached under his cowl and gingerly fingered the sore spot where the flower pot had bashed him. He had a lump coming up—it would go nicely with all the bruises he was collecting—but to his relief, his scalp wasn't bloody. Apparently the hood had protected him a little.
So, he'd escaped relatively intact. Outwitted the rest of the world again. He felt the usual surge of exhilaration, the thrill that, as much as the easy coin, accounted for his devotion to the outlaw life.
Yet it wasn't quite as potent as usual. Perhaps Burgell's treachery was to blame. Or the discovery that the Whistlers had joined forces with the Red Axes to hunt him down. Or the way the onlookers had cheered to see him beaten, or the unpleasant surprise of the pot crashing down on his skull. What had that been about?
Shadows of Mask, had all Oeble turned against him?
No, surely not. He just needed to settle this affair of the strongbox, and things would calm down. After a moment's thought, he headed for home, to pick up the lantern he kept there.

CHAPTER 7
With the approach of evening, the Talondance had become more crowded and unruly. The clamor of the customers nearly drowned out the constant reedy music that droned from no visible source, as if ghosts were playing the birdpipes, shaums, and whistlecanes. As she surveyed the assembly of orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, ogres, lizard men, and humans who appeared equally savage, Miri was glad that she had a comrade to watch her back.
She turned to Sefris and said, "I don't think you'll have to linger here very long to see things you wouldn't see back in the monastery."
"I imagine you're right," Sefris replied. "In fact, here's one of them now. Look sharp."
An orc clad in a shirt of scale armor crowed and leaned forward to rake in its winnings. A lizard man on the opposite side of the table hissed, threw down its cards, grabbed the hooked short sword that lay naked beside its dwindling stakes, and sprang up from its chair. Its lashing tail tripped a garishly painted whore and sent her staggering.
The orc jumped up, and crossing its arms, it reached to draw the daggers it carried sheathed on either hip. Other orcs and lizard men scrambled toward the scene of the confrontation, while those with no interest in choosing a side scurried to distance themselves from it. A human shouted that he'd give two to one on the scaly folk.
Then a massive form, tall as an ogre but even burlier, as well as less human in its proportions, emerged from a shadowy alcove. Armored in yellow-brown chitin, its feelers quivering, it employed its elongated arms with their long, thick claws to knuckle-walk like an ape. It gnashed its huge mandibles once. Everyone jumped at the sharp rasp, turned, then froze when they saw what had made the sound. After a moment, the orcs and lizard men lowered their weapons.
Miri shook her head. She'd seen many strange things in her career as a scout, but few stranger than an umber hulk maintaining order in a tavern. If she could believe her training, the immense subterranean creatures possessed their own kind of intelligence, but not of a sort that disposed them to cooperate with humans or even goblin-kin.
"Amazing," she said as the umber hulk, evidently satisfied that it had cowed the would-be brawlers, turned away.
"The yuan-ti said the owner of the Talondance was a wizard," Sefris replied. "It didn't mention her magic was powerful enough to enslave a brute like that."
"Maybe there's another explanation."
"Possibly."
"Feeling reluctant?" Miri asked.
"No, merely pointing out that we'll need to keep our wits about us."
"Believe it or not, I've been trying to do that right along, even if you couldn't tell it from the way I blundered into the slavers' trap." Miri smiled crookedly, nodded at a female gnoll standing behind a bar, and said, "Let's talk to that one."
As they wended their way through the crowd, a sweaty, musky, half-animal stench, compounded of the individual stinks of unwashed specimens of twenty different races, assailed Miri's nostrils. Its thumb on the scale, a hobgoblin weighed out measures of mordayn powder for eager—in some cases frantic—addicts. Prostitutes pulled down their bodices or lifted their skirts, exposing expanses of pimply, pasty flesh to entice their customers. A potential buyer peered into a slave's ears, and a foppishly dressed, nervous-looking young man dickered with a pair of ruffians, trying to negotiate his uncle's murder.
It was all sordid and repulsive almost beyond belief, and Miri glanced at Sefris to see how she was tolerating it. Somewhat to her surprise, the monastic wore her usual half smile, as if the scene didn't trouble her in the slightest. Evidently the Broken Ones achieved some genuine serenity through their martial exercises and meditations.
"What you want?" snarled the gnoll, a bit of slaver dripping from its canine muzzle. It could speak the common tongue employed by a good many civilized and even barbaric folk across the continent of Faerun, but not very well.
"We need to speak to Naneetha Dalaeve," Miri said as she laid a silver piece on the bar.
The gnoll failed to pick up the coin.
"Don't know nobody named that," it said. "What you drink?"
"She owns this place," Miri said.
The yuan-ti she and Sefris had interrogated had told them as much, and since the snake-man had feared for its life at the time, she was inclined to believe it.
"Don't know her," the gnoll repeated. "Buy drinks, or get out."
Miri sensed it would do no good to increase the size of the bribe.
"Two jacks of ale," she said.
The shaggy, long-legged gnoll fetched them, one hoped without drooling into them during the process, and the two humans stepped away from the bar.
"What now?" Sefris asked.
"See that doorway in the rear wall?" Miri replied. "It stands to reason that if the owner isn't out here, she's in the back somewhere. The problem will be reaching her. I've already had enough excitement for one day. I'd just as soon pass on fighting an umber hulk and half the goblin-kin in Oeble."
"Suppose I distract everyone?" the monastic asked. "Would you be comfortable bracing a wizard by yourself?"
"Yes," Miri said, "but what are you planning? I don't want you putting yourself in danger."
Sefris's enigmatic smile widened ever so slightly as she said, "Don't worry. Everybody in Oeble loves knife-play, so I'll simply teach them a thing or two about the sport. Wait until everyone is looking my way, then make your move."
The monastic slipped through the throng toward the spot where an orc, a goblin, and a lizard man stood throwing daggers at a human silhouette crudely daubed on the wall. The otherwise black target had its eyes, throat, and heart picked out in red, presumably for bull's-eyes. Some of the Dance's patrons sat just to the sides of the mark, but they didn't look nervous because of it. Either they trusted the competitors' accuracy, or they were too drunk or reckless by nature to mind the blades hurtling past scant inches from their bodies.
Sefris pushed back her cowl. The rogues, goblin-kin, and scaly folk had already marked her as an outsider, but beholding her shaved head, they realized she was a more exotic visitor than they'd initially thought.
"Pitiful," she said. She wasn't shouting, not in any obvious way, but even so, her voice carried across the tavern back to where Miri was standing.
The orc turned. It was missing its left ear, and perhaps as some obscure form of compensation, it wore several jangling golden hoops pierced into the right.
"Are you talking to us?" it asked.
"I'm afraid so," Sefris replied. "All my life, I've heard how deftly folk in Oeble handle knives. I thought when I finally saw it I'd marvel. But the three of you throw like blind, arthritic old grannies."
The orc bristled. Considering that neither it nor its fellow players had missed the painted figure, it was entitled.
"Can you do better?" the humanoid grunted.
"Of course," said Sefris. "Anyone could."
Her movements a fluid blur, she snatched her chakrams from her pockets and threw them one after the other. Miri was impressed. She'd trained hard to learn to nock, draw, and loose her arrows rapidly, but she would have been hard-pressed to send a pair of them flying as fast as that.
The razor-edged rings thunked into the target's torso.
The one-eared orc spat. "That's not as good as my throwing. Last round, I hit both the eyes."
"I needed to warm up," Sefris replied. "I'm ready to play now."
"We already have a game going on," the goblin said.
The small, bandy-legged creature wore a royal-blue velvet cape that was both bloodstained and considerably too large for it. Presumably it had stolen the garment off a corpse.
"Begin a new one," Sefris said. "Unless you're afraid to play against someone who knows how to throw a knife."
"Why should we start over?" asked the orc. "We throw for gold. Have you got any?"
"Not much," Sefris said.
"Then stop wasting our time, before we decide to use you for a target."
"What I do have," the monastic continued, "is myself. If I lose, I'll do the winner's bidding until sunrise. Anything he asks."
The offer shocked Miri and likewise silenced the crowd for a heartbeat or two. Then the onlookers started to laugh and babble.
"You say 'anything,' " said the orc. "It's liable to be just about anything. Anything nasty."
"What do I care about warm-blood females?" growled the lizard man.
"You could rent her out," said the one-eared orc. "The place is full of folk who'd relish a go at a fresh, clean human woman, even if she is bald. Not that you're going to win. I am."
"I take it my wager is acceptable," Sefris said.
"Yes," said the orc, leering. "There's just one thing. You challenged us to a knife-throwing contest, so you'll have to use knives, not those rings."
It pulled a pair of daggers from its boots, tossed them into the air, caught them by the blades, and proffered them hilts first
If Sefris felt dismay at the substitution, she didn't let it show.
She examined the knives, and then said, "These will do. What are the rules?"
"You throw two times every round," said the orc. "Hit the black, and it's a point. Hit the red, and it's five. Miss the red three turns in a row, and you're out. First one to three hundred wins."
Sefris nodded and asked, "Who starts?"
"Maidens first," the orc said with a grin.
Miri saw that the whole tavern was watching the bout, which meant it was time to sneak away. But she couldn't, not just then. She couldn't bring herself to abandon Sefris until she felt confident that the monastic had at least a reasonable chance of holding her own against the other players.
Sefris threw the daggers as quickly as she'd cast the chakrams. One pierced the target's heart, and the other, its throat She was equally accurate the following round.
Of course, even if she was victorious, it wouldn't necessarily mean she was out of danger. The losers might resent the humiliation and decide to molest her anyway. But for the moment at least, she was safe. The spectators perceived she had such a good chance that some of them were betting on her, and everyone wanted to see how the contest would turn out
Miri would do her best to return before the end, so that whatever happened, Sefris would have a comrade to help her escape harm. For surely, wager or no, the monastic had no intention of submitting herself to the brutality of a gang of ruffians and goblin-kin, nor as far as Miri was concerned, did honor require that she should.
The ranger skulked along the wall until she reached the doorway, then slipped through. On the other side was a corridor with chambers opening off to either side. Storerooms held beer barrels and racks of wine. Blocks of ice, an expensive commodity in the Border Kingdoms with their warm climate and lack of mountains, cooled the larder. Rather to Miri's relief, none of the red-and-white hanging carcasses was human, the menu she'd noticed earlier notwithstanding. Inside the steamy kitchen, a fat cook in a stained apron screamed curses and beat a cringing goblin assistant about the head with a ladle.
And that was it. The hallway didn't seem to go anywhere else. Yet the yuan-ti had sworn that the reclusive Naneetha Dalaeve lived somewhere on the premises.
If so, Miri had to find the mage's personal quarters quickly, before someone else stepped into the corridor and spotted her. Knowing that spellcasters sometimes used illusions to hide that which they wished to remain private, she peered closely at the sections of wall around her, and when that failed to yield results, she ran her hands over the brick.
At first that didn't work, either, but then roughness smoothed beneath her fingers. Once her sense of touch defeated the phantasm, her vision pierced it a moment later, and she was looking at an oak door.
She tried the brass handle, and found the panel was unlocked. She slipped warily through into a suite dimly illuminated by the soft greenish light of everlasting candles. The sitting room was lavishly furnished in a frilly, lacy style that set her teeth on edge. It looked like the habitation of a nobleman's pampered daughter, not the lair of a wizard who ran a tavern catering to dastards of every stripe. The books on the shelves were of a piece with the rest of the decor. Instead of tomes of arcane lore, they were ballads and romances, tales of knights slaying dragons for the love of princesses both beautiful and pure.
A small dog yapped, and in response, a feminine voice laughed. Miri followed the sound through the apartment. She crept past one room that manifestly was a wizard's conjuration chamber, with a rather slim grimoire reposing on a lectern, sigils of protection inscribed on the walls, and the memory of bitter incense hanging in the air, then came to the source of the noise. Beyond another doorway, a blond woman in a shimmering blue silk dressing gown tossed a rawhide chew toy for a little fox-red terrier, which bounded after the plaything and fetched it back to her. The dog's mistress sat with her back to the door.
"Mistress Dalaeve," Miri said.
The terrier rounded on her and barked. The blond woman gave a start then, without turning around, swept her hands through what was clearly a cabalistic gesture.
"No spells!" Miri nocked an arrow and drew the fletching back to her ear. "I'm not here to hurt you, but—"
She broke off the threat because Naneetha obviously had no intention of heeding her. Her hands kept moving.
Such stubbornness posed a dilemma. If Miri was prudent, she'd loose the arrow before the wizard could complete the magic. But she wouldn't be able to question Naneetha if she killed her, and common sense told her it was difficult for any marksman, even a wizard, to target a foe while looking in the opposite direction. So she hesitated a heartbeat, and the blond woman pressed her hands to her own face.
As far as Miri could see, nothing happened as a result.
Naneetha uncovered her features and said, "Quiet, Saeval!"
The terrier yipped a final time, then subsided. The wizard turned, revealing a flawlessly beautiful heart-shaped countenance worthy of a heroine in one of the sagas on which she evidently doted.
"Who are you," the woman asked, "and what do you want?"
Miri released the tension on her bow and pointed the arrow at the floor, but kept it on the string.
"My name is Miri Buckman. I'm a guide of the Red Hart Guild. I apologize for bursting in on you this way, but my business is urgent, and your staff didn't want to let me in to see you."
"I like my privacy."
"I won't intrude on it any longer than necessary. I just need you to answer a few questions. A robber stole a strongbox from the courtyard of the Paera—"
"I know. Everyone does. You must be the ranger who lost the prize."
Miri sighed and said, "What everyone doesn't know is the name of the thief, or at least, no one's been willing to tell me. But I've learned he's a friend of yours. He and his three accomplices drank here often."
"As I'm sure you've seen, the Dance is a busy place. Many rogues squander their loot here."
"But sometimes you invited this particular scoundrel, who's young, lean, fit, and wears a goatee, to wander back to your suite and visit you."
"You're mistaken."
"I don't believe you," Miri said, "and I promise, I'll pay for information."
"The Dance brings in all the coin I need," Naneetha said. "Now, please go."
"I'm sorry, it isn't that easy."
"Let's be clear, then," the woman asked. "Are you threatening to shoot me if I refuse to betray a friend?"
Even as frustrated as she was, Miri didn't have the stomach for such callous retribution, but she didn't have to admit as much.
"Why shouldn't I kill you?" she asked. "You provide a haven for the worst kinds of vermin to conduct their business and pursue depraved amusements. That makes you as bad as they are."
"It must be nice out in the wilderness, where everything's so simple ... good or evil, gold or dung. In Oeble, we live as best we can."
"If your goal is to live, give me the robber's name."
"No," Naneetha said. "I don't have many friends. It's hard to make them when you spend your days in a cellar, and Saeval and my books aren't enough to hold the loneliness at bay. The few companions I do have brighten my days with the stories of their adventures, and the lad you seek has told me some splendid ones."
Miri wondered if Naneetha was an invalid or such a notorious fugitive that she dared not show her face in the city above, for she seemed to be saying she felt unable ever to leave the confines of the Talondance.
"Whatever lies the wretch feeds you," Miri said, "he's a common thief, not a hero out of your storybooks."
The wizard shrugged.
"Look," Miri persisted, "it's nice you have someone to keep you company, but a good many people will suffer if I don't recover the lockbox."
"Why?"
"I'm not at liberty to say, but you have my word that it's the truth."
"Well, you have mine that I'd sooner push a hundred strangers into the Abyss than betray one friend." Naneetha lifted her hands, making a show of poising them for further conjuration, and added, "Now, are we going to fight?"
No, Miri thought bitterly, we aren't.
Naneetha had called her bluff, and that was that. It felt in keeping with the fundamental perversity of Oeble that the first even vaguely honorable person she'd met in the Underways had proved just as unwilling to help her as all the black-hearted scoundrels she'd questioned hitherto.
She was pondering how to make a dignified exit when the dog yapped.
"I see you found her," Sefris said.
Miri glanced over her shoulder. The monastic appeared unscathed and unruffled as usual.
"Thank Mielikki—and Ilmater—that you're all right," Miri said.
"It was no great matter. I won the contest, the orc and goblin took exception to it, and I had to knock each of them senseless. That started a brawl even the umber hulks—it turns out there are two—had some difficulty quelling. In the confusion, I slipped back here to join you."
Once again, Miri was impressed. Logic suggested that when the fight had broken out, Sefris must have been at the very center of it. She'd surely needed almost preternatural powers of stealth and evasion to extricate herself from the fray.
"And what of you?" the monastic continued. "Are you finding the answers you seek?"
"No," Naneetha said, "she isn't. She was just leaving, and I ask you to do the same."
"You don't seem to realize the situation has changed," Sefris said. In the blink of an eye, a chakram appeared in her hand. "The scout and I are both adept at combat. Perhaps your magic could fend off her or me alone, but not the two of us together, and after we've subdued you, we'll make sure you can't give us any more trouble. I never yet met a mage who was much of a threat with broken fingers."
"Nor I a warrior, once she was burned from head to toe," Naneetha replied.
Miri would have sworn the doorway wasn't wide enough to accommodate two women without them squeezing and jostling one another, but Sefris twisted through in one sudden movement, without even brushing her. Once inside the room, she had a clear shot with the chakram, and when she lifted it, the ranger realized she hadn't been bluffing.
Miri snatched frantically and grabbed Sefris's arm.
"No!" she cried.
Her eyes cold, unreadable, Sefris stared at her.
"She knows," he monastic said. "The yuan-ti said so."
"Still...."
Sefris took a breath and let it out slowly.
"As you wish," she said. "It's your errand. I just came along to help as best I can."
"I take it you're leaving," Naneetha said.
"Yes," Miri said. She started to turn away, then yielded to the urge to make one more try. "It's your own people, your own city, that will benefit if I recover the box."
"Such vagaries mean nothing," the wizard said.
At the same time, Sefris murmured something under her breath then sprang past Miri and dashed back down the hall. The ranger turned just in time to see her comrade vanish into the conjuration chamber.
"What's she doing?" Naneetha asked, sounding rattled for the first time.
"I don't know," Miri said.
Sefris strode back into view with the mage's open grimoire. One hand clutched the vellum pages, ready to tear.
"Tell us what we need to know," the monastic said, "or I'll destroy this."
"Is that supposed to frighten me?" Naneetha asked. "I can buy a new spellbook, or scribe one myself if need be."
"Yes," Sefris said, "but in the meantime, you won't have access to your magic. You won't be able to cover your face with a mask of illusion. Everyone will see your scars."
Naneetha stared, swallowed, then said, "I have no idea what you mean."
"Of course you do," Sefris replied. "Is this the page with the disguise spell?" The monastic ripped a leaf in half, crumpled the loose portion, and dropped it to the floor. "Or is it the next?"
"Stop it, or I swear I'll burn you!"
"While I'm holding the grimoire? I doubt it."
She tore a second page.
"Please," the wizard begged, all the defiance running out of her at once, "you're a woman, too. Don't make me be ugly. My friends won't come to see me anymore."
"Then the choice should be easy," Sefris said. "Betray one companion, or lose them all."
It took Naneetha several seconds to force the words out, "His name is Aeron sar Randal."
Miri felt a pang of excitement, undercut by a muddled shame at the manner in which Sefris had extracted the information.
"Where does he live?" the ranger asked.
"I don't know. I don't think many people do. A lot of thieves are wary of letting folk know where they sleep."
"Well, fortunately," Miri said, "the town's not huge. Did this Aeron talk to you about the plot to steal the strongbox?"
"A little. The Red Axes hired him to do it."
"The Red Axes?"
"The biggest gang in Oeble."
"Then by now," said Miri glumly, "he's delivered the coffer to them."
Naneetha hesitated for an instant as if trying to decide whether to risk a lie.
"No," the wizard said. "For some reason, he didn't hand it over, and now they're looking for him, too."
For once, the ranger thought, maybe the Oeblaun propensity for double-dealing would work in her favor.
"Then we have to find him first," said Miri.

CHAPTER 8
Aeron glanced over his shoulder. He didn't have any particular reason to think anyone was shadowing him, but it was an ingrained habit to check. In so doing, he caught sight of Oeble, its towers, some visibly leaning, black against the evening sky. Ordinarily the view would have pleased him, but the tangled spires seemed somehow threatening just then, like the writhing facial tentacles of those green, centipede-like monstrosities that sometimes crawled into the Underways from Mask alone knew where.
He snorted his momentary uneasiness away. Oeble was home, as good a home as an outlaw could want, and if it had treated him harshly those past couple days, that was part of what made life within its environs so exciting. He'd sell the contents of the lockbox, lie low until everyone tired of hunting him, and everything would be all right.
He hiked on into a stand of trees, trying with some success to keep the dry fallen leaves from crunching beneath his feet, enjoying the sharp scent of the pines. Night engulfed the world, but Selune shed enough silvery glow to guide him. He didn't bother to light his lantern until he reached the glade at the center of the wood, where he and Kerridi had sometimes picnicked.
The benighted clearing was hardly the ideal workspace in which to crack open a magically protected coffer, but Aeron hadn't dared tackle the job in the center of town. If he triggered more thunderclaps, they were likely to lead some of his various and sundry ill-wishers straight to him. Out there in the countryside, that at least ought not to be a problem.
Aeron found a level bit of ground, unrolled the white sheet he'd brought, and set the steel case on top of it. He unpacked the tools he'd taken from Burgell's flat and felt himself tensing, his pulse ticking faster. Aeron willed himself to relax.
Maybe he was no master cracksman like the faithless gnome, certainly no wizard, but he knew the basics of defeating magical traps. He thought that if he was careful, methodical, he could get the box open without killing himself in the process.
He peered at the case through a topaz lens. It didn't reveal anything he hadn't seen already, so he pulled the cork from a glass vial and dusted one side of the strongbox with gray powder. The coarse grains crawled and clumped together, forming letters and geometric figures, covering over and thus revealing the invisible symbols a spellcaster had drawn upon the steel.
So far, so good, he thought, but now comes the tricky part.
Aeron picked up a file and scraped at the glyphs, defacing them. Metal rasped on metal. Though in theory he knew at which angles and junctures he could attack the symbols safely, he kept wanting to flinch as he imagined the magic rousing and striking at him in some devastating fashion.
It didn't, though, not then, and not when he neutralized the sigils on the other faces of the box. He sighed with relief and picked up the brass key, which still appeared in constant flux even though he couldn't feel it changing shape between his thumb and forefinger. He slipped it into the lock and twisted.
Perhaps he felt it stick or shiver. In any event, he sensed he had to let go immediately. He snatched his hand back, and thunder boomed a split second later. The blast slammed him onto his back and brought loose twigs and dead leaves showering down from the branches overhead. Half dazed, he climbed back up onto his haunches, felt a wetness in his mustache, and wiped a smear of it onto his fingertips. His nose was bleeding.
He felt a jab of anger, a regret he'd ever come within a hundred leagues of that wretched box that had killed his friends. He wanted to grab it and fling it into the underbrush, never to be found or trouble anyone again.
But naturally, he didn't really feel that way. No thief truly wanted to cast away his loot Had he won it at great cost, that was just reason to prize it all the more. He swallowed his frustration and pondered the task at hand.
Maybe the glyphs were only decoys. In any case, spoiling them hadn't silenced the thunder, and he didn't see any other way to attempt it.
But so far, the blast had only sounded when someone inserted a pick or skeleton key in the lock. Maybe he could open the case in another way. He turned it around so he could get at the hinges.
Try as he might, he couldn't loosen the pins. If was as if they weren't merely fastened but frozen, glued, or rusted in place. He assumed another enchantment was to blame.
Well, maybe he had the countermagic for that one. He opened another of Burgell's vials and poured a quantity of viscous blue fluid on each of the hinges. Brewed by one of the outlaw community's more capable alchemists, the oil wasn't merely slippery. Rather, according to the gnome, it embodied the fundamental idea of slipperiness. Aeron wasn't sure what that really meant, and he had a hunch it might just be impressive-sounding mumbo jumbo, but he knew from personal experience that the lubricant was slick enough to unstick almost anything.
He resumed his assault on the hinges. The component parts seemed to loosen grudgingly, by infinitesimal degrees, only to tighten back up as soon as he released pressure from them. At first, in the uncertain light, he wasn't sure, but eventually he saw that that was exactly what was happening. like living creatures, the mechanisms were resisting vivisection, screwing and jamming themselves back together.
Most likely that meant he wouldn't be able to disassemble them. By loosening them, he had, however, temporarily opened a crack between the lid and bottom of the box, which until then had fit perfectly together. In desperation, he drew his largest Arthyn fang, a blade sturdy enough to double as a lever, shoved it into the gap, braced the coffer, and pried with all his strength.
The hinges tore with a screech of tortured steel. The two halves of the strongbox popped apart, and the thrice-damned thunderclap boomed once more, bashing him like a club. He gasped a curse, and when he succeeded in blinking the tears of pain from his vision, perceived that the coffer hadn't yet finished giving him trouble.
A vapor wafted from the interior of the box, swirled, and coalesced into a squat, dark thing. At first glance, it was vaguely toadlike, but then he made out the six stubby arms terminating in four-fingered hands and the three eyes, positioned asymmetrically and shifting around at the ends of flexible lumps. The central mass of it was either all head or all torso, depending on how one cared to look at it, with a bizarre vertical maw that opened it almost all the way down to the sexless crotch when it bared its fangs. It oriented on Aeron and charged, covering ground as fast as a man despite the seeming handicap of its stumpy legs.
Aeron scrambled backward, tried to poise his Arthyn fang to meet the threat, then realized he'd lost hold of it, the largest and most formidable of his weapons, when the final thunderclap boomed. He snatched out a throwing knife, a flat, leaf-shaped blade with a leather-wrapped handle, and hurled it. It pierced the guardian demon's flesh, but the creature kept coming.
Still retreating, Aeron flung a second dagger. Though it put out one of the apparition's eyes, that didn't stop it, either. It suddenly sprinted even faster, leaning forward so its jaws were poised to bite off the legs of its prey.
His heart pounding, Aeron made himself stand still until the last possible instant. That way, the demon would have trouble compensating when he dodged. Unless, of course, he delayed too long, in which case it would simply catch him in its spikelike teeth.
He spun to the side and stabbed with his fourth and next-to-last dagger. The demon's teeth clashed shut, missing him, and the blade rammed deep into its flank. Using his off hand, he bashed it with his cudgel.
Unfortunately, that still didn't slow it down. Pivoting, yanking the hilt of the knife from his grasp, it grabbed at his leg with its broad, stubby-fingered hands, no doubt seeking to hold him fast long enough to bring its jaws to bear. Its talons jabbed through his breeches and the skin beneath. He wrenched himself free, but he lost his balance in so doing. He reeled backward, fell on his rump, and the demon pounced on top of him.
It jaws gaped, reaching for his head. Terrified, he jammed the club between them. It served to hold them open for a moment, but the wood bowed under the pressure. In another second, it would snap.
Aeron whipped his final knife from his boot and plunged it into the demon's side. The creature thrashed, made an ugly gargling sound, and stinking slime geysered up from its maw. Its death throes broke the cudgel in two, and it slumped motionless.
Aeron dragged himself out from underneath the carcass, then sat until he stopped panting and shivering. He was used to fighting people, even if he didn't often enjoy it, but demons were another matter.
Still, he'd bested the vile thing, and it was time to see what his victory had gained him. Trying to brush away the sludge the spirit had puked onto his tunic, he strode back to the sundered halves of the broken strongbox.
His prize lay in the padded bottom section, where it fit snugly. It was a big, old-looking book bound in black.
As he reached for it, it occurred to Aeron that perhaps he still hadn't reached the end of the wards. But shadows of Mask, he'd already contended with the warning screech, the glimmering that neutralized his invisibility, spells of locking, thunderclaps, and a guardian imp. Surely even the most cautious shipper would have deemed those protections sufficient, and in any case, Aeron was simply too impatient to muck around with Burgell's tools and powders any longer. He picked up the book, and nothing disastrous happened as a result.
The tome had a title embossed on the cover and spine with a few flecks of gold leaf still clinging to the letters, but since Aeron couldn't read, that was no help. His father had sometimes encouraged him to learn, but it had always seemed like a lot of effort for a minimal return.
His best guess was that he'd stolen a wizard's grimoire, for what other kind of book could be valuable enough to warrant such elaborate defenses? But he'd handled a couple of those in his time, and when he leafed through it, he didn't find the elaborate pentagrams and illustrations of mystical hand gestures he was expecting.
What he did discover were lines of text, pictures of leaves and flowers, and a hundred smells, many exquisitely sweet, faint yet still perceptible even through the musty, nose-tickling odor of aged, decaying parchment.

The dark street was narrow, and the towers crowded close on either side. Miri found it oppressive. Considering that she was comfortable in even the deepest reaches of primordial forests like the Chondalwood, with gigantic mossy trees looming all around, it was ridiculous, but true nonetheless.
Well, at least she had a patch of open sky above her head once more and hope of completing her mission without the necessity of a return to the claustrophobic confines of the Underways. In fact, if she could only ease her mind on a certain matter, she might feel better than at any time since Aeron sar Randal made off with the saddlebag.
The problem was figuring out how to broach the subject with a comrade who'd been nothing but helpful, who had, indeed, saved her life. As a general rule, Miri believed in directness, yet she had a sense that in that situation, she'd feel like an ingrate if she failed to muster a degree of tact.
"I still can't make out how you knew," she said as they hiked along.
"About Mistress Dalaeve's face?" Sefris replied.
"Yes."
"We Broken Ones can see through illusions sometimes. Open eyes are a benefit of our meditations." As they neared an intersection, Sefris pointed to a frieze of manticores decorating a crumbling wall and said, "This is where our informant told us to turn."
Miri peered around the corner, studying the path ahead. Even up in what was allegedly the law-abiding part of Oeble, it appeared to her that an absurd number of folk were skulking about in the dark, engaged in business that, were it wholly legitimate, they would have conducted by day. But none of them looked like they were lying in wait for outlanders, so she and the monastic proceeded on their way.
"But how did you know she was so worried about keeping her scars hidden that a threat to unmask her would break her will?" the ranger asked.
Sefris shrugged and replied, "It was a guess, based on what we'd heard and seen. Her reclusiveness. The dim lighting and frilly furnishings. Her taste in reading matter, and the fact that the false visage she affected was absolutely perfect, like a statue's face."
"Very clever," said Miri.
His cane tapping and bowl outstretched, a stained strip of linen tied over his eyes, a beggar meandered toward the two women. Reminded of sar Randal's disguise, Miri scowled, and the "blind" mendicant, who evidently saw her forbidding expression perfectly well, veered off.
"Thank you," Sefris said. "Yet I sense you don't wholly approve of my tactics."
"It's not that, exactly. I suppose I'm trained to fight with my hands, not by finding a person's private shame and rubbing salt in the wound. It just felt dirty, somehow."
Sefris arched an eyebrow and said, "I intended to master the wizard through the exercise of our martial skills. You stopped me."
"Because unlike the yuan-ti, who tried to enslave me, she hadn't done anything that made her fair game."
"Operating a haven for the foulest kind of outlaws and goblin-kin doesn't qualify?"
"It seems like it should," Miri said with a sigh, "doesn't it?"
"Yet you pity her." To her surprise, Miri thought she heard a trace of scorn in the monastic's generally calm, mild tone, and she wondered if it was directed at Naneetha or herself. "Consider this, then. Suppose something scarred you. Would you spend the rest of your life hiding in a hole?"
"No. It wouldn't make all that much difference to me, I suppose."
"Nor me, nor anyone who wasn't bloated with vanity to begin with. Whatever distress Mistress Dalaeve experiences is the result of her own stupidity and weakness. You and I are not to blame."
"And your deity is tender Ilmater, god of mercy," said Miri with wry incredulity.
"Whose sympathy and help are given first and foremost to the innocent and those who strive for the right like you, my friend, and the good folk who you say will benefit when we recover your stolen treasure. There. That's it, isn't it?"
The scout peered and saw that Sefris was right. Ahead and to the left were the broken foundations of two spires, like decaying stumps in a row of teeth. One tower had evidently fallen sideways, demolishing its neighbor in the course of its collapse. Imagining the catastrophe, Miri winced at the probable loss of life.
But it had happened long ago, and all those unfortunate souls were beyond her power to help. What mattered then was that if her informant, one of Oeble's apothecaries, had told the truth, Aeron sar Randal lived on the top floor of a tower three doors farther down.
Miri and Sefris stalked forward, stepping silently and gliding through the shadows. The ranger spotted a hobgoblin lurking in a recessed doorway, its cloak draped so that it half concealed the crossbow dangling in its hairy hand. She stopped and raised her hand, whereupon Sefris, too, halted instantly. Miri pointed.
"A lookout," she whispered.
"Yes, I see it now. Aeron's sentry, do you think?"
"It's possible, but it feels wrong. At the Paeraddyn, his accomplices were all human, and if I understood Naneetha correctly, he doesn't even belong to a gang himself. He might not have any partners as a general rule."
"Well, whoever it is, it's likely no friend of ours, not unless you have other allies you haven't told me about."
"No," Miri replied.
"I can't fling a chakram that far, but you can surely hit it with an arrow."
Miri reached for a shaft, then left it in the quiver.
"I can't just kill it without knowing for certain who it is or what it's doing," she said. "It might be working with the Gray Blades."
"A hobgoblin?"
"I know it seems unlikely, but Oeble is full of townsfolk the rest of the world disdains as savage marauders. Maybe some of them even spy for the law."
"What should we do, then?" Sefris asked. "Creep around to the back of the tower and look for another way in, one the watcher can't see?"
"I'll do that. You keep an eye on the hobgoblin and this approach, and hoot like an owl if you need to alert me to anything."
Sefris smiled and said, "I remind you, this isn't the wild."
"They must have a few owls," Miri replied. "Anyway, we need some sort of signal."
She started toward the alley that ran between the two buildings, and the door to Aeron's tower opened.
Several ruffians, a couple human, the others not, skulked out onto the street. The one in the lead was a tanarukk, the first of that infamous breed Miri had noticed among Oeble's motley population. Stooped and massive, curved tusks jutting from its lower jaw, it stalked along with a heavy battle-axe in one fist and a lead line in the other.
The trailing end of the rope bound the hands of a human prisoner, who hobbled as best he could with a burlap sack over his head. For a moment, Miri wondered if it was Aeron, then decided it couldn't be. The captive was excruciatingly gaunt, not lean, and carried an assortment of old scars on the exposed portions of his skin.
The hobgoblin lookout emerged from the doorway to join his comrades. Miri laid an arrow across her bow.
Sefris touched her on the arm.
"What are you doing?" she whispered.
Miri was surprised that a Broken One, sworn to help the victims of cruelty, would ask.
"I'm going to shoot an outlaw or two," the ranger replied.
"Why? We don't know this is any of our affair. The toughs and goblin-kin look villainous enough, but perhaps they have some legitimate grievance against this man."
"Then let them go to the law with their complaint. I thought that's what towns are supposed to be good for."
"How many acts of injustice and brutality have you seen since coming to Oeble?" asked Sefris. "How many chained thralls wailing that they were enslaved unlawfully? How many pimps beating their whores and bravos terrorizing shopkeepers for protection? Yet you passed on by, because you're on a mission, and if you deviated from it to right every wrong you stumbled across in this den of scoundrels, you'd never get it done."
"Maybe we don't have to close our eyes every time."
"Something about the plight of this particular wretch has stirred your sympathy, but surely your guild masters taught you that mere emotion is no reason to abandon a strategy."
"I admit, they did, but..."
Uncertain, hating Sefris a little but herself more, Miri watched the kidnappers, if that was what they were, lead their captive away.
"All right," Miri said when the street was clear, "let's get this done."
She promised herself that once it was, and she'd delivered the strongbox into the proper hands, she'd depart Oeble within the hour, never to return. Unless it was at the head of an army, to raze the filthy place.
She and Sefris scurried into the tower and on up the shadowy spiral stairs. The risers were soft, treacherous, half rotten, but they managed the climb quietly even so. On the third-floor landing, a door opened, and a halfling in a feathered hat started to emerge. He took one look at the two grim-faced human strangers striding by and retreated back inside.
The door to Aeron sar Randal's garret apartment was standing open. Miri and Sefris ascended the remaining stairs warily, then they peeked beyond the threshold. Someone had torn the flat apart. At first the exercise had likely been a search, but had included simple malicious destruction before it was through. Shards of shattered bottles littered the floor, and the varnished scraps of a broken mandolin lay in the reeking puddle of spilled wine.
No one was inside, though Miri was reasonably certain she'd seen the vandals only minutes before.
"Look," Sefris said, pointing. The light of the garret's one surviving lamp sufficed to reveal the outline of an axe scrawled in crimson chalk on the wall. "The Red Axes signed their work."
"And plainly," Miri said, "it was them we saw coming out of the tower with their prisoner. Otherwise, the coincidence is just too great. Curse us, we should have waylaid them."
"Perhaps so," the monastic replied, "but let's take a moment to think it through. Who do you think they abducted, Aeron's father?"
"Somebody dear to him, at any rate, someone they hope to trade for the box."
"Not a bad idea, and if we take the hostage from them, we can try the same thing."
Miri frowned and said, "We're not kidnappers, to hold a man prisoner and barter his life for treasure."
"Do you think the captive an innocent? My guess is that he's as wicked a knave as Aeron himself, for what bond of affection could exist between such a thief and a righteous man?"
"We can't mistreat him just on the basis of our suspicions."
"No," Sefris sighed. "Of course not. What was I thinking? I think this evil place is corrupting my judg—"
Without warning, she leaped and spun, her heel streaking at Miri's head.
Reacting out of sheer reflex, Miri bounded back out of range, and the monastic's kick missed her by an inch. The scout continued her frantic retreat, meanwhile nocking and drawing an arrow. Sefris landed in a deep crouch, one hand high and open, the other clenched into a fist and cocked at her hip.
"What is this?" Miri demanded. "Why would you attack me?"
"The arcanaloth promised you'd guide me along the path to the Bouquet," Sefris replied, "but I think you've done your part. From this point onward, your mawkish scruples and squeamishness would only get in the way. So now I'm going to kill you for daring to set yourself against the Lady of Loss."
Miri didn't understand all of that. She didn't know what an "arcanaloth" was, for example. But it was plain that Sefris was as treacherous a double-dealer as most everyone else she'd met in Oeble, and had been playing her for a fool from the start.
"I'm the one with an arrow aimed at your heart," Miri said. "If you so much as twitch, I'll let it fly. Now, you're no Broken One. Who are you?"
"Perhaps you've heard of the Monks of the Dark Moon."
Sefris's hand leaped toward her pocket and the chakram inside it. Miri released the bowstring.
The arrow flew straight, but the monastic twisted aside. The chakram whirled through the air. Miri simultaneously ducked and flailed at the ring, and by luck as much as skill, she swatted it away with her buckler. Steel clashed against steel.
Sefris pounced, too fast for even the deftest archer to ready another shaft. In desperation, Miri swung her bow like a club. The monastic caught the weapon, twirled it out of Miri's grasp, and cast it aside.
At least that took an instant, which Miri used to scramble backward once more. The retreat took her out onto the balcony, which groaned and dipped alarmingly under her weight. She also had time to snatch out her broadsword and, when Sefris lunged forward again, prompting the platform to creak and lurch, meet her with a stop cut. The robed, shaven-headed woman halted instantly, cleanly, on balance, and the attack fell short.
Smiling ever so slightly, Sefris shifted back and forth, looking for an opening. Miri felt an unaccustomed pang of fear, and struggled to quash it.
I know she's good, she thought, but the sword gives me the reach on her, and she can't dodge around too much out here. The balcony's too small.
Miri advanced, feinted to the head, and cut to the flank. Sefris ignored the false attack and swept down her arm to parry the true one. It shouldn't have worked very well. The broadsword should have chopped into her wrist, but the block incorporated a subtle spinning motion that somehow permitted her to fling the blade away and remain unscathed.
She riposted with a spring into the air and a front kick to the face. Miri swayed backward, out of harm's way, and slashed at the other woman's extended leg. She grazed the flapping hem of her robe, but that was all. Sefris touched down, spun, and caught the sword with a crescent kick. The impact tore it from Miri's grasp and sent it flying over the broken railing.
The ranger grabbed for the hilt of the dagger sheathed at her belt. Hands poised for slaughter, Sefris whirled around to face her.
Wood cracked and screamed, and the balcony swung down, the horizontal surface becoming a steep incline. The platform was pulling loose from it anchors.
Sefris turned and, nimble as a cat, clambered up the slope and into the safety of the garret. Miri tried to do the same, but scrabble as she might, she couldn't catch hold of anything to pull herself up. Her boots kicked away rotten fragments of railing, wood cracked and snapped, and she and the balcony plummeted, tumbling through empty space.

CHAPTER 9
As the crash sounded below, Sefris drew a calming breath. She hadn't feared Miri's bow or sword, but she had felt a twinge of alarm when the balcony unexpectedly gave way. The fear proved she still had a way to go before she achieved a perfect, contemptuous indifference to the well-being of all unworthy created things, herself included.
It was something to work on in her meditations, but not just then. She had to recapture the opportunity that was receding beyond her grasp. The monastic retrieved her fallen chakram, she then sprinted back down the spiral stairs.
As Sefris hurtled downward, she cast off—she wished for all time—the habits of speech and expression she'd adopted to impersonate a Broken One. The warmth and compassion of a servant of Ilmater were entirely alien to her own nature. It had taken a constant effort to counterfeit them, and she knew she hadn't managed perfectly. Still, she'd passed muster right up until the end, and that was what mattered.
When she reached ground level, she raced down the street in the direction the kidnappers and their victim had taken. She kept to the shadows as best she could, but stealth was less important than speed, and her sandals pounded the wheel-rutted earth.
Indeed, she'd nearly passed the narrow cul-de-sac before she registered the stairs at the end of it, like a well lined with steps twisting downward into the ground. When she spotted it, however, she stopped cold.
The part of Oeble that knew rain and sunlight did possess some semblance of law and order, no matter how corrupt or ineffectual, so it seemed unlikely that outlaws dragging a prisoner along would opt to continue in the streets when they could descend to the Underways instead. Sefris bounded down the narrow, unrailed steps, indifferent to the possibility of a fall. Her Dark Moon training had honed her sense of balance to such a degree that the rapid descent was no more difficult than sprinting on level ground.
The real challenge came when the stairs deposited her in a twisting tunnel, the inky darkness relieved only by the smears of phosphorescence on the walls. Peering around, she saw nothing to indicate in which direction the Red Axes had gone.
Accordingly, she listened, hoping that, since they'd returned "below," the toughs would start taunting their victim or gloating over their success. In her experience, such mindless, undisciplined behavior was typical of robbers and goblin-kin the world over.
She thought she heard catcalls and laughter echoing faintly from the right, and she hurried in that direction. She judged she was heading more or less toward the river, though the mazelike warrens were already muddling her sense of direction. She rather wished she could cast a spell of tracking or guidance to keep her on the proper course, but the simple fact was that no sorceress could master every conceivable conjuration and enchantment, and such tricks weren't a part of her repertoire.
As it turned out, she didn't need them. She rushed or skulked past various scenes of the sort the Underways provided in such abundance—a burglar selling a silk wedding dress to a dealer in such stolen commodities, ruffians and apprentices squatting in a circle throwing knucklebones, several orcs closing in on a human who'd managed to draw his dagger but looked too drunk to wield it properly—and the kidnappers came into view. Unfortunately, they still had such a lead on Sefris that she wouldn't have spotted them if that length of tunnel hadn't been unusually straight or if a brothel-keeper hadn't hung a scarlet lantern to lure patrons to the doorway of his establishment.
She loped to close the distance, meanwhile pondering the tactical parameters of her situation, not with trepidation, but simply in order to manage the coming slaughter as efficiently as possible. Her foes were many, and she was only one. They had crossbows, which could shoot their quarrels considerably farther than she could fling a chakram. The non-humans could see considerably better in the dark.
She, however, possessed her own advantages. The enemy didn't know she was trailing them. Even more importantly, the Red Axes were simply ruffians, while Sefris was an elite agent of the Lady of Loss, possessed of all the lethal skills a Dark Sister required. A single spell could thin out the toughs in short order.
Unfortunately, the drawback to that approach was that the prisoner was limping along in the midst of the outlaws, and he looked frail enough that any magic potent enough to incapacitate a half dozen bravos was likely to kill him outright. Sefris was still trying to think her way around that aspect of the problem when the folk ahead turned down a side tunnel.
Afraid of losing them, she quickened her pace yet again, but even so, she was too late. When she peeked around the bend, she found that the way dead-ended in a massive oak door reinforced with iron, more like the sallyport of a castle than any entrance to a common residence. Plainly, her quarry had passed through.
She frowned in annoyance, because though killing a group of Red Axes in the Underways would have posed certain problems, invading their fortress was likely to prove far more difficult. Then an alternative occurred to her.
She proceeded to the door. Someone watched her approach. She couldn't see the peephole or hidden sentry box, but she felt the pressure of his gaze. She knocked on the panel.
After several seconds, a gruff voice sounded through the door, "Password."
"I don't know it," she said. "I'm not one of you, but I have business with your chief."
"He's busy."
"Tell him it's about the strongbox Aeron sar Randal stole from the ranger."
For a while, there was no response to that. Then the door opened. The short passage on the other side likewise reminded Sefris of castle architecture, for it resembled a barbican, with murder holes in the ceiling and another stout door at the far end. Two ruffians, one a black-bearded man whose brawny arms writhed with tattoos, the other a naked, crouching meazel, waved her inside. The latter was another of Oeble's surprises. Sefris would have thought the stunted, green-skinned semi-aquatic brutes with their talons and webbed feet too feral and dull-witted to relate to other humanoids as anything but prey, but plainly the leader of the Red Axes had attracted at least one of the brutes into his employ.
"We're going to search you," said the tattooed man. It was the same voice Sefris had heard before.
"Here," she said, removing her chakrams and cesti from her pockets.
The ruffian frisked her anyway, fondling her in the process. It didn't bother her. During her training, her Dark Father and other teachers had systematically subjected her to ordeals compared to which a bit of lascivious groping was meaningless. The important thing was that the sentry failed to discover the various spell components secreted about her person. The confiscation of those would have diminished her capabilities far more than the surrender of her weapons.
But even though the tattooed man's impudence failed to perturb her, she memorized his face for chastisement later on. Her faith virtually required it, for as much as anything, the Lady of Loss was a goddess of revenge.
The toughs escorted her on through cellars crammed with a hodgepodge of no doubt stolen and smuggled goods, then up a flight of stairs into the living areas of what had once been a lavish mansion. In its essence, it still was, but the dirt, dust, scattered garbage, and smell of mildew marred the splendor. Eventually they reached a spacious solar on the second floor. The north wall was essentially one long window, made of genuine glass, and the expensive panes, cracked, smeared, and grimy though they were, provided a panoramic view of the Scelptar, the bridges spanning it, and the moon, her Tears, and the stars sparkling across the night sky.
The leader of the Red Axes apparently used the chamber as a lord would employ his hall, to grant audiences and issue decrees, for, his battle-axe lying across his thighs, the tanarukk lounged in a high-backed, gilded throne at the far end. A dozen of his followers loitered around in attendance, and the prisoner sprawled on the floor. Someone had pulled the sack off his head, revealing haggard, intelligent features, frightened but defiant, and an old scar around his neck.
"Bring her closer," the tanarukk growled.
The meazel gave Sefris a shove, its filthy, likely disease-bearing talons jabbing her but not quite breaking the skin.
She advanced and said, "Kesk Turnskull."
He grunted a swinish grunt and asked, "And who are you?"
"Sefris Uuthrakt."
"What do you know about the lockbox?"
"I won't bore you with the tale of everything that happened in far Ormath months ago," she said. "Let's just say I know what's in it, and I came to Oeble to acquire it."
Kesk grinned around the long, curved spikes of his tusks.
"Then you're out of luck," he said. "It's already spoken for."
"I figured you already had a buyer. I'll pay more. I can lay my hands on three hundred thousand gold pieces' worth of gems. Rubies, emeralds, diamonds, tomb jade, and ghost stones, all of the finest quality."
The lie reduced the hall to astonished, greedy silence for a moment, and then Kesk said, "I don't know you. Why should I believe in this treasure trove?"
Sefris hoped an admixture of truth would make her deception seem more plausible.
"I serve the Lady of Loss," she said. "like you Red Axes, our temple reaves plenty of wealth from those unable to defend it." She waited a beat. "Would it bother you to deal with us?"
Kesk, leering, said, "Do you know where the race of tanarukks sprang from? I'll trade with anybody, no matter what devil-goddess she worships, so long as I can turn a profit. And I'd guess that the secret strongholds of Shar, wherever they may be, do have plenty of coin. But can you prove you're one of the priestesses, or am I just supposed to take it on faith, like the existence of all these jewels you're going to give us?"
"Have you heard of the Dark Moon?"
Kesk's eyes, red and faintly luminous, like embers, narrowed.
"Of Shar's clergy," he said, "yet not. They're protectors and assassins."
Sefris inclined her head and replied, "Something like that. If you've heard of us, you know we study a certain unarmed fighting style. If I defeat a couple of your men at once, using only my empty hands, will that prove I'm who I claim to be?"
"It might," the tanarukk said, "and if they beat you down instead, well, we were already planning on some torture. We might as well question you and old Nicos at once. He can tell us where his son keeps the coffer, and you can give us the truth about all those gems. Presmer, Sewer Rat—you brought her up here, you deal with her. Orvaega, you help. You can bleed her and break her bones, but try not to kill her."
The tattooed man—Presmer, Sefris assumed—whirled off his short leather cape, dangled it in one hand, and drew his short sword with the other. The meazel—the monastic wondered if Sewer Rat was its actual name, translated into human speech, or just a nickname the other rogues had given it—simply hissed and crouched. Evidently it saw no need for any weapons other than its claws. Orvaega, a female orc, hefted a war club in both hands.
Sefris stood still as her opponents spread out to encircle her. Then, suddenly, she bellowed a battle cry, pivoted, and leaped into the air, kicking at Presmer. Startled, he recoiled, as she'd intended. She touched down, whirled, and Sewer Rat and Orvaega were lunging at her. That, too, was as she desired. She'd turned her back and feinted at Presmer to lure them in. Control what your adversaries did, and when, and you were well on the way to defeating them.
Twisting at the hips, she performed a double-arm block that bounced the war club harmlessly away. She then punched the startled Orvaega in the snout, breaking bone and knocking the orc unconscious, and shoved her into Sewer Rat, which served to knock the runtish meazel backward, spoiling its frenzied attack. Floundering out from under the dead weight of its comrade, the black-eyed creature snarled and spat.
Sefris would have rushed Sewer Rat while the meazel was still off balance and encumbered, except that she knew enough time had passed for Presmer to have returned to the fray. She turned, and he swung his cape at her face, seeking to blind her. And stun her, too, perhaps, it the garment had weights sewn into the hem. She dropped into a squat, letting the cloak fly harmlessly over her head, and she simultaneously hooked his ankle with her foot. Presmer crashed down on his back.
Sefris sensed Sewer Rat pouncing. She turned, grabbed the meazel—immobilizing its raking claws in the process—spun it through the air, and smashed it down on top of Presmer. The impact snapped bones and stunned the both of them, and Sefris's only remaining problem was resisting the impulse to go ahead and make the kills. A long, slow breath served to buttress her self-control. She inclined her head to Kesk.
"There," she said.
He gave a grudging nod. If he had any concern for the welfare of the followers she'd just mauled, she could see no sign of it in his demeanor.
"I guess you probably do belong to the Dark Moon," the tanarukk said. "It still doesn't prove you have a king's ransom in jewels to barter."
"I'll produce them when the time comes. If I don't, simply sell the book to the person who first asked you to steal it."
"The fact of the matter is, he's promised more than coin."
"Do you trust him to keep his pledges," Sefris replied, "once he has the book in hand?"
Kesk spat. The gesture left a strand of saliva, which he didn't bother to wipe away, dangling beside the base of one tusk.
He said, "I don't trust anybody much."
"Rest assured, if it's a guarantee of future help you want, or even a genuine alliance, no one can offer more than the followers of Shar. We often make common cause with others who stand against the witless laws of men."
"I'll think about it," said Kesk. "Tell me how to get in touch with you."
"I'd hoped to stay with you for the time being."
The Red Axe snorted and said, "I still don't know what to make of you, human. Until I do, I don't want you running around my house."
"But you may need me. We may need to work together to take possession of the book."
"I doubt it."
"I take it you're going to try two approaches," Sefris said. "The first will be to hope Aeron's father knows the location of the strongbox and torture the secret out of him."
"Do your worst," the old man rasped. "It won't matter. I don't know where the cursed thing is."
Sefris ignored him to stay focused on Kesk.
"The problem," she continued, "is that, as we can see from all those scars, somebody got to him before you and mangled him severely. He's fragile now, and elderly to boot. If you question him in some crude fashion, his heart is likely to stop. But a child of the Dark Moon understands the human body as a healer understands it. It's part of our secret lore. I can cause a prisoner excruciating pain without doing serious harm."
Kesk shrugged and said, "That could come in handy, I suppose."
"I can make myself just as useful if you need to trade the old man for the book. Because it may not go smoothly. Aeron may decide he'd rather be rich than regain his father. He may try to trick you. Or you may decide to deal falsely with him."
"The wretch broke our deal. I'm no longer obliged to keep any promises I give him."
"I agree, and the point is, I can help you catch him. I have my skills, and he won't know we're working together until it's too late."
The tanarukk, scowling, said, "You're not as special as you think you are, woman. We Red Axes have managed to run Oeble for years now without any help from the likes of you."
"But you haven't managed to catch Aeron sar Randal. He's still running around free with the strongbox, laughing at you."
Kesk glared and trembled. His hands clenched on the haft of his axe. For a second, Sefris wondered if she'd pushed too hard, and would have to defend herself against him and all his henchmen, too. She called the words of a spell to mind.
Then, however, he brought himself under control.
"All right, you can stay for the time being." He waved his hand at Aeron's father and added, "Let me see this light touch of yours."
Sefris smiled without having to feign satisfaction, because she'd accomplished her objective, and her new situation, dangerous though it was, afforded her several advantages. As long as she was working with the Red Axes, she wouldn't have to worry about their somehow laying hands on the book ahead of her. A gang of cutthroats could manage a prisoner more easily than could a lone monastic, and since Oeble was their city, they ought to have less trouble making contact with Aeron. When the time came, it would be challenging to snatch the prize and vanish from their midst, but she was confident of her ability to do so.
She rounded on Nicos, who, his courage notwithstanding, saw something in her manner that made him blanch. She jumped him, found the proper pressure point, and paralyzed him as she had the beggar boy.

When Aeron slipped through the door of the cramped little shop, Daelric Heldeion was at his desk, whittling a chop from a piece of pine. The paunchy scribe was primarily in the business of writing and reading documents, but he'd made a profitable sideline of providing his illiterate clientele with a means of signing their names, or in the case of the budget-minded, their initials, to a piece of parchment.
Daelric looked up, realized who'd come to call on him, and his gray eyes opened wide. In light of recent events, that was all Aeron needed to see. He whipped out a throwing knife, cocked his arm, and Daelric froze.
"Are the Red Axes watching this place?" Aeron asked. "Are you supposed to give a signal?"
"No!" Daelric said. "But Kesk's ruffians have been around hunting you. The Gray Blades, too, though they don't know who they're looking for. Why in the Binder's name are you still in town?"
"I can dodge the folk who wish me ill. I always have before."
"If you say so. I wish you'd put the knife down."
Aeron returned the weapon to its sheath and said, "You'll see it again up close if you try anything foolish."
"What would I try? I'm a scribe, not one of you cutthroats," Daelric replied. He produced a linen handkerchief and blotted the sweat on his round, pink face. "What's that muck on your tunic? I can smell the stink from over here."
"Demon gore."
Aeron advanced to the desk, its surface littered with quills, inkwells, penknives, pine shavings, a stack of parchment, and lancets for those who insisted on contracts and promissory notes signed in blood. He cleared a space, brought the black book out from under his cloak, and set it down. Daelric goggled at it.
"This is the prize everyone wants so badly?" the scribe asked.
"Yes, and I need you to read enough of it to tell me why."
The scribe rubbed his thumb and fingertips together.
Aeron sighed. He set the rest of his coin atop the desk. Daelric regarded the copper and silver pieces without enthusiasm.
"Is that all you have?" said the scribe. "If the Red Axes find out I helped you, it could mean my life."
"I'll give you more—lots more—once I sell the book. Or, if that's not good enough, I'll find somebody else to read it, and not only will you miss out on the coin, you'll never know what all the fuss was about."
Aeron knew from past dealings that the clerk possessed a healthy streak of curiosity.
"Oh, all right." Daelric ran his finger under the embossed words on the cover. "The title is The Black Bouquet..Does that mean anything to you?"
"No."
"Nor to me," Daelric said.
He opened the volume, and sweet fragrances wafted up, combined with the smell of crumbling paper. He started to read. Aeron waited for a couple minutes, until impatience got the better of him.
"Well?" he asked.
"Well," Daelric replied, "it's old."
"I could tell that much."
"The point is, languages, and our way of writing them, change over time."
Aeron frowned and said, "That sounds strange. Why would they?"
"They just do, and as a result, old books are more difficult to read than new ones. I'm having a slow time of it, but I think this one is a formulary."
"A formulary?"
"A recipe book," the scribe explained. "For making perfumes."
"That would explain all the flowery scents clinging to the pages. But... magical perfumes?"
"It doesn't seem like it."
"Then what makes it so cursed special?" Aeron asked.
"I may need to read it cover to cover to determine that."
"How long will that take?"
"A couple days, perhaps."
"Thanks anyway." Maybe Daelric was more trustworthy than Burgell—it would be nice to think so—but Aeron couldn't linger that long, nor was he such a fool as to let the book out of his possession. "I'll figure it out some other way. By the way, you haven't seen me."
"I understand," the scribe said.
"For your own sake, I hope so."
Aeron tucked the formulary back under his cloak, opened the door, checked the street for lurking cutthroats and patrolling Gray Blades, then prowled on his way.
Concerned that someone might spot him moving through the open spaces comprising Laskalar's Square, he swung wide around it and reached his own tower a few minutes later. As he climbed the rickety stairs, he was looking forward to telling his father about his adventures. Maybe Nicos had heard of The Black Bouquet.
One glimpse of the open door at the top of the steps turned eagerness to anxiety. The old man would never have left it that way. Aeron started to run, realized someone might be lying in wait inside the garret, and forced himself to proceed warily instead. It was as hard as anything he'd ever done in his life.
No one was waiting for him, Nicos included. Intruders had plainly ransacked the apartment and smashed it up as well, and scrawled a crimson battle-axe sign on the wall so he'd know who to blame.
Aeron felt stunned. He hadn't anticipated Kesk's finding his home. No enemy had ever sought it out before, even though a few friends and tradesmen knew where it was. Even if he'd expected it, he wouldn't have thought the Red Axes would hurt Nicos. The old man had done nothing to offend them, and he had in his time been a respected member of the outlaw fraternity. In the Dance, the Door, and the Hungry Haunting, the bards still told tales of his most daring thefts.
Aeron realized that up until then, his rogue's life, though perilous, had always seemed to abide by certain rules. His rivals and the law would try to interfere with him, but only up to a point. Maybe it was just luck, and his own folly, that made it feel that way, or maybe, by stealing The Black Bouquet and defying Kesk, he'd spurred his adversaries to new heights of energy and ruthlessness. But either way, he was playing a new game, one where every hand was raised against him, and no tactic was out of bounds.
Everyone was right, he thought. I should have run away when I had the chance.
Unfortunately, it was too late. He couldn't flee and leave Nicos in danger.
He noticed the empty space where the balcony had been. It was hard to imagine that the Red Axes, maliciously destructive as they'd been, had taken the trouble to break the platform loose from its anchors. It had probably fallen on its own, and Nicos had loved to lounge out there and watch the river. What if Kesk's outlaws hadn't kidnapped him after all? What if—Aeron didn't want to finish the thought. He just scrambled to the brink and peered down.
Two stories below, a Rainspan connected the tower to the roof of a small building. The balcony had smashed down on the bridge and shattered. Most of the planks had plummeted to the ground far below, but a few, along with a motionless human figure, littered the elevated pathway.
Aeron raced out of the garret and down the steps. He found the door to the Rainspan and plunged out onto the end. The bridge creaked and shifted under his weight. He couldn't remember a time when it had truly felt secure, but the impact from above had clearly weakened it.
His eyes widened in surprise. The bloody body sprawled on the Rainspan wasn't his father. It was the female ranger from whom he'd stolen the saddlebag. Her broadsword stuck up out of the walkway, so close to her head that it might have sheared a lock of her close-cropped hair. Maybe she'd had it in her hand when the balcony collapsed, and she lost her grip on it. At any rate, he could picture it tumbling on its own and striking the bridge point first a second after her, nearly piercing her face in the process.
He pushed the grisly image out of his head. What mattered was that it wasn't his father lying there. Nicos must really be in Kesk's brutal hands, and Aeron had to find a way to set him free. He started to turn away, but then he hesitated.
He told himself not to be an idiot. The scout deserved whatever misfortune came her way. She'd killed Kerridi, Gavath, and Dal.
Yet she hadn't shot Aeron, and he hadn't knifed her when he'd had the chance. What was the point of sparing her then, only to let her die later? Assuming she wasn't dead already. From where he stood, he couldn't tell.
Maybe she'd watched the Red Axes abduct Nicos. Maybe she could tell Aeron something he needed to know.
His reasons for intervening felt like mere excuses, unconvincing even to himself. Yet, witless though it was, he'd feel base and vile if he simply walked away. He set the book down, and took a cautious step toward her, and the Rainspan squealed and shuddered. He froze.
"Scout," he said, "if you're alive, you have to let me know. Otherwise, I'm not coming out there."
She didn't respond. That was it, then. Maybe she was only unconscious, not dead, but all things considered, it would be stupid to risk his own neck to find out.
Or so he told himself. Then he crept forward anyway.
He moved slowly, setting his feet down as softly as he ever had slinking toward the jewelry box on a lady's vanity with the woman and her husband snoring in bed just a few feet away. Despite his caution, the Rainspan snarled and jerked.
It didn't crumble away beneath him, however, and in time he reached the woman. He stooped, cupped his hand over her nose and mouth, and felt the brush of her exhalation. She was alive.
Aeron guessed that meant he wasn't a complete fool. Maybe three quarters' worth.
"Ranger," he said, "wake up."
He gave her a little shake, then pinched her cheek hard. No matter what he did, she wouldn't stir.
"Wonderful," he said.
He lifted the guide in his arms. The damaged bridge had protested simply at supporting him. The weight of two people concentrated in a single spot made it rasp and buck repeatedly. The jerking grew increasingly violent, and the snapping and grinding, louder.
Aeron's heart hammered. His mouth was dry. He felt an almost ungovernable urge to scramble off the walkway as quickly as he could, but he forced himself to proceed as cautiously as before, until finally he reached the safety of the shelf to which the Rainspan was attached.
He set the archer down, wiped at the sweat on his face, and panted until he caught his breath. Then he searched her.
Her sword was stuck out on the bridge, and her bow presumably lay somewhere in the street below. She still had a dirk, a buckler, and some arrows in her quiver, however, all of which he tossed beyond her reach. She certainly seemed severely injured, but he was no healer. He wanted to make certain she didn't suddenly rouse and stick something sharp in him or brain him with the shield.
Next he went after her coin. Like many folk in Oeble, she carried a few coins in the pigskin purse on her belt, but more in an interior pocket of her leather armor. When he relieved her of her gold and saw just what a tidy sum it was, he grinned. At least he was back in funds again.
He stuffed The Black Bouquet under his tunic. Big as it was, it rode uncomfortably there, but he needed both hands. Though someone had once told him an injured person shouldn't be moved any more than necessary, he couldn't leave the ranger there. He had to take her someplace where she could be helped.
He wrapped her in her cloak in what he recognized was a rather pitiable attempt to disguise the nature of the peculiar burden he proposed to carry through the streets. He tugged his hood as far forward as it would go, to shadow his features, then he picked her up, carried her down the stairs, and out of the tower.
He was fit and she was slender, but the past couple days had been strenuous, and his arms and back soon started to ache. He was pondering the advisability of draping her over his shoulder when someone whistled in the darkness up ahead. A moment later, a similar series of shrill notes warbled from behind. Aeron couldn't understand the signals—as far as he knew, no outsider could—but he recognized the distinctive signature of Whistlers calling to one another. The first one trilled again. It sounded closer. The gang member was evidently heading down the street.
Aeron could have dashed for the mouth of an alleyway, but not quickly enough, not encumbered with the ranger. He considered dumping her, but even if no one molested her, there was no guarantee that anybody would help her, either, and he simply couldn't bring himself to do it. He could also try relying on his cowl to conceal his identity, but he doubted it would do the job, not if the Whistler was actually hunting him and passed close by.
That meant his best option was to hide. He carried the scout into a shadowy doorway and hunkered down. He drew a throwing knife in case he did have to fight, and stayed motionless thereafter.
A pair of bravos, both human, came into view. The cleanshaven one swaggered and sneered as, Aeron assumed, bullies the world over were wont to do. The one with the long, drooping mustache looked bored.
They glanced this way and that, plainly searching for someone or something. The man with the mustache peered straight at Aeron, but then turned indifferently away. The fugitive slumped with relief, and the ranger twitched and groaned.
He frantically tried to clap his hand over her mouth. It took him a second to find it inside the muffling cloak. Meanwhile, he waited to see if the Whistlers had heard her.
No, evidently not, for they wandered on down the street. Once they were gone, and his nerves left off jangling, he checked on the guide. She was still unconscious. She'd moaned in her sleep, if "sleep" was the proper word for her condition.
"You're too much trouble," he told her. "I earned every bit of your stinking gold." He wrapped her up again and carried her onward.
The priests of Ilmater maintained a house of healing on the thoroughfare called the Rolling Shields. Someone had painted the god's emblem, a pair of white hands bound with red rope, on the door, where the lamplight illuminated it. A scarlet bell pull hung beside the sigil, but with his hands full, Aeron found it easier simply to kick the panel until a stocky young acolyte with bloodstained sleeves opened it. The smells of astringent soap, incense, and sickness drifted out from inside.
"I have an injured woman here," Aeron said. "I'll pay for a private room and the best care you can give her."
"Everyone receives the best care we can give, no matter the size of the donation," the novice said stiffly.
Still, he led Aeron past the public wards with their double rows of cots to a chamber with a single bed in it. Aeron set the scout down, and the acolyte disappeared. A senior priest, scrawny, pale, and grizzled, appeared a minute later. He gave Aeron a curt nod, then proceeded to examine his patient. Eventually he rested his fingertips against her head and murmured an incantation. Pale light shone around them both, as if they were celestial beings possessed of halos. Bone clicked inside the guide's body. Aeron assumed it was knitting itself back together, but even so, the noise set his teeth on edge.
"How is she?" he asked.
"She was gravely injured," said the priest, "but she'll mend."
"Quickly, I imagine, since you used a spell on her."
"I'll be using more, but even so, it may be tomorrow or even the next day before she regains consciousness."
"Piss and dung," Aeron muttered.
He couldn't wait that long to set about the task of freeing his father, which meant he was likely going to have to proceed without the benefit of whatever information the ranger could give him. Oh, well, he doubted she actually had anything critical to say. He produced a handful of her gold.
"Take good care of her," Aeron told the priest, "and please, don't tell anyone she's here. There are people who want to hurt her."
That last could well be true, if the Red Axes knew she'd been poking around, and had decided they didn't like it.
"What about you?" he priest asked. "You're bruised and battered. You look like you could use a chirurgeon's attention yourself."
It occurred to Aeron that he ought to conserve his coin, but he decided, to the Abyss with it. He definitely could use some relief for his aches and pains, and a safe—well, as safe as anywhere in Oeble—refuge in which to rest. He scooped out more coins.
"You're right," he said. "In fact, I'd like to stay for a while myself. You can drag a cot or pallet in here, and if you can lay hands on a fresh shirt and tunic, I'd be grateful for those as well."

CHAPTER 10
Kesk disliked being awake before mid-afternoon. He disliked Slarvyn's Sword, too, even though the food was good and the decor—an eclectic collection of weapons, suits of armor, and the skulls and preserved carcasses of ferocious beasts—was to his taste. The problem with the dining club was the gauzy-winged sprites flitting about to maintain order. It rankled that the tiny fey, by wielding the slender wands with which the proprietor had equipped them, could paralyze even a tanarukk with a single burst of magic.
So, all in all, Kesk was in a foul mood, which soured still further when Aeron sat down opposite him. He quivered with the urge to leap up and swing his axe. The sprites would never stop him in time. But, unfortunately, such a tactic was unlikely to gain him the book, so he controlled himself.
"You're late," he growled.
"I had to look the place over," Aeron said, "to make sure you came alone."
From his calm demeanor, no one would have guessed he feared for his father's life, but Kesk thought that was a bluff and that the facade would crack soon enough.
"I did as the urchin you sent told me to do," said the tanarukk. "Where's the box?"
"The Black Bouquet, you mean."
Kesk sighed and said, "So you got it open."
"Yes, and now I'm ready to sell it. I was thinking Imrys Skaltahar might be interested. He has enough coin to pay a fair price, and he's so well established that he's one of the few people who doesn't need to fear you. Half of your own operations would fall apart if he wasn't involved."
Denied the satisfaction of an axe stroke, Kesk riposted with mockery of his own, "Let's not be hasty. Skaltahar can't give you your father back. Only I can do that, and I will, if we can come to an arrangement. For now, here's a little bit of him, as a show of good faith." He tossed a small bundle onto the tabletop. "Go on, look at it."
His hands trembling almost imperceptibly, Aeron unrolled the bloody rag to reveal the severed finger inside.
"You piece of filth."
"What did you think we were going to do to him," Kesk replied, "after you betrayed me?"
"He had no part in it."
"I couldn't be sure of that until we questioned him. Anyway, I needed a stick to beat you with, and, lucky him, he's it. Really, a chopped finger is the least of it. We've kept him screaming ever since we caught him. Nobody in the house can get any sleep. We're going to go right on torturing him, too, and snipping pieces off, until you hand over the book."
Aeron sat silently for a few heartbeats, then said, "I have to get something out of this."
"You get Nicos back."
"Yes, and that's as it must be. I love him. But... he's old and sick. He might not survive much longer in any case. I've got my whole life in front of me, and if I can live it as a rich man, I'm not going to let the chance slip away. Back in the water gate, we agreed on a new price."
"Back in the water gate, I didn't have Nicos."
"I'm telling you, he's not enough."
It irked Kesk even to give the appearance of yielding, but he felt that, all things considered, further resistance was a waste of time and effort.
"All right, damn you. You'll get the coin and poor old Papa, too."
"And peace thereafter. Give me your vow that you and the Red Axes won't hold a grudge."
"I swear by He Who Never Sleeps," Kesk said with a sneer, "and the Horde Leader that we won't hold this against you. But you'll run afoul of us again, and probably sooner rather than later. When that happens, I'll have your skull to make me a goblet."
"We'll see."
"So we will. Bring the book to my house. You have until sunset, and—"
Aeron snorted, then said, "Do you think I'm stupid enough to walk into the dragon's cave? Call me timid, but I have a hunch I wouldn't come out again. Come midnight, put my father and the coin on board that pleasure barge of yours. Row out under the central span of the Arch of Gargoyles and drop anchor. If I see any of your henchmen on the bridge, or any bows, slings, or javelins on the boat, then you won't see me."
"Agreed."
"Then we're done," Aeron said as he rose.
Kesk leered and said, "You're forgetting the finger. Don't you want it? If not, maybe I'll have the cook fry it up."
The human gave him a level stare, then, plainly thinking better of whatever it was he wanted to do or say, he turned away in a swirl of gray cape. Kesk watched, interested to see how Aeron would exit. Obviously, the thief had chosen the dining club because there were so many ways in and out. It was accessible through the Underways, at street level, and via Rainspans. It would be hard for even the most determined gang to lay a trap along every route.
Kesk hadn't tried. The trap, such as it was, was sitting just a few tables away, sipping tea, her cowl pulled up to cover her shaved scalp.
Kesk didn't know what to make of Dark Sister Sefris. He certainly didn't trust her, any more than he would have trusted anyone who professed allegiance to Shar. Humans and dwarves called his own gods, the deities of the orc pantheon, evil, but in fact, they were simply powers who granted their worshipers strength, plunder, and pleasure, the things every sensible person wanted. In contrast, the Lady of Loss, from what the tanarukk vaguely understood, sought the destruction of the entire world, her own followers included. Only a lunatic would pledge himself to a patron such as that.
Still, Sefris plainly did have useful talents, exactly as she'd claimed, and just as importantly, Aeron had no idea who she was. With luck, she could deal with him, Kesk would deal with her, and he could acquire the fortune in gems—if it even existed—either by trading honestly or cheating. Cheating, most likely. If he murdered the monastic, he could follow through on his deal with his original partner, and make that much more coin. Maybe even one day control all the illegal activity in Oeble, entirely unhindered by the Gray Blades, assuming he could trust the little weasel that far.
When he thought about it that way, it seemed as if a splendid future lay in store, but the complexity of the current situation irked him. It almost made him wish he'd told Aeron the truth from the start. Maybe if he had, the job would be over already.
The funny thing was, he wasn't even sure why he'd withheld so much information. To avoid scaring Aeron off, or shave his fee? Possibly. That was what he'd told himself, but he suspected he'd really done it out of spite, simply because he didn't like the human. If so, the impulse had worked against him. But in general, it was his determination never to forget a slight or injury, to do his foes a bad turn at every opportunity, which had made him the most powerful chieftain in Oeble's underworld, so he supposed it was an acceptable trade off.
Aeron climbed the stairs to the second floor. Unless he was planning to double back down again, he was headed for the Rainspans. Sefris took a final sip of tea, laid a silver piece on her table, and rose to follow.

Sefris knew any number of tricks for tailing a man without being spotted. More valuable than any technique, however, was the instinct that warned her when her quarry was going to look around. When Aeron reached the door, she sensed it was about to happen.
Fortunately, the upper stories of Slarvyn's Sword, like the ground floor, were crammed with decorations selected to please the sensibilities of warriors, adventurers, and those who enjoyed imagining themselves in such roles. She sidestepped behind the stuffed body of a peryton. The trophy was a fine specimen, its aquiline body more than eight feet long, and the antlers curving forward from its purple, staglike head, sprouting eight points each. It smelled faintly of some bitter substance the taxidermist had used to preserve it.
One of the sprites, a blue-skinned grig with the antennae and long, folded legs of a cricket, swooped in front of her and hovered. Evidently it had noticed her ducking into hiding, while she, intent on Aeron, had missed spotting it. It pointed its rune-carved wooden wand at her face.
She was reasonably certain she could swat it out of the air before it could speak the word that triggered the weapon, but perhaps not without attracting the hostile attention of its fellows.
"I'm not going to cause any trouble in here," she said, keeping her voice low. "What happens outside is no concern of yours."
The grig regarded her for another moment, then gave a curt nod and flew away. In other places, the fey had a reputation for fighting "evil," but it seemed that in Oeble, even they thought twice about meddling in affairs that were none of their business.
Sefris stepped from behind the peryton. Aeron was gone. Through the door, presumably, though if he was as wily as his reputation indicated, maybe not. She strode to it and cracked it open.
It was all right. There he was, moving down the Rainspan. It wasn't necessarily the escape route Sefris would have chosen. If someone was chasing you, you could only flee in one direction. But by the same token, you only had to keep an eye out for foes straight ahead or directly behind.
Which meant Sefris couldn't afford to look like an enemy. She let him get a few paces farther ahead, then ambled out into the sunlight, gawking like a rustic to whom the towers and elevated pathways were a marvel.
At best, the pretence would fool Aeron for a little while. If he kept a sharp eye out, started and stopped, and doubled back as she expected him to, he was bound to mark her eventually. Her objective was to close to striking range before that happened, then drop him.
He paused as if to admire the view. She knew it would seem too much of a coincidence if she abruptly did the same, so she kept on strolling. Once she was close enough, her nerves fairly sang with the urge to strike him. Alas, other people were nearby. In all likelihood, it would be easy enough to kill them if they were so foolish as to intervene, but it was more sensible to be patient and wait until she and her prey were alone. She passed on by.
At the end of the bridge, steps twisted up and down around the outside of a spire built of crumbling brick, and a door led into the interior. She had no way to predict which way Aeron would choose, and therefore climbed to the start of another rickety Rainspan a story higher. At least from that vantage point, she could count on seeing where he went.
As he neared the tower, she reflected that she could spin a chakram down and hit him. She had a perfect shot, and the folk with whom they'd shared the bridge were entering Slarvyn's Sword. The only thing that deterred her was that the razor-edged rings were made for maiming and killing, not simply stunning a man helpless. Despite her skill, she might conceivably hurt Aeron so severely that he wouldn't be able to reveal the location of the book.
A spell, however, was a different matter. She plucked a pinch of sand from her pocket, tossed it into the air, and murmured the charm that would put a victim, or even several, to sleep.
A dimness seethed about her, the Shadow Weave manifesting itself even in the midst of the bright sunlight. Power whispered. But Aeron kept right on walking. He had a strong spirit, or was merely lucky, for somehow he'd resisted the spell, probably without ever even realizing he was under magical attack.
Well, she'd get him next time. When he reached the tower, he started down around the outside, in a moment disappearing around the curve of the rounded wall. As she headed after him, she saw a shaggy-headed ruffian skulk from the dining club. She assumed it was her own shadow. Kesk lacked subtlety, but had sense enough to try to ensure that she wouldn't get hold of The Black Bouquet and vanish.
The Red Axe—or Whistler, or member of some other gang beholden to the tanarukk—was of no importance at the moment. Sefris would kill or evade him when the time came. She had to keep up with Aeron, and she hurried down the side of the tower, knowing that until he came into view below her, he couldn't see her, either.
The problem was that he never did appear, not on the steps or on the ground underneath, either, and by the time Sefris reached the second story, she realized what was wrong. He'd noticed her magic after all, and was trying to shake her off his trail.
How, though? Had he sprinted to the ground and concealed himself? It was possible, but she hadn't heard his running footsteps slapping on the steps. It seemed more likely that he'd slipped through one of the doors leading into the tower.
She did the same, and found herself on a landing lined with doors. Interior staircases zigzagged up and down. Which way?
She was grimly aware that he could have gone anywhere. But a sorceress learned to heed her intuition, and hers told her he'd scurried upward, doubling back to the Rainspans. She dashed in that direction.
She threw open the door that led to the bridge she'd crossed a minute before. Kesk's minion was in the middle of it.
"Did you see where Aeron went?" she snapped.
He gaped at her, evidently amazed that she'd picked up on who he was and manifestly useless.
She raced on up the inside of the tower and plunged through the exit to the higher of the two Rainspans. Aeron sar Randal was scurrying along it. When he heard the door bang against the wall, he turned, saw her, and like-wise looked surprised, in his case surprised that she was still on his track and catching up so quickly. He shouldn't have been. Her training enabled her to run faster than any common thief.
Nobody else was on the bridge to deter her from attacking. She charged, and Aeron threw a dagger at her. It flew straight and true, and without breaking stride, she batted it out of the air.
The thief hurled a second knife. She ducked it. He spun, ran, reached the end of the Rainspan, and sprinted on down the long axis of a clay-tiled gable-and-valley roof, which the builders had made flat to create a narrow walkway. At the far end was the top of a spiral staircase that presumably corkscrewed all the way down to the ground.
Not that it mattered where it ended. Aeron wouldn't make it that far before she overtook him. Evidently he realized it, because he spun around to face her and reached under his cloak. Grabbing for another weapon, she supposed.
But she was wrong. He brought out The Black Bouquet itself. He'd carried the volume to his meeting with Kesk, the Dark Goddess alone knew why. He heaved it away, at right angles to the path. It thumped on the tiles and slid on down the steep pitch of the roof.
Sefris leaped off the bridge and dashed after The Black Bouquet, intent on intercepting it before it slid over the edge. If the old, crumbling book fell to the ground below, the impact could damage it severely.
She dived for it at the last possible second, indifferent to the fact that by so doing, she was also flinging herself toward the drop-off. She grabbed the tome, somersaulted to the very brink, and stamped down hard. The action shattered clay tiles, countered her momentum, and kept it from tumbling her off the edge.
She felt a swell of satisfaction, which ended abruptly when she took a good look at her prize. Viewed up close, it was a little too small and didn't have a title embossed on the front cover. It wasn't the perfumer's formulary after all, just a decoy Aeron had procured in case he needed a diversion.
She spun around. The ridge walkway was clear. The thief had disappeared, but where?
As before, Sefris could think of several possibilities, but she knew that at that point, in Aeron's place, she would have tried to reach the ground as quickly as possible, which meant he'd bolted down the stairs. She could use them herself, but despite her skills, would waste precious seconds clambering back up the slanted roof. It would be far quicker to descend via the controlled plummet she'd learned during her training.
She swung herself off the brink and dropped, grabbing at protrusions and depressions, the merest unevenness sometimes, in the timber wall with its flaking white paint. Many of these handholds could never have borne her full weight, but even so, the fleeting contacts served to slow her down a little.
She landed in a snowy flurry of dislodged paint chips, executed a shoulder roll, and vaulted to her feet uninjured. The gable-and-valley configuration of the roof existed at street level as well, which was to say the whole building was cross-shaped, and positioned behind one of the projecting arms, she could no longer see the spiral steps.
She dashed around the structure until they came into view. Her quarry didn't. Assuming she'd correctly guessed his intentions, he'd already made it down to the teeming street, where a good many humans, orcs, goblins, halflings, and gnomes were bustling about.
She pivoted, peering into the crowd, and abruptly spotted a flash of copper in the bright, warm autumn sunlight. Aeron had pulled up his cowl to cover his red hair, but when he glanced back, no doubt checking to see if she was still on his trail, it didn't quite hide his goatee. The thief was striding toward a staircase that, at first glance, looked like it led down into someone's cellar, but which she suspected was actually an entrance to the Underways.
She didn't want him to reach the steps. He probably could elude her down in the tunnels. She couldn't hit him with a chakram, not with so many people milling around between them, but her magic might work, and at that point, she didn't care who saw. If anyone took exception to her actions, she'd deal with him.
She gestured, and the shadow of a brown-and-white horse standing in the traces of a parked hay wagon lengthened and deformed into a tentacle, which then reared from the ground. The animal whinnied and shied, and people nearby cried out in alarm. Aeron turned, saw the length of darkness lashing in his direction, and tried to dodge. He wasn't quite quick enough. The tentacle spun around him and held him fast. He thrashed, struggling to squirm free. Agile as he was, with that skinny frame, he might actually do it, but it wouldn't save him. By that time, Sefris would have closed to striking distance. She raced forward.
Broadsword in hand, a Gray Blade scrambled out of the crowd to bar her path. With his slender frame, ivory skin, and vivid green eyes, he looked as if he might possess some elf blood.
"Hold it!" he said. "I saw you ca—"
Sefris drove her stiffened fingers at the half-elf's solar plexus. He had excellent reflexes. He jumped back in time and brought his round target shield up to block. His sword leaped in a head cut. She shifted in so close that the stroke fell harmlessly behind her. Sefris rammed the heel of her palm into his jaw, snapped his neck, and raced on toward Aeron.
Maddeningly, a second Gray Blade—middle-aged, stocky, and entirely human—lunged at her. Apparently he'd been hurrying toward Aeron and the tentacle, but had spied his partner's fate and turned back around to avenge him. His sword point streaked at her face. She sought to deflect it with a press, and avoiding the block, it dipped down to threaten her midsection. She had to retreat a step and twist at the hips to keep it from piercing her guts.
She gave him a roundhouse kick to the knee. Bone snapped, and he fell down. She stamped on his chest, breaking ribs and rupturing his heart.
She ran on. People scurried to get out of her way, which afforded her a good view of the conjured tentacle. It writhed and shifted from side to side, clenching and unclenching, its coils empty. The Gray Blades had delayed her long enough for Aeron to wriggle free.
She dashed down the steps into the Underways, cast uselessly about, chose a direction at random, and sprinted that way. After she passed a couple intersections, she realized further pursuit was futile. The thief had escaped her for the time being.
But not forever. She'd eavesdropped on Aeron's conversation with Kesk, and was convinced that the tanarukk was right about his fellow rogue: The redheaded thief would keep on trying to liberate his father. That meant she'd have another chance to catch him, and surely he couldn't be so lucky twice in a row.