The Black Bouquet r-2

by Richard Lee Byers

  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 t
o 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.