The Black Bouquet

by Richard Lee Byers

  “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.”

  Kesk disliked being awake before mid-afternoon. He disliked Slarvyn’s Sword, too, even though the food was good and the décor—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 i
nstinct 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 likewise 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 di
sappeared, 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.