When Miri felt able, she said, “Better let me take a look at that shoulder.”
“All right.”
For once, Aeron’s voice was dull, not the energetic, sometimes humorous tone to which she’d become accustomed. She ripped the rent in his bloodstained sleeve wider to get a better look at the gash.
“You’re lucky,” said the ranger. “It’s shallow. If you think it’s unsafe to go back to Ilmater’s house, some salve from an apothecary and a bandage will probably take care of it. If need be, I can put a couple stitches in.”
“Lucky….”
From the bitterness in his voice, Miri realized he wasn’t talking about the cut.
“I’m sorry the plan didn’t work,” she said. “It nearly did. If the wizard hadn’t been there …”
“Even though he was,” Aeron said, “we almost saved my father. Another couple paces, and I would have picked him up in my arms. Then the fog came, and it panicked us. We turned tail and left him lying there.”
“We didn’t have a choice.”
“You can’t be sure of that. Maybe we still could have gotten him out. We’ll never know, because you said we had to run, and I listened.”
She stared at him, then said, “So it’s all the fault of my cowardice that things didn’t work out.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Not in so many words, but … Listen, when we fight your fellow cutthroats, all they do is try to club you unconscious, or cut a leg out from under you. They’re out to kill me. So I’ll be damned if I understand where you find the gall to question my courage.”
“I said we both panicked. I didn’t mean to put it all off on you.”
“I’m a scout of the Red Hart Guild,” Miri replied. “I have honor. You’re a common sneak thief. You don’t. Be thankful I’m willing to dirty my …”
She felt the clench in her muscles and heard the shrillness in her voice. She took a long breath.
“Never mind,” Miri continued. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m frustrated, too.”
For a few heartbeats, Aeron just stared out at the night as if struggling to swallow his own anger.
Eventually he said, “For all we know, he could be dead now.”
“I don’t think the mist would kill him,” Miri replied, “and I didn’t see any fresh blood on him when he was lying on the floor. I think the one Red Axe just knocked him out with the flat of his blade, or his fist.”
“That could have been enough to kill him, sickly as he is. Or maybe, after what happened, the Axes decided I’m never going to trade the book, and they stuck a knife in him.”
“I doubt the wizard would let them do anything rash,” said the ranger. “He strikes me as too canny.”
She reached out to give Aeron a reassuring pat on the shoulder, but he irritably twisted away from her touch.
“You don’t know that, either,” he said. “All we do know is that we wasted our one chance to sneak into Kesk’s house. We’ll never get inside a second time.”
“Then it’s time to try it my way, isn’t it? Seek help from the Bouquet’s rightful owner, and the authorities.”
Aeron scowled and said, “I explained to you why that wouldn’t work.”
Despite herself, Miri felt her own hostility welling up anew.
“While painting our faces green like clowns in a pageant works brilliantly,” she said. “I think you won’t turn to the law just because it is the law. It would tarnish this notion you have of yourself as some sort of master rogue, and you couldn’t bear that. You’d rather let your father die.”
“That isn’t true. It just wouldn’t help.”
“What is the answer, then?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Shut your mouth for a while, and maybe something will come to me.”
Kesk’s mood was already sour from several fruitless hours of hunting Aeron through the Underways, and it curdled into cold fury as soon as he tramped into the solar and saw his henchmen. It was obvious from the way they quailed from his gaze, as much as their fresh splints and bandages and the sooty fire damage around the far doorway, that some new fiasco had occurred in his absence.
Ambling closer, his cane tapping the floor, the wizard took it upon himself to explain how Aeron and a female accomplice had entered the house in disguise to spirit Nicos away.
“We would have captured them,” the wizard added, “except that Dark Sister Sefris burst in to snatch them away. Evidently she’d been tracking them or something. While we all fought over Master sar Randal and his ally, they escaped. It’s rather ironic when you think about it.”
Kesk trembled. At that moment, he would dearly have loved to split the rich man’s masked face with his axe.
“You think it’s funny, do you?” the tanarukk asked.
“Mildly,” the wizard replied. “Now, don’t glare at me like that. Aeron didn’t rescue his father, which means that except for a few casualties, which you, with your horde of underlings, can readily afford, we’re no worse off than before.”
“And no better.”
What truly infuriated Kesk wasn’t the wear and tear on his henchmen. Those too weak to defend themselves deserved whatever they got. What nettled him was that, by arranging the raids on his various enterprises, Aeron had successfully concealed his true intentions. In other words, made a fool of him. Kesk wondered which of his other foes or rivals were actually responsible for the harassment his operation had suffered earlier in the evening, at the same time the redheaded thief was invading his home. He vowed to find out, and pay them back triple, but supposed it would have to wait until he settled the maddening business with the black book.
“If,” the wizard said, “Aeron could be convinced we’ll make a fair trade, give him Nicos and a reasonable amount of coin, too, and not come after either of them later, don’t you think he’d agree to it?”
Across the room, bound to his chair, Nicos laughed feebly until an orc silenced him with a slap.
“I suppose that is the proper response to my suggestion,” sighed the small man. “Aeron would have to be mad to trust us at this point. Your malice and bungling saw to that.”
Kesk glared.
“Get it straight once and for all,” the tanarukk grumbled. “I’m not your lackey, and I don’t take orders from you. I did what I thought best.”
“And look how far it got us.”
“As far as your fumble-fingered wizardry and magical toys.”
“‘Toys’ you extorted from me after I spent years collecting them,” the mage countered. “I wouldn’t care if it had done some good. But even equipped with enchanted gear, your Red Axes can’t lay their hands on one lone-wolf cutpurse. Instead, he’s made you look like a dunce in front of the entire city.”
Kesk had been thinking something similar himself, which only made the magician’s taunt rankle all the more. For a second, he was so angry that it choked off the words in his throat, and the merchant saw something in his face that made the eyes above the lemister scarf widen in alarm.
“Well,” gritted Kesk when he was able, “I’m not going to look foolish for much longer. Tomorrow I’m going to put an end to this business.”
“How?”
“My people will spread the word that if Aeron doesn’t hand over what I want by midnight, I’ll chop his father’s head off and dump the sundered pieces in Laskalar’s Square.”
The wizard shrugged and said, “You’ve been threatening Nicos’s welfare right along. How will this be any different?”
“Because of the deadline, my promise to display the corpse to the whole city, and the fact that my men will repeat it to every robber, slaver, and whore they can find. Aeron will know I have to follow through. Otherwise, I’ll lose respect.”
The magician cocked his head and asked, “You mean, if things don’t work out as planned, you actually mean to do it?”
“Yes.”
“Then we lose our hold on Aeron, don’t we? With Nicos slain, what’s to stop
him from fleeing Oeble with The Black Bouquet still in his possession?”
“Nothing, I guess. At least I’ll be rid of him,” Kesk replied, “and you.”
“Without me for a partner, you’ll never rise any higher than you have already.”
Kesk sneered and said, “Maybe it doesn’t look like it to you, but since the day I first came to Oeble, with nothing but this axe to help me carve out a life, I’ve climbed pretty high already. If I never go any farther, that will be all right.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Oh, yes, I do, and you can’t talk me out of it. So why don’t you turn that twisty mind to yours to the task of laying a trap that Aeron can’t possibly escape?”
Aeron kept quickening his pace despite the fact that even under normal circumstances, it could be dangerous to race headlong through the Underways. You could blunder into a strong-arm robber lying in wait for easy prey or intrude on plotters willing to kill to keep their palavering a secret.
Thus, whenever he caught himself, he forced himself to slow down, but it was hard. After fleeing Kesk’s mansion, he and Miri had slept aboard an unattended skiff moored at one of the docks. Restless, anguished over their failure to rescue Nicos, he woke first and rose to prowl the streets. It was then that he overheard a team of thieves, two pickpockets, a bag man, and a lookout, discussing Kesk’s well-publicized threat to murder his hostage at midnight unless Aeron gave him what he wanted. Since then, he’d felt a seething urgency that made him want to hurry every instant, whether it was sensible or not.
“Do you really think,” said Miri, striding along beside him with her bow slung over her shoulder, “our allies are likely to do more than they have already?”
“We won’t know until we ask.”
“Actually,” said the scout, “I already did ask, when we talked to Om—their chief the first time. If you recall, he said he’d snipe at the Red Axes on the sly, but not risk open war.”
Squinting against the darkness, Aeron peered down the passage. Three people stood murmuring to one another at the next intersection. He recognized one of them, and once more had to quash the impulse to rush.
“Then I’ll just have to change his mind,” the thief said.
“I tell you, visiting him again is just a waste of precious time. Let’s go to my employer.”
“We had this talk already.”
The trio ahead were good at their trade. They didn’t even glance up as Aeron and Miri drew nearer.
“We had it hours ago,” said the scout, “and you promised to come up with a new strategy. This desperate notion won’t do, and if it’s all you can think of, then we need to try things my way. Fury’s Heart, try behaving like a decent, law-abiding person for once in your life. You might like it.”
“I might like it all the way up the gallows steps.”
The loiterers were just a couple paces away. Aeron’s heartbeat quickened.
“I swear by the Forest Queen,” said Miri, “I’ll make sure you aren’t punished. My employer doesn’t care about you. He only wants his property retur—”
Aeron pivoted and threw a punch.
Miri must have seen him swing, for she reacted with the quickness of a trained warrior. She dodged, and he only struck her a glancing blow.
She sprang back and reached for the hilt of her broadsword. The problem was that, by retreating from Aeron, she’d merely shifted closer to his three confederates. The largest of them, a half-orc with a broken nose, lashed its cudgel against her back. The blow slapped her leather armor, and she lurched forward.
The other two ruffians lunged at her, bludgeons flailing. She swept her buckler in a backhand stroke that held them off long enough for her sword to clear the scabbard. She cut, the half-orc recoiled, and her blade missed its torso by a finger-length. A passerby who’d stopped to watch the show cried out in excitement.
Aeron edged in on her flank, then faked a leap into the distance. She turned and thrust, and that gave the half-orc a chance to give her another blow from behind. It knocked her to one knee, and the creature’s human partners swarmed over her. Her sword was useless at such close quarters. After a few moments of frantic struggling, they pummeled her into submission, then lashed her hands behind her back with rawhide.
“When I said you were learning to think like an Oeblaun native,” Aeron said to her, “I gave you too much credit. You told me how one fellow led you into a trap here in the tunnels, and now you’ve let exactly the same thing happen again. I don’t think Sefris will save you this time around.”
Miri glared up at him. Blood trickled from her split lip.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“You can’t help me rescue my father. Maybe if you had the rest of your precious guild behind you, but not by yourself. I gave you your chance, but you aren’t skilled or brave enough.”
“Shall we get her moving?” asked the half-orc.
“Yes,” Aeron said.
His confederates hauled Miri to her feet and relieved her of her belt pouch and remaining weapons. The half-orc shoved her to set her stumbling in the right direction.
“I’m a better fighter than you,” she said, still focused on Aeron. “I still don’t see the point of this.”
“It’s simple enough. I can’t trust Kesk to hold to any deal we make. You and I alone can’t fight all the Red Axes, or sneak into their lair a second time. So I’ve decided to save my father with gold. I’ll bribe one of the gang to smuggle him out.”
“Maybe that would work,” she said, “but …”
The half-orc gave her another push.
“Unfortunately,” Aeron said, “the Axes are all afraid of their chief, and they live pretty well already. That means it’s going to take a lot of coin to tempt one of them. More than I’ve got, and more than I can steal in the time remaining. I wouldn’t be able to sell The Black Bouquet quickly enough, either, or use the book itself as a bribe. Kesk’s cutthroats wouldn’t understand what it is or why it’s valuable any more than I did until you explained it to me.”
“But you decided what you could do,” Miri said, “is sell me.”
Aeron grinned and replied, “I found out who wanted all those yuan-ti to capture you, then asked him if he was still interested. It turned out he is, so we arranged the details.”
“Listen to me,” she said. “You don’t have to do this. If you want to try bribery, I can get the gold from my employer. I won’t even have to mention your name.”
He shook his head and told her, “I feel safer dealing with my own kind.”
“Curse you for a liar and a traitor! You have rat’s blood in your veins!”
“What did you expect?” Aeron asked. “You’re the one who said I’m just a common thief, with no notion what honor means.”
“I didn’t truly want to believe that.”
“Well, believe this,” he said. “Folk like you and me are natural enemies, you killed my friends, and even if none of that was true, I’d sell out you and a hundred like you to save my father. Look, it’s your new home.”
They marched her onward, through the entrance to Melder’s Door.
Even at that hour, when so many of Oeble’s rogues were snoring in their beds, the stone-walled common room held a motley assortment of travelers and waiters, and as usual, tiny dragons flitted everywhere. Most everyone, whether human, goblin-kin, or reptile, eyed Miri with curiosity, some with malicious amusement, and none, so far as Aeron could judge, with sympathy.
Smiling, handsomely clad in a red silk shirt and a black suede jerkin laced with scarlet cord, Melder sauntered up to inspect his prize. Miri spat at him, and a dozen of the little wyrms hurtled at her like bees defending a violated hive.
Melder raised a swarthy hand, and the dragons veered off.
“Please,” he said to Miri. “It can all be quite pleasant, if you’ll only allow it to be.”
“I’ll kill you for this,” she said, “and even if I fail, the Red Hart Guild will aveng
e me.”
“As your own experience demonstrates,” Melder said, “your friends had better stick to their forests and mountains. Oeble will eat them alive.” He looked at the half-orc. “Why don’t you lock her away, then I’ll pay you?”
The creature and its fellow kidnappers manhandled Miri across the common room. She struggled every step of the way, but with her hands bound, to no avail. She and her captors disappeared through a doorway.
“I’d like to get paid, too,” Aeron said.
“Surely,” Melder said. “Vlint?”
A hobgoblin appeared at his elbow with a clinking pigskin purse in hand.
Aeron untied the laces, lifted the flap, and stirred the coins inside with his fingertip, which afforded him a glimpse of the ones at the bottom.
“Thanks,” Aeron breathed.
“I realize,” Melder said, “that these days you have to be careful about lingering too long in any one place. But will you have a glass of something before you go?”
Aeron smiled a crooked smile and said, “I suppose I might as well celebrate. This was the first plan that’s gone off without a hitch since before I robbed the Paer.”
Sefris heard voices echoing down the tunnel, and though she couldn’t make out the muttered words, instinct warned her she had cause for caution. She cast about and spotted a notch in the wall, containing a steep flight of steps that probably linked that section of the Underways to somebody’s cellar. She silently hurried partway up the steps, above the eye level of anyone likely to pass below then crouched motionless in the narrow, unlit space.
Sure enough, two Red Axes tramped by. She recognized them from the time she’d spent among the gang, and assumed they were scouting the tunnels near Melder’s Door for the same reason she was. They’d heard the gossip that Aeron sar Randal had visited the inn to sell his former ally to the proprietor.
It seemed unlikely that Aeron was still lingering in the area, but it also seemed inexplicable that he’d made such a conspicuous display of himself in Melder’s establishment in the first place. In any case, Sefris didn’t know where else to look for him, so there she was.
The Black Bouquet Page 23
