The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask

by Jeff LaSala

  Tallis jerked open the door and ran through.

  The other dwarf approached Soneste and Jotrem with a hand axe gripped tightly in one fist. “What’s going on here?”

  Soneste pointed to the open door and looked to the dwarf. “We’re with the Justice Ministry!” she said. “Is there another way out through there?”

  “Yeah,” the mace-wielding dwarf spat, glaring at the door through which Tallis had retreated.

  She turned to Jotrem, who struggled angrily to free himself from the alchemical glue. It was a tanglefoot bag Tallis had used against him, an invention usually used to stop an opponent from running. Tallis had come prepared to elude pursuers.

  “Jotrem, make sure he doesn’t double back.” The older inquisitive looked incredulous at her words, but he was in no position to pursue the suspect. Besides, he’d only slow her down.

  Soneste vaulted the counter herself and paused at the door Tallis had taken. “Aegis, go out the front and follow around. Take him alive!”

  Without another word, Soneste dashed through the door in pursuit.

  Tallis plucked the dart-size crossbow bolt from his shoulder, cursing as the pain revisited. Drazen had been right. He did need a new disguise, something to fool anyone who knew his face. For the first time since he’d known her, Tallis couldn’t wait to see the Midwife again. He’d appreciated her services before but had never needed them for himself. Until now.

  Tallis had made his way through the back of the Bluefist, cursing all dwarves for their cynical nature. Every weapon in the back of the armory had been under lock and key, and he didn’t have time to fish around for any untended tools. He’d had to exit into the alley unarmed.

  Two blocks away, the woman had nearly caught up to him. He’d led her in circles, always just out of sight. She’d expect him to disappear into the sewers or leave the district, but that wasn’t his way. After doubling back once, she’d grown wise to his strategy. When they’d faced each other across one street, he hadn’t expected her to take aim with a miniature crossbow.

  Those little bolts hurt.

  Who was this woman traipsing around with that old wolf, Jotrem? Not a Karrn, by the sky blue of her coat or her flaxen hair, nor any freelancing inquisitive he’d seen in Korth before. Despite the irritation she presented, he wasn’t ready to confront her yet.

  If I don’t know you, we don’t deal, he thought. It was a rule. Not negotiable.

  Tallis reached a small courtyard, an intersection between the tall, utilitarian structures of the Commerce Ward. He allowed himself to pause. No sign of her yet. He might have lost her this time.

  When he’d gained the last roof, she’d started to climb as well. Even the White Lions seldom gave chase when Tallis rose above street level. It was usually a tried and true way to scrap the cats.

  Tucking the bolt into a pocket of his jacket for later examination, he considered the three narrow alleys before him. To the left, he saw the market throngs of the main avenue. In thick crowds he could lose her, but she’d stirred up the Lions during their chase and they would be looking for him there. In front of him, the street would lead directly to the House Medani enclave—even less desirable right now.

  To his right—

  A flicker of movement directly above him had Tallis diving into the right-hand alley. He looked over his shoulder and saw the young woman drop to the ground like a cat from high above, landing with only the sleight scuffle of her boots and one palm to the cobbles. In her other glove was her hand crossbow, loaded again.

  “Blunted!” he said, then rose and started away down the deadend alley.

  Soneste was accustomed to Sharn’s spires rising high overhead and its dizzying precipices yawning before her, yet somehow Korth’s towers felt more oppressive, especially in the backstreets. Their sheer walls were pressed closer together as if the city was one vast prison complex, with only a network of narrow courtyards serving as streets. Her drop from the third story had been smooth, and the hum of another of her powers faded away.

  Soneste kept her eyes on her quarry, but from her peripheral vision she saw there were a couple of citizens nearby. “Call the White Lions,” she bade as she gestured to one with her free hand, “There’s a reward. Go now!” The other hand she raised, pointing her crossbow at Tallis.

  Tallis walked backwards, facing her. She’d cornered him in an alley that extended half a block before giving way to an open sky—the edge of the Commerce Ward, which dropped in a sheer cliff forty feet above the streets of the Community Ward.

  Closer to him now, Tallis appeared younger than she’d taken him for. The haughty, almond-shaped eyes of an elf were offset by a jocular mouth and longish, sable-black hair. His ears tapered only sleightly. Even accounting for his elven blood, he was a good deal younger than Jotrem. They could not have been classmates. The older inquisitive might have been Tallis’s superior officer.

  Even as she studied him, he offered a toothy smile like a street urchin with a piece of stolen fruit. Soneste reminded herself that he’d been there at ir’Daresh’s suite. He might have been party to the murder of the ambassador, his wife, and their two children. The Justice Ministry’s records had listed several other killings over the course of his criminal career. Mostly other criminals, suspect politicians, and known Cultists of the Blood. What was he after in all this?

  Tallis was clad in black like many Karrns, but his attire was tailored like a uniform, the sign of a professional man of action who wanted no restriction to his movement. He carried no obvious weapons, but two metal rods hung from his belt, as though they were death-dealing wands and he an accomplished war-mage. But by all reports, Tallis was no spellcaster. Soneste did note a single ring on his left hand—a silvery band with a stylized dragon’s head on it. He didn’t wear a Rekkenmark ring.

  “Tallis,” she began, “in the name of King Kaius III of Karrnath—”

  “So what brings a fawn-eyed girl like you into Khorvaire’s fairest kingdom this lovely day?” Tallis gestured at the leaden sky.

  Soneste clenched her teeth for a moment. “—and King Boranel of Breland, surrender to the justice afforded you.”

  Tallis raised his eyebrows. “You came from Breland? Really? Say, do they still serve those Aundairian pastries on the rail dining carts? Glorious taste, but they run amuck in the Cogs, if you know what I mean.”

  Tallis continued his backward advance, but Soneste kept pace. She noted with satisfaction that the only door that led to the alley—the only means by which he could try another escape—was blocked up by a heavy stack of rain-soaked crates. A small, battered cart lay discarded near the alley’s far end, one wheel propped against the stone wall.

  “Not two days ago I walked the skybridges of Sharn,” she answered with a thin smile. “Breland sends more than some no-name sleuth to bring political murderers to justice.”

  Tallis smirked, but she could see the implications reach into his eyes. “I didn’t kill that man,” he said, more seriously now, “or his family.”

  “If you’re telling the truth, Tallis, then why did you run from me?”

  “I don’t know you,” he answered with a boyish grin. “A pretty girl starts to chase me with a weapon. Thrilled as I am by that, I prefer a more formal courtship.”

  Soneste rolled her eyes. Did he expect this to buy him time?

  “You know as well as I do that they just want someone to blame,” he continued. “I am apparently the only suspect? The Justice Ministry and your king are all doing an excellent job, miss.”

  “If you’re innocent of this crime,” she offered, throwing his sarcasm back at him, “perhaps you’d like to assist me in finding the real killer?”

  Tallis let out a resigned sigh. “I must decline, sadly.” He started to move past the propped cart, mere steps away from the bluff’s edge.

  Without taking her eyes away off him, Soneste drew the sleeve of her coat across the razor tip of the loaded crossbow bolt. The sealed edge of the flat pouch sewed there to
re open, freeing its contents. A thin, cobalt-colored paste now slicked the steel tip.

  Tallis froze two steps from the edge. “Poison?” He was incredulous, or he feigned it well.

  “Blue whinnis,” she said. “Just a sting, and you’ll sleep for hours.”

  Tallis licked his lips, his hands held up. “You must really like me.”

  Less than ten feet from him, Soneste knew she couldn’t miss, but his proximity to the edge made her nervous. With her free hand, she swept a stray lock of hair back from her eyes, raising her crossbow for better aim.

  “Far enough!” she shouted. Hadn’t this same man scaled the Ebonspire?

  “Sorry,” he answered with a shrug, stepping back again—

  —and dropped soundlessly over the cliff’s edge, falling out of sight.

  Soneste cursed, lunging forward and dropping her crossbow to reach for him with two hands. As she reached the edge, she saw he hadn’t fallen far at all. He clung with both hands to a pair of steel bars protruding conveniently near the cliff’s edge.

  No, not merely convenient. The two metal rods he’d worn at his belt hung in the empty air by some invisible magic, and as his body swung beneath them, they didn’t quiver at all.

  On her knees, Soneste stared down at him. “That was your cunning escape?”

  Though exerted from the maneuver, he winked back at her. She flushed, then turned away to retrieve her hand crossbow. With speed and agility that belied his slender frame, Tallis vaulted upward and reached his feet to the edge. As he did, the floating rods released and locked again, providing him the means to leverage his body up and over the edge.

  Soneste picked her crossbow up and started to turn, but Tallis was already there. A kick to her hand sent the weapon clattering against the wall. Despite the pain in her wrist, she began to draw out her rapier. Tallis grasped the blade halfway from its sheath, arresting the attempt.

  “Enough!” he grunted, lifting her light frame and slamming her back hard against the wall. The force of the blow expelled the air from her lungs, and she was unable to stop him as he pressed one of the rods into her stomach.

  The rod locked again firmly in place, pinning her against the stone. Dodging her kicks, he grasped one ankle and placed the other rod just beneath her foot. It held there, allowing her weight to settle on it. The pressure against her stomach subsided sleightly. Tallis drew a length of black cord from his left sleeve and coiled it fast around her wrists, binding them together.

  Soneste’s felt her face burn, ashamed to be so swiftly subdued. “The law will not be forgiving,” she said, struggling for air. “You are admitting your guilt.”

  “My guilt?” Tallis shook his head, then glared up at her. His face was flushed from the struggle. “Look, Miss Not Some No-Name Sleuth from Sharn, if you’d taken the rail like most folks, you might have had the time to read up on Karrnathi justice. I was guilty the moment my name made Hyran’s list as a suspect. The first poor fool you bring in will get the sword. Then everything will quiet down until the real killer kills again. Hyran means well, but politics demand retribution. Not justice.”

  Soneste stared back into his silver-gray eyes but wriggled her body slowly in an attempt to extricate herself. Tallis snapped her rapier free from its sheath then lifted the tip of the blade to her neck. “What is your name?” he asked again.

  Her heart thundered inside her, but Soneste had been in situations more perilous. She glanced down the alley and saw a few curious citizens looking on from a distance.

  “The White … Lions!” she dared to call out, her voice raw. Soneste prodded the enchanted rod at her stomach in an attempt to disengage it, a difficult feat with her hands tightly lashed.

  Tallis sighed again and angled the rapier’s tip just behind her neck. She winced as the tip grated against the stone. At the same time she felt the ribbon binding her hair fall away. With his hand, Tallis pulled the strip of blue linen away and held it before her eyes. “Call out again and I will stuff your mouth with your own pretty bow.”

  “You won’t,” she said.

  “Fine.”

  Tallis turned and tossed her rapier over the bluff’s edge. She heard it skitter against the cliff face before landing somewhere far below. That was expensive magewrought steel!

  “Dagger take you!” she oathed.

  “Your name?” Tallis asked again as he picked up her hand crossbow. The bolt had not dislodged.

  Soneste shut her eyes and composed her body, inhaling slowly. If Tallis was going to kill her, he would have done so already.

  In her mind, she pictured herself alone in a vast, empty chamber. Her mental counterpart sang a single, resonant note which rippled outward and formed a ghostly net in her hands. She cast it out in a circle around her, snaring errant emotions within its reach.

  “If you didn’t murder ir’Daresh,” Soneste asked calmly, opening her eyes and staring down at Tallis, “then who is framing you? Why were you at the Ebonspire?”

  With a mere thought, Soneste drew the mental net back within her. She saw exasperation, doubt, and fear flow out from Tallis, invisible to those without the psychic capacity to perceive it. She heard her mental song fading away, the lingering display of her power. Tallis glanced down the alley as though he, too, had heard the unearthly sound. Her fingers found a minute button at one end of the rod.

  “I don’t know,” he finally answered with a tired voice. With a click he withdrew the small bolt from the hand crossbow. He examined its tip, still glazed with the blue toxin. “Yet.”

  Soneste pressed the button and the metal rod dropped easily into her hand. She stepped to the ground to fight her way free, but Tallis immediately kicked her foot out from under her. Instead of falling, she fell into his grasp. With his arms around her body, he swept her to the ground. In the scuffle, she felt a sharp stab of pain at her wrist like the bite of an insect.

  The broken cobbles of Korth’s back streets were not gentle beneath her.

  “I didn’t kill Gamnon,” Tallis said quietly, inches from her face. “Sleep soundly, Breland’s lovely, nameless sleuth. And please don’t follow me again.”

  Almost immediately, all stimuli began to recede. Sound was muted and the gray clouds grew darker still. The only things that remained focused in her field of vision were Tallis’s eyes, resembling quicksilver so close to her own.

  “Don’t … do this …” she whispered, and started to wonder if the words were her own. Her limbs didn’t respond to her at all. “Just tell me … what …”

  She saw Tallis’s shape moving away. A darker shape was rising over her—the discarded cart, one wheel spinning uselessly as the Karrn raised its bulk over her. All light had disappeared, and even the sudden scent of waterlogged wood was fading away from her.

  Soneste felt the shame of failure as she succumbed to the poison. The last thing she could sense, in the confines of her own drowsing mind, was the raw frustration she’d seen leaking from Tallis like burning tears.

  Chapter

  TWELVE

  Propaganda

  Mol, the 9th of Sypheros, 998 YK

  Soneste woke with a start sometime later. The White Lions had found her curled up beneath the cart Tallis had placed over her body. By the time she’d opened her eyes, Jotrem had come upon the scene and was standing over her with an unreadable look on his rigid face. Aegis stood behind him, flanked by a pair of White Lions who watched him closely.

  Face flushed, Soneste refused assistance and climbed to her feet. Not only had Tallis tossed away her rapier, but she was enraged to learn that he’d taken her crysteel dagger. Though Jotrem waited for her in silence, she was too overcome with fury and shame to speak.

  It was Aegis who eventually broke the silence.

  “They detained me, Mistress,” the warforged said with an emphatic gesture at the White Lions. “I could not assist you.”

  Soneste gave the guards a scathing look but simply didn’t have the energy to berate them. The blue whinnis had been
thorough. Even now she wanted to search again for Tallis, but her body had had enough. The poison’s effects would melt away soon, but the day had already been a long one.

  She’d been so close!

  She recalled Tallis’s frustration, sorrow, regret, rage. She was certain Tallis was not the killer, had not intended the death of the ir’Daresh family at all. But she was also certain that he knew more—much more—about the situation. Finding him again was imperative. It would not be easy, given that he knew she’d be looking for him now.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered, Aegis,” she said tiredly. “He was difficult to catch, even for me.”

  Jotrem spoke up at last. “His flight is further evidence against him.”

  Soneste looked at him, incredulous. “Are you an idiot, Karrn?” Her weariness had also robbed her of inhibition. “The Ministry wants him—you want him dead for somehow wounding your pride and Host knows what else. Tallis does know something about this, yes, but he’s not the assassin. What was it you told me? Oh yes.” Soneste spoke with a stiff, Karrnathi accent. “ ‘I doubt he would hesitate to kill you, Miss Otänsin.’ Well, I’m still alive.”

  Aegis slammed his fist into his arm-buckler, an obvious expression of impatience. “Mistress, this half-elf, this Tallis. I fought with him and he defeated me. If he is not responsible for the murder, he will know who is. We must find him.”

  Soneste nodded, too flustered for more words.

  She suspected she wouldn’t find Tallis again soon—he knew she was looking for him now—so finding his residence was Soneste’s next step. It had been only a matter of speculation and inevitable deduction. He was a customer of the Bluefist of Mror, obviously drawn to the place with its ready arsenal of unusual weapons. The dwarves of the Mror Holds were famous for their interest in commerce and the gold it could bring them. They did not question their clients as long as those clients took the effort to conceal their criminal associations.