Viper's Kiss

by Lisa Smedman

  If by riverboat, he’d also have to find a way to board without Zelia seeing him.

  Two men were approaching—the sailors who had been mounting the repeating crossbows on the boat earlier. Fortunately, the snow was still falling. Screened by its mottled white curtain, Arvin stepped into the shadows at the rear of the Eelgrass Inn and watched the men enter another of the inns. He glanced at the boat they’d just come from. Of the dozen tied up to the piers, it was the only one with a guard—Arvin could see him moving on the boat’s raised stern, beside a dull red glow that must be a brazier. The guard obviously wasn’t going anywhere, which meant the riverboat had cargo loaded on board. It was the one that would sail in the morning. It would be an easy matter for Arvin to use his psionics to distract the guard then slip into the hold and hide. That would ensure that Zelia wouldn’t see him. Then, with Tymora’s blessing, Arvin would be on his way to Ormpetarr. Zelia would never even know that he’d nearly blundered into the inn where she was staying.

  Unless she, too, was planning on leaving by riverboat.

  Arvin couldn’t very well hide in the hold for the whole of the two-day journey to Ormpetarr. He had to know whether Zelia was planning on being aboard the riverboat tomorrow morning. More important, he needed to learn what she was doing here. Had she heard that Arvin was alive and on his way to Ormpetarr, then positioned herself at the one place he was sure to pass through on his way there?

  In order to find the answers to his questions, Arvin had to take a risk.

  A very big risk.

  Taking a deep breath, he placed a hand on the rough wooden wall next to him. He withdrew into himself, drawing his consciousness first into the “third eye” at the center of his forehead and deeper, into the spot at the base of his throat. Tightly coiled swirls of energy were unleashed in each location; a heartbeat later he heard the low droning noise that accompanied his manifestations of this power. Silver motes of light sparkled in his vision then flared out around him, sputtering into invisibility as they moved away from him.

  They penetrated the walls of the inn. Following them with his consciousness, Arvin quested about mentally, looking for the distinctive disturbances that accompanied the use of psionics. He found none. At the moment, Zelia was not manifesting any of her powers.

  Thus reassured, Arvin shifted his consciousness away from his throat and into a spot at the base of his scalp. Energy awakened there with a prickling that raised the hairs on the back of his neck as he manifested a second psionic power. Once again, the silver sparkles erupted around him. He sent his consciousness into the inn a second time, searching, this time, for thoughts. He skipped lightly from one patron of the inn to the next. Strangely, he could not locate Karrell—had she left the inn without Arvin spotting her? But Zelia’s mind, powerful as it was, rose above the others. Catching his breath, he listened.

  She wasn’t thinking about him. Instead her thoughts were focused, impatiently, on someone she was waiting for: a male—someone who couldn’t come inside the inn, for some reason. This someone probably wouldn’t arrive for another day or so, given the unusually snowy weather. She was stuck here until he arrived, and she wasn’t happy about it. But all she could do was wait. He would send her a message as soon as he was in the vicinity of—

  Arvin felt Zelia’s thoughts jerk to a sudden halt. There was a faint tinkling noise at the edges of her awareness—the secondary display of the power Arvin was manifesting. Zelia focused on it. Someone was trying to contact her. Was it—?

  Instantly, Arvin disengaged. He scrambled away from the Eelgrass Inn, putting as much distance between himself and Zelia as possible. The power that allowed a psion to detect manifestations in his or her vicinity had a limited range, typically no more than twenty paces. Likewise the power that allowed a psion to detect thoughts—a power Zelia also had.

  Only after he’d slipped and staggered through the snow and put a hundred paces between himself and the inn did Arvin slow to a walk. Panting, he looked nervously around. That had been close. “Nine lives,” he whispered, touching the crystal that hung at his throat. The power stone, a gift from his mother, was long since used up. He wore it on a thong about his throat for sentimental reasons only. But old habits died hard.

  Listening in on Zelia’s thoughts had nearly alerted her to his presence. It had been worth it, though. It seemed that Zelia’s presence here was a coincidence. She wasn’t looking for him. Not yet, anyway.

  Unfortunately, Arvin had gleaned neither a name nor a description of the fellow Zelia was waiting for. Now he had to watch out not only for Zelia, but for her ally, as well. But at least it sounded as if the fellow wouldn’t be here tonight. Arvin could take a room at an inn, wait until just before dawn, then slip aboard a riverboat and be out of here, leaving Zelia behind.

  Of course, that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t drop whatever she was doing and come slithering after Arvin, once she learned that he wasn’t dead, after all. Which she would quickly realize, if Karrell mentioned the name “Vin” and “rope” within earshot of Zelia.

  If only Arvin knew which room Karrell was staying in, he might be able to prevent her from giving him away. One charm—let’s see how she liked being on the receiving end—would see to that. Trouble was she didn’t seem to be in the Eelgrass Inn. And he couldn’t very well go around using his psionics to search for her. That would be certain to attract Zelia’s attention. It would be like dangling a live mouse in front of a snake. No, it would be better to save his psionic energies in case he needed to mount a defense against Zelia—futile though that defense would be.

  If Zelia did discover him, Arvin was a dead man. He knew Zelia nearly as well as she knew herself. The mind seed that had been lodged in his head for six days had seen to that. If there was one thing Zelia savored, it was vengeance. Exacting it upon a human who had thwarted her would be especially sweet. She’d stop at nothing to obtain it. Not to mention the fact that he knew more about her—and her secret dealings—than anyone else in Hlondeth, save perhaps, for Lady Dediana. Arvin knew a number of details that Zelia would kill to keep secret: the identities of several of the mind seeds that served as her spies, for example.

  He toyed, for a brief moment, with the thought of sneaking into Zelia’s room. He could lay in wait for her, attack her when and where she least expected it. But he quickly rejected that idea. The last time he’d tried to get the drop on Zelia, he’d failed miserably, even after springing several magical surprises on her—surprises he didn’t have at his disposal, this time. No, he’d do better to sneak away, instead, and pray—pray hard—that Zelia would finish her business at Riverboat Landing and depart without ever knowing that their paths had crossed.

  At least, Arvin thought, he had one thing in his favor if Zelia did find him: the power that Tanju had taught him, shortly before Arvin had departed for Sespech. Using it, Arvin could link the fates of any two individuals. While it was active, if one was injured, the other would be, too. If one died, so would the other. Or, at the very least—in the case of extremely powerful spellcasters or magical creatures—the other would be seriously reduced in power.

  Knowing that Zelia would be severely debilitated or even die if she killed him was cold comfort, but it was the best he could do. Her powers were vastly superior to his; the defenses he’d learned would only hold her off for so long. But if he could link their fates, it would at least give him some bargaining time.

  Keeping a wary eye on the Eelgrass Inn, Arvin made his way to the inn farthest from it to book a room for the night. He’d have to rise just before dawn in order to sneak aboard the riverboat, but he didn’t think he was going to have any problem with that.

  He doubted he was going to get much sleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  With a lurch that caused the hard, lumpy ingots of iron Arvin had been lying on to shift, the riverboat got under way. The cargo hold was nearly full; the deck was a mere palm’s width above Arvin’s face. Footsteps thudded across it, loud above the cons
tant rush of water past the hull. Arvin, lying in darkness, shivered and tried to flex numbed fingers and toes. The temperature had hovered around the freezing point even after the sun came up, and he was chilled to the bone.

  He lay just below one of the smaller hatches, its edges outlined with thin morning sunlight. As footsteps passed over him once more, making the deck creak, he awakened the energy that lay coiled at the base of his scalp and manifested the power he’d used the night before. Silver sparkles flared around him then disappeared. He sent his awareness upward, through the deck, and sent it questing through the minds of the people who were aboard the boat. He dipped briefly into the thoughts of a sailor who was gripping the riverboat’s tiller—how much better it was, this fellow was thinking, to sail aboard a boat as a free man—and into those of a second sailor who was serving as lookout. Perched high on the mast, this second fellow was awed by the speed at which the riverboat was traveling. It was only his tenth trip south, and yet he’d been chosen as lookout, due to his keen eyesight. The thought filled him with pride.

  There were also two guards on board—one half-asleep as he leaned on one of the deck-mounted crossbows, the second tense as a spring and gleefully visualizing sending a bolt into attacking slavers. Idly watching them was the captain, a man whose mind wasn’t on his duties. Instead his thoughts were lingering on the woman he’d lain with last night as he tried to recall her name.

  The thoughts of the next man were much more interesting. His mind was focused intently upon the wind that was driving the boat along. He was controlling its intensity with a spell. Unlike the others on board, he thought in terms of sound and tactile sensation. Though he was directing the wind against the sail, there was no accompanying picture in his mind. He thought of the sail in terms of a taught canvas under his hand, of the creak of its yard as it shifted under the wind. He must, Arvin realized with some surprise, be blind.

  There were three passengers on board: a merchant who was fretting over a delay that had nearly caused him to miss the boat, and a husband and wife on their way to Ormpetarr to attend a relative’s wedding. She was eagerly anticipating it; he was dreading the tedium of being cooped up in a room with her boring kinfolk.

  Arvin continued searching, but found no sign of Karrell. He wondered why she wasn’t on board. Had she chosen not to travel to Ormpetarr after all? The thought disappointed him. At the same time he felt relief to have found no sign of Zelia. There were only nine people aboard the riverboat, all of them strangers to Arvin. All were just what they seemed to be. None were mind seeds.

  Arvin drew his awareness back inside himself, ending the manifestation. He slid a hand under the small of his back, grasped the dagger that was sheathed there, and vanished it into his glove. He wouldn’t use his weapon unless he had to. For now, his plan was to present himself as a stowaway with good reasons for sneaking on board—the captain’s thoughts had given him an idea—and offer to pay for his passage.

  He shoved open the hatch and clambered up onto the deck, dragging his pack behind him. Two people who must have been the husband and wife—he a sour looking man with a heavy black beard, she a narrow-faced woman wearing a white fur hat, her hands shoved into a matching muff—had been standing next to the hatch. They started at Arvin’s sudden appearance. The merchant, a portly, balding fellow in a gold-thread cloak, was a few paces away. As Arvin appeared from the hold, he blinked in surprise.

  One of the guards—a wiry fellow with a hook nose and tangled black hair—whipped a glance over his shoulder, shouted, “Slaver!” and immediately tried to swing his crossbow around to point inboard, only to find that it wouldn’t swivel that far. The other guard—the older, gray-haired man Arvin had distracted last night when he crept aboard—looked startled but wasn’t yet awake enough to react.

  Arvin glanced up at the raised rear deck, searching for the captain. Three men stood there: a dark-skinned human with short, dark hair tarred flat against his head and a shadow of stubble on his chin; a barrel-chested man with a beard that didn’t quite hide the faded S-brand on his cheek, holding the tiller; and an elf clad head to toe in white, his eyebrows furrowed in a V of concentration and his silver hair twisting in the magical wind like fluttering ribbons. The elf’s eyes were unfocused, identifying him as the blind spellcaster.

  Though both of the other men looked like ordinary sailors, the dark-skinned one was clearly in command. He stared a challenge at Arvin, fists on his hips.

  Arvin gave the captain a grin and opened his mouth to begin his explanation, but before he could get a word out, he saw a motion out of the corner of his eye. The hook-nosed guard had yanked a sword from the sheath at his hip. He tensed, about to attack.

  So much for explanations, Arvin thought. Quick as a blink, he summoned energy from points deep in his throat and his third eye and sent it down into his right foot. A droning noise filled the air as he stomped the deck, sending a flash of silver shooting through the planks toward the guard holding the sword. The deck below hook-nose’s feet bucked, sending him staggering. He grabbed at the rail and managed to steady himself, but lost his weapon overboard. “My sword!” he shouted. Cursing, he stared at the dark water that had swallowed it.

  The gray-haired guard by now had a hand crossbow leveled at Arvin’s chest, but Arvin’s chief worry was the spellcaster at the stern. The elf, however, seemed oblivious to what was happening on the main deck. His attention remained focused on the riverboat’s main sail. By feel alone, he was directing the magical wind, his fingers moving in complicated patterns as if he were knotting a net.

  Arvin bowed to the captain and manifested a second power—this one coercive rather than confrontational. “Sorry to have startled you, sir,” he said. The base of his scalp prickled as energy coiled there. He let it uncoil in the direction of the captain and saw the fellow tilt his head as if listening to something as the power manifested. “I’m no slaver, but a simple stowaway. I snuck aboard to avoid a woman who … ah … thinks I should marry her.”

  The captain’s lips quirked in a smile. “Got her in the family way, did you?” He walked down the short flight of steps to the main deck, motioning for the gray-haired guard to lower his crossbow.

  As the guard complied, Arvin sighed with relief. His charm had worked. He reached into his boot, pulling out his coin pouch. “I’ll gladly pay for my passage to Ormpetarr.”

  The hook-nosed guard stomped over to where the captain was standing, muttering under his breath. “What about my sword, then? Who’s going to pay for that?”

  “Do not worry,” a female voice said from the bow. “This man is on his way to a meeting with Ambassador Extaminos. If he does not compensate you, the ambassador surely will.”

  Arvin whirled around. “Karrell!”

  “Hello, Vin.” She stood, smiling, a pace or two behind him. She’d obviously been aboard all along; she must have been wearing or carrying a magical device that protected her from mind-probing magic. That would explain how he’d missed her last night, when he sifted the thoughts of those at the inn. She’d been standing up on the bow until a moment or two ago, screened from view by the sail, which was why Arvin hadn’t seen her. The wind of the boat’s passage had tangled her hair. Somehow it made her even more beautiful.

  The captain tilted his head slightly in her direction and spoke to Arvin in a low voice. “Is she the one you’re—”

  “No,” Arvin said firmly. “She’s not. We met on the wagon to Riverboat Landing. I got to know her during the journey.”

  The gray-haired guard smiled knowingly. “Lucky man,” he said, a chuckle in his voice. “I can see why you wanted to slip the other woman.”

  The wife clucked her tongue in disapproval and tucked one of her hands possessively into the crook of her husband’s arm. The merchant rolled his eyes.

  “What about my sword?” the hook-nosed guard complained. “It was dwarven-forged steel.”

  The captain gave him a disdainful stare. “It was a standard trade sword, and che
aply made.”

  Hook-nose lowered his eyes.

  “But I’m sure this man—Vin, his name was?—will pay for it,” the captain continued. Then, to Arvin, in a low voice, “Five plumes is more than enough. And nine more, for your passage.”

  Arvin nodded, rummaged in his pouch for the gold coins, and handed them to the captain, who counted five of them into the hand of the guard.

  Karrell, meanwhile, moved closer to Arvin. “I am glad you are aboard, Vin,” she said, taking his arm. “Come. We will talk.”

  Arvin picked up his pack and followed her to the bow. As they passed the sail, the wind of the ship’s passage hit them full force, whipping Arvin’s cloak. They were traveling up the broad, open river at the speed of a galloping horse; already the cluster of inns that made up Riverboat Landing was far behind.

  The windblown bow was empty; the closest person was the lookout, who sat on a swinglike perch that had been hoisted to the top of the mast. He was a teenager, judging by the cracking of his voice as he called out hazards on the river ahead. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he shouted back at the captain. “Snag! Snag dead ahead, two hundred paces!”

  The yard creaked as the sail shifted, swinging the bow slightly to port. Arvin glanced over the bow and saw a submerged log, its tangled root mass just below the surface and barely visible. The roots were wound around something round and gray, probably a large stone that had been uprooted with the tree when the wind blew it over. Arvin heard a thump and scrape as the hull grazed the snag, and the riverboat continued on its way, having avoided the worst of the hazard thanks to the lookout’s keen eyes.

  Arvin set his pack at his feet and turned to Karrell. “I’m surprised to find you on the boat,” he said. “I didn’t, ah … see you come aboard.”