The Black Bouquet Read online

  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 décor. 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.

  A small dog yapped, and in response, a feminine voice laughed. Miri followed the sound through the apartment. She crept past one room that manifestly was a wizard’s conjuration chamber, with a rather slim grimoire reposing on a lectern, sigils of protection inscribed on the walls, and the memory of bitter incense hanging in the air, then came to the source of the noise. Beyond another doorway, a blond woman in a shimmering blue silk dressing gown tossed a rawhide chew toy for a little fox-red terrier, which bounded after the plaything and fetched it back to her. The dog’s mistress sat with her back to the door.

  “Mistress Dalaeve,” Miri said.

  The terrier rounded on her and barked. The blond woman gave a start then, without turning around, swept her hands through what was clearly a cabalistic gesture.

  “No spells!” Miri nocked an arrow and drew the fletching back to her ear. “I’m not here to hurt you, but—”

  She broke off the threat because Naneetha obviously had no intention of heeding her. Her hands kept moving.

  Such stubbornness posed a dilemma. If Miri was prudent, she’d loose the arrow before the wizard could complete the magic. But she wouldn’t be able to question Naneetha if she killed her, and common sense told her it was difficult for any marksman, even a wizard, to target a foe while looking in the opposite direction. So she hesitated a heartbeat, and the blond woman pressed her hands to her own face.

  As far as Miri could see, nothing happened as a result.

  Naneetha uncovered her features and said, “Quiet, Saeval!”

  The terrier yipped a final time, then subsided. The wizard turned, revealing a flawlessly beautiful heart-shaped countenance worthy of a heroine in one of the sagas on which she evidently doted.

  “Who are you,” the woman asked, “and what do you want?”

  Miri released the tension on her bow and pointed the arrow at the floor, but kept it on the string.

  “My name is Miri Buckman. I’m a guide of the Red Hart Guild. I apologize for bursting in on you this way, but my business is urgent, and your staff didn’t want to let me in to see you.”

  “I like my privacy.”

  “I won’t intrude on it any longer than necessary. I just need you to answer a few questions. A robber stole a strongbox from the courtyard of the Paera—”

  “I know. Everyone does. You must be the ranger who lost the prize.”

  Miri sighed and said, “What everyone doesn’t know is the name of the thief, or at least, no one’s been willing to tell me. But I’ve learned he’s a friend of yours. He and his three accomplices drank here often.”

  “As I’m sure you’ve seen, the Dance is a busy place. Many rogues squander their loot here.”

  “But sometimes you invited this particular scoundrel, who’s young, lean, fit, and wears a goatee, to wander back to your suite and visit you.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Miri said, “and I promise, I’ll pay for information.”

  “The Dance brings in all the coin I need,” Naneetha said. “Now
, please go.”

  “I’m sorry, it isn’t that easy.”

  “Let’s be clear, then,” the woman asked. “Are you threatening to shoot me if I refuse to betray a friend?”

  Even as frustrated as she was, Miri didn’t have the stomach for such callous retribution, but she didn’t have to admit as much.

  “Why shouldn’t I kill you?” she asked. “You provide a haven for the worst kinds of vermin to conduct their business and pursue depraved amusements. That makes you as bad as they are.”

  “It must be nice out in the wilderness, where everything’s so simple … good or evil, gold or dung. In Oeble, we live as best we can.”

  “If your goal is to live, give me the robber’s name.”

  “No,” Naneetha said. “I don’t have many friends. It’s hard to make them when you spend your days in a cellar, and Saeval and my books aren’t enough to hold the loneliness at bay. The few companions I do have brighten my days with the stories of their adventures, and the lad you seek has told me some splendid ones.”

  Miri wondered if Naneetha was an invalid or such a notorious fugitive that she dared not show her face in the city above, for she seemed to be saying she felt unable ever to leave the confines of the Talondance.

  “Whatever lies the wretch feeds you,” Miri said, “he’s a common thief, not a hero out of your storybooks.”

  The wizard shrugged.

  “Look,” Miri persisted, “it’s nice you have someone to keep you company, but a good many people will suffer if I don’t recover the lockbox.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say, but you have my word that it’s the truth.”

  “Well, you have mine that I’d sooner push a hundred strangers into the Abyss than betray one friend.” Naneetha lifted her hands, making a show of poising them for further conjuration, and added, “Now, are we going to fight?”

  No, Miri thought bitterly, we aren’t.

  Naneetha had called her bluff, and that was that. It felt in keeping with the fundamental perversity of Oeble that the first even vaguely honorable person she’d met in the Underways had proved just as unwilling to help her as all the black-hearted scoundrels she’d questioned hitherto.

  She was pondering how to make a dignified exit when the dog yapped.

  “I see you found her,” Sefris said.

  Miri glanced over her shoulder. The monastic appeared unscathed and unruffled as usual.

  “Thank Mielikki—and Ilmater—that you’re all right,” Miri said.

  “It was no great matter. I won the contest, the orc and goblin took exception to it, and I had to knock each of them senseless. That started a brawl even the umber hulks—it turns out there are two—had some difficulty quelling. In the confusion, I slipped back here to join you.”

  Once again, Miri was impressed. Logic suggested that when the fight had broken out, Sefris must have been at the very center of it. She’d surely needed almost preternatural powers of stealth and evasion to extricate herself from the fray.

  “And what of you?” the monastic continued. “Are you finding the answers you seek?”

  “No,” Naneetha said, “she isn’t. She was just leaving, and I ask you to do the same.”

  “You don’t seem to realize the situation has changed,” Sefris said. In the blink of an eye, a chakram appeared in her hand. “The scout and I are both adept at combat. Perhaps your magic could fend off her or me alone, but not the two of us together, and after we’ve subdued you, we’ll make sure you can’t give us any more trouble. I never yet met a mage who was much of a threat with broken fingers.”

  “Nor I a warrior, once she was burned from head to toe,” Naneetha replied.

  Miri would have sworn the doorway wasn’t wide enough to accommodate two women without them squeezing and jostling one another, but Sefris twisted through in one sudden movement, without even brushing her. Once inside the room, she had a clear shot with the chakram, and when she lifted it, the ranger realized she hadn’t been bluffing.

  Miri snatched frantically and grabbed Sefris’s arm.

  “No!” she cried.

  Her eyes cold, unreadable, Sefris stared at her.

  “She knows,” he monastic said. “The yuan-ti said so.”

  “Still….”

  Sefris took a breath and let it out slowly.

  “As you wish,” she said. “It’s your errand. I just came along to help as best I can.”

  “I take it you’re leaving,” Naneetha said.

  “Yes,” Miri said. She started to turn away, then yielded to the urge to make one more try. “It’s your own people, your own city, that will benefit if I recover the box.”

  “Such vagaries mean nothing,” the wizard said.

  At the same time, Sefris murmured something under her breath then sprang past Miri and dashed back down the hall. The ranger turned just in time to see her comrade vanish into the conjuration chamber.

  “What’s she doing?” Naneetha asked, sounding rattled for the first time.

  “I don’t know,” Miri said.

  Sefris strode back into view with the mage’s open grimoire. One hand clutched the vellum pages, ready to tear.

  “Tell us what we need to know,” the monastic said, “or I’ll destroy this.”

  “Is that supposed to frighten me?” Naneetha asked. “I can buy a new spellbook, or scribe one myself if need be.”

  “Yes,” Sefris said, “but in the meantime, you won’t have access to your magic. You won’t be able to cover your face with a mask of illusion. Everyone will see your scars.”

  Naneetha stared, swallowed, then said, “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Of course you do,” Sefris replied. “Is this the page with the disguise spell?” The monastic ripped a leaf in half, crumpled the loose portion, and dropped it to the floor. “Or is it the next?”

  “Stop it, or I swear I’ll burn you!”

  “While I’m holding the grimoire? I doubt it.”

  She tore a second page.

  “Please,” the wizard begged, all the defiance running out of her at once, “you’re a woman, too. Don’t make me be ugly. My friends won’t come to see me anymore.”

  “Then the choice should be easy,” Sefris said. “Betray one companion, or lose them all.”

  It took Naneetha several seconds to force the words out. “His name is Aeron sar Randal.”

  Miri felt a pang of excitement, undercut by a muddled shame at the manner in which Sefris had extracted the information.

  “Where does he live?” the ranger asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think many people do. A lot of thieves are wary of letting folk know where they sleep.”

  “Well, fortunately,” Miri said, “the town’s not huge. Did this Aeron talk to you about the plot to steal the strongbox?”

  “A little. The Red Axes hired him to do it.”

  “The Red Axes?”

  “The biggest gang in Oeble.”

  “Then by now,” said Miri glumly, “he’s delivered the coffer to them.”

  Naneetha hesitated for an instant as if trying to decide whether to risk a lie.

  “No,” the wizard said. “For some reason, he didn’t hand it over, and now they’re looking for him, too.”

  For once, the ranger thought, maybe the Oeblaun propensity for double-dealing would work in her favor.

  “Then we have to find him first,” said Miri.

  Aeron glanced over his shoulder. He didn’t have any particular reason to think anyone was shadowing him, but it was an ingrained habit to check. In so doing, he caught sight of Oeble, its towers, some visibly leaning, black against the evening sky. Ordinarily the view would have pleased him, but the tangled spires seemed somehow threatening just then, like the writhing facial tentacles of those green, centipede-like monstrosities that sometimes crawled into the Underways from Mask alone knew where.

  He snorted his momentary uneasiness away. Oeble was home, as good a home as an ou
tlaw could want, and if it had treated him harshly those past couple days, that was part of what made life within its environs so exciting. He’d sell the contents of the lockbox, lie low until everyone tired of hunting him, and everything would be all right.

  He hiked on into a stand of trees, trying with some success to keep the dry fallen leaves from crunching beneath his feet, enjoying the sharp scent of the pines. Night engulfed the world, but Selûne shed enough silvery glow to guide him. He didn’t bother to light his lantern until he reached the glade at the center of the wood, where he and Kerridi had sometimes picnicked.

  The benighted clearing was hardly the ideal workspace in which to crack open a magically protected coffer, but Aeron hadn’t dared tackle the job in the center of town. If he triggered more thunderclaps, they were likely to lead some of his various and sundry ill-wishers straight to him. Out there in the countryside, that at least ought not to be a problem.

  Aeron found a level bit of ground, unrolled the white sheet he’d brought, and set the steel case on top of it. He unpacked the tools he’d taken from Burgell’s flat and felt himself tensing, his pulse ticking faster. Aeron willed himself to relax.

  Maybe he was no master cracksman like the faithless gnome, certainly no wizard, but he knew the basics of defeating magical traps. He thought that if he was careful, methodical, he could get the box open without killing himself in the process.

  He peered at the case through a topaz lens. It didn’t reveal anything he hadn’t seen already, so he pulled the cork from a glass vial and dusted one side of the strongbox with gray powder. The coarse grains crawled and clumped together, forming letters and geometric figures, covering over and thus revealing the invisible symbols a spellcaster had drawn upon the steel.

  So far, so good, he thought, but now comes the tricky part.

  Aeron picked up a file and scraped at the glyphs, defacing them. Metal rasped on metal. Though in theory he knew at which angles and junctures he could attack the symbols safely, he kept wanting to flinch as he imagined the magic rousing and striking at him in some devastating fashion.

  It didn’t, though, not then, and not when he neutralized the sigils on the other faces of the box. He sighed with relief and picked up the brass key, which still appeared in constant flux even though he couldn’t feel it changing shape between his thumb and forefinger. He slipped it into the lock and twisted.