The Black Bouquet

CHAPTER 3

Miri found the stairs at the end of a short, strangely quiet passage off the busy Sixturrets intersection, where her contact, the plump man, had said they would be. As she regarded the steps twisting down into the ground, she felt an uncharacteristic pang of doubt. Maybe Hostegym was right; perhaps it was a bad idea. If she was out of her element in the streets and alleys of Oeble, it could only be worse in the city's Underways, supposedly a labyrinth of tunnels where the Gray Blades never ventured, and rogues of every stripe did precisely as they pleased.

But for that very reason, it seemed the best place to seek news of the green-eyed thief and the stolen treasure. Mielikki knew, Miri certainly hadn't had any luck above ground. So she scowled her misgiving away, loosened her sword and dagger in their sheaths, and adjusted the small steel buckler strapped to her wrist. She didn't much like the latter. The weight didn't bother her, but the armor made her feel awkward when shooting. Still, she thought that in the cramped confines of a subterranean warren, she might find a shield more useful than the bow she nonetheless carried strung and ready in her hand.

She crept down the steps, disturbing a rat that squealed and scuttled on ahead of her. She passed beyond the light leaking down from above into total darkness. Her pulse ticked a little faster.

Then, to her relief, a dim glow blossomed ahead. She stepped off the stairs into an arched tunnel which was neither as wet nor as malodorous as she'd expected. She'd imagined that "Underways" was a fancy way of saying "sewers," and in fact, a faint stench of noisome waste wafted in from somewhere, but there was no stream of muck flowing sluggishly down the center of the passage. Evidently the two systems were separate, at least to some degree.

The tunnel was essentially dark, no hindrance to orcs, goblins, and other creatures that could see in such conditions. Patches of pale sheen smeared the earthen walls in a couple of places, evidently to accommodate those who could not. Miri couldn't tell if they were some species of luminous mold or splashes of a man-made pigment.

Trying to look as if she truly knew where she was headed, as if she belonged down there, she marched away from the stairs. Around the first bend, she came upon two men huddled together, who eyed her speculatively and left off their whispering until she passed by. Not far beyond them, the corpse of a chubby halfling lay facedown. The victim, no bigger than a half-grown human child, bore more than a dozen wounds and had left a trail of blood like a snail. Evidently he'd crawled several yards on his belly while his assailants hacked and stabbed him.

The passage twisted repeatedly, and branching tunnels snaked away into blackness. Miri's sense of direction never failed her in the wild, but she had the unpleasant feeling that, even so, she could lose herself down there. She was glad her first destination was only supposed to be a short walk from the stairs she'd descended, and gladder still when the lamp-lit doorway came into view.

According to the information she'd received, Melder's Door was the only true inn in the Underways, and marginally safer than either of the taverns found "below." It seemed a reasonable place to continue her inquiries.

She pulled open the heavy door and stepped into a surprisingly spacious common room whose walls were lined with stone. The air was damp and chilly, and the glows of the few hanging lanterns, half occluded behind their hinged black iron hoods.

Still, after the gloom outside, she might almost have found the place welcoming, if not for the way all the surly-looking patrons-humans, orcs, towering, dog-faced gnolls, and horned, scaly, diminutive kobolds-turned to stare at her. It was disheartening. An inn, by definition, catered to wayfarers. To strangers. Yet even mere, something about the way she looked or carried herself instantly branded her an outsider.

Well, to Fury's Heart with it. She'd be damned if she'd let a pack of ruffians make her feel self-conscious just for looking like a righteous, law-abiding person. She returned sneer for sneer, then strode toward an empty table.

Until something flitted across her field of vision, then hovered in front of her face. She found herself nose to snout with a tiny dragon or wyvern, its wings shimmering, beating fast as a hummingbird's, its skinny body only a trifle longer than her middle finger. Startled, she recoiled, and the onlookers laughed at her discomfiture.

Their mirth made her flush with anger, and the miniature dragon's scrutiny made her wary. It scarcely seemed large enough to pose a threat, yet it might possess a nasty bite or sting or even the capacity to puff flame or poison into her eyes.

She lifted her hand to swat it away, and a bass voice rapped, "Don't."

She froze, the winged reptile whirled past her and away, and she looked around. A handsome man was smiling back at her. His barbered hair and eyes were black, and his skin was dark in a way that owed nothing to the touch of the sun. His purple velvet breeches and tunic were cut tight, the better, perhaps, to flatter his slender frame, save for exceptionally baggy sleeves that hung all the way down over his knuckles. Looking more like a child's toy than an actual weapon, a dainty hand crossbow dangled from a double-looped scarlet belt with a gold buckle.

More tiny dragons fluttered all around him, as if they were bees, and he, a particularly succulent flower. Miri experienced a sudden, unpleasant mental image of all the creatures swarming on a victim simultaneously. How could any one person defend against such an assault, no matter how adroit an archer or fencer she might be?

"Please don't hit my eye," the dark man continued. "You wouldn't like it if I hit you in one of yours."

"I won't," Miri answered. "The beast surprised me is all."

"No harm done." He sketched a bow, elegant and perfunctory at the same time. "I'm Melder. Welcome to the Door." He grinned and added, "My instincts tell me you haven't come in search of accommodations."

"No," she said, "just beer."

"Ah. We have a good ale brewed hereabouts, a fine dark lager from Theymarsh, and-"

"The local stuff will do. Perhaps you'll lift a tankard with me."

"You honor me. Please be seated, and I'll return in a trice."

She did as he'd bade her, then divided her attention between watching her fellow patrons, who were gradually returning to the murmured conversations her arrival had interrupted, and the little reptiles flying about. They wandered wherever they wished, and even the drunkest and most brutish-looking guests resisted the impulse to slap them away.

Melder sat two foaming leather jacks on the table, then sat down across from her.

"My small friends interest you," he said.

"They're beautiful," she replied.

"They're certainly the prettiest things in this dank old place, or were until a few moments ago," he said with a smile. "They keep the bugs and rats down, too. I believe I introduced myself, but I didn't catch your name."

"Miri Buckman."

"A lovely name. It fits you. And what, dear Miri, brings you below? You have a sensible look about you. Tell me you aren't simply indulging your curiosity, that you aren't one of those fools who think no visit to wicked Oeble complete without an excursion into the Underways."

She sipped her ale. He was right, it was good, the flavor hearty and not too bitter.

"Suppose I came down here to do some business," she said. "Could you point me to the right person?"

He chuckled.

Miri felt a pang of irritation and asked, "What's funny about that?"

"Please, forgive me," Melder said. "It's just that one doesn't rush these conversations. The parties generally sample a drink or three, chatting of nothing in particular, acquiring a sense of one another, before anyone broaches the actual point of the discussion. I suspect you know better, you tried to play the game, but your impatience betrayed you."

She knew what he meant. Out in the wild, she would have been more circumspect. She'd once reveled with a tribe of centaurs for three days and nights, satisfying all their elaborate rituals of hospitality, before so much as mentioning the reason for her visit to their camp. But Oeble, and her current dilemma, made her twitchy.

"I haven't much time," she said, "or at least I fear I haven't."

"I understand," he said. "For all you know, the precious saddlebag has already left town."

Miri glared at him and said, "You knew who I was from the start."

Melder shrugged. "I didn't know your name, but people are naturally talking about a robbery inside the Paeraddyn and the ranger tramping around town trying to trace the surviving thief. What was in the pouch, anyway?"

"I don't know, myself."

He grinned, his teeth a flash of white in his swarthy face. A tiny green dragon settled on his shoulder for a moment, almost as if whispering in his ear, then flew away.

"You're a bad liar," he said, "probably because you haven't learned to enjoy it. If I knew what you're looking for, perhaps I could help you find it."

And maybe, she thought, you'd covet it for yourself.

Miri asked, "Are you willing to help me?"

"Well, it all depends. I make a tolerable living from the Door, and as you can imagine, my guests don't rest their heads here because I have a reputation for tattling. Still, it's conceivable you could persuade me to be of some assistance, comely as you are. Grubby from the road, of course, but a bath would fix that."

She made a spitting sound then said, "Apparently you haven't known many rangers, at least not of my guild. We don't pay for anything that way."

"A pity. If you exploited them properly, like a sensible lass, your charms could be a mightier weapon than that bow."

"Forget it. I am willing to pay a hundred Sembian nobles if you furnish information that leads me to what I seek."

"Perhaps some gold up front would serve to jog my memory or sharpen my wits."

"Ever since I started poking around," said Miri, "folk have been hinting they can help me, then they ask for coin in advance. Had I heeded them, my purse would be empty already. I'll pay you when I recover what was in the saddlebag, not before."

"And how, sweet Miri, do I know that I can trust you?"

"Because I swear it by Our Lady of the Forest."

He laughed and said, "Your vow. Delightful."

She glowered at him then asked, "Can you help me or not?"

"I assume you took a good look at the three thieves who died."

"Yes."

"Describe them."

She did, and based on his expression asked, "You recognize them?"

"I believe so, though I didn't know them well. Their names were Gavath, Kerridi, and Dal."

She felt a thrill of excitement.

"What gang did they belong to?" she asked.

Melder shook his head and answered, "None. They were petty operators, really, gleaning what the gangs don't bother to take."

"I don't see how four such little fish, working strictly by themselves, could have conceived an elaborate plan to steal the saddlebag as soon as it reached Oeble. They wouldn't even have known it was coming. Somebody must have hired them to seize it."

"That would be my guess," Melder said. "Have you any notion who that person might have been?"

Someone with a spy in place, Miri thought, either here or in Ormath, to report on what was supposed to have been a secret transaction.

Beyond that, she couldn't say. She spread her hands.

"Whoever it was," Melder said, "he has plenty of coin, or at least convinced the thieves he did. He wouldn't have tried to rob the Paer without a substantial fee in the offing."

"Did the dead outlaws have a particular comrade with whom they often worked? Someone thin, bearded, and around my age, green-eyed and skilled with a knife?"

"I fear I can't tell you. As I said, I didn't know them personally, and we have so many ne'er-do-wells skulking about Oeble-new ones every day. The river barges float them in, and the Dead Cart rolls them out."

"Well, presumably somebody knew them," Miri replied. "At least you've given me a place to start, and I thank you."

She gulped down the rest of her beer, laid a silver coin on the table, rose, and headed for the door.

Melder sat and watched the scout stride away. He generally liked his women with a little more meat on their bones and considerably more concerned with presenting a well-groomed and feminine appearance. But even clad in her dirty woods-runner's armor, breeches, and boots, she was a pleasant sight.

Vlint appeared at his elbow and gave a disapproving snort, a mode of expression admirably suited to his bulbous blue nose, though incongruously prissy for a hobgoblin. Melder sighed and turned his head to meet the hulking, shaggy bravo's sallow eyes.

"I take it you were eavesdropping," the human said, "and think me too garrulous."

"It's not for me to say," said Vlint, in a tone that conveyed his opinion with utter clarity. None of the Door's other guards would have expressed disapproval, but he'd been in his master's employ for a long while, ever since the days when Melder had been a thief in his own right instead of a quasi-respectable innkeeper, and was thus inclined to take liberties.

"I didn't give up any of our patrons," he said.

Something tickled Melder's wrist, and forked tongue flickering, a gray, wedge-shaped head slid out from under the cuff of his long, floppy sleeve. He caressed the restless viper with his fingertip, then coaxed it to slither back where it belonged.

"Come to that," Melder added, "I didn't even give up anyone alive."

"Still," said the bouncer and ruffian-for-hire, "it wasn't the kind of thing you generally do."

"Most thief takers aren't as pretty as that one, and it should serve to keep her wandering around here below."

Vlint scratched at his thick, flea-bitten neck and said, "You think that so long as she's nearby, she might decide to warm your bed after all?"

"Alas, no. The ranger's guilds shouldn't admit women. You let a wench worship a goddess who takes the form of a unicorn, and she's bound to place an exaggerated value on her chastity."

"Then you want to make a play for the saddlebag yourself."

"No. Those days are behind us. Though if it simply fell into my lap…What I think is that as pretty Miri blunders about, someone will decide to make some coin from her, and likely sooner rather than later. Put the word out to the slavers that if anybody catches her, I might be interested in buying. Or at least renting for a day or two."

As befitted his status as chieftain of the Red Axes, Kesk Turnskull lived with a certain style, in an expansive, albeit decaying, house on the river. In better times, the place had likely belonged to a prosperous merchant, who'd built both street entrances and a water gate to facilitate the passage of goods in and out. More recently, diggers had connected the cellars to the Underways.

Thus, Aeron thought, surveying the structure from the Arch of Gargoyles, centermost of the three bridges, he had his choice of ways in. The problem was making sure of a way out. Because it was one thing to resolve to gouge a higher payment out of Kesk and his pack of ruffians, and something else actually to accomplish it. He had to manage the discussion in a manner that would preclude the tanarukk's simply taking him prisoner and torturing him until he divulged the current location of the strongbox.

He pondered the problem for a time, while the reflections of Selune and her Tears sparkled on the black water rippling below the bridge, and the stone imps squatting atop the piles seemed to brood along with him. At length, when he decided on his approach, he trotted back toward shore. New though they were, the planks bounced and shifted under his feet. The folk of Oeble replaced them every year, but not with any extraordinary care or craftsmanship. Why should they, when the Scelptar was destined to devour them in any case?

Keeping an eye on the sprawling mansion ahead, field-stone on the ground level and timber above, Aeron skulked along the docks where, in one of his occasional flirtations with honest toil, he'd loaded and unloaded galleys and flatboats. Nobody called out to him. He would have been chagrined if anyone had. Unlike some thieves of his acquaintance, he had no use for flowing cloaks and masklike cowls of midnight black. Those posturing fools who did might as well have worn placards proclaiming themselves nefarious outlaws. But his inconspicuous clothes of dark gray and brown permitted him to blend into the dark with equal facility.

He stepped out onto a deserted pier, considered removing his tunic and boots, and decided against it. Even if he could be sure of returning to that very spot, somebody was likely to walk away with them before he did, Oeble being what it was. He sat down on the edge of the dock, then lowered himself into the water.

Oeblaun fishermen liked to swap stories of pike and freshwater eels huge enough to gobble a man with a single snap of their jaws, but the creatures, if in fact they existed, were evidently either sated just then or hunting elsewhere. He wasn't an exceptionally good swimmer, but the water was still reasonably warm, the current gentle, and he had little difficulty stroking and kicking his way to the sprawling house's river gate.

The gate resembled the mouth of a half-flooded tunnel protected by a portcullis, which, unfortunately, was down. Aeron dived beneath the surface. There, the white light of the moon, and the tail of sparkling motes that people called her Tears, failed him, and he had to grope his way along the steel grille, seeking a breach. He didn't find one.

When he could stay submerged no longer, he came up and sucked in a breath. He knew he couldn't keep diving and searching for long, or one of the sentries would spot him. As best he could judge, that left him only one recourse.

The portcullis would keep out any boat. The spacing of certain of the bars, however, might permit a swimmer to wriggle through, if he was thin and had studied the art of squeezing through tight places. Aeron had. It was a valuable knack to possess if you dabbled in housebreaking.

He slipped beneath the surface, located one of the larger holes in the grillwork, and started to squirm through headfirst.

Shadows of Mask, it was close!

Closer than it had seemed when he was simply gauging its width with his hands. Close enough to scrape patches of his skin raw. So close that down there, in the wet and the black, it seemed to clench around his chest like a clutching fist.

Aeron had gotten stuck before, in windows and chimneys, but never underwater, where if he couldn't free himself within a minute or so, he'd drown. He felt a surge of panic and struggled to quash it. Without a clear head, he had no hope whatsoever of liberating himself.

He gripped a bar to either side of him and tried to haul himself clear. No good. He drew one of his knives and sawed at his shirt and overtunic, trying to strip away the layers of cloth between his flesh and the metal that held him fast. He managed to yank some tatters out, but was still trapped.

He wondered suddenly, with a fresh shock of terror, if the portcullis was magical. The trader who'd originally built the mansion had obviously been wealthy enough to commission an enchanted defense. So was Kesk, as far as that was concerned. Maybe the cursed thing really was squeezing Aeron like a crayfish's pincers.

No. It wasn't. That was just the fear talking, and he wouldn't listen. He strained to drag himself backward rather than forward, only to find retreat as impossible as advancing. Meanwhile, his chest began to ache with the urge to take a fresh breath. Soon his air would run out.

His air. If he emptied his lungs, his chest would be narrower, wouldn't it? Maybe narrow enough to allow him to writhe his way free.

Even though he knew it was his only chance, it took an effort of will to exhale. He forced himself, and the air was gone beyond recall.

He made what would surely be his final effort to pull himself forward. At first, nothing happened, then his chest popped clear like a cork from a bottle of that sweet white sparkling Saelmurian wine poor Kerridi had so enjoyed. He surged forward, only to jerk to a halt an instant later.

He told himself the grillwork hadn't really clamped shut around his ankles. His feet had simply caught on a crossbar. Resisting panic, the impulse to flail wildly, crazily, he tried to untangle himself from the obstruction, and succeeded. He struggled upward.

Desperate for air as he was, it was only at the last second that he remembered he couldn't surface amid a great splashing and floundering, or else one of the Red Axes would notice him. He took care to complete his ascent circumspectly, then breaststroked his way into the shadowy, shielded space between two moored boats.

Clutching at the side of a vessel for support, he sucked in air. It took all the strength he had left simply to make himself inhale and exhale quietly, and he knew that if anyone spotted him before he caught his breath, he'd be helpless to defend himself. Luckily, no one did, and when he recovered, he took a stealthy look around.

The river gate terminated in a stone platform at the far end, where an arched door led farther into the mansion. A walkway ran along either wall. Half a dozen boats floated in the water, tied up until someone should want them. Four were commonplace vessels for transporting passengers and cargo, the fifth a sleek galley equipped with a small ballista in the bow as well as other features useful to river pirates, and the sixth a gilded and ornately carved pleasure barge, aboard which Kesk sometimes chose to pursue his less unsavory amusements.

Two guards slouched on camp stools near the doorway, playing a game of cards for low stakes. The muscular bugbear with its hairy yellow hide was smirking, exposing stained, crooked fangs, and had most of the copper pennies heaped in front of it. The human wore a peeved expression that seemed at home on his pinched and sour face.

Neither one looked particularly alert. Evidently they trusted the portcullis to keep intruders out. Even so, it was going to be tricky.

Aeron drew himself up onto the walkway behind the bugbear's back. He readied the sturdy oaken cudgel he'd brought with him, then skulked forward.

He fancied that few people could have approached the sentries unheard, not clad in soaked garments that wanted to slap and squelch with every step. Fortunately, there was an art to moving silently under even the most adverse conditions, and he'd mastered that one, too.

Yet soft footfalls could only protect a fellow up to a point. He was still a few paces away from the gamblers when the human threw down his creased, greasy hand of cards in disgust, lifted his head, and looked straight at him. The Red Axe's eyes opened wide.

Aeron charged. The bugbear twisted around, and he clubbed at the hulking creature's square, brutish head. The blow cracked home, and the goblinoid jerked at the impact.

By then the human guard was on his feet and had his dagger out. Aeron dodged a thrust, grabbed hold of the little folding camp table that held the game, and flipped it upward. Cards and coins flew everywhere, the coppers clinking on the platform. The tabletop bashed the Red Axe in his face, slamming him backward.

Aeron whirled back around toward the bugbear. Its low forehead bleeding, the burly creature, taller than almost any human its attacker had ever seen, lurched to its feet, snatched its scimitar from its scabbard, and raised it high. Its sleeve slipped down its hairy forearm, revealing the ruddy axe brand Aeron had once declined to wear.

Sidestepping out from under the threat of the curved sword, he lashed the bugbear across the ribs and kicked it in the knee. It stumbled, and that brought its head low enough for him to bash it a second time, and a third. The goblinoid collapsed unconscious.

Aeron pounced atop the bugbear and poised an Arthyn fang at its throat. The human Red Axe, who was lunging forward, hesitated.

"Stay back," Aeron panted, "or I'll kill it."

The guard spat, "I never liked him anyway. I think he cheats."

"If you're such a dunce that a bugbear can trick you," Aeron shot back, "you deserve to lose your coin. Now, you may not like the brute, but I'll bet your chief finds it useful. Useful enough that he wouldn't appreciate you throwing away its life when it can be avoided."

"Maybe. What do you want?"

Aeron nodded toward the windlass and said, "First, raise the portcullis."

He had no intention of squirming through the bars again when it was time to leave.

The guard grumbled, "That's a two-man job."

"The damn thing has a counterweight," Aeron said. "Just put your back into it."

Grunting with effort, or the petulant pretense of it, the Red Axe managed to do as instructed. The chain clanked as it wound around the reel.

"Now what?" the guard asked.

"Now you go into the house and tell Kesk to come out alone for a private talk. Tell him that if he doesn't show himself in the next five minutes, the cardsharp here dies, and he can forget about ever taking possession of the saddlebag."

The sentry stood and stared at him.

"What are you waiting for? Go!"

The Red Axe disappeared through the door, slamming it behind him, and after that, Aeron had nothing to do but listen for approaching footsteps, at least until the bugbear stirred. He pressed the keen edge of his knife against his captive's throat, drawing the goblin-kin's attention to it.

"Don't move," he said, "or you're dead."

"Don't matter," the bugbear said, its bestial voice slurred. Evidently it was still dazed from the beating it had taken.

"You don't care if I kill you?"

"Don't matter you didn't do… what you was told. You're still going to die."

Still? What did that mean, precisely? Aeron would have asked, but at that moment, Kesk Turnskull stalked through the door.

If ever a creature was born to rule a company of cutthroats, Kesk was surely the bully in question. Short and stooped as he was, his muscular body looked nearly as thick as it was tall. Patches of coarse hair bristled from his leathery gray hide, and with its truncated snout and jutting tusks, his face resembled that of a wild boar. Despite the oil lamp burning beside the door, the interior of the water gate was dark enough to reveal the faint luminescence of his scarlet eyes, which smoldered like coals beneath a low, ridged brow.

Aeron had heard that tanarukks hadn't always existed, that the race had emerged only in recent times as the result of crossbreeding between orcs and demons. He himself had no firsthand knowledge of such esoterica, but thought that anyone who laid eyes on Kesk would have no difficulty crediting the story.

As always, the founder and master of Oeble's most vicious gang carried a heavy, double-bitted battle-axe in his hand. Supposedly, he'd plundered the enchanted weapon from the body of a fallen foe, a gold dwarf champion who'd believed the axe, a cherished family heirloom, would only serve a pure-hearted warrior of his own race. Kesk liked to tell the story of how he'd proved the fool wrong by using it to slaughter the dwarf's own kin.

The tanarukk regarded Aeron and the bugbear. It was difficult to read the expression on that swinish face, with its protruding lower jaw, but he seemed to be sneering.

"What's the point of this?" Kesk growled. "Why didn't you come to the house through the Underways, as I told you to?"

"If I had, would I be dead already? Did you have some of your murderers lying in wait for me?"

Kesk's red eyes narrowed and he asked, "What are you talking about?"

"According to the bugbear, you meant to kill me."

"You can't club Tharag over the head and expect him to talk sense. He doesn't do much of that at the best of times. Now, if he's smart, he'll shut his hole and let the two of us palaver."

"You expect me to forget what he said?"

"Just use your own head, will you?" Kesk replied. "Why would I hire a man to do a job, then kill him? To get out of paying? I buy stolen and smuggled goods all the time, and a gang chief has to deal fairly. If I picked up a reputation for cheating, no one would do business with me."

When Kesk put it that way, it did seem to make sense, yet Aeron found he wasn't ready to let the topic go.

"You'd betray a hireling in the blink of an eye if it was worth your while, particularly if you thought you could make him disappear with no one the wiser."

"We agreed on a nice fee for your work, but hardly large enough to beggar me, or make me go to the trouble to play you false. I don't see the saddlebag. Where is it?"

"Somewhere safe."

"It's like that, is it?"

"I lost three friends stealing that box."

"Which means you don't have to split up the coin," said the tanarukk. "You can keep it all, and wind up four times richer than you expected. Be satisfied with that. Don't think you can grind me for more."

"You knew to send us after the box, so maybe you knew how well protected it was. But you didn't warn me."

Kesk snorted-a wet, ugly sound like a pig oinking-and said, "I thought you knew the game, redbeard. I thought you were a man. When a job gets bloody, a man doesn't weep and whine about it."

"Right. A man hits back when someone sets him up for a fall."

The tanarukk glared and said, "Why wouldn't I tell you everything I knew about the… the box? I wanted you to get away with it, didn't I?"

"Maybe you feared that if I knew what I was getting into, I wouldn't take the job. Or maybe you hoped some of my crew would get killed. That would save you Red Axes the trouble of slaughtering us all yourselves."

"I told you, we weren't planning to kill you. Maybe we still won't, provided you come to your senses. The War Leader knows, you've got a death coming for this harebrained stunt here tonight, but I've got other meat to chew. Now, where's the lockbox?"

"What's it worth to you, really?"

Kesk quivered, quite possibly with the urge to charge and attack.

"Curse you, human," the gang leader said, "we had a deal, and no one goes back on a bargain with me!"

"I'm not reneging, exactly," said Aeron. "It's just that I charge extra for every lie and lost partner."

"You don't know what you're getting into. If you've got any brains at all, you understand I can't let folk cross me and live to brag about it, or else I'm finished in this town. But even that isn't the whole of it."

"You're starting to bore me, Kesk. Perhaps someone else will pay a fair price for the coffer."

The tanarukk shuddered, and the corner of his mouth twitched and drooled around the jutting tusk and fangs.

"All right," Kesk said. "I'll give you five times as much as we agreed on."

"Ten, and we'll make the trade at a place and time of my-"

The flame in the oil lamp flared, momentarily illuminating the shadowy gate as brightly as the noonday sun. Aeron had the misfortune to be looking in the general direction of the blaze, and it dazzled him.

He didn't know how Kesk had accomplished the trick. Maybe it was some innate capacity derived from his demonic heritage. But he didn't even need to hear the pounding footsteps to comprehend why the tanarukk had manipulated the flame. Kesk had had his back to the lamp, so he hadn't been blinded, and he was charging in to attack his startled, crippled foe.

Aeron flung himself to the side. Something whizzed past his head, just missing, judging from the breeze. He assumed it was Kesk's battle-axe.

Tharag roared something in the uncouth language of his kind, reminding Aeron that he had two foes, not just one.

Damn it!

He should have taken a split second to knife the bugbear before rolling clear, but had been too rattled to think of it.

He couldn't battle both of them, not when all he could see was spots and blobs swimming before his eyes. Truth to tell, he wouldn't have bet on his ability to outfight Kesk under any conditions. He had to get out of there.

Aeron sensed something lunging at him. He jumped backward, with a sick certainty that it wasn't enough to save him, then heard two bodies smack together and Kesk bellow in frustrated rage. Evidently he and the bugbear had rushed Aeron at the same instant, and on the fairly narrow platform, had gotten in each other's way.

Aeron knew it had only bought him a second, time he needed to use to leap back down into the water, where his foes' axe and scimitar couldn't reach him. But which way was it? Blind as he was, disoriented from dodging, he was no longer sure.

All he could do was take his best guess. He ran-one stride, a second-and pitched into empty space. He felt a split second of elation, then he crashed down on a solid surface.

For an instant, stunned, Aeron couldn't grasp what had gone wrong, let alone what to do next. Finally it came to him that he'd landed inside one of the boats. The craft bounced as someone else jumped in with him.

Aeron scrambled backward, bumped into the gunwale, and swung himself over the side. His maneuver tipped the craft, and Kesk cursed as he struggled to keep his balance.

Aeron plunged into the water, then struck out in what he prayed was the direction of the river. A missile of some sort, a thrown dagger, perhaps, splashed down beside him. Finally his vision began to clear, and he saw he was headed the right way.

As he reached the mouth of the gate, he glanced backward, and felt a jolt of terror. Kesk held his battle-axe poised for a swing at the chain that held the portcullis in the raised position. The weapon's edge glowed scarlet as he activated some magic bound in the steel.

Aeron hurled himself forward. Metal clashed, chain clattered, and the grille dropped just behind him, kicking up a little wave that carried him a few feet farther out into the Scelptar.

The trick then was to make it safely ashore. Aeron thought Kesk would send the Red Axes to prowl along the riverside, but if he kept on swimming as fast as he could, he reckoned he'd be able to make it onto dry land before the tanarukk could organize the search.