The God Catcher

THIRTEEN

Nestrix's consciousness swam near and darted away several times before she could grasp hold of it and pull herself from sleep. She swayed as she sat up, and took in her surroundings. She had awakened in a cold, dank room. No-a cage, she amended. She was surrounded by iron bars, and beyond that slick walls of mold-covered brick illumined in the meager light of a few caged glowballs. Vague shapes of boxes or trunks or furniture huddled in the shadows. The sound of rushing water thrummed from every direction. Water dripped on her head from a ceiling she couldn't see. The stormcloak she'd purchased hung around her neck, soaked through and tatter-edged when she felt along it. Someone had pulled out all the pins.

Her head was pounding and her throat was parched. She opened her mouth and tilted her head back to catch the water, then nearly spit it out at the foul, metallic taste. She made herself swallow and take a few more drops. Her mouth and throat burned.

She remembered the lightning breath, the brief moment when she felt as powerful as a summer storm-just before her pathetic body failed her. She gently prodded the blisters at the comers of her mouth.

Then she remembered why she had breathed the lightning she knew she couldn't handle.

Tennora… and the taaldarax.

Nestrix sprang to her feet, to the bars. She passed them one by one under her hands, searching for the door. It rattled when she grabbed it, but for all her shaking, it wouldn't budge.

Her stupid, useless eyes couldn't pierce the darkness, but she couldn't smell Tennora anywhere. Just the buttery must of old wood, the sharpness of rust, and the sweet putrescence of stagnant water. No wizard-thieves. No dokaal with inky fingers.

She slid down to her knees, alone in the dark.

She was at the mercy of the green taaldarax. How her heart had stopped when she'd thrown open the door. She'd expected to find Tennora hurt and cornered. She'd expected to find another of his lovacs looming over her.

But the taaldarax himself, even in the skin of a young man, was unmistakable. She didn't doubt he'd felt the same explosion of recognition-underneath that acrid, swampy smell of his were still the cool, dusty notes of a male dragon. Whatever he had looked like to Tennora and the other dokaal, Nestrix only saw the proud, sharp features of a young green, all horn and fang.

And arrogance-a dangerous arrogance.

She swallowed, trying to wet her mouth, and found herself thinking of her grandsire, Chendarixanath, a hoary old ulhar with a horn that could gouge a hole in a ship as it sailed. He had been a player in the great game, had still been playing when the Spellplague rolled over Faerun. Nestrix did not know what had become of him.

For a decade she had learned the game from him, curious and hungry for power at first, then bored and disinterested in its intricacies, at which point he chased her from his caverns. If she closed her eyes, she could remember watching Chendarixanath doling orders out to his lovacs and lecturing a younger, coltish version of her dragon self. She could remember the basic rules of the game, boomed out in guttural Draconic.

"First," he said, "you may not act against another player. Xorvintaal is about subtlety and patience. To cut another player out, you must trap them with their own movements."

The green and his lovac had spoken as if she were a player, fully knowing she had already broken the most cardinal of rules. It did not bode well for her, she thought. Either he no longer suspected her of playing, or he was not so fond of following rules himself.

"Your pieces are your greatest asset," Chendarixanath had said. "And your greatest obstacle; a weakness in them is a weakness in you. Cull those you cannot trust."

The man with the knives was clearly the lovac, the foremost of the green's pieces in Waterdeep. And yet it was the taaldarax who had attacked Tennora, when he should have ordered the lovac to put other pieces into play. Alert the Watch of a false crime. Imply the betrayal of some local criminals. Even hiring someone to hire an assassin would have been a reasonable, if artless, move.

But no. The green had disdained such thoughtful planning and chosen instead to make himself a piece in the game, making himself his greatest weakness. Her grandsire would have been disgusted.

"Half of the game is what you do," he had said, "but the true art is in the other half-what you force others to do by the moves you take. Between your actions, your opponents' reactions will determine your success."

Another voice, this one a human man with white hair on his chin instead of his head, imposed itself on her. "You'll get yourself into trouble if you jump into it like that." She'd asked what she should do. "Wait. Let them trip on themselves."

The memory of sitting by the hearth, listening to his stories, filled her thoughts. But where Nestrix would have sat, the image fluttered between two girls-one with golden hair, one with deepnight black. One who should be dead, and one who had never existed. But which was which? Lyra the thief and Nestrix the dragon, or Nestrix the thief and Lyra the bronze: they blurred and blended until she didn't know which to trust.

"Fine," she muttered. "You think you know better? Tell me what to do."

The fractured memories of Lyra the thief swarmed her thoughts. Nestrix let them, listening to the dead woman's thoughts for the first time in her life and gleaning a sort of wisdom from them.

Lyra's memories fluttered by, following their own unfathomable pattern. They showed Nestrix how to cheat at cards, how to ride a horse, how to flirt, how to bargain, how to pick a lock…

Nestrix startled herself from the borrowed memories of long-fingered hands working the two tools in the workings of an elaborate lock.

From the other edge of the darkness, the glow of a lantern broke the gloom. Nestrix lay down again, as if asleep, but watched from beneath nearly closed lids as two men entered.

The first was a young man wearing a green velvet coat and walking with a cane. He was coughing and held a handkerchief to his mouth. The coughing grew worse, and he had to stop and lean against the second man for a moment.

"Tiamat m'henich" he swore in Draconic as the coughing subsided. The hairs on Nestrix's neck stood on end. That was the taaldarax.

"Master," the second man, the lovac, said, "sit down. Rest yourself."

"Away, Ferremo," the other man snapped. "I don't need a nursemaid." He limped away from the antiquary. The light moved with him and illumined a comfortable-looking chair among the dark hulks of a dozen chests. The man with the cane scowled at it, but sat anyway.

"How long will she be unconscious?" he asked.

"It is hard to say," Ferremo answered, and Nestrix realized they meant her. "It should only have been a few hours… but we navigate uncharted waters here." He paused for the briefest moment. "If what you say is true, master."

The man in the chair grunted. "Have I ever been wrong before?"

"Of course not," Ferremo said. "Never in my time with you." He paused. "But the bounty hunter and his story are… quite compelling."

A tense pause. "Whenever did you find the time to seek out a bounty hunter?"

"I-that is, Alina brought him to my attention. The likeness is-"

"The result of a decent artist and a foolish magistrate. Words on foolscap do not make a fact." He began coughing once more, and it was long moments before it subsided.

"The girl," Ferremo said, "her lovac, came to the shop. She offered a trade." "I don't want it," the man with the cane said.

"She offers a relic. Of the world before the Blue Fire. A collar meant to protect against the dragonward."

His master snorted. "I will not need it much longer."

"Master, as a precaution. You're suffering."

"I will endure," he said. "And what does she want in return? Her mistress?"

"Yes." Another pause. "Consider it, master. The creature is not worth your-" He broke off with a sudden gasp.

"You'll mind your tongue, Ferremo," the taaldarax said.

"Whoever she is to you and me-foe or friend or innocent-she is your better."

"And if she is not?" Ferremo asked, after a breath or two. "Master?"

A long silence hung in the air. "Do you think I cannot tell the difference?" the man with the cane said. "Do you think I'd mistake a human for one of the ulhar?"

"You… you are ailing, master."

"May I never be so frail as to…" He trailed off. "Awake, are we?"

Nestrix cursed silently, but she sat up once more with an easy grace. "You are frail enough to have missed that. I have been awake some time now, taaldarax." She glanced over at the antiquary turned lovac. "You wound me, dokaal. You'll live to regret it."

"Leave us," the assassin's master growled at him. Ferremo gave a quick bow, his eyes never leaving Nestrix. When the lovac had left, the dragon in the man's skin stood still and regarded Nestrix for a long while.

"You're a blue," the man said in Draconic. The sharp consonants rolled off his tongue as easily as an old tavern song, without the slightest of two-legged accents. Even Nestrix's tongue tripped on her first language now.

"Are you certain?" she said acidly.

He clucked his tongue. "I'm cleverer than most, ulhar. I know what you are, even if I've never met your kind before."

"And I've never met a green before," Nestrix said, "but your arrogance precedes you. Even if you hoard like one of the aussir."

"How droll." He stepped into the light. An overdramatic gesture, Nestrix thought, worthy of a young and self-absorbed dragon. "I wondered. You always hear the ulhar are too vain to notice much beyond the ends of their horns."

She smiled sweetly. "What am I doing in this cage?"

"Talking," the man said with a smile. "Preferably about how you've managed to evade the dragonward's effects."

Nestrix bit her lip to keep from laughing. "Why?" she said, her voice dripping honey. "Does the dragonward bother you?"

He stood at the bars of the cage, and she could see now that it did. He clutched the walking stick like an old man with a palsy, and he was breathing heavily. His skin was pale, and a fine bead of sweat stood out on his forehead.

"How did you do it?" he said calmly.

"I merely entered the city," she said.

"Now who's being arrogant?" He held up a hand and whispered words that Nestrix knew were a spell, even if she couldn't identify it.

A lance of icy air pierced her lungs, and she was suddenly so cold she couldn't draw breath. She twisted out of its path, but the frost lingered in her chest.

"Henich," she hissed. "Bastard! This is your plan? Cage me up and throw ice at me? What do I care? I have nothing left."

He paced along the edge of the cage. "I've asked around-as much as I can in the space of a night. None of the taaldarax I know recognize you. What are you doing in my territory?"

"They wouldn't know me," Nestrix said, standing. If he was going to torture her, he'd look her in the teeth as he did it. "As I don't play xorvintaal."

"Then who are you working for?"

Nestrix laughed. "Don't you listen? This has nothing to do with your little game. I have no interest in the machinations of mortals." She pulled herself to her feet. "And you know that. You can't kidnap or kill another player."

The man did not blink. "You'll find there are a lot of rules I know my way around. Tell me your name."

"Clytemorrenestrix. Of the Calim, last time any of your opponents heard of me."

He repeated the name under his breath, likely telling that lovac of his to ask around about her. There was nothing to find, she knew, save the possible opinion that she was just a mad human woman with a few lucky talents. She thought of Tennora and the leaflet she'd found.

"I am Andareunarthex," he said, but dissolved into another fit of coughing. He pressed the bloodstained handkerchief to his lips.

"Of Waterdeep?" Nestrix asked.

When the coughing faded, he fixed his dark emerald eyes on her again. "You are a mystery, Clytemorrenestrix. You're a blue-even if Ferremo tells me otherwise, even if your girl says the same, even if there's a hunter calling you to court for human laws' sake. You and I know what is what. You're no more human than I am." He settled back into his chair. "And you say you are no taaldarax, but you dance around my questions as if their answers matter a great deal to you and quote rules back at me like an old one."

Another spell burst from his wand, surrounding Nestrix in a blur of purple light that stung her skin like a swarm of wasps and made her bones feel as if they were melting. She tumbled to her knees.

Dareun leaned forward, looking down at her.

"But whatever you are," he said, "you cannot stop me from taking what I want."

"Why bother?" Nestrix panted. "The dragonward's doing a fine job bringing you down."

Dareun smiled. "For now. Ferremo!" he shouted over his shoulder. The assassin stepped forward and bowed.

"We will take the girl up on her offer," Dareun said. "Who knows-it could be exactly what I need."

Ferremo bowed again. "Shall I shackle this one?" he said.

"No," Dareun said, turning back to Nestrix with a smug look on his face. "We're having such a lovely conversation. She should stay."

Ferremo hesitated. "The girl's certain to make a fuss though." "Well then," Dareun said, and Nestrix felt her heart freeze even as he spoke. "Why don't you give her the business end of your knife for her troubles?"