Well, at least she had a patch of open sky above her head once more and hope of completing her mission without the necessity of a return to the claustrophobic confines of the Underways. In fact, if she could only ease her mind on a certain matter, she might feel better than at any time since Aeron sar Randal made off with the saddlebag.
The problem was figuring out how to broach the subject with a comrade who'd been nothing but helpful, who had, indeed, saved her life. As a general rule, Miri believed in directness, yet she had a sense that in that situation, she'd feel like an ingrate if she failed to muster a degree of tact.
"I still can't make out how you knew," she said as they hiked along.
"About Mistress Dalaeve's face?" Sefris replied.
"Yes."
"We Broken Ones can see through illusions sometimes. Open eyes are a benefit of our meditations." As they neared an intersection, Sefris pointed to a frieze of manticores decorating a crumbling wall and said, "This is where our informant told us to turn."
Miri peered around the corner, studying the path ahead. Even up in what was allegedly the law-abiding part of Oeble, it appeared to her that an absurd number of folk were skulking about in the dark, engaged in business that, were it wholly legitimate, they would have conducted by day. But none of them looked like they were lying in wait for outlanders, so she and the monastic proceeded on their way.
"But how did you know she was so worried about keeping her scars hidden that a threat to unmask her would break her will?" the ranger asked.
Sefris shrugged and replied, "It was a guess, based on what we'd heard and seen. Her reclusiveness. The dim lighting and frilly furnishings. Her taste in reading matter, and the fact that the false visage she affected was absolutely perfect, like a statue's face."
"Very clever," said Miri.
His cane tapping and bowl outstretched, a stained strip of linen tied over his eyes, a beggar meandered toward the two women. Reminded of sar Randal's disguise, Miri scowled, and the "blind" mendicant, who evidently saw her forbidding expression perfectly well, veered off.
"Thank you," Sefris said. "Yet I sense you don't wholly approve of my tactics."
"It's not that, exactly. I suppose I'm trained to fight with my hands, not by finding a person's private shame and rubbing salt in the wound. It just felt dirty, somehow."
Sefris arched an eyebrow and said, "I intended to master the wizard through the exercise of our martial skills. You stopped me."
"Because unlike the yuan-ti, who tried to enslave me, she hadn't done anything that made her fair game."
"Operating a haven for the foulest kind of outlaws and goblin-kin doesn't qualify?"
"It seems like it should," Miri said with a sigh, "doesn't it?"
"Yet you pity her." To her surprise, Miri thought she heard a trace of scorn in the monastic's generally calm, mild tone, and she wondered if it was directed at Naneetha or herself. "Consider this, then. Suppose something scarred you. Would you spend the rest of your life hiding in a hole?"
"No. It wouldn't make all that much difference to me, I suppose."
"Nor me, nor anyone who wasn't bloated with vanity to begin with. Whatever distress Mistress Dalaeve experiences is the result of her own stupidity and weakness. You and I are not to blame."
"And your deity is tender Ilmater, god of mercy," said Miri with wry incredulity.
"Whose sympathy and help are given first and foremost to the innocent and those who strive for the right like you, my friend, and the good folk who you say will benefit when we recover your stolen treasure. There. That's it, isn't it?"
The scout peered and saw that Sefris was right. Ahead and to the left were the broken foundations of two spires, like decaying stumps in a row of teeth. One tower had evidently fallen sideways, demolishing its neighbor in the course of its collapse. Imagining the catastrophe, Miri winced at the probable loss of life.
But it had happened long ago, and all those unfortunate souls were beyond her power to help. What mattered then was that if her informant, one of Oeble's apothecaries, had told the truth, Aeron sar Randal lived on the top floor of a tower three doors farther down.
Miri and Sefris stalked forward, stepping silently and gliding through the shadows. The ranger spotted a hobgoblin lurking in a recessed doorway, its cloak draped so that it half concealed the crossbow dangling in its hairy hand. She stopped and raised her hand, whereupon Sefris, too, halted instantly. Miri pointed.
"A lookout," she whispered.
"Yes, I see it now. Aeron's sentry, do you think?"
"It's possible, but it feels wrong. At the Paeraddyn, his accomplices were all human, and if I understood Naneetha correctly, he doesn't even belong to a gang himself. He might not have any partners as a general rule."
"Well, whoever it is, it's likely no friend of ours, not unless you have other allies you haven't told me about."
"No," Miri replied.
"I can't fling a chakram that far, but you can surely hit it with an arrow."
Miri reached for a shaft, then left it in the quiver.
"I can't just kill it without knowing for certain who it is or what it's doing," she said. "It might be working with the Gray Blades."
"A hobgoblin?"
"I know it seems unlikely, but Oeble is full of townsfolk the rest of the world disdains as savage marauders. Maybe some of them even spy for the law."
"What should we do, then?" Sefris asked. "Creep around to the back of the tower and look for another way in, one the watcher can't see?"
"I'll do that. You keep an eye on the hobgoblin and this approach, and hoot like an owl if you need to alert me to anything."
Sefris smiled and said, "I remind you, this isn't the wild."
"They must have a few owls," Miri replied. "Anyway, we need some sort of signal."
She started toward the alley that ran between the two buildings, and the door to Aeron's tower opened.
Several ruffians, a couple human, the others not, skulked out onto the street. The one in the lead was a tanarukk, the first of that infamous breed Miri had noticed among Oeble's motley population. Stooped and massive, curved tusks jutting from its lower jaw, it stalked along with a heavy battle-axe in one fist and a lead line in the other.
The trailing end of the rope bound the hands of a human prisoner, who hobbled as best he could with a burlap sack over his head. For a moment, Miri wondered if it was Aeron, then decided it couldn't be. The captive was excruciatingly gaunt, not lean, and carried an assortment of old scars on the exposed portions of his skin.
The hobgoblin lookout emerged from the doorway to join his comrades. Miri laid an arrow across her bow.
Sefris touched her on the arm.
"What are you doing?" she whispered.
Miri was surprised that a Broken One, sworn to help the victims of cruelty, would ask.
"I'm going to shoot an outlaw or two," the ranger replied.
"Why? We don't know this is any of our affair. The toughs and goblin-kin look villainous enough, but perhaps they have some legitimate grievance against this man."
"Then let them go to the law with their complaint. I thought that's what towns are supposed to be good for."
"How many acts of injustice and brutality have you seen since coming to Oeble?" asked Sefris. "How many chained thralls wailing that they were enslaved unlawfully? How many pimps beating their whores and bravos terrorizing shopkeepers for protection? Yet you passed on by, because you're on a mission, and if you deviated from it to right every wrong you stumbled across in this den of scoundrels, you'd never get it done."