"Maybe we don't have to close our eyes every time."
"Something about the plight of this particular wretch has stirred your sympathy, but surely your guild masters taught you that mere emotion is no reason to abandon a strategy."
"I admit, they did, but…"
Uncertain, hating Sefris a little but herself more, Miri watched the kidnappers, if that was what they were, lead their captive away.
"All right," Miri said when the street was clear, "let's get this done."
She promised herself that once it was, and she'd delivered the strongbox into the proper hands, she'd depart Oeble within the hour, never to return. Unless it was at the head of an army, to raze the filthy place.
She and Sefris scurried into the tower and on up the shadowy spiral stairs. The risers were soft, treacherous, half rotten, but they managed the climb quietly even so. On the third-floor landing, a door opened, and a halfling in a feathered hat started to emerge. He took one look at the two grim-faced human strangers striding by and retreated back inside.
The door to Aeron sar Randal's garret apartment was standing open. Miri and Sefris ascended the remaining stairs warily, then they peeked beyond the threshold. Someone had torn the flat apart. At first the exercise had likely been a search, but had included simple malicious destruction before it was through. Shards of shattered bottles littered the floor, and the varnished scraps of a broken mandolin lay in the reeking puddle of spilled wine.
No one was inside, though Miri was reasonably certain she'd seen the vandals only minutes before.
"Look," Sefris said, pointing. The light of the garret's one surviving lamp sufficed to reveal the outline of an axe scrawled in crimson chalk on the wall. "The Red Axes signed their work."
"And plainly," Miri said, "it was them we saw coming out of the tower with their prisoner. Otherwise, the coincidence is just too great. Curse us, we should have waylaid them."
"Perhaps so," the monastic replied, "but let's take a moment to think it through. Who do you think they abducted, Aeron's father?"
"Somebody dear to him, at any rate, someone they hope to trade for the box."
"Not a bad idea, and if we take the hostage from them, we can try the same thing."
Miri frowned and said, "We're not kidnappers, to hold a man prisoner and barter his life for treasure."
"Do you think the captive an innocent? My guess is that he's as wicked a knave as Aeron himself, for what bond of affection could exist between such a thief and a righteous man?"
"We can't mistreat him just on the basis of our suspicions."
"No," Sefris sighed. "Of course not. What was I thinking? I think this evil place is corrupting my judg-"
Without warning, she leaped and spun, her heel streaking at Miri's head.
Reacting out of sheer reflex, Miri bounded back out of range, and the monastic's kick missed her by an inch. The scout continued her frantic retreat, meanwhile nocking and drawing an arrow. Sefris landed in a deep crouch, one hand high and open, the other clenched into a fist and cocked at her hip.
"What is this?" Miri demanded. "Why would you attack me?"
"The arcanaloth promised you'd guide me along the path to the Bouquet," Sefris replied, "but I think you've done your part. From this point onward, your mawkish scruples and squeamishness would only get in the way. So now I'm going to kill you for daring to set yourself against the Lady of Loss."
Miri didn't understand all of that. She didn't know what an "arcanaloth" was, for example. But it was plain that Sefris was as treacherous a double-dealer as most everyone else she'd met in Oeble, and had been playing her for a fool from the start.
"I'm the one with an arrow aimed at your heart," Miri said. "If you so much as twitch, I'll let it fly. Now, you're no Broken One. Who are you?"
"Perhaps you've heard of the Monks of the Dark Moon."
Sefris's hand leaped toward her pocket and the chakram inside it. Miri released the bowstring.
The arrow flew straight, but the monastic twisted aside. The chakram whirled through the air. Miri simultaneously ducked and flailed at the ring, and by luck as much as skill, she swatted it away with her buckler. Steel clashed against steel.
Sefris pounced, too fast for even the deftest archer to ready another shaft. In desperation, Miri swung her bow like a club. The monastic caught the weapon, twirled it out of Miri's grasp, and cast it aside.
At least that took an instant, which Miri used to scramble backward once more. The retreat took her out onto the balcony, which groaned and dipped alarmingly under her weight. She also had time to snatch out her broadsword and, when Sefris lunged forward again, prompting the platform to creak and lurch, meet her with a stop cut. The robed, shaven-headed woman halted instantly, cleanly, on balance, and the attack fell short.
Smiling ever so slightly, Sefris shifted back and forth, looking for an opening. Miri felt an unaccustomed pang of fear, and struggled to quash it.
I know she's good, she thought, but the sword gives me the reach on her, and she can't dodge around too much out here. The balcony's too small.
Miri advanced, feinted to the head, and cut to the flank. Sefris ignored the false attack and swept down her arm to parry the true one. It shouldn't have worked very well. The broadsword should have chopped into her wrist, but the block incorporated a subtle spinning motion that somehow permitted her to fling the blade away and remain unscathed.
She riposted with a spring into the air and a front kick to the face. Miri swayed backward, out of harm's way, and slashed at the other woman's extended leg. She grazed the flapping hem of her robe, but that was all. Sefris touched down, spun, and caught the sword with a crescent kick. The impact tore it from Miri's grasp and sent it flying over the broken railing.
The ranger grabbed for the hilt of the dagger sheathed at her belt. Hands poised for slaughter, Sefris whirled around to face her.
Wood cracked and screamed, and the balcony swung down, the horizontal surface becoming a steep incline. The platform was pulling loose from it anchors.
Sefris turned and, nimble as a cat, clambered up the slope and into the safety of the garret. Miri tried to do the same, but scrabble as she might, she couldn't catch hold of anything to pull herself up. Her boots kicked away rotten fragments of railing, wood cracked and snapped, and she and the balcony plummeted, tumbling through empty space.
CHAPTER 9
As the crash sounded below, Sefris drew a calming breath. She hadn't feared Miri's bow or sword, but she had felt a twinge of alarm when the balcony unexpectedly gave way. The fear proved she still had a way to go before she achieved a perfect, contemptuous indifference to the well-being of all unworthy created things, herself included.
It was something to work on in her meditations, but not just then. She had to recapture the opportunity that was receding beyond her grasp. The monastic retrieved her fallen chakram, she then sprinted back down the spiral stairs.
As Sefris hurtled downward, she cast off-she wished for all time-the habits of speech and expression she'd adopted to impersonate a Broken One. The warmth and compassion of a servant of Ilmater were entirely alien to her own nature. It had taken a constant effort to counterfeit them, and she knew she hadn't managed perfectly. Still, she'd passed muster right up until the end, and that was what mattered.
When she reached ground level, she raced down the street in the direction the kidnappers and their victim had taken. She kept to the shadows as best she could, but stealth was less important than speed, and her sandals pounded the wheel-rutted earth.