Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune

Pricks and Afflictions Dennis L. McKiernan

Glog!

The wave shoved Rogi down again, and a great bubble exploded from his mouth as he spat the oath underwater: “Thshite!”

Rogi fought his way upward, yet even as he broke through the surface—thnk!—the box slammed into the back of his head.

Down went Rogi once more, the little hunchback now caught in the undertow and dragged along the mud and silt and sand.

In spite of his panic, in spite of clawing for purchase even as the powerful riptide slammed him repeatedly into the bottom and rolled him and tossed him somersaulting, Ith thith the end of Rogi? he wondered.

Just moments before, as he’d stumped along the western shore of the White Foal and swatted mosquitoes and shooed away gnats and picked off leeches while he hunted the rats who frequented the fringes of the Swamp of Night Secrets, rats that occasionally came out from the reeds to the shoreline to hunt small crustaceans and perhaps lick salt from the rocks, as the sinking sun hung low in the sky, Rogi had “thspotted a chetht” tossing to and fro in the whitecaps and tricky currents ’round the Hag’s Teeth, there where the furious rush of the White Foal met the cold surge of the sea. He saw the curious markings—runes mayhap—carven into the sides, and he guessed that it was something “thpethial.” Perhaps the rumors were true about the strange wreck out on the Seaweal Reefs; maybe this chest had come from there. Quickly, Rogi had stripped off his clothes, pausing momentarily to admire his dragon, and then he had plunged headlong into the heavy waves yet cresting from a blow somewhere far out to sea. The shock of the cold water shrank his dragon down to minuscule proportions, but Rogi persevered, swimming an ungainly sidestroke against the white-crested billows rolling in from the south, and the swirling, gurgling river current rushing down from the north. With water cascading over him and the long red hair growing only on the right side of his head whipping about in the currents, gasping between crests, he made his way outward to fetch this curious artifact … or so he hoped it might be. After all, if it were “thomthing thpethial” his “mathter” would reward him handsomely … perhaps even enough to visit the ladies above the Yellow Lantern and make his dragon happy.

But then a breaker had smashed him under and a swell had lifted him up and he had been hit in the back of the head by the box, and another roller had hammered him under again, where the undertow had grabbed him and hurled him along the bottom. And he had no air, yet needed to breathe, but could not, deep down as he was. And as he tumbled, the swift-running undercurrent crashed him against the skeletal ribs of the rotted remains of a longdrowned hulk, its keel deeply buried in the muck.

Desperately, Rogi grabbed at the wooden beam and managed to hang on, and then, as if climbing a tree, he shimmied his way up the curved member, his diaphragm pumping hard against his clenched-shut lips, seeking to draw anything into his lungs, whether it be air or not. And with black spots swirling before his eyes … all of a sudden was free of the seaward pull of the deep tow.

Now hastily scrambling upward, but still clinging to the sunken ship’s paling and with darkness sucking at his mind, at last his head broke free of the water, and—ghuu—uuh!—he sucked in sweet, sweet air, though with the offshore breeze blowing out from the swamp, others might not call it “sweet.” Yet to Rogi, nothing else in the troughs between combers had ever been so precious as the odiferous stench he sucked into his burning lungs.

With waves yet crashing over him, Rogi tried spotting the chest, the little hunchback scanning about in the surge. “Dogths ballths!” he shouted—glug!—as another billow washed by, “I’ve lotht it!” for he could see nought of the box tossing among the foaming crests.

Turning loose of the hulk’s rib, Rogi began awkwardly side-stroking in the direction of the tops of the waving reeds he could now and then see above the billowing whitecaps, and, struggling, at last he reached footing, muddy silt and sand though it was.

Waves knocked him down several times ere he gained the shore and, drenched, water runnelling from his completely hairless left side but sopping his extremely hirsute right, he made his way toward his clothing.

Rogi dressed quickly against the chill, for though the summer air was warm, the waters of both the ocean and the White Foal were startlingly cold. Even as he pulled on his breeks, he paused momentarily to mourn over his poor wrinkled dragon, but then hauled the pants up to his waist and cinched tight the rope he used for a belt. Throwing on his shirt with its too-long sleeves, he plopped down and slipped into his floppy-topped socks, one of his toes seeking freedom through a hole. At last he slipped into his shoes, with scrap leather stuffed inside to make him taller than his considerably short four foot six, though, hunched over as he was most of the time, he seemed more like three foot four. Finally, he flopped a great length of his long red hair from the right side of his head over the bald left side—the mother of all comb-overs, someone at the Vulgar Unicorn had called it—and jammed on his ear-flapped cap, tying the cord under his chin.

As he turned to take up his blowpipe and drugged darts, “Vathankath’th member!” he cried, for in the fading light and washed ashore not ten feet away lay the rune-marked chest.

Hâlott, looked up as the sound of a timid tap tapping came down the stairs from the weatherworn, heavy-planked, iron-bound door. “Rogi!” he hissed, his whispery voice sounding much like that of dead leaves stirring in a cold wind.

Moments passed and the familiar scuttle of Rogi’s waddle did not come.

“Rogi!” again Halott called out, if a hoarse rasping can be said to be a call.

Tap-tap came the soft knock.

Still Rogi did not respond.

“Pah.” Hâlott set aside the long, thin-bladed flaying knife and stepped away from the half-skinned corpse on the table and headed for the stairs leading up to the first floor.

Tap-tap.

With skeletal, black-nailed fingers, Hâlott lifted the latch and swung the door inward. Just beyond stood a woman in a dark brown, coarse-spun cloak held tightly ’round.

She cast back her hood. “My lord—” she began, and looked up into Hâlott’s face, and gasped and recoiled, half turning as if to flee. But then she mastered her panic, though not her rapidly beating heart and once more she faced this reputed necromancer. Before her she saw a tall, gaunt, cadaverous, dried-up, dark-robed being; perhaps he had once been a man, but no longer it seemed. He had parchmentlike yellowish brown skin stretched tightly over his completely bald skull, his face nought but sunken-in, hollow cheeks and a narrow, desiccated, hawklike nose, and his eye sockets covered with the skin of eyelids sewn shut. Even so, false eyes he had—painted in kohl—and the young woman flinched at the sight of them, for they reminded her of the markings on a death’s head moth. Long, bony, grasping fingers he had, and bony limbs from what she could see of his wrists and arms jutting out from partly rolled-up voluminous sleeves. And when his cadaverous whisper came—“Well?”—she was certain she was speaking to a corpse.

Hâlott on the other hand saw before him a young woman, and surely a lady, for beneath the coarse-spun cloak she wore the quality and cut of her garments told a tale. Too, her ginger hair was well coifed and in the latest style, and she was quite clean. Her nails were well manicured, and she wore a ruby ring on a finger of her right hand, a ring Halott recognized.

“What brings you here from the court, my lady?” Hâlott whispered.

She gasped. “How did you—?”

“I am Hâlott,” replied the necromancer, as if that explained all. “Won’t you step into my—”

“No, no,” she blurted, drawing back from this, this creature . And she twisted the ring from her finger. “Lady Na—um, my mistress commanded me to bring you this.” Her hand trembled as she gingerly held out the ring, the circlet tentatively grasped between thumb and finger, the maiden no doubt hoping against hope that she wouldn’t come into contact with Hâlott’s withered digits. “Though I can see nothing wrong with it, my mistress says it needs repair. Yet when I suggested Thibalt the Rankan—Thibalt the Jeweler—could mend any ring, she said it must come to you. And so …”

Hâlott’s blue-tattooed lips twitched in what was perhaps meant to be a grin, but appeared more like a grotesque facial tic instead. Again his hollow whisper sounded: “When?”

“My lady says she needs it two days hence, for she would wear it at the courtyard gathering three days from now.” In spite of the repellent being before her, the young woman’s face lit in anticipation. “We are celebrating the visit of per-Arizak—he usually stays up in the hills, you know—and just about everyone will be there, and my mistress would wear her bloodred stones.”

“Bloodred. How fitting,” said Hâlott, and again he smiled, this time more widely, his rictus exposing yellowed teeth.

The woman flinched back.

Hâlott held out his hand, palm up, and said, “Come back at this time two days hence. Tell—tell your mistress it will be ready by then.”

With relieved smile on her face, for she did not have to touch the yellowed and no doubt dead skin, the young woman dropped the ring into Hâlott’s hand and turned and fled.

At the palace, Nadalya, the golden-haired second wife of Arizak, stood in an alcove and whispered to fair-haired Andriko, and from the cast of his face and hair he, like Nadalya, was clearly of Rankan blood. The tongue they spoke was neither Rankene, Ilsigi, Irrune, nor even the bastardized Wrigglie. Instead in hushed tones they spoke Yenizedi, a language not likely to be understood by anyone else in this part of the palace.

“Driko, I would have you ride into the hills and find me a hornet’s nest, or that of wasps,” she murmured as the setting sun shone through a nearby casement and cast a ruddy light over all. “Make certain that it is plugged or contained in some manner so that they cannot escape, though I will need a means to set them free.”

“My lady?” Andriko’s blue eyes widened in disbelief. “A hornet’s nest? Oh, ’tis the season, and I’ve seen one out in the hills, but hornets, wasps?”

Momentarily, Nadalya’s face flashed in ire, but then she smiled and said, “Yes, Driko. I would have the nest, a large one at that, with many of the stingers inside. It is for a … demonstration I have in mind.”

Andriko shrugged nonchalantly, though a bit of a frown of puzzlement yet lingered on his face. “I can get a small wooden cask or box and enclose a nest therein.”

Nadalya nodded, but then her eyes lit up. “Better yet, Driko, seal them in a clay jar, one that is easily broken.”

“A clay pot when broken, my lady, makes a sound.”

“Oh, Driko, you are right. Perhaps a box is better.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Driko. “When do you need this—?”

“No later than early morn three days from now, Driko.”

“The day of the courtyard affair?”

“Yes, Driko. Then.”

Twilight fell and great clouds of mosquitoes and gnats rose up from the swamp. And on its fringes and dragging the chest by one of its brass handles, Rogi struggled along the west bank of the White Foal, now and again forced into the racing water by a stubborn out-jut of reeds. And every time he had to do so, the rush of the current nearly tore the prize from his grasp. “Blathsted thwamp!” he muttered, his long, long tongue causing his incurable lisp. Often he stopped to swat at the “bloodthucking petht” buzzing about, and to pick off a leech or two, but at last he reached the end of the reeds, where he paused momentarily to rest. As he stood panting, he knuckled away sweat runnelling down his hairless left brow and into that eye; as well, he flicked sweat from his single, hairy eyebrow—the only one he had, and that over his right eye—and he looked at the rune-marked box. Some mere three feet long, two feet deep, and two feet wide, it didn’t look all that heavy. Still, Rogi recked that it was at least twice his own weight. And though the handles were brass and the bottom was brass plated, the bulk of it seemed made of gilded wood. Perhaps what was within was what made it so heavy, yet Rogi could find no lock nor latch nor lid nor anything else by which to open it. “My mathter will know how to get inthide.”

After a short rest he took up the journey again, dragging the chest after. If the White Foal wathn’t tho thwift, I could float thith boxth nearly all the way to my mathter’th tower.

But the waters of the ’Foal were swift, and so Rogi dragged the chest toward the ford. Reaching it at last, gasping and struggling, he hauled the box into the knee-deep flow, but halfway across he stumbled and fell, and lost his grip on the container, and it bobbed off downstream. “Oh, no, you don’t, you pieth of thsheep-thshite!” shouted Rogi, rising up and floundering after, falling—glug!—rising up again, falling once more, but finally catching the case in the swiftening current just ere it reached the narrows where it deepened beyond his head.

Struggling, Rogi managed to gain the shallows, and, with water runnelling from him, he drew the floating box through the ford until he came to the upstream end of the crossing, and there he dragged it onto the bank and rested once more. At last, he took up the effort again, and began hauling the container overland, following the White Foal northerly, until he came to the trace that led toward Hâlott’s tower.

At that juncture and in the darkening dusk, a young woman in a brown cloak going the opposite way came hurrying down the trail, and before Rogi could catch his breath and offer to let her see his dragon, she veered wide of him and shrieked, “Get away from me, you ugly little thing!” and fled toward town.

Shrugging, Rogi grabbed a handle of the chest and dragged it along the faint path toward the tower. Finally he reached the door and pushed it open. Grunting, dripping, he hauled the box into the darkened chamber, then splopped about, his shoes squishing as he lit lanterns—for although Halott with his painted-on eyes seemed to need no light to see, Rogi was not as fortunate. And so he struck strikers and filled the dusty chamber with luminance, all the while shouting, “Mathter, Mathter, come and thsee what it ith I have dithcovered! It’th a thecret boxth! A thecret boxth! Come quick and open it!”

When Rogi awakened the next day, still his “mathter” had not managed to find the way to open the chest. Hâlott had spent all night trying to discover the secret, yet he had failed. Even so, he had seemed overly excited when he had first seen what it was that Rogi had dragged in, if a tensing of his corpselike body could be said to be uncontained excitement. And he had traced the runes carven into the wood, or whatever it was the case was made of, all the while muttering in an arcane language under his breath, a language Rogi didn’t know, and given Rogi’s lengthy life’s experiences, it was rather odd that he hadn’t a clue to what this tongue might be.

Finally Rogi, exhausted from his labors and unable to sustain the excitement of what might be in the chest, had left Hâlott to his unsuccessful attempts and had gone down to his dank quarters in the fourth sub-basement under the tower and had promptly collapsed into sleep.

But that was last evening and now it was midday, and Hâlott still hadn’t managed to open the box, though somehow he had managed to get the heavy container up on a table.

“Perhapth it takth a thecret word to open it, Mathter,” suggested Rogi, clambering up onto a stool to observe. “Have you tried a thecret word? I know theveral thecret wordth, and—”

Hâlott made a sharp gesture of dismissal.

“Did you try to thlip thomething under thomthing elth? I have thome thkinny knivth that we could—”

Again, Hâlott made the gesture, only this time he whispered a hollow groan of sorts, a groan that Rogi knew represented a growl of rage.

Still—“Did you try prething thomething and then thomething elth? I could preth on thomething while you preth on thomething elth and—”

Hâlott’s whispered groan got louder.

“We can alwayth thmack it with a thledge hammer,” suggested Rogi. “One really good thmack with a thledge hammer and I bet it would—”

The necromancer whirled on the little hunchback, and how Hâlott managed to glare with painted-on eyes Rogi did not understand, nevertheless a glare it was.

“Yeth, Mathter, I’ll be thilent.” Rogi got down long enough to fetch a piece of bread and a hunk of cheese from the cupboard. He was the only one of the two who seemed to take any sustenance, though he suspected that Hâlott did something with the corpses he seemed always to be cutting into or dismembering or flaying or draining of blood or raising up in a ghastly semblance of life. Maybe Hâlott drank the blood, or ingested some other bodily fluid to keep life flowing through his own collapsed veins. Regardless as to whatever it might be that Hâlott did, Rogi would just as soon dwell in ignorance than to truly know.

Rogi waddled back to the table and clambered up onto his stool, and, in spite of his promise, as Hâlott pushed and prodded on the case, Rogi grunted and sucked air in between clenched teeth, and moaned, and fluttered his lips, and—

“Rogi,” hissed Hâlott, jerking his head toward the little hunchback, dried muscle and sere tendon and ancient bone creaking like twisting rope, “You will go now into the woods and forage for the kastor ricinus.”

“Thothe little brown beanth that made me thshite and thshite until I thought my thtomach wath going to oothe out of my athend … and I only ate one? Thothe beanth?”

“Yes, those beans. Bring me a handful.”

Rogi shuddered and sighed but said, “Yeth, Mathter.”

He hopped down off the stool, and, stuffing the uneaten remainder of his bread and cheese into a pocket, he took up a small empty pouch and his blowpipe and poison darts, and he set off out the door and stumped ’round the tower and into the hills, heading toward the last place he had found the poisonous bounty.

As Nadalya came into the chamber, the coterie about Naimun suddenly fell silent. She smiled sweetly at the various members, and then at her eldest son. Some among the group bowed, while others merely canted their heads, depending on whether they saw her as a lady of Ranke and wife of the current ruler of Sanctuary——as she was—or merely the fair-haired daughter of a well-to-do wine merchant and not of royal lineage, or as a degraded woman, degraded because she had become the number-two wife of an uncouth, Irrune outlander, king though he was.

Fair-haired and handsome in a coarse, heavyset way, Naimun’s thick lips curved upward in a smile. “Mother,” he said.

“La, my son,” said Nadalya, her tone merry, her hazel eyes atwinkle. “Take care, for if you and your group fall silent when one outside your circle enters the chamber, why, one might think you were plotting.”

Even as she laughed in blithe unconcern, still her gaze took in every nuance of the group—Some of those fools actually looked away. But one of them, Nidakis, held his composure and stepped forward and deeply bowed. As the young man straightened and brushed his black hair from his dark eyes he said, “We were merely stunned by the light of your presence, my lady.”

“Oh, my, a flatterer, I see,” replied Nadalya, smiling. “Beware this one, Naimun. He is like to turn your head.”

To one side, ginger-haired, freckled Caliti quickly glanced at Naimun and then looked down at the floor.

“Mother, where are you off to?” asked Naimun.

Nadalya sighed. “Your father seems rather pained by his leg this day, and I go to cheer him and to beg him to be at the courtyard gathering in two days to help us celebrate the visit of per-Arizak, the Dragon. Seldom does Ariz come down from the hills, and I would have him know he is welcome in his father’s house.”

“Indeed, my dear lady,” said Nidakis, “an event that Lord Arizak should attend, can his health permit him to formally welcome his eldest son. And so, let us not cause you to tarry, as pleasant as that might be.”

Nadalya grinned and tilted her head. “Naimun, ’ware my words, for this second son of Lord Kallitis is a wily one and likely to charm you blind.”

With that she stepped on past the young men and into the corridor beyond, where her merry mood vanished, and her gaze grew hard. They plot to set Naimun on the throne, and therefore they plot against Raith. For that they will pay, though but one at a time. And Nidakis: the chief schemer, that one, his smooth words those of a serpent, a seducer of minds, including Naimun’s. Should Naimun gain the throne, instead of my beloved Raith, Nidakis would stand in the shadows and whisper in Naimun’s ear and thereby actually rule. Well, we shall see about that. Indeed, we shall see.

In his tower, with a disgusted grunt—if a whisper can be said to resemble a grunt—Hâlott finally gave up on the chest. It was beyond his skill to open. Nevertheless, there were some in Sanctuary who might succeed where he had failed. He considered several:

Tregginain? No, too incompetent.

Dysan? Too young. No experience with puzzles and locks, I think.

Spyder? Some say he moves like a cat burglar, but there is an aura about him that does not speak of thief. I will have to look into him one day.—Ha! Look into him. Hâlott’s blue-tattooed lips twitched in what was for him a grin at his unintended double entendre.

Pegrin the Ugly might do, even though he seems to have given up his thieving ways, now working as he does for a steady wage at the ’Unicorn. Still, it might be that he will take on a commission, even though he seems appalled by my appearance.

Then there is that young one known as Lone, though perhaps he is nought but a cat burglar.

Ah, wait. There is one even better. I will send Rogi to fetch him.

Satisfied with his decision, Hâlott patted the chest and then turned to the ruby ring. It was time to begin that commission.

Rogi scrambled up the thorny slope and over the crest, and down into the grassy vale beyond. In moments he had come to the stand of kastor ricinus plants. At the first of them, a rather tall one, he pushed aside the large, bronzegreen star-shaped leaves, some of them with a purplish tint down their centers, and he looked for the spiny, seedbearing pods. Since the warm season was upon them, surely there should be some. Yet, after long examination, it seemed there were none.

Rogi moved further into the stand of the smoothstemmed shrubs, and once more failed to find any bean pods.

A bit farther in, he spotted a number of the spiky husks yet clinging to the inner branches, and Rogi pushed through to get them.

He had nearly filled the small pouch, when he heard the sound of a horse coming over the rise and down into the vale. Rogi froze so as not to be seen, for oft had he been harassed by bravos looking for a bit of sport, but for Rogi it was maltreatment Of course, the moment they discovered that Rogi was Hâlott’s lackey, the torment immediately ceased, such was the regard for the thing Hâlott was, though no one was certain just what that thing might be. However, if there were a rider astraddle the oncoming horse, then whoever this rider might be, perhaps he did not know of Hâlott or that Rogi fetched for him. And so, Rogi remained concealed among the leaves and limbs of the kastor plants.

When the horse and the man rode by—for it was a man on a horse—he passed heedless of the little hunchback within the foliage.

Rogi watched, just in case he had to run, yet the rider seemed to be following something, for his eyes were focused on a point in the air. What that might be, Rogi didn‘t—Oh, wait, it’th a flying inthect of thome thort. Well I’ll be thshite upon; it’th a wathp or a hornet. Why would thomeone follow a wathp?

Curious, Rogi slipped out from under the drooping branches of the kastor plant and, at a distance, trailed after.

It was not long ere the man stopped beneath the limbs of a large, wide-branched tree.

Rogi flopped bellydown in the tall grass.

The man cautiously backed his horse away from the tree, and dismounted and tied the reins to a sapling. He then unlashed a small, latched wooden box from the rear saddle cantle and sat down beside the horse and waited. And as he lingered, he tied one end of the rope ’round the box and the other end to his belt.

The scant remainder of the day slowly passed, and Rogi watched the man as the man watched the tree. As dusk descended, the man stood and took up the box and walked to the tree and looked up. After long moments, he somehow seemed satisfied and began climbing, one end of the rope yet fastened to his belt, the other yet tied to the box sitting on the ground.

Rogi frowned in puzzlement, but kept an eye on the man.

Finally, with the rope yet affixed to his belt, the man reached one of the large middle limbs and stepped onto the heavy branch and carefully sidled outward. He finally stopped and straddled the limb and warily moved a bit more outward. He then drew up the box and unlatched a hasp and opened the lid and cautiously raised it and swiftly—

What the thshite? He‘th thlipping it over a horneth’ netht!

The man quickly latched the hasp and then slowly lowered the box. As soon as it was on the ground, he swung down from the tree. In moments he rode away with his prize lashed to the back cantle.

What the thshite did he want that for: a boxth of angry horneth?

Shaking his head, Rogi got up from his concealment and, weighing the bag of kastor beans in his hand and deciding he had enough, he set off for the tower, hoping to arrive before dusk turned to dark … .

He didn’t make it, and blundered in just ere mid of night.

Carefully, Hâlott, down in his laboratory, twisted the minute augur into the minuscule denticle, barely widening the hollow running its length. Then he augured even tinier holes thwartwise through the sides of the tooth. Finally, he carefully rasped the widest end of the tiny, conical dent to flatness. He examined the work in total blackness, the lack of light notwithstanding. The bone was, in fact, the minute tip of a wee serpent’s fang, now no larger than the point of a pin with a tiny length of shaft, hollow end to end with three additional infinitesimal flutelike holes along the insignificant span.

“Good,” he whispered in the darkness.

“Rogi!” he called, though it sounded more like groan.

There was no answer.

“Rogi!” he groaned again, somewhat louder.

There was still no answer.

Hâlott went back up the stairs and began examining the rune-marked, gilded box. He was still prodding and poking it well into the night, when at last Rogi came stumbling in.

“I wath lotht, Mathter,” he said in the dark, “elth I would have got here thooner.” Rogi began lighting lanterns.

“Have you the kastor ricinus?”

“Yeth. Quite a few, Mathter.”

Hâlott held out his hand, and Rogi dropped the pouch into it.

“There wath thith man, Mathter, and he put a large horneth’ netht into a boxth.”

“Did he see you?”

“No, Mathter. You told me to avoid being theen when I collect the beanth.”

“Good.” Hâlott stepped away from the table and headed for the stairs to the lab. But then he paused and said, “I want you to go and find a man they call Chance. He is a man with black hair and dresses in black and limps and carries a cane.” Hâlott seemed to glance at the box, though how Rogi could tell is a mystery. Perhaps he had come to know Hâlott’s ways through long association, for they had been together through many years and across many countries and through many escapes and flights from angry mobs and enraged rulers and other such. Regardless, Hâlott slightly twitched his head toward the box and said, “Tell him I have a commission for him. You might find him at the Bottomless Well.”

“But Mathter, they throw me out of the Bottomleth Well.”

“Tell them you are on my business.” Without further word, Hâlott turned and descended the stairs.

With a sigh, Rogi got another chunk of bread and a wedge of cheese from the cupboard and then left, heading for Sanctuary, all the while mumbling about “having to thtumble about in moonthadowth with a bag of beanth, and nobody theemed to care that he needed retht and needed to get thome thleep, and what‘th more it’th the middle of the night, and robberth and muggerth would be lurking in alleywayth and …”

Andriko stood in the light of the moon above and waited.

A slim, dark figure came slipping through the shadows.

“You have it, Driko?”

“Yes, my lady.” He canted his head toward the latched box. “It’s a rather large one. White-faced hornets.”

“White-faced? Not yellows?”

“The whites are very aggressive, my lady.”

“Well and good. I need them placed in the courtyard sometime ere the gathering, unseen, of course.”

“Yes, my lady. The day after tomorrow.”

“I need them to be unnoticed, and I need a means for loosing them wherein I will not overly suffer from stings.”

Andriko frowned in puzzlement but said, “I will arrange for both.”

“Thank you, Driko.”

With mortar and pestle, Hâlott ground the husks of the kastor beans to a fine powder. Then he added a bit of liquid from a vial, and another bit from a second vial. He was not overly cautious while doing these things; after all, why should he be? Poisons, toxins, venoms: None had an effect on him, not even elixir of ricinus.

Stirring the admixture, Hâlott’s brows twitched in a frown. What might the rune-marked box contain? And he wondered whether Rogi had yet found the man called Chance.

Grumbling to himself, Rogi stumped away from the Broken Mast along the docks. Several fishermen had paused in their worry about the oncoming storm season long enough to jeer at him, but they had made no move to plague him further. After all, he was Hâlott’s man.

Before going to the Mast, he had tried the Bottomless Well, the ’Unicorn, and the Yellow Lantern, but in none of those places was a man in black, no man with a cane. But now he was headed for the Golden Gourd, a place said to be a brothel, though they always threw Rogi out before he had occasion to see for himself.

Rogi finally reached the tavern. Stepping through the door, he immediately spotted a black-haired man in black clothes sitting at a table. A rather heavy hardwood cane hung on the back of his chair. Across the table was a black-haired woman dressed in drab, rather shapeless garments. It was Elemi, the S’danzo woman who had read her cards for Rogi and had told him that as a newborn on two separate occasions he had been deliberately cast into the sea and had been twice plucked therefrom. She and the man in black seemed to be in deep converse. Other than those two, there were but a handful of patrons within.

“You little shite!” called Prall, starting ’round the bar as he added, “I told you to never show your face in this—”

“I am thent here by my mathter Hâlott,” yelled Rogi at the barkeep. “I am here to thsee a man named Chanth.”

Prall glanced at the man in black, who shrugged and nodded.

“All right, pud,” said Prall, waving Rogi forward. “But keep a froggin’ civil tongue in your head.” Then he looked at Rogi and laughed uproariously and managed to gasp out, “As if you could keep that long lapper of yours inside your mouth.”

Rogi scuttled over to the table where the man sat and looked up at him. In spite of the man’s black hair, he appeared to be in his sixties. “Are you the one called Chanth?”

The man nodded.

“I am thent by my mathter who wanth to give you a commithion.”

“A commission?”

“Yeth.”

“And it is for … ?”

“He didn’t thay.”

Chance shook his head. “I take no commissions these days, Rogi.”

Rogi’s eyes widened in surprise, for the man knew his name even though Rogi had not until now ever spoken with this person called Chance.

Still, the man seemed to be intrigued, and he glanced over toward a dark corner where sat a young man. Rogi looked, too, and saw a youth also dressed in black, though a red sash splashed a bit of color across his waist. His black hair was pulled back in ponytail, and he wore a sword at his side and an upside-down dagger strapped to a forearm. A dangerouth perthon, thought Rogi.

Chance interrupted the small hunchback’s observations: “Rogi, have you no inkling whatsoever as to what this commission might be?”

Rogi glanced at Elemi. The young woman stared back at him, her dark, dark eyes glittering in the lantern light, her gold hoop earrings gleaming as well.

“You can trust her,” said Chance.

“I think he wanth you to open a boxth.”

“Open a box?”

Rogi nodded. “A thecret boxth.”

Chance smiled, and then called to the youth in black. “Lone.”

Lone stood and crossed the common room, his walk like that of a swaggering cat, his jet ponytail swinging in counterpoint.

Near dawn, Hâlott filled the minuscule fang with a minute amount of the ricinus elixir, and then he sealed the flat end with a insignificant amount of wax. Just as he took up the ruby ring, he heard a shout: “Mathter, Mathter, I bring you thomeone to open the boxth.”

Lone looked about the chamber and shook his head. Not only had he seen that the square-based tower was a ruin—with vine-covered rubble about its foundation, the top two levels but shells, with partial walls here and there and stairs leading up to dead ends or gaps—but now that he was inside, the ground-level floor seemed nearly a ruin itself, even though it was intact: barely livable, it was all but dead of neglect. Rogi set the lantern on a dust-laden table then went about lighting candles, while still calling out “Mathter, Mathter, thomeone to open the thecret boxth.”

Lone’s gaze went to the rune-marked, gilded box sitting on the table. There seemed no latch, no lock, no lid. He smiled in anticipation.

And then Hâlott walked into the room, and Lone turned, and for the first time the youth saw Hâlott up close and personal. Oh, he had seen Hâlott in the ’Unicorn now and again, yet always at night, and always from across the room. But now he stood no more than a stride away from what seemed to be the desiccated remains of a living corpse, and Lone wondered, What the frog has my mentor foisted upon me now?

At dusk, once again came a light tapping on the door. When Rogi answered it, he saw the young woman who had called him an ugly little creature and had fled.

Even as she recoiled once more, Rogi smiled and looked up at her, the irises of his eyes such a pale, pale blue that the whole of them looked dead white … white with black dots where his pupils were. Rogi began fumbling at the rope at his waist. “You would like to thsee my dragon, yeth?”

She huffed and said, “I would see your master.”

Rogi’s shoulders slumped. He turned and called out, “Mathter, thome woman to thsee you.”

A hollow whisper came from the adjacent room, and Rogi responded.

In moments, Rogi exchanged the ruby ring for a small but fairly weighty pouch, and the young woman fled once more.

Rogi sighed, and closed the door, then untied the pouch strings and fished out from among the coins two rather large and squarish silver ones—shaboozh—and one small gold piece—a royal—and pocketed them for himself. After all, he had worked hard for his wages: Not only had he found the “boxth,” he had wandered around in the shadowy woods in the moonlight with a bag of “beanth,” and he had searched all over town to find Chance and Lone and had been jeered at by fishermen and had nearly been thrown out of the Golden Gourd and …

From nearby and for perhaps the hundredth time came Lone’s frustrated shout: “Frog! Froggin’ chest!”

Dressed in white and wearing her ruby jewels, Nadalya, smiling, sauntered among the crowd of personages gathered in the courtyard to celebrate the visit of per-Arizak, known as Ariz to some and, because of his fiery temper, as the Dragon to others. Big and brawny and brown-haired, as were most of the Irrune, he was a man who clearly had gotten his height not only from his father, but also from his mother, Verrezza, Arizak’s first wife. In the courtyard to greet his eldest son was Arizak, who sat in a chair with his damaged left leg propped on a pillowed footstool. Tall, gray-haired Verrezza was there, too, for certainly she would not miss an event where the “one true” heir to the throne was present at court. Naimun, first son of Nadalya and Arizak, stood off to one side surrounded by his coterie of plotters, many of the young men laughing over something that their own pretender to the throne had said, or at some gaffe by Ariz, an uncouth but dangerous boor in their eyes, living in the hills with the bulk of the savage Irrune people as he did. Red-haired Raith was elsewhere among the crowd, the second son of Nadalya and Arizak. At seventeen, Raith was lithe and of a middling height, taller than his petite mother, shorter than Naimun, and certainly shorter than Aziz. Raith was the brightest of the lot, or so his mother deemed, and would make a better ruler than either of the two other contenders.

Additionally, there were merchants and their wives from Land’s End, powerful in their own right, as well as ladies of the court and daughters of various guests, all hanging on the words of so-called men of power or of their sons, especially those of Aziz, Naimun, and Raith. The smarter ones, though, sought out Verrezza or Nadalya, for that’s where the true machinations of the court as well as the progression resided.

Nadalya wove her way among the crowd, pausing here to jest with a youth, stopping there to speak of the tide and times with a merchant, lingering at another gathering to compliment the gems or hair or dress of some lady. Across the courtyard, she espied Andriko and caught his eye, and he nodded toward a cloth-draped table on which sat casks of wine used by the servants to replenish pitchers they bore through the gathering to refill goblets and glasses held by the guests.

Slowly, working her way outward, Nadalya eventually came to the table and casually and without notice found the box beneath, a cord tied to the hasp of the latch.

She tapped on the wine casks, as if measuring their fill, and at the same time, she repeatedly kicked the box below, the sound of one covering for the other. Then she took up the hasp-string and pulled the lid open, then stepped away toward Naimun and his circle of friends.

In moments, screams signaled that the enraged hornets had found their way out from under the cloth-covered table and were attacking anyone or anything that moved.

As men batted at the angry insects, women screamed and ran for the doors of the palace. Verrezza and Ariz got Arizak to his feet, and, with him hobbling, they headed for the palace as well.

Nadalya turned the ring ’round her finger until the gemstone was toward her palm, and she twisted aside the ruby and stepped to Nidakis and cried, “Oh, Nikki, there’s one on you,” and she slapped him on the back of his neck, then grabbed Naimun’s arm and headed for the palace, and was most pleased to see that Raith was before them and moving with the crowd.

The next day, Nidakis developed a cough, which by the following day turned into an endless hacking along with nonstop diarrhea. On the third day, a fever came upon him, and he could not keep any food on his stomach—vomiting until he was empty, and then retching nought but greenish bile thereafter. Even water would not stay down, nor juices of any kind. By that evening he had fallen into a coma, swiftly followed by death. The healers were puzzled, including Velinmet, the best of the lot … until postmortem they examined his body, and embedded under the skin in the back of his neck they found …

After four days of repeated and frustrating attempts, Lone, who had stubbornly determined that nothing could or would defeat him, at last opened the gilded box. It took twenty-seven separate moves of sliding panels in just the right sequence to unlatch the thing, and inside he and Hâlott found a carefully wrapped bronze bust of a woman. Beautiful she was, with a long, elegant neck and high cheekbones and graceful lips and a narrow chin and a long, straight nose. She had a high forehead and shell-like ears, and she wore what seemed to be a crown of sorts, or perhaps a strange, tall hat. The hat itself was marked with an ankh, like the one Hâlott himself wore. But strangest of all was that her eyes were outlined in a similar manner to Hâlott’s own painted-on eyes of kohl.

Lone was disappointed, for this was no treasure he wanted—no gems, no gold, no silver, no coinage or jewelry of any sort—and he had expected riches worthy of the puzzle of the box. But Hâlott was devastated, and he howled at the sight of the bust and sank to his knees and buried his withered face into his bony hands and sobbed inconsolably, though no tears whatsoever ran down his desiccated cheeks.

Lone drew away from the living dead man, and muttered something about coming back for his fee, and then he was out the door, leaving the grief-stricken necromancer behind, who now and again whispered the name Meretaten between howls of anguish.

For the next several nights, the guards at the Gate of Triumph reported seeing that dreadful person Hâlott wandering through the graveyard just beyond their post. What he was doing there, none knew, though one reported that he seemed to be weeping.

Rumors and whispers flew throughout Sanctuary, in the taverns and inns—the ’Unicorn, Yellow Lantern, Broken Mast, Six Ravens, and the many other establishments—over back fences, in alleys, down at the docks, and perhaps in the palace itself. No matter where, whenever men and women got together, inevitably their voices dropped and they whispered conspiratorially:

“That Nidakis, he’s not the first one of the court to have died in this manner.”

“A mysterious ailment, I hear.”

“Yar. Like the ones before: terrible fever, can’t keep anything down, coughing endlessly. They say their whole insides died—guts, lungs, hearts, livers, kidneys, all of it—and that’s what killed ’em.”

“That don’t sound like no snakebite to me.”

“Snakebite?”

“Yar. From one o’ them beynit snakes. Kill you in moments, they will.”

“Pah! Wasn’t no snakebite killed Nidakis.”

“Wull then, just how do you explain the fact that the healers found a tiny snake tooth stuck under the skin in the back of Nidakis’s neck?”

“I hear it was found in his mouth.”

“Bit him in the night, I hear.”

“Ooo, gives me shivers, it does, terrible snakes slithering through the dark.”

“’Fit were a snake tooth, a beynit snake, then the Beysibs are back.”

“Small, they are, I hear, and brightly colored.”

“The Beysib?”

“Nah, the snakes. The Beysib, though, eyes of a fish they have, them women.”

“Mayhap they’re gathering again.”

“Might have somethin’ to do with that ship what was wrecked.”

Rumors flew, whispers flew, and soon it was told that a huge conclave of the Beysib were plotting somewhere deep in dank tunnels beneath the city, and they would one day come forth en masse. It would then be a case of the devil you know—the savage Irrune—versus the devil you once knew—the fish-eyed Beysib.

Nadalya was quite pleased with this turn of events, for even some at court were caught up in the Beysib rumors. It was a nice bit of misdirection, Hâlott having used an embedded serpent’s fang to slowly deliver the deadly toxin. She would have to pay him a bonus. And because Nidakis had first sickened a full day after the courtyard gathering, and then had died three days beyond that, there was nothing to connect the gathering with his untimely demise. Yet even had there been, nothing could ever be proved. Regardless, Nidakis was dead—“Isn’t it sad, that poor youth, and he had seemed so healthy, too?”—and so she had temporarily cut off the head of that particular set of scheming serpents surrounding Naimun. Perhaps now the rest of the snake would die, and Raith would be safe from their plotting.

Little did Nadalya know that she had merely eliminated an insignificant member of a much larger cabal conspiring together for power. For, depending upon who was pacing it out, a mile or two northeast of Sanctuary in a closed room on a rich estate at Land’s End Retreat, powerful men gathered to speak of this latest assassination at court, and what they might do about it. Aye, though the conniver Nidakis was dead and his sycophants leaderless, the true head of that particular serpent was still very much alive.

None of this bothered Rogi at all, for he lay with an extremely well-satisfied lady of the evening in a room above the Yellow Lantern. His rather impressive and considerable dragon was very happy that night.