Thieves' World: Enemies of Fortune

Gathering Strength Selina Rosen

Kaytin feigned sleep as he heard Kadasah slamming around the hovel she called home. She made not even the hint of an attempt to move more silently in order to keep from waking him up.

And he so desperately needed to sleep. He had chased the accursed woman until she caught him, and now … Well, she was trying to use his manhood completely and totally up.

He would have liked to believe that she kept him so “busy” because she knew his reputation for being a lady’s man, and was afraid he would stray. Unfortunately, he got the distinct impression that when she wasn’t using him in one way or another she didn’t give a good damn what happened to him, or what he did, as long as he was handy when she needed him again.

Kaytin felt spent, but how could he possibly tell the woman he’d chased for years that one really could have too much of a good thing? In fact, Kaytin fully believed that if he begged for mercy she would find someone in the same minute who she believed could keep up with her.

Not that Kaytin believed any one man could.

Kadasah’s energy seemed to be boundless, and every time she killed one of the followers of the Lady of Blood, her sexual appetite became even more insatiable than usual.

And she had killed a lot of them lately. Or at least it seemed like a lot to Kaytin; of course his fatigue and Kadasah’s embellishments had blurred the actual numbers, but he was pretty sure she’d killed at least two in the last four weeks.

She would scour the area between the ruins of the Temple of Savankala and the Street of Red Lanterns, hunting for her prey. Sometimes when none of the Bloody Hand had surfaced for a while she would go into the tunnels after them with a stealth almost magical. So Kaytin knew damn good and well that she could be quiet when she wanted to!

Ever since that bloated, silk-clad pud Kadasah called her patron had given her four times her normal fee for the little added information she’d gleaned from their near-death experience in the tunnels, she didn’t need any encouragement at all to go right down into the ground. More times than not dragging poor Kaytin right along behind her.

Kadasah seemed to be highly motivated by money—a fact that defied all explanation, because she never seemed to have any, and she certainly didn’t have anything to show for it. She chose to live in the decaying outbuilding of an abandoned redbrick estate in the hills beyond the walls. The roof of this building was only a few half-rotted timbers with an old oilcloth stretched across it. The door had ropes where hinges should have been and a hole in the middle of it big enough to throw a cat through. There was no furniture, not even a stick. At night the only light was from a red lantern she’d stolen from the street with the same name. It hung from a tattered piece of rope tied to one of the before-mentioned half-rotted rafters, and every time she refilled the lamp she had less rope. When Kaytin asked why she didn’t just put up a new rope she explained that the one she had still worked.

There was a big stack of old blankets piled haphazardly in the middle of the floor, which she called a bed.

She owned exactly one stew pot, a skillet, a wooden bowl, and a spoon, all of which she kept in a wooden box by the front door of the three paces by three paces structure. She kept their food supplies in there as well, when there actually were any. And she—they—would stay here for days at a time, eating whatever might be in the box and whatever Kadasah could kill. Not, of course, including the cultists, though sometimes he wondered.

Kaytin had given up asking what the current burned animal hanging on a stick might be, deciding it was easier to eat it if he just didn’t know what it used to be.

Kadasah kept more in her saddlebags than she did in her house, except of course when the saddlebags were in the house. What she could pack into those bags never ceased to amaze Kaytin. It seemed that whenever she needed something for her “work” it was always contained within one of them.

Kaytin didn’t know just how much her “patron” paid Kadasah for the pieces of skin laden with scars or tattoos she left as proof of her kill—she had certainly never told Kaytin an exact amount—but he had a feeling that they could be living in the lap of luxury in some apartment in Sanctuary instead of out here in the filth.

He wondered just what she did with all the damn money. She gave him only barely enough to jingle in his pocket—Kaytin didn’t mind being a kept man at all, but he would have liked to be at the very least well kept.

It was true that they ate and drank a lot in the taverns and bars of the city, but they didn’t eat that much, and he doubted even they could drink that much. Besides, she made a frequent habit of sneaking out without paying her bills at all. Sometimes she’d even purposely start a brawl just to keep the barkeep’s attention drawn away from the fact that she was leaving.

In fact she stole most everything they needed. The only time Kaytin had ever seen Kadasah willingly part with money was to buy new weapons from the Black Spider.

Kaytin remembered the day well. He had found the shop shortly after it opened and happened to have been there to see the owner’s own prowess with the weapons he sold.

When later that day Kadasah had proudly shown Kaytin the new weapons she had bought to replace the ones that had been taken by the followers of Dyareela, he had looked at them, yawned, shrugged, and told her he’d seen better, and at better prices.

She demanded to know where, and he took her straight to the Black Spider.

“Can I help you?” Spyder asked from behind the counter.

She turned to look at him and smiled. “New weapons.” “But your weapons look new,” he said looking at her, one eyebrow cocked in suspicion.

“Aye, but my friend tells me they aren’t as good as your weapons,” Kadasah said slamming a thumb Kaytin’s way.

Spyder had smiled at him. “Good to see you again, Kaytin.”

From that moment on it was as if Kaytin had gone invisible. As Spyder showed Kadasah all the weapons, she moaned and groaned in damn near orgasmic ecstasy. It was embarrassing to see her gush in such an uncharacteristic manner.

Spyder hadn’t even had to work at talking her into the most expensive bastard sword and hand ax in the entire store, with a trade-in of course. She didn’t blink an eye at the cost nor did she try to steal the things. And when she had handed over her weapons, paid the difference, and had them fastened to her person, she was in no hurry to leave. She didn’t suddenly remember that she had come there with Kaytin and say, Come on, Kaytin, let’s go, and by the way thanks for bringing me here, and I love you with all my heart and soul.

No, she never even acknowledged his presence. In fact, it soon became painfully obvious why she wasn’t showing that she was connected to Kaytin at all as she began to flirt outrageously with Spyder, not that Spyder for his part seemed to take any notice. She engaged him in conversation about weaponry and even played dumb. She started telling him stories, bragging about her riding abilities, all her battles and her talent with both sword and ax. She even, once again, told the tired story about how she’d killed three men with one ax blow.

At first Kaytin had thought it was all some trick, some way for her to get her money back, because he had never known Kadasah to flirt with any man including—maybe even especially—him unless she wanted something. But no, she never once started to steer the conversation into, “You’re in a bad section of town, and I am the best bastard sword fighter in all the Kingdom, maybe the known world, and for a small fee …” No, she was actually flirting with him as if Kaytin didn’t exist at all.

“I’m wondering,” Spyder asked, “why you didn’t enter the tournament?”

“Tournament?” Kadasah had asked curiously.

Spyder had then told her all about the damnable tournament. In fact, it seemed they might stand there talking all day, but then Spyder’s mysterious and beautiful mate came strolling down the stairs, saw Kadasah’s rather blatant display, and Kaytin swore he heard the woman growl.

Kadasah took one look at the woman and the way Spyder looked at her and seemed to realize she was wasting her time. She said her good-byes and left. Kaytin had followed her, as he always followed, even though in that moment he had known … . Nothing had changed between them. She was using him before, and she was using him now. Kaytin meant nothing to her; he was just, well … her man whore.

To add insult to injury she had chided him all the way home for not telling her about the tournament, which she was sure she could have won.

He had been silent, pouting, for all the good it had done him. If Kadasah had noticed at all, she did a fine act of hiding it.

There was very little he could do about the position he had put himself into. His mother had disowned him, and he had no place else to go. As little as Kadasah had, Kaytin had even less. His mother had been in such a rage over his affair with Kadasah—it was so hard to hide things from people with the sight—that she’d thrown him out with only the clothes on his back, screaming after his departing form that she had no son.

Kaytin didn’t even have a marketable trade. The only job—if you could call it that—he’d ever been any good at was listening in on other people’s conversations, blending in, being relatively unnoticed, and reporting the things he heard back to his family. And now … well, none of them were actually talking to him.

So his life was playing decoy for Kadasah, and being her love monkey.

He could probably get a job as a bartender or a dockworker and rent a place in town. There were other women, many women, women who had loved him, who would take him in.

There was only one problem.

He loved Kadasah with every fiber of his being. He would willingly stay with her forever, even in this hovel.

If she didn’t frog him to death.

Kadasah belched loudly then yelled—just to make sure he was awake no doubt, “Hey, Kaytin! You want some scrambled eggs?”

“Yes,” he said in a small, tired voice, trying not to think about where she had gotten the eggs and what condition they might be in. It hardly mattered. Whatever they had been before, they’d be cinders when Kadasah was done with them. He had heard once that charcoal was good for your digestion. If that was the case, he’d never have to worry about any ailments of the stomach.

He heard her starting to cook. She’d obviously been up long enough to get the fire going. She was whistling a happy tune as she clanged the one spoon against the one skillet, and it sounded like doom to him.

They had just left the pub after a couple of pints and a bit of bread and cheese. Normally Kaytin would have scoffed at such a bland meal, but after three days of Kadasah’s cooking it had been like a little slice of heaven.

“You never listen, or you would have known about the tournament,” Kaytin said, wishing this argument wouldn’t have started up again. He climbed onto the back of his mule.

“People purposely kept the news from me because they knew that I would win,” Kadasah said, now accusing the general population as she climbed onto her red stallion, Vagrant. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Kadasah asked as she started riding toward the ruined Temple of Savankala.

“For the hundredth time I did tell you. Kaytin talks, and you do not listen.” The truth was he hadn’t told her about the tournament because he knew she would enter if she had known about it, and although she was a spectacular fighter, even he didn’t believe she was as good as she thought she was. Since she really did only half listen to him she wasn’t likely to catch him in his lie.

“I do listen … most of the time,” she said, then added, “you should have told me more than once and when I was sober. They said the prize was some jewel worth a lot of money.”

“Maybe we could have bought a new tarp,” Kaytin muttered with mock enthusiasm.

“What’s that?” Kadasah asked.

“Nothing.”

“You know, Kaytin, if you didn’t prattle on so, saying meaningless nothings and mumbling, I might actually listen to you when you were talking.”

“Are you listening now?”

“I am,” she assured him.

“Did you hear what those fellows at the table behind us were saying about the ship?” Kaytin asked excitedly.

“Yeah, big deal …”

“Kadasah, the ship wasn’t like anything anyone has seen before. It was in perfect condition. Its cargo was still intact. There was no one on board, not alive and not dead.”

“So? It’s just a ship, big froggin’ deal,” Kadasah said as she reined Vagrant to the left as they turned a street corner.

“So … you don’t find it even a little interesting?” Kaytin asked, more than a little disappointed.

Kadasah shrugged. “Not as interesting as that,” she said in a whisper. She nodded her head to the right where a man was looking around covertly before ducking between two buildings into a narrow alley.

“Who is that?” Kaytin asked.

“That’s a member of Naimun’s entourage, and he lives in the castle, so what is he doing in this part of Sanctuary just before the beginning of the early watch?” She jumped off Vagrant, who immediately came to a complete standstill. Then she looked at Kaytin as if demanding that he do the same thing.

“We never do what I want to do,” Kaytin mumbled as he watched Kadasah fold herself into the gloom of early evening. “No, no, that’s all right. I’ll just stay here with the animals, no need to worry about Kaytin.” He glared at the horse. “She loves you more than Kaytin,” he muttered accusingly, and he could swear the horse smiled. Kaytin sighed. “Even the animal he laughs at Kaytin’s pain.”

Kadasah. recognized the man from her days in the palace. He might have dressed down, but he still stuck out like a sore thumb to her hunter’s eye. She might not listen, but, she saw plenty well.

She tracked him down the narrow alley and wasn’t too surprised at all when he seemed to be taking a back way to the ruined Temple of Savankala. She slung herself into a doorway to hide when she saw him stop as he entered the seemingly deserted temple ruins and looked around, no doubt to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

It was nowhere near cloak weather, but she found herself wishing she had her black one just because it would have helped her hide in the shadows. She continued to follow him only when she was sure he hadn’t seen her.

If he isn’t up to no good, then why is he so worried? she thought. Kadasah was pretty sure that she knew what he was up to.

She’d tried to tell those hardheaded, sheep-shite-for-brains idiots who were holed up in the palace that the Dyareelans were back in force. That they had planted people in Arizak’s own court, but none of them would listen. Not to her. She was unstable in their eyes. Kadasah grated against everything they believed she should be. She wasn’t a proper Irrune. Whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

Her quarry disappeared from in front of her. She knew exactly what that meant because she knew about this opening into the Dyareelan tunnels.

She went back to where she had left Kaytin and Vagrant, took the horse’s reins, and started leading him back the way she’d just come. Kaytin got off his mule and followed.

“Well?” he asked in a whisper.

“We’re going to take a shortcut to the ruins tonight.”

“Was it who you thought it was?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it. He turned and I got a good look at his face. It’s him all right. I can’t remember his name, but it’s him—one of Naimun’s boys. He went right down into the tunnels, too, so either he’s going after them—which I sort of doubt since he was alone—or he’s one of them.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to wait for him to come up, and then we’re going to grab him, take him to Arizak, and make him confess—give up his buddies, too. I’ll prove I wasn’t just talking shite.”

“Kaytin hates when you say ‘we,’” Kaytin whined. “You say ‘we’ and I get hurt. My own sweet love, let us not make the chief’s problem our own. They will not listen to you no matter what proof you bring, for they have branded the woman with the purest heart in all of Sanctuary as a deceitful, drunken, troublemaker.”

“Frogs, Kaytin, I don’t have time for your crap. Come own.”

Kaytin followed, dragging his mule behind him, his chin nearly resting on his chest. He knew this was not going to end well.

They waited, and they waited, and then they waited some more, until it was pitch dark and near the late watch. Kaytin was convinced that Kadasah had either dreamed the whole thing or the man had left from another opening. Then they heard a shuffling sound, there was a sudden motion, and there he was.

He appeared to be alone, not that Kaytin suffered from, any notion that Kadasah would have stayed in hiding if twenty of the Bloody Hand had come boiling up out of that hole.

She struck a match and lit the rag hanging from the bottle she held in her hand, and then tossed the bottle down the hole just to be on the safe side. It wouldn’t do any real damage, but it would at the very least stop anyone from coming out of the hole for the next few minutes.

As the man turned to face her she pulled the sword from her back. There was a small explosion, and then a very gratifying plume of flame erupted from the hole at her back.

The man drew his own sword.

“You again,” he hissed. “Kadasah, I told them they should hunt you down, but it’s just as well they didn’t. No one believed you, and now I get to kill you myself. I will go back to the palace holding your head up high, and all will praise me.”

“Listen, pud, no man has ever bested me with sword. I’ve killed everyone I ever intended to kill, but I don’t want to kill you. I need you alive, to be my proof,” Kadasah announced.

“You live in a dream world, Kadasah. You cannot kill me for I am a servant of Dyareela! I shall drain your blood for the Dark Mother.” He ran at Kadasah, and she easily parried his blow. Then she slapped him in the back of his head with the flat of her blade, driving him to his knees, but he jumped up and charged at her again. Kaytin leaped forward, stuck out a foot, and tripped the man. He went flying, landing at Kadasah’s feet, and before she could stop herself instinct took over and she slammed her blade through the back of the guy’s neck.

“Frogs!” Kadasah exclaimed as she pulled the blade from the wound.

Meral had been sound asleep when he heard the calls for help. In his line of work it wasn’t an altogether rare occurrence. He was a healer, and as such was prepared to be awakened at all hours of the night, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and ready to go to work. He rose from his pallet, lit a candle, put on his boots, and walked into the middle of the apothecary where the two strangers stood holding a man between them by the arms.

He lit a lantern for better light then walked over to take a good look at the injured … very, very, dead man.

“Can you fix him?” the Irrune woman asked as she and her cohort dropped the man on his face.

Meral grimaced and looked up at them. “Was he a friend, Kadasah?” Meral asked guardedly. Kadasah and her friend weren’t exactly the sort of people a wise man wanted to give bad news to. She was tall even for an Irrune, and she wore the black leather armor and weapons, not to mention the scars of one who had seen many battles. It was hard to tell what race the man was, Ilsigi maybe. Though shorter than his female counterpart, he was no less capable, and the dirk he wore at his belt looked as if it had gotten plenty of use.

“Nah,” she said with a smile. “He’s Dyareelan swine, but I need him alive to prove a point, so … can you fix him, Meral?”

“I’m afraid he’s rather dead,” Meral announced after kneeling and taking a closer look just for their benefit.

“Are you sure?” Kadasah asked in a disappointed voice.

Meral stood up and looked at her with a smile. “The blade seems to have both severed his neck from his backbone and cut his windpipe in two. In my medical opinion, he’s quite dead.” Meral marveled at the fact that there wasn’t a lot of blood; the blow had managed to bring death without hitting any major blood vessels. “On a brighter note, it’s a very clean kill.”

“Could you check him again just to be sure? I sort of need him alive,” she said.

“I told you he was dead, Kadasah. You don’t have to be a healer to see that. You stabbed him through the back of his neck.”

Kadasah gave her companion a dirty look then turned to Meral, smiled helplessly, and said with a shrug, “It’s a very good sword. Are you sure you can’t … I don’t know … make a potion to bring him back?”

“Dead is dead,” Meral answered. “I’m a healer not a wizard.”

She nodded and sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

“He … well, he doesn’t look like one of the Bloody Hand,” Meral said. He’d known Kadasah for a while and it wasn’t the first time she’d come to him when she was in trouble. Kadasah was hotheaded and he wouldn’t half put it past her to kill some poor soul over a dice game then want to take it back.

“Well of course he doesn’t, that’s the whole point,” she explained. “He’s a member of Naimun’s entourage.”

“They’ve infiltrated Arizak’s court?” Meral asked with astonishment and more than a little anxiety.

She seemed to realize then that she might have told him too much. He wondered just what she was up to, and now it looked like she wasn’t likely to tell him. She could be making up this whole story right off the top of her head. It would be just like Kadasah to do that, especially if she’d killed this fellow by accident

“Well, I guess we better take our body and go; sorry to have awoken you, Meral.”

“No problem.” It was, of course, but no sense telling Kadasah that. For one she wouldn’t care and for another it never hurt to have a mercenary of some reputation on your good side.

Kadasah and her friend picked up the body by the arms and started dragging it out.

Meral started to try and stop them, he would have liked to ask them a couple of more questions, but thought better of it. “Sorry I couldn’t help,” he said, watching them as they dragged the body away.

“Maybe some other time,” Kadasah yelled over her shoulder, and then they were gone.

Meral smiled, shook his head, and started back for his bed, but before he made it halfway across the floor a man came screaming into the apothecary brandishing a large dagger. He ran at Meral. Meral stepped aside, and the man ran past him. As he turned to continue his attack Meral pedaled backward, frantically looking for something to use as a weapon to defend himself. He tripped over something of unknown origin and went sprawling. His attacker stood over him ready to pounce, and Meral was sure he was about to breathe his last. He cringed under his arms, and Kadasah seemed to appear from nowhere, sword in hand, screaming a battle cry.

His attacker turned to face the woman and found himself sliced nearly in two for his troubles. She looked down at Meral, smiling helplessly, and shrugged. “Good sword,” she apologized. “And bad, bad, evil cultist.”

“You … you saved my life from that Dyareelan scum,” Meral said as Kadasah reached down with her free hand and helped him to his feet. “If there is ever anything I can do for you …”

“Ah, it wasn’t nothing, but … as long as we’re talking. You got any potions to … Oh, I don’t know, make me run faster and jump higher? And I don’t want the crap this time, Meral, I want the good stuff.”

Meral made up the potion quickly. When he had finished she shoved it into one of three pouches she carried on her belt, then she left, stopping just long enough to reach down and grab the cultist’s body by one foot and drag it off with her.

Meral wanted to ask her why she was taking the body. Ask if they shouldn’t call the authorities about the attack. But the truth was Meral was a healer of moderate skill. His potions many times didn’t work exactly as they were supposed to. He couldn’t afford any more bad press, and dead bodies in a healer’s office were never good for business. Then there was that other thing—it just wasn’t smart to get on Kadasah’s bad side, people who did wound up dead.

“Better to have her as an ally,” Meral mumbled as he put his herbs away.

They didn’t really start talking until they had unloaded the bodies in a remote location next to the Swamp of Night Secrets.

Kadasah started to laugh even as Kaytin stood shaking in his boots and looking all around, expecting some evil haunt to pop out from behind the trees and fog at any moment.

“Meral never even blinked, he just gave me those potions. Hell, I think he’d have given me half the store if I’d just asked. He thought I saved him. It never occurred to him that the bastard had followed us there and that he figured the healer knew too much and was going to kill him just as a forerunner of getting his hands on us.”

“The Bloody Hand are on to you. They know now that you’re the one who’s been depleting their numbers, probably because of all your bragging. They sent an assassin for us, and you somehow find that funny. Well, Kaytin for one is not laughing.”

“Would you calm down and quit being such a chicken shite? They didn’t have time to send someone after us. That guy had to have seen us take ole-what’s-his-face and followed on his own”

“And that’s another thing, Kadasah. I saw no one following us, and neither did you. It is the Chaos Goddess herself who has seen what you are doing. That man,” Kaytin pointed to the larger of the two corpses, “called out to her in his final moments. She heard and sent another of her servants after us.”

“Frogs, Kaytin. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times. There are no gods; there are no goddesses. Just stupid people who want to believe that everything that goes wrong in their lives isn’t their fault.”.

Kaytin covered his ears. “Kaytin does not want to hear. Quit saying such things, and especially don’t say them here and now.” He uncovered his ears and said in a hopeful voice, “Perhaps the Bloody Hand was after the healer and not after us at all.”

“Come on, Kaytin, use that little thing you call a brain. Why would a member of the Bloody Hand be after Meral?”

“Because they want to cause pain and destruction, and someone who heals takes away pain and stops destruction,” Kaytin answered.

“Ah … maybe, but I don’t think so. Doesn’t matter. Meral thinks I saved him, and I’ll be able to go get any kind of potion I want, without paying for quite awhile.” Kadasah busied herself stripping the corpses of anything that might identify them—and anything of value. “I ruined this robe and the shirt he was wearing under it,” she muttered.

“If Dyareela is on to you, ruined clothing will be the least of your worries and you might need the healer’s services to mend your wounds.”

“I’ve blown farts more powerful than this so-called goddess.”

“Kadasah, do not taunt the goddess,” Kaytin said in a hiss.

She frowned then, and for a second Kaytin thought that perhaps she understood the true seriousness of their situation, but then she ruined the moment by saying, “This one’s covered with tattoos and scars, but Naimun’s boy doesn’t have a single distinguishing mark on his body. Frogs, how can I prove I got two? If these guys aren’t going to mark themselves, it’s going to make it damn hard for me to collect my reward.”

Surprisingly enough, Kadasah never even tried to cheat her patron. Some sort of honor thing Kaytin didn’t really understand, considering all the swindling and stealing she normally did.

“Why don’t you take two tattoos from the guy who has so many? It wouldn’t even be lying, you did kill two of them.”

Kadasah nodded and started to do the deed. She slipped the pieces of skin into the pouch she used specifically for that purpose, then she slashed the faces of her victims until they were unrecognizable and tossed the bodies into the swamp. She cleaned up in the muddy water and then they headed back to town.

Kaytin was only too glad to go. Dumping bodies was never one of his favorite things, but the Swamp of Night Secrets gave him goose bumps up and down his spine on the best of days.

There were evil things there; he knew it. Kadasah didn’t believe in such things. Kadasah believed in nothing except Kadasah. But despite what she might think, just because she didn’t believe in something didn’t mean it didn’t exist.

Kadasah sent Kaytin ahead to the Vulgar Unicorn as she went to leave the proof of her kill in her secret hiding place for her patron to find. She didn’t trust Kaytin to know where that was, and he guessed that said about everything you needed to know about their “relationship.”

Kaytin sulked up to the bar and ordered a tankard of Talulas Thunder ale. It was getting on toward the middle of the late watch, and the bar was sparsely populated.

“You look more than a little shaken this evening, Kaytin,” Pegrin the Ugly said with real concern.

“Were you ever in love, Pegrin?”

He laughed. “Oh, aye, many times,” he looked around. “So … where is the Irrune wench?”

“On business. She’ll be back shortly to drink too much and lie even more. We may even get back home and into bed before daybreak.”

“Doesn’t sound to me like love is your problem, sounds more like too much of each other.”

Kaytin’s head shot up and he nodded. “Exactly! The woman … she uses Kaytin till there is nothing left.”

Pegrin laughed loudly and said over his shoulder as he went to wait on another customer, “You know, in all my years behind the bar I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a man complain about that particular problem.”

Kaytin sipped at his ale. “All of Sanctuary is laughing at Kaytin’s pain,” he mumbled into his drink.

Kadasah awoke early the next afternoon lying crosswise across her “bed” with her head resting on Kaytin’s bare stomach and her feet laying out on the dirt outside the door. Her head was pounding, and her tongue felt hugely swollen. Damn! She hoped she’d had a good time.

She sat up and wiped the dirt off her feet. It was drizzling, apparently, because her feet were wet, or maybe they’d just had a very thick dew. No, it was raining, she could see the water dripping from a hole in the roof onto Kaytin’s head.

“Hey, Kaytin,” she said softly, as much for her head as his.

He covered his face with his arms. “No … not again, not so soon, I can’t, please, I beg you.”

“Whatever are you going on about? I was just going to tell you to move out of the drip.”

Kaytin moved his arms, looked up, and a drop of water landed in his eye. He got quickly to his feet and showed that he was at least a little hungover when he staggered and held his head.

“That’s it! I’ve had it. Do you hear me? This is the last straw. Would it be too damn much to ask for a new oilcloth at least, maybe a real door? You’re about to get paid, couldn’t we have a few comforts for the house? Do you really expect me to just continue to live here in this shack with you without even the simplest of conveniences? Does Kaytin mean anything to you at all, or am I just a convenient frog, a stooge to help you with your dirty work, a lackey to hold your horse and your place at the bar?”

“All right already,” Kadasah said, holding her hands over her ears to hold out his yelling. “You can have a new roof, and a new door.”

As soon as the rain let up they rode into town and Kadasah sent him to the changing house to swap the sword, dagger, boots, and clothes she’d taken from the two guys she’d killed the night before for the things he wanted.

He should have known it was too much to hope for that she might just hand him money and say, Go buy what you need.

Bezul looked at the still-wet clothing suspiciously, and Kaytin, who had stopped to wash the blood from the items of clothing, said quickly, “They got wet in the rain.”

“Uh-huh,” Bezul said skeptically. “And I suppose your girlfriend takes in laundry for a living.”

Kaytin smiled helplessly, and assured Bezul. “She didn’t steal them.”

Bezul shook his head, a smile on his face. “Get what you need.”

Kaytin found what he needed, the whole time wondering why she couldn’t just give him the money and come in and exchange things like the clothing and weapons of men she had killed herself. By the time he left the changing house his hands were shaking, and he didn’t feel guilty at all about keeping the few coins Bezul gave him in the trade.

The skies were gray and Kaytin was sure he could smell a storm coming. They worked through the rest of the day together to repair the door and lay the new oilcloth over the old one, tacking it down on the edges to what was left of the rafters.

When they had finished Kaytin was surprised at how much better he felt about everything. There was a certain security in knowing he had someplace to go where the wind couldn’t reach him and the rain couldn’t fall on him.

Besides, he had complained and she had actually cared enough to do something about it, which had to mean something.

They sat around the fire that evening chewing on some burnt animal or another, and Kaytin finally felt like he was home.

“I wish there was some way I could get Arizak and the others to listen to me,” Kadasah said.

“Just tell them about the guy you killed. That he came out of the tunnels, that he sang praises to the lady of death,” Kaytin said. “Why would you lie?”

“I’m sure they could come up with lots of reasons. They won’t believe me any more now than they did before. I don’t have any proof,” Kadasah said angrily, throwing what was left of her portion into the fire, not that it could burn any more than it already had. “More likely than not they’d string me up for confessing to the murder of ole-what’s -his-name.”

“You could tell them it was an accident.”

“Oh, yes, Kaytin, that will work. I accidentally stabbed him in the back of the neck, and then I accidentally stripped him, disfigured him, threw him in the swamp, and sold his stuff to fix my roof.”

“You had plenty of money to fix the roof,” Kaytin mumbled. Then he took a deep breath and said, “I heard that the Dragon and some of his people have left Sanctuary and gone off to the wilds to ride horses and play with sheep. And they say that Arizak’s taking so many drugs for the pain in his foot that he’s somewhat addled …”

“You apparently listen for the both of us,” Kadasah said with a smile. “But I fail to see of what use that information is to me.”

“Kaytin was just thinking that with everyone else so preoccupied, perhaps now would be a good time to approach Naimun, to tell him what you have learned Without of course telling him that you killed his friend. You could just say that you saw him go down into what you know is an entrance to the Dyareelan tunnels.”

“I’m not sure they even believe that anyone still lives in the tunnels. They refused to even go with me to look, remember? Perhaps I should just try talking to my father.”

“Your father … I thought you said that he was dead.”

“Well almost, he’s old and he lives in the palace; that’s nearly the same thing.”

During the night the storm blew in fast and furious. It was so bad that Kadasah found herself glad that Kaytin had whined and that she had caved in to him.

He was sound asleep; she didn’t know how. The wind and thunder were loud enough that she wondered if there might be a hurricane in the midst of the storm.

Just before the storm had started in earnest she had gone out to check Vagrant and Kaytin’s mule and found them right where she had thought they would be—huddled against a wall in a slightly larger, but less sturdy, stone outbuilding. Kadasah had stacked full logs and tree limbs over the top of it to make a shelter for Vagrant. The first time Kaytin had seen it he had made the observation that the horse lived better than she did.

Vagrant never went into the shelter unless the weather was incredibly horrid so Kadasah knew right then that they were in for a hell of a storm. She had stroked his nose, assured him that all would be well, and started for the house stopping only a second to say a kind word to the mule.

She’d just reached their newly rebuilt door as the bottom fell oat of the sky and the rain started to come down in buckets. In the red light that illuminated the small room she saw Kaytin look up at her with a smug smile.

She smiled right back. “Good idea I had to fix the door and the roof.”

She was pretty sure that he yelled at her then, but it was hard to tell because amazingly the rain started coming down even harder.

It hadn’t let up, and they had gone to bed having nothing better to do. She smiled as the pleasant near-memory filled her head and thought seriously about waking Kaytin up … after all, she couldn’t sleep.

She shook her head. She needed to think, and while that helped her sleep it certainly didn’t help her think.

The cult was growing, and she didn’t know how. She kept killing them, and they kept coming … and what if Kaytin was right and they were on to her? What if they had figured out that she was the one depleting their numbers? There could be assassins at every corner waiting for her.

Not that she couldn’t handle it, just that it would be a giant nuisance.

On the one hand, killing them a few here and a few there kept her in good, steady work. On the other hand, she never wanted there to be any chance that the cult could gain control again. She’d heard enough to know that their reign hadn’t been a pleasant one. Kaytin had insisted that one of the ones she had killed was speaking in a strange tongue, and she had to admit she didn’t recognize it.

She had buried that guy outside the city walls a couple of months ago. Maybe the Bloody Hand was a bigger problem than anyone knew.

The Irrune were in control here now; she was Irrune, and better than that she had grown up in Arizak’s court. It should have given her just the in she needed. But it did just the opposite because her father sat at the leader’s shoulder and convinced him that every word out of Kadasah’s mouth was nothing but a slanderous lie.

Which hardly seemed fair.

The key was getting her father to believe her.

But how?

Then as lightning splashed across the sky brightly enough that she could see it through the cracks in the door, and thunder roared loud enough to make Kaytin jump, she had the answer.

She woke Kaytin up to celebrate.

“What do you want?” Tentinok asked in a slur from where he sat at the corner table in the Golden Gourd.

“You might at least wait for me to sit before you dismiss me outright,” Kadasah said, sitting down. “I’ve brought you an ale—your favorite.” She slid the glass toward him, hugging her own in her hand.

“A drink will hardly buy my forgiveness, daughter. I’m surprised they’d let you in here, as much damage as you’ve done to the place in the past.”

Kadasah gave him a curious look. “Now, how would you know that?”

“One hears things. You sent word, I’m here, that’s more than you deserve.” He spat across the table.

Kadasah sighed, took a drink from her tankard, and then watched as Tentinok did the same, as usual downing half the tankard with his first drink. “I’ll keep it short … I tried to tell Arizak before, to tell all of you, but no one would listen to me. Well, now I have proof,” Kadasah said.

“Proof of what?”

“That you haven’t cleaned this city of the Bloody Hand by a long shot …”

“Oh … you aren’t going to start that again.”

“They’re hiding in tunnels under the Street of Red Lanterns. But it’s worse, so much worse than that.” She lowered her voice. “They’re not all marking themselves anymore. They’re walking around with the rest of us pretending to be normal. As I told you before, they have infiltrated Arizak’s court.”

“What do you hope to gain from these lies?”

“Tentinok … Father. I have proof. Only two nights ago … no, wait it was three, or four perhaps. It was before the big storm, and it lasted for two days, so I think four days …”

“Do get on with it. You said you were going to keep it short, and I’m not growing any younger.”

“I saw a man who I recognized as a member of Naimun’s entourage. He went down into one of the tunnels. A few minutes later a man in a hooded robe came out of the tunnels. He was one of the followers of Dyareela. I fought with him, and as I fought with him this man you have been sharing the palace with came out of the hole, praised the Dark Lady and attacked me. I cut him, but he and his twisted friend both got away.”

“What is this man’s name, Kadasah? I have seen no wounded man in Naimun’s entourage or in the palace at all, perhaps you didn’t hurt him badly …”

“Or perhaps I gave him a fatal wound, and he has crawled off to some dark place to die. Perhaps because they failed his brothers have hacked him and his friend to pieces and thrown him into the swamp.”

“What is the man’s name?”

“I … well, don’t remember his name, but I recognized him, I swear.”

He laughed at her then. “And your word holds so much weight because … you are a creature of virtue? Again, Kadasah, what is it that you hope to gain with your story?” He finished the rest of the ale in his tankard then fell forward onto the table.

When Tentinok awoke the world was dark, and he wondered for a minute if he had died. His vision was blurred, and his head felt … well, dusty.

“He’s very heavy,” a male voice complained.

“I was about to think that not even a six-times dose of the sleeping potion was going to knock him out,” Kadasah’s voice said. “Then I was glad we had that strengthening potion or I don’t think even the two of us could have moved him.”

“Maybe you gave him too much. He’s not moving at all. Maybe he isn’t going to wake up.”

“And maybe I’m going to wake up and kill you both,” Tentinok roared as he stumbled to his feet, staggering like a drunk.

“Quiet,” Kadasah ordered in a whisper, “you’ll bring all of them down upon our heads.”

“Who, Kadasah? There is no one here. Just some dark, dank,” he lifted a foot and shook it, “very wet tunnel.”

“They are here, and if you make too much noise we’ll have them all to fight at once,” she assured him. “Now come on.” Candle in hand she moved forward. A young man pressed a candle into his hand, and Tentinok glared at him, sure he knew what this foreign man was to his daughter.

He followed, and as he did so his head began to clear, enough that he began to wonder why he was following them at all. Especially when the water started to get deeper and they still hadn’t shown him anything but half-flooded tunnels.

“Kadasah,” he said in a whisper, “there is nothing here. No one.”

“The storm it must have driven them further in,” Kadasah said.

Suddenly a man ran out of the darkness through the mud, and Kadasah easily took him down. The man fell into the water covering the floor of the cave, and Kadasah handed her candle to the young man and dragged the body from the mud. She held the man’s tattooed face up for her father to see. “See, Father? Is it not just as I have said? He’s one of them.” With her sword she cut one of the tattoos off and stuck it in her pouch—Tentinok didn’t even want to know why—then she dropped the body, took her candle back from the man, and kept walking.

“One man is not dozens and proves no connection to the palace,” Tentinok said, but he followed until the water had hit waist deep and the tunnel in front of them—where it started to go deeper into the earth—was completely submerged. “Kadasah … there is no one else here. Just one cultist, probably alone.”

“No,” Kadasah said urgently. “I tell you, these caves are normally filled with activity. They must have gotten flooded out during the storm and they are temporarily hiding somewhere else.”

He wanted to believe her. Not because he wanted to for one second think that the Bloody Hand could get a foothold in Sanctuary ever again, but just because she seemed so earnest, and she had gone to all the trouble of … drugging him and dragging him here to get all wet. His patience eroded. He turned around and started stomping—not at all easy with all the mud—back the way they had come.

The others followed after him. “Father, I swear to you …”

“Quiet! Your words mean nothing to me. You drug me and you bring me here. You tell me stories of one of our own who is a hidden cultist, and yet you have no proof, you do not even know his name. You show me one cultist and tell me there are hundreds.” He tripped then, landing in the muck and succeeding in getting himself covered to the very top of his head. He wiped the water and mud from his face and spit, then he screamed. “Never, never darken my door again! Never contact me. Just leave me be!”

Tentinok walked into the palace slinging mud and water and looking ready to kill.

“What happened to you?” Naimun asked with a smile.

“Don’t ask,” Tentinok growled back.

“Bad day?”

“You might say that, once again problems with Kadasah. I’m just going to go get cleaned up, get into some dry clothes, and forget the whole sordid ordeal. What brings you to this part of the palace at this hour?”

“I’m a bit concerned. No one has seen Kopal in four days running. You haven’t seen him about have you?”

“No … which means we might have a much bigger problem.”

Kaytin lay quietly, not at all exhausted and still relishing the words he had heard. “Enough, enough!” his beloved had cried out.

“So, I know most of the day didn’t go so well, but that wasn’t so bad.”

“It was amazing,” Kadasah said, and she sounded truly sincere, as if all the day’s events had been forgotten in their lovemaking.

Kaytin hoped the healer stayed thankful for a very long time. Turned out all he really needed was a little extra strength.