With nothing but ice in his expression, Riven put his foot into the back of the corpse and shoved it at Ergis. The body collapsed in a heap at the half-orc's booted feet. The pirate's feral eyes showed fear.
"I'm leaving," the half-orc said, and took a single step backward. He lowered his blade and held up his other hand. "All right?"
He looked past Riven to Cale, Jak, and Magadon as though for support.
"I'm sorry, Felwer," he said to the innkeeper. "I won't be back." To Riven, he said, "Umberlee's arse, man. It's just a dog."
Riven eyed Ergis with a gaze devoid of emotion. He ominously tapped the blade of the bloody punch dagger against his palm. He looked back at the wounded dog, which was licking the dirty hands of the innkeeper and whining.
Jak saw a ripple of anger run the length of Riven's body.
The assassin turned back to Ergis and said, in a tone so low that Jak could barely hear him, "And you're just a number. There ain't no walking away from this, Captain."
The half-orc paled, turned, and ran. But he couldn't move quickly on his wounded calf.
Riven bounded after him, would have closed on him, but Cale's voice stopped the assassin cold.
"Let him go," Cale ordered.
Hearing those words, Jak almost grinned in relief. Cale and Riven might be separated by only a blade's edge, but that edge was keen and clear. Cale showed mercy. Riven did not.
The assassin stopped his pursuit but did not otherwise acknowledge that he had heard Cale. Ergis vanished into the darkness of the street. For a moment, Riven simply stood with his back to them, a bloody punch dagger in his fist, anger written clear in the bunch of his back. After a moment, he turned, picked up his daggers, and stalked over to the innkeeper and the wounded hound. With surprising gentleness, the assassin knelt, let the dog sniff his hand and scratched it behind the ears.
"The gods smile on you," said the innkeeper, taking Riven's other hand.
Jak caught Riven's sneer.
The assassin muttered words under his breath, entwined shadows around his fingers, and touched them to the dog. The little hound yelped as its leg bone twisted back into place and re-knit.
Riven gave the dog one last pat, stood and said to the innkeeper in a cool tone, "Gods smile on the strong, granther. Go back inside and mind your dog."
The old man's thankful smile grew uncertain. Visibly confused, he turned and walked back into the tavern, trailing his hound.
Riven spun on his heel and marched up to Cale, still holding the punch dagger, still wearing that emotionless expression. Cale gave no ground and shadows leaked from his skin.
"Don't ever tell me what to do, Cale," Riven said.
Cale's eyes narrowed.
"Then don't make me. You made your point." He nodded at the two corpses cooling in the street and added, "The dog was safe."
Riven replied, "You save whores, I save bitches, and we both let someone walk away. Those are bad habits, Cale."
The shadows around Cale's head and hands intensified.
"Those are my habits," he replied. "You don't like them, walk away. And don't ever call her a whore again in my presence."
Riven's eye narrowed and his voice lowered.
"Softness for women is another of your bad habits, First of Five."
Jak had no idea what woman they were talking about and he dared not ask, at least not just then.
Cale answered with a cold stare and colder silence. For a moment, they stood there glaring into each other's faces, priest and assassin, saying nothing, saying everything.
Magadon broke the tension.
"Let's get to where we're going and get off the street," the guide said, eyeing the passersby.
Jak realized that he had been holding his breath. He blew it out. Cale and Riven could go from working as smoothly together as interlocking cogs one moment, to grating against one another like flint and steel the next. The constant underlying tension was exhausting to Jak.
"A good idea," Riven said. "And this may as well be where we're going." He indicated the Pour House. "Likely the old man will give us free room and board. Meantime, I've got to get ready for my meet."
With that, he spun on his heel and walked away.
Cale stared daggers into Riven's back as the assassin walked away.
As they passed through the curtain of seashells that served as the doorway of the Pour House, Jak looked back to see several skinny humans in tattered clothing emerge from nearby alleys and begin to strip the dead sailors of valuables like a pack of dogs stripping a kill of meat.
The moment Cale and Magadon had procured a room from the innkeeper-Riven had been right; the old man insisted on providing them free lodging-Cale said to him, "Little man, stay here for this. We'll be back within two hours. Mags, you're with me."
* * * * *
From a rope bridge suspended a dagger's throw above the street, Azriim had watched the confrontation between Cale and the one-eyed assassin. He hadn't been able to hear their words, but he could see the genuine tension between them, and could sense the latent anger.
When the assassin stalked off and Cale and his comrades entered the inn, Azriim sped off down the hemp highway. Azriim-as-Thyld had arranged a meeting with the assassin within the half hour. After the confrontation with Cale, he knew the assassin would come alone.
CHAPTER 16
NEW TRICKS
Azriim watched the one-eyed assassin stalk into the common room of the Crate and Dock. The human moved with a grace, a predatory sinuousness, that reminded Azriim of his broodmate Serrin. The human's efficiency too-at least to judge from the fight with the sailors in the street-was also reminiscent of Serrin. No wonder Azriim's broodmate hated the human so. Serrin and Azriim had nearly come to blows over Serrin's insistence that he be allowed to attend the meeting with the human. Azriim had refused, concerned that his broodmate's hostility for the assassin would have shown through even a changed form. Instead, he'd stationed Dolgan on the street outside, in the big slaad's habitual form of a street drunk, and left Serrin back at the storehouse.
Anything unusual? Azriim projected to his broodmate.
He was alone, Dolgan responded.
Dressed in a non-descript gray cloak over leathers, the human wore his sabers-magical sabers, Azriim saw-with practiced ease. The assassin's one eye quickly swept the candlelit, hazy common room, and the dozen or so laborers sitting at the worn tables-the Crate and Dock was a favored eatery of dock laborers. When he spotted Azriim, in the form of Thyld, the human's eye narrowed.
Rather than sit at the table in the center of the common room that Azriim had chosen, the human nodded Azriim over and sat at another table in a dark corner, one with a view of the rest of the space. Azriim smiled as he rose. The human was choosing the battlefield, in case Azriim had set him up, and forcing Azriim to put his back to the door.
Limping along as Thyld, Azriim crossed the common room and slid into the chair opposite the assassin. For the meeting, Azriim grudgingly had changed his eye color to match Thyld's dull brown.
"Speak," the assassin said. "You know what I want to hear."
Azriim placed his hands on the table and interlaced his fingers.
"First, my price," he said, playing his part.
"If what you offer is of value to me, you'll be treated well," the assassin said with a sneer. "If what you offer is lies, you'll be treated quite differently."
Azriim rubbed the back of his neck, making a show of worried consideration, then said, "Very well. You wanted to know about a duergar with eyes of two different colors. Here is what I know. Without embellishment, of course."
Azriim began to tell the assassin a fiction about the duergar slaver and his two human companions who had hired a troop of armed guards to escort a caravan into the northern tunnels of the Underdark. Apparently, they were transporting valuable cargo.