Of course. She'd almost miss him, if ever she was out and about in Marsember by night without her doggedly pursuing Rhauligan. Almost. Why, every Waterdhavian thieving lass should have one.
With a sour smile on her lips from that thought, Narnra doubled up like a wriggling eel and swam for the other side of the canal. Even with her wrists bound together, Narnra found she could cleave the water quite quickly-and for all their stink, these oily canals were calmer and less crowded than where she'd learned to swim: the just-as-filthy waters around the docks of Waterdeep.
Still, she was used to clawing at the water when she wanted to hurry and using porpoise-wriggles only when trying to keep very, very quiet. . . and she was growing tired already.
Rhauligan would be up and quiet again to listen for her in another breath or two, and her most likely destination couldn't help but be rather obvious.
In one direction-through Rhauligan-the canal joined the wider tangle of fingerlike canals and slips that made up this end of Marsember's harbor. In the other, just ahead, it ended in a turn-basin choked with rotting nets, a scum of dead fish, and oily refuse. A lone barge, waterlogged and awash, was moored to a dock there. It looked as if only its mooring-chains were keeping it from sinking and that they-brown and crumbling with rust-might soon sigh and give up their task. The barge seemed to belong to a once-grand stone warehouse that looked every bit its rival in the race to become forgotten, abandoned, and utterly decrepit.
Narnra made for the lowest point of the barge rail where it was a good foot or so under water and rolled herself up onto the ancient vessel, scattering chittering rats and startling sleeping seabirds into complaining flight.
Rhauligan could hardly fail to miss that, but 'twasn't as if the kindly gods had left her any choice, now, had they?
Even if he was charging through the water at her now, her first task was to bide right where she was, sitting on something painful and unseen in the stinking, crab-scuttling water of this barge, and try to saw through Rhauligan's bindings with her boot-knife.
Easing her blade out without dropping and losing it was slow work. Wedging it in the rotting barge-planks took but a moment- but cutting her bindings took far too gods-bedamned long and involved a cut finger and some more cursing.
Shaking away drops of blood with a snarl, Narnra stood up and fumbled in her back pouch for the spare draw-string bag she carried-a mere scrap of leather with pierced ends gathered by a single thong-in case she ever found loot enough to need something extra to carry it away in (something that had happened exactly twice in her life thus far). Thong drawn tight, the bag made a clumsy bandage for her finger. She ran hastily along the barge toward its basin-end, where the dock looked more solid and less trash-strewn.
Behind her, blood sank like smoke into the inky water- which boiled up into a long, slender tentacle that burst forth, dripping, to stab hungrily out across the now-deserted barge . . . right in front of the furiously swimming Glarasteer Rhauligan. He glared at it and plunged right over it, snatching at the nearest mooring-chain.
His fingers closed around it at about the same time three more tentacles lanced out of the water, and his other hand closed on the hilt of one of his daggers.
One of the trio of tentacles undulated through the air over the barge, for all the world as if it could sniff and see, following the first tentacle in the direction Narnra had fled. The other two curled around to stab at Rhauligan, who decided-particularly in view of the fact that a habitual glance back over his shoulder had just shown him no less than three suspicious-looking bulges moving purposefully through the waters of the canal, straight toward the barge-that getting every inch of his well-used hide clear of the water right yesterday would be the wisest thing to accomplish in his life right now.
He let go of his dagger without drawing it and clawed his way up onto the barge, rotten planking crumbling like wet bread under his fingers. Tentacles were sliding boldly up along his legs as he heaved, kicked, and rolled for all he was worth, not caring if he ploughed through most of what little was left of the barge with his face if it got the rest of him out of the water.
Which was when he discovered that some of the tentacles were rising from the water-filled depths of the barge itself … a bare breath before Narnra at the far end of the ramshackle wreck screamed enthusiastically.
Rhauligan saw her struggling like a suddenly animated figurehead, body wavering back and forth on the prow of the barge with tentacles spiraling around her in a small forest-then a smaller but no less energetic forest of tentacles was slapping across bis face and body, dragging him down toward the water his right cheek was already coldly kissing. . . .
With a snarl of fury he plunged his hand into the open front of his plastered-to-his-hide silk shirt, found the tiny trinket riding on its thong there-and tugged.
It took three wrenches before the gods-be-blasted thong broke. By then his arm was hauling the weight of six or more finger-thin tentacles along with it. Rhauligan fought to raise his hand high, his eyes on the struggling thief he was hunting. She had a knife out now and was using it with frenzied viciousness-but there seemed to be no end to these tentacles.
There were more rising up around him now, too, some of them festooned with weed-clocked human bones . . . and some bearing partial skeletons. Small wonder the warehouse and barge were so deserted!
Rhauligan muttered the word Alusair herself had taught him.
He hated to lose this magic, one of the few things the Crown Princess had ever given him-and with a lovely, avid kiss, too!-but on the other hand, he'd hate to lose his life, too, so …
He threw the trinket down the barge, snapping his wrist to spin it farther even as the clinging tentacles dragged at his arm. It bounced once and skittered into some refuse. He closed his eyes hastily.
Sudden heat warmed his face an instant later, even before the flash and the roar that sent the barge heaving upward under him . . . and the tentacles spasming into a wild and frantic dance of their own. A chaos of wriggling, flailing, shivering tentacles tumbled him over and erupted past him, desperately seeking . . .
Some impossible escape from the fire that was now raging along the barge, burning even underwater thanks to the magic, cooking the unseen heart of the tentacles. Rhauligan scrambled to his knees as the wet, ropelike things fell away from him by the dozens and saw Narnra half-flung off the far end of the barge.
She landed with a splash in the filth of the basin but churned the water in her haste to swim up and out of it, and in less time than it took Rhauligan to catch his breath and bound toward the dock she was ashore at the street end of the basin, running hard, if unsteadily, into the mists of approaching dawn.
Hurling hearty mental curses at the dying tentacled thing, the Harper hound raced past the burning barge after her, bursting out onto the street almost under the wheels of a handcart being trundled by a half-asleep fishmonger.
The cart promptly crashed over onto him-but thankfully was empty at this time of the morning. The man who'd been pushing it erupted in startled rage, clawing aside his ramshackle boxes in his haste to get at Rhauligan and do damage.
The Harper greeted him with a charge up from the ground that brought one balled fist in under the fishmonger's chin and thrust him off his feet to bounce halfway across the street-bowling over a Watch patrolman who with his fellows had just formed a ring of drawn swords around a dripping and furious Narnra.