“Dried armadillo. Keeps evildoers out of your home.”
“Too late.”
I forked over a ten rather than waste time arguing, which turned out to be a mistake. As soon as the pale concrete wall rolled back, I found myself mobbed by a line of hawkers selling the magical equivalent of snake oil. I barely noticed. Because stretching out behind them was a sight designed to make anyone’s jaw drop.
I’d expected something along the lines of the previous drain—gloomy, smelly, depressing, dangerous. I’d expected a bunch of little dirty caves filled with huddled, desperate people. I’d expected a low ceiling, bad air and vermin. I hadn’t expected an enchanted forest.
But that’s what spread out in front of us in a dazzling expanse. Softly glowing branches shed a delicate white light over a huge cave. They draped the booths that filled the space, crisscrossed above footpaths and climbed up stone support pillars. Some people had even stuffed twigs into colored glass jars, making lanterns that spotted their booths with watery puddles of amethyst and plum, turquoise and jade, ruby and amber.
My brain finally supplied the name—hawthorn. I recalled a few basics—originally from Faerie, burns brightly with the application of a simple spell—but that description left a lot to be desired. The branches threw gently waving shadows on the walls, ceiling and floor, shadows with leaves and berries, neither of which the dried branches had.
“This way!” Dieter was tugging on me, obviously embarrassed to be seen with the gawking tourist.
I followed him through a maze of cardboard and plywood shanties. Inside, medicine women, folk doctors, astrologers, fortune-tellers and cut-rate sorcerers plied their wares. Dogs and children ran underfoot. People laughed and bartered around the shops, or called to each other across the aisles. After the deadly quiet of the drains, it felt like a madhouse.
Dieter skirted the main aisle, heading for a narrow path where animals bleated and squealed from cages on either side. Most were nothing out of the ordinary, but the same couldn’t be said for the smell. I stopped, gagging at the most offensive odor I’d ever encountered. “Is there another route?”
“Not unless you want to go by yourself. I’m not supposed to be here, remember?”
My eyes were already starting to water. What the hell was that? “And the dwarves don’t come this way?”
“Nobody comes this way since they moved in the bonnacon.”
He nodded at a huge shaggy animal with small curled horns pacing back and forth in a nearby pen. Unlike the other large animals, this one wasn’t in a barbed wire cage. Instead, pieces of corrugated aluminum had been nailed haphazardly to the sides of a wooden frame, creating a pen that was almost six feet high. Maybe the height was to help block the smell, but if so, it wasn’t working. I’d encountered poison gas that didn’t reek like that.
“Do I want to know?”
“You really don’t,” Dieter said as we edged around.
A large black nose with a ring through it poked over the top of the pen as we passed, and a low, menacing sound issued from behind the metal. “I don’t think he likes you,” Dieter observed.
I would have made a comment about that making us even, but it would have required taking a breath.
We finally emerged into (relatively) fresh air beside a packed bar. It was outlined with a row of lanterns made out of green and amber beer bottles. They swayed cheerfully on their wires, splashing moving colors on the floor below. Behind the counter, vegetables were being stir-fried in huge, shallow pans, sending clouds of fragrant steam skyward. My stomach reminded me that I’d skipped lunch, but we didn’t stop there.
A couple streets over was an even more impressive establishment, in a tent formed out of army blankets. Over the entrance, someone had rigged an old Vegas sign: cocktails was spelled out in fat, fifties-era orange bulbs. Inside, hot dogs sizzled on a cinderblock grill next to the bar and every folding card table had its own flickering candle. They weren’t needed for lighting, but added to the unexpectedly inviting atmosphere.
We didn’t stop there, either.
We did stop at the entrance to a small dark cave, sitting all on its own at the end of a side street. Once my eyes adjusted, I understood the reason for the lousy lighting—and why the place made no effort to advertise. The smugglers, assassins, illegal arms dealers and narcotic pushers that made up 90 percent of its clientele probably preferred their privacy. I recognized half a dozen wanted criminals slouched at tables in the shadows. One must have recognized me, too, or maybe just what I was. He raised a glass in a mock salute. He knew I wouldn’t take him in—not when he’d be back on the street in an hour.
“Stop looking like that!” Dieter said, sounding a little stressed.
“Like what?”
“Like you want a fight!”
I realized that my hand had automatically gone to my potion belt. I slowly removed it, and the shadowy shapes on either side of the door relaxed slightly. We threaded our way through the crowd to a slab of plywood raised on sawhorses—the bar, I assumed. The tables were packed, but the area around the bar was empty. That probably had something to do with the presence of a large, reeking Awsang behind the counter.
“That’s Tilda,” Dieter said, appearing unfazed by the smell. I found that I wasn’t that bothered myself. I had new standards now, excitingly.
I perched on a stool and summoned up a smile. It was a little hard to tell if Tilda smiled back. She was busy slurping something from a plastic Burger King cup through her hairy proboscis. Since Aswangs are carrion-eaters, I was just as glad I couldn’t see what half-rotten delicacy lay inside.
“Beer in a bottle?” I asked hopefully.
The slurping continued. Guess that meant no.
“I’m looking for a friend,” I told her, figuring it was worth a shot. I reached for my wallet intending to show her Cyrus’s photo, but found that it was gone. And a moment later, so was the stool. I hit the floor and a giggling kobald scurried out from under me, heading for the door as fast as his childlike legs could carry him.
My lasso caught him around one chubby foot before he could make his escape. He tried to shake it off, but I strengthened the spell and started dragging him back, ignoring the stream of profanity I couldn’t understand anyway. He wiggled and squirmed and left furrows in the dirt floor with his fingernails, but I wrestled him closer. Until he shape-shifted again, into a column of fire, which the lasso couldn’t hold.
He flew out of the door on a wash of sparks, but with no hands he’d been forced to drop my wallet. It hit the floor with a thud and a sizzle, so I lassoed it instead, put out the flames and pulled out Cyrus’s photo. There was no visible reaction from the barmaid to any of this.
I added a twenty to the picture, and the bill disappeared faster than I could blink. But Tilda only shook her head. “She doesn’t know him,” Dieter translated unnecessarily.
“He might have been in Were form—”
I was going to describe his markings, but never got the chance. Tilda spat a great wad of brown-tinted yuck on the floor. “She doesn’t serve Weres,” Dieter interpreted.
“Why not?”
“Since you guys left, the gangs have turned into a major pain in the ass. They’re all bad, but the Weres are the worst. Like this morning, a bunch of them burnt out the settlement where I was staying. I lost everything.”
“That sucks. So do you see him?”
Dieter put his head down on the bar. “I lose my entire stash, get caught by that fucking bounty hunter and meet you—all in the same day. My life more than sucks. Sucking would be a step up.”
“Yeah. So do you see him?” I repeated.
“See who?”
“You said there was a wardsmith here,” I reminded him, striving for patience.