The wooden cover wasn't yielding to one hand. The man set the flask on the ground and hauled at the cover with both hands. It groaned and began to shift. Feena reached into her spirit, seeking the point of balance between woman and wolfand shook herself.
Her chain and the battered symbol of Selune jingled softly.
The man started and the wooden cover slipped from his fingers.
"Who's there?" he called, peering back into the alley. Without taking his eyes away, he bent down, groping for the flask.
Feena flung herself down the alley, exploding out into the courtyard on legs as long and as powerful as a human's, but bent like those of a wolf. She still had a wolfs tail and a wolfs head, as well, but her torso and arms were those" of a woman for all that they rippled with short reddish fur. Her hands, however, were huge, her fingers long, thick, and tipped with claws. Her muzzle all but incapable of forming human words, she let out a dangerous snarl as she leaped.
The man gasped and jerked back toward one of the courtyard's walls. Feena landed with a thump on the wooden cover of the well and spun around to face him.
He clutched the flask in his hand. She growled and stretched out clawed fingers. The man's eyes darted around the tiny courtyard as he sought a way past her. From the top of the well, however, she commanded the space. He started to take a step and she jumped forward to block his way.
The dim light from above flashed on her medallion. The reflected light caught his eyesand they widened.
"Selunite!" he gasped, pulling away. His features hardened into sneering resolve. "You won't have me, moon-bitch!"
Jerking the stopper free, he raised the flask to his lips and drank greedily.
Startled, Feena froze. When finally she barked and lunged forward to bat the flask away, it was too late. Only a few drops of the dark, acrid liquid splattered across the man's face. His eyes opened wide, the pupils huge, and he let out a strangled, gasping rattle before thrashing back against the wall. Dark froth oozed out of his mouth and across his lips. One hand clawed at his neck and a pendant there.
"Shar…" he slurred.
Horrified, Feena stepped away as he stumbled off his feet, fell to the ground, and lay still.
Moonmaiden's grace, she silently cursed.
Feena bent down swiftly and touched his neck, feeling for a pulse as best she could with her clumsy taloned fingers.
Nothinghe was already dead. But his dying words
She seized his hand and pulled against muscles drawn as rigid as steel by the poison. The dead man's fingers loosened enough to allow the pendant he had seized to fall free. A wooden disk, its rim dark but its center even darker. By better light, Feena knew it would be black surrounded by purple.
A follower of Shar.
Feena let his hand drop and scrambled for the flask as it spun slowly in the shadows. Spilled poison stained the neck and sides. She picked it up carefully, holding it in a beam of pale light from above. A scrap of paper with crude writing had been pasted to the flask's side.
"For the glory of the Lady of Loss," it read. "Let all know her power and despair."
Sharrans. There were Sharrans in Yhaunn.
The flask's stopper had rolled out of the dead man's other hand. Feena retrieved it and replaced it in the flask. A cold feeling was forming in the pit of her belly. If the enemies of Selune were operating in the city, there was certain to be trouble.
But at the same time, her thin, wolfs lips drew back and she bared her teeth in grim satisfaction. Archives for Dhauna, social graces for Mifano, accounts for Velsinorea fight for Feena. Finally, something she could handle without feeling like a complete fool. Feena touched one clawed hand to the medallion around her throat as she stood and turned away from the poisoned corpse.
Bright Lady of the Night, she thought, thank you! — amp; The creature turned away. On one of the walkways overlooking the courtyard and its well, Variance Amatick waited another moment, then parted the shadows that had concealed her. A Selunite and a werewolf. So what she had been told was not an exaggeration.
"I hadn't expected to find you hunting the night, Moonmistress-Designate," she murmured to herself.
She took a step forward into shadowand emerged on the ground in the courtyard. The dead man's eyes stared up at her. It was a nobler death than she would have given him. A score of deaths and a flask proclaiming the glory of Shar would have been a good lure. The body of a fanatical Sharran cultist would have been even better.
But a Selunite to witness and stop the whole affair before Variance even had to dirty her hands, that was a gift from Shar herself.
That the well had not been poisoned was no great loss. A score of people had been spared death that night, but it would come for them eventually. The Selunite had seen and heard all that was necessary. Moonshadow Hall would have to respond.
Still, there seemed little point in wasting a corpse when it could be used to create even more havoc and confusion.
Variance knelt down and broke the cord around the dead man's neck, tugging it and the symbol of Shar away. She tucked both into a fold of her own mantle. The Selunites knew their enemy, but no one else needed to.
"Have no fear," she told the corpse. "The Lady of Loss will know your soul. There's just one more sacrifice for you to make."
She rose and stepped back. Whispering a prayer to Shar, she crooked two fingers as if beckoning someone. Or something.
Shadows swirled and condensed into a massive black dog with a hide like night itself. Variance pointed at the cultist's body.
CHAPTER 4
What?" Feena asked, looking from Velsinore to Mifano in stupefied disbelief.
"There are no Sharrans in Yhaunn, Feena," Mifano insisted. "We'd know if there were."
Sitting beside him, Velsinore nodded her agreement. Feena clenched her hands and her fingernails scraped across the polished top of the table around which the three of them sat. As soon as Moonshadow Hall had begun stirring that morning, she had commandeered one of its receiving rooms for the meeting. Her intention had been to keep unnecessary panic from spreading through the junior members of the temple. It was beginning to look increasingly like the privacy would serve instead to keep word from spreading of another clash with Mifano and Velsinore.
"But I told you what I saw," Feena growled. She lifted one hand and pointed at the flask that stood in the center of the table. Getting it back to Moonshadow Hall had not been easy. Shifting into wolf form and carrying the flaskpoison lingering within itin her mouth had been out of the question, of course. Shifting to human form would have left her naked. She had been forced to duck through alleys and shadows in her monstrous hybrid shape all the way back to the temple and her waiting clothes. "You can read the inscription on that yourself."
"A badly-written label is hardly an inscription," Mifano said as he picked up the flask again. "Anyone could have written this and stuck it to the flask. Anyone could have gone to a less than ethical alchemist and bought the poison. Anyone can invoke Shar's name if they choose to." He set the flask down. "It's not a cult, Feena. I think you stumbled across a misguided madman working on his own."
"But there could be a cult at work," protested Feena. "How do you know there isn't?"
Velsinore leaned forward. Her face was cross. "Because we do," she said. "Honestly, do you think we don't take the threat of Shar's followers seriously? We monitor every tale and rumor that passes through Yhaunnand around it, too. We have faithful who aid us in watching. We're vigilant, Feena! You know the spoor of Malar's servants, don't you? You know when they come to Arch Wood. If there was any sign of a Sharran cult spreading in the city, we would have known."
"This is a sign!" Feena banged the table.