There would be answers within a tenday, Dhauna had promised. Feena was beginning to doubt that.
She'd had no time to look into the threat of Sharran activity. When she raised the issue again with Mifano, couching it in the most diplomatic terms she could manage, he had once more denied the possible existence of a cult of the dark goddess in Yhaunn.
"We'd know, Feena," he'd said. "Sharrans can't hide themselves forever. Shar thrives on sacrifices and wicked deeds. We watch for those but we've seen nothing out of the ordinary." He'd given her a sideways glance. "Except for a suspiciously mauled body in the Stiltways, that is."
Feena had said failed to respond.
Her chances of finding any clues almost five nights later, after Manas and the city guard had already surveyed the area, Were questionable. As she'd told Julith, though, she had to at least try. Velsinore had mocked her for leaving the Selunite battle against Shar to fight the bloody followers of Malar, but it didn't seem as if Moonshadow Hall was trying very hard in the battle against Shar either. There was something more to be found, something more going on than either Mifano or Velsinore knew aboutFeena was certain of it.
And while she missed the keen insight that her wolf-shape's nose gave her, there were places two legs could go that four could not. She would enter the Stiltways as a woman.
The district was busier than it had been before. Its lower levels seemed darker as well. Feena paused in the shadows to let her eyes adjust and to get her bearings, then plunged onward. While her departure from the Stiltways the last time had been hasty and furtive in an attempt to conceal her monstrous hybrid wolf-woman form, she had taken care to make note of landmarks. Even so, her progress through the darkness of the Stiltways's streets was haphazard. She was forced to backtrack several times. She clenched her teeth. Manas had said the Sharran's friends claimed he hadn't frequented the Stiltways. When she'd followed the man, however, he'd moved quickly and with purpose. Even if he hadn't frequented the mazy district, he'd been more than familiar with the route to the well.
Feena stayed alert as she walked, not just for the human predators and denizens of the Stiltways, but for signs of more monstrous presences, the kind of creatures that might maul a body. Especially the kind that would maul a body with poison flowing through it. Over the past several days, shed given the question a lot of thought. It was possible that feral dogs had done the damage, but they would have smelled the poison on the Sharran just as she had and shied away. More unnatural predators might not have minded the poison, but she hadn't caught the scent of any such creatures before. Was it another werewolf, or other lycanthrope, as Manas had suggested? It was possible, but unlikelyFeena couldn't understand why any intelligent creature would risk poisoning itself just to ravage a corpse.
Unless someone had deliberately set out to make the Sharran's death look more violent than it really had been and to pin that violence on her. In which case, who and why? She couldn't believe that even Velsinore or Mifano, as much as they disliked her, would stoop to such a thing.
She found the tiny courtyard and the well. Just as before, the area was deserted. Scooping up a pebble, Feena murmured a prayer to Selune. A thread of divine energy shivered through her fingers. When she opened her fist, the pebble shone with the light of a full moon. She cupped her hand so that the light shone only downward and played it across the ground. The courtyard was paved with broad flagstones, broken and uneven with time. Dirt and dust blurred its corners, and mingled with a scattering of broken crockery.
There was only the faintest of stains where the Sharran had fallen. Her human nose wasn't as sensitive as her wolf nose, but even so, she could smell only the residue of poisoned blood. She looked closer. A wide patch of the cracked stone paving was cleaner than elsewhere in the courtyard and the dust around it was streaked and pocked by water. Some well-meaning soul had tried to wash away the offense of the man's death, probably with the very water he had been trying to taint. Feena shined her light on the dust and dirt. The only tracks she saw were the prints of boots and sandals. She sighed and looked around the courtyard, then turned her gaze upward to the walkways and platforms above it.
Two levels up, light glimmered and rough sounds of merriment drifted downthe backside of a tavern, she guessed. She stepped all the way to the opposite side of the courtyard and peered closely at the wall, risking an upward flash of her magical light. It barely reached that high, but she could make out long, wet stains streaking the walland the figure of a man who staggered and slurred obscenities, twisting around to peer over his shoulder as the faint light caught him. Feena flicked the light back down and wrinkled her nose. The tavern's toilet facilities, such as they were, overlooked the courtyard.
It was a place to start. Some regular patron of the tavern might have seen or heard something to give her a clue. She dismissed the light with a whisper and waited for her eyes to adjust again, then slipped back out onto the street and looked for a way up. A simple ladder two buildings over led up one level; a steep plank ramp led up another. She doubled back along a narrow, creaking platform and found the front of the tavern. It was hardly an inspiring sight. Narrow windows, any glass in them long since broken away, spilled light and the blue smoke of pipeweed into the night. The door of the place had been a window at some point in the pasta frame of rough wood covered the rounded edges of long broken bricks. The narrow alley that led to the courtyard reeked of urine. The tavern didn't smell any better.
And only a short time ago, Feena thought, I was walking in a beautiful garden and shaking hands with the great and glorious of Yhaunn.
She crinkled her nose and stepped through the open door.
In spite of its appearance and odor, the tavern was packed with customers. A few glanced at hersome wearily, some suspiciously, some with an unnerving las-civiousnessbut most ignored her presence. The crowd was a surprising mix of rogues off the streets, sailors up from the docks, respectable craftsmen, and well-dressed merchants, all of them squeezed in and sweating together. A bard was giving a raucous performance in one corner. In another, a big, muscular woman in shining bracers was arm-wrestling a burly dwarf to the encouragement of the crowd. Their chants "Lahumbra! Lahumbra!" mixed with the screeching of the bard to create quite a din. Feena forced her way through, trying to guess who might be a likely patron to have witnessed something in the courtyard.
She settled on an old man wedged into a corner near the thick plank that served as the bar. He looked as comfortable as if he had grown there, but his eyes were bright and sharp, not addled with too much ale. She stepped in close to him.
"Good evening to you, sir!" she said over the noise of the tavern.
His eyes went wide and Feena bit her tongue. She'd gotten too used to speaking in the stilted, precise register of a high priestess. She forced her voice back to its normal tones.
"Well met, old father!"
The man's long eyebrows twitched. "Well met, young daughter." He switched the stem of a clay pipe to the other side of his mouth as his eyes traveled slowly up and down her body. Feena fought back an urge to growl at him. He sighed regretfully. "Lass, if I were thirty years younger, your virtue would be in danger."
She gave him a sharp-toothed smile. "Really?" she asked. "From what?"
The old man choked on his pipe smoke and let out a long, rattling laugh.
"Well, aren't you a shark out of water," he wheezed after a moment. His eyes fixed on her face. "Eyes like an angel, tongue like a guard. You've got questions, don't you?"