"That's not our job!"
"Whose is it then?" Kethry dug her fingers into the wood of the windowframe behind her, as tense and worried as she'd ever been. "We'd better make it our job if we're going to survive! And I told you earlier -- I don't want you cosseting me! I know what I'm doing, and I can protect myself!"
Tarma sighed, and there was a shadow of guilt on her face as she rolled over to lie flat on her back, staring at the ceiling; her hands clasped under her head, one leg crossed over the other. "All right, then. I don't know a damn thing about magic, and all I care to know about demons outside of a book is that they scare me witless. I still would rather go for help, but if you don't think we'd have the time -- and if you are sure you're not getting into more than you can handle -- "
"I know we wouldn't have the time; he's not going to waste time building up a power base," Kethry replied, sitting down on the edge of Tarma's bed, making the frame creak.
"And he may not be there at all; it might just be a wild rumor."
"It might; I don't think I'd care to bet my life on waiting to see, though."
"So we need information; reliable information."
"The question is how to get it. Should I try scrying?"
"Absolutely not!" Tarma flipped back over onto her side, her hand chopping at the pillow for emphasis. Warrl winced away and looked at her reproachfully. "He caught that poor witch back in Delton that way, remember? That much even I know. If you scry, he'll have you on his ground. I promise I won't cosset you any more, but I will not allow you to put yourself in jeopardy when there are any other alternatives!"
"Well, how then?"
"Me." Tarma stabbed at her own chest with an emphatic thumb. "Granted, I'm not a thief -- but I am a skilled scout. I can slip into and out of that temple without anyone knowing I've been there, and if it's being used for anything, I'll be able to tell."
"No."
"Yes. No choice, she'enedra."
"All right, then -- but you won't be going without me. If he and any followers he may have gathered are there and they're using magic to mask their presence, you won't see anything, but I can invoke mage-sight and see through any illusions."
Tarma began to protest, but this time Kethry cut her short. "You haven't a choice either; you need my skill and I won't let you go in there without me. Dammit Tarma, I am your partner -- your full partner. If I have to, I'll follow you on my own."
"You would, wouldn't you?"
"You can bet on it." Kethry scowled, then smiled as Tarma's resigned expression told her she'd won the argument. Warrl nudged Tarma's hand again, and she began scratching absentmindedly behind his ears. A scowl creased her forehead, but her mouth, too, was quirked in an almost-smile.
"Warrior's Oath! I would tie myself to a headstrong, stubborn, foolish, reckless, crazed mage -- "
"Who loves her bond-sister and won't allow her to throw her life away."
" -- who is dearer to me than my own life."
Kethry reached out at almost the same moment as Tarma did. They touched hands briefly, crescent-scarred palm to crescent-scarred palm, and exchanged rueful smiles.
"Argument over?"
"It's over."
"All right then," Tarma said after poignant silence, "Let's get to it now, while we've still got the guts for it."
Ten
Tarma led the way, as softand sure-footed in these dark city streets as she would have been scouting a forest or creeping through grass on an open plain.
The kyree Warrl served as their scout and their eyes in the darkness. The uninformed would have thought it impossible to hide a lupine creature the size of Warrl in an open street -- a creature whose shoulder nearly came as high as Tarma's waist; but Warrl, although somewhere close at hand, was presently invisible. Tarma could sense him, though -- now behind them, now in front. From time to time he would speak a single word (or perhaps as many as three) in her mind, to tell her of the results of his scouting.
There was little moonlight; the moon was in her last quarter. This was one of the poorest streets in the city, and there we're no cressets and no torches to spare to light the way by night -- and if anyone put one up, it would be stolen within the hour. The buildings to either side were shut up tight; not with shutters, for they were in far too poor a state of repair to have working shutters, but with whatever bits of wood and cloth or rubbish came to hand. What little light there was leaked through the cracks in these makeshift curtainings. The street itself was rutted mud; no wasting of paving bricks on this side of the river. Both the mercenaries wore thin-soled boots, the better to feel their way in the darkness. Kethry had abandoned her usual buffcolored, calf-length robe; she wore a dark, sleeved tunic over her breeches. Kethry's ensorcelled blade Need was slung at her side; Tarma's nonmagical weapon carried in its usual spot on her back. They had left cloaks behind; cloaks had a tendency to get tangled at the most inopportune moments. Better to bear with the chill.
They had slipped out the window of their room at the inn, wanting no one to guess where they were going -- or even that they were going out at all. They had made their way down back alleys with occasional detours through fenced yards or even across roofs. Although Kethry was no match for Tarma in strength and agility, she was quite capable of keeping up with her on a trek like this one.
Finally the fences had begun to boast more holes than entire boards; the houses leaned to one side or the other, almost as though they huddled together to support their sagging bones. The streets, when they had ventured out onto them, were either deserted or populated by one or two furtively scurrying shadows. This dubious quarter where the abandoned temple that their priestly friend had told them of stood -- this was hardly a place either of them would have chosen to roam in daylight, much less darkness. Tarma was already beginning to regret the impulse that had led her here -- the stubbornness that had forced her to prove that she was not trying to shelter her partner unduly. Except that... maybe Kethry was right. Maybe she was putting a stranglehold on the mage. But Keth was all the Clan she had....
Tarma's nose told her where they were; downwind of the stockyards, the slaughterhouse, and the tannery. The reek of tannic acid, offal, half-tanned hides and manure was a little short of unbreathable. From far off there came the intermittent lowing and bleating of the miserable animals awaiting the doom that would come in the morning.
"Something just occurred to me," Kethry whispered as they waited, hidden in shadows, for a single passerby to clear the street.
"What?"
"This close to the stockyard and slaughterhouse, Thalhkarsh wouldn't necessarily need sacrifices to build a power base."
"You mean -- he could use the deaths of the beasts?"
"Death-energy is the same for man and beast. Man just has more of it, and of higher quality."
"Like you can get just as drunk on cheap beer as on distilled spirits?"
"Something of the sort."
"Lady's Blade! And he feeds on fear and pain as well -- "