He clawed her again and the iridescent creature withdrew, slithering backward, twitching and spasming from the pain.
“What are you?” She hissed at him. “You undead thing. You shambling horror. What are you?”
Willem didn’t have a word for what he was, so he didn’t say anything. He moved relentlessly toward her, and though she did her best to fend him off, tried again to cast a spell, the fact that he didn’t care if he “lived” or died kept him pressing ever forward.
“I didn’t kill him,” the creature gasped. “It was Devorast’s all along, and I’m glad I didn’t kill him. Tell your master that.”
Finally the rot caught up to her and she collapsed into a deep puddle.
“You should kill Harkhuf, too,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve to…”
The alchemist screameda shrill, girlish soundand the creature opened her mouth, closed her eyes, and choked out her last breath into the pouring rain.
The alchemist screamed again, and Willem looked over at him. He met the man’s gaze, and Harkhuf promptly collapsed onto the cobblestones. Willem could smell the urine that drenched his already rain-soaked trousers.
When Willem turned back to the creature she had already begun to dissolve. Her body sagged in on itself, rotting from the inside out as though she’d been dead for a month, then a year, then all that was left of her was a dull gray dust that was scattered by the rain and driven into the mud of the pigsty.
“Go home,” Willem said to Harkhuf, but the alchemist lay on the street quivering, staring at him in open-mouthed horror.
Willem stood there for a few moments before he finally picked up the alchemist, who fell into an uneasy faint, and carried the man home.
24
5Marpenoth, the Year of the Unstrung Harp (1371 DR) The Canal Site
"By Thard Harr’s belt-bustin’ gut,” Hrothgar growled at the gray sky, “I think I might be gettin’ used to all this constant drippin’.”
Surero smiled at the wet dwarf, his long beard pasted to his leather apron. His boots were sunk as much as an inch deeper into the mud than Surero’s, though the alchemist had two feet in height on the stonemason from the Great Rift.
“Careful, there, Hrothgar,” the dwarfs distant cousin Vrengarl warned. “Sayin’ things like that out loud in front of all these humans… people’ll think you’ve gone soft.”
Hrothgar puffed out a scoffing laugh and said, “Then they’ll see how soft my boot is when I stick it up their”
Surero looked up when the dwarf stopped speaking. Hrothgar had lifted one foot out of the mud, and the deep brown dirt fell off it in clumps.
“Well, maybe that wouldn’t feel so hard after all,” he said.
The two dwarves shared a loud, raucous laugh, and Surero joined them, only a little more quietly. He’d been uneasy since word had begun to filter through the camp of the murder of Horemkensi.
Devorast, who worked at Surero’s side at that very moment, measuring the depth of the holes they dug in the wet ground to set kegs of smokepowder, had refused to discuss the murder in detail. Surero knew that Devorast hadn’t arranged the man’s death, though by all rights he should have. And something about that made the crime all the more disturbing to Surero.
Whoever had killed Horemkensi likely had his eye on the canal, either to seize control of the construction, or to once again put a stop to it. Either way, it would interfere with their work, and whoever this new player was, surely he wouldn’t be as easy to fool as Horemkensi had been.
Surero had suggested that Devorast step up and publicly reclaim the realization of his own genius, but that, at least as of yet, didn’t happen. Devorast seemed maddeningly content just to do the work, leaving the credit to whomever was in that position upon its completion.
“That’s deep enough,” Devorast said, standing and flicking mud off his hands.
“Well, let us get out of here before you bring in that smokepowder,” Hrothgar insisted. “That boomin’ o’ yours hurts my delicate ears.”
“And we wouldn’t want you to have any trouble listenin’ to yourself whine, now would we?” Vrengarl shot back.
“How Tsout we test the hardness of my muddy boots on your disrespectful arse, eh?” Hrothgar said as the two dwarves scrambled up the muddy side of the shallow trench.
“You can try,” Vrengarl replied, “but let’s do it back at camp. I’m hungry.”
The dwarves complained and threatened and harrassed each other until they finally crested a hill and disappeared from sight. Devorast watched them go with a strange expression.
“Is something?” Surero began, but Devorast held up a hand to silence him. He was listening, and Surero did the same.
All the alchemist heard was the rumble of the rain pounding the saturated ground.
Devorast reached out, grabbed Surero’s arm,’ and pulled him down into the mud. The alchemist gasped, then spat dirty water out of his mouth. He almost spoke, then he heard ita leathery rustle.
A bird, he thought, but a big one. Too big.
Surero looked up into the driving rain, squinting, but the clouds were low and dark, and he couldn’t see anything above them. The sound was gone anyway.
“What is it?” he whispered to Devorast, who drew the long knife he’d taken to carryingmore as a tool than a weapon. Surero had nothing like a weapon himself.
“I think you will find,” a stern, deep voice came from above them, “that you will live longer if you throw the knife away and submit.”
Surero saw Devorast wince at the sound of that word, “submit,” then he looked up to the lip of the trench, which was only a few inches above his head. A man dressed entirely in black armor, with a long black weathercloak fluttering in the wind, stood looking down at them. His long sword was sheathed at his belt, and his hands were at his side, hanging loose, but Surero could feel a tension there, and he knew that the man could draw and strike in the blink of an eye.
“You are Ivar Devorast,” the man said.
Devorast stepped away from the wall of the trench to get a better look at the man, and Surero heard the flapping of wings again. On the other side of the trench, only a few yards away, a strange creature like a tiny black dragontiny for a dragon, but still a bit larger than the biggest man Surero had ever seenalit in the mud and stared at them with smoldering red eyes that glowed in the dim light.
More black figures emerged from the rain, some human, some not.
“We’re surrounded,” the alchemist breathed.
The man in black laugheda cold, humorless sound and said, “Indeed. Master Devorast… the knife?”
“Ivar?” Surero said. His hands started to shake, then his knees. He couldn’t make himself decide if he wanted Devorast to drop the knife and “submit,” or lunge at the man in black and fight for their lives.
Devorast tossed the knife away without a word, and it sank halfway in the mud on the floor of the trench. The black monster on the other side of the trench ruffled its wings and gnashed its teeth, and Surero couldn’t help thinking the thing was disappointed.
“I am Captain Olin of the ransar’s black firedrakes,” the man in the black armor said. “I have come on the orders of Ransar Pristoleph to place you both under arrest for the murder of Senator Horemkensi.”
Surero’s heart sank and his hands began to tingle and go numb.
Don’t faint, he told himself. Do what Ivar does.
Devorast heaved a tired sigh, seemed not the slightest bit surprised, and said nothing.
“We didn’t kill him,” Surero heard himself say, then he coughed and clenched his teeth together hard.
“I don’t care,” said Captain Olin.
25
15 Nightal, the Year of Wild Magic (1372 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
The jailer dragged Devorast from his cell, but in only a few steps, the prisoner’s legs got under him and they walked side by side. At the end of the short, dark corridor, the jailer rapped on a steel door, which was opened from the other side by one of the guards. The guard grabbed Devorast by his filthy, sacklike gown and pulled him through into a little room lit by smoking candles. A line of buckets sat on the floor. The jailer barked an order at Devorast, who hesitated then saw the buckets and pulled off the tattered garment. The time it took him to disrobe betrayed the stiffness in his arms and shoulders, but his face remained stern and impassive.