LUSKAN.
The word held terror and wrath, but he found it soothing, too. It gave him purpose.
Before he went to sleep, he thought he heard something down in the alley, but he ignored the sound. A man catching on fire would surely make more noise than that.
Red Logenn waited a good long while-he sang the “Ghost and the Maiden” in his head, which took nigh on half an hour-to make sure his quarry had settled. Then he rose from where he’d been hiding in the alley. Whoever this man was-this Shadowbane-he was good.
Too bad Logenn was better.
At first, he hadn’t wanted to take the job. Not many worked with the Coin Priest if they didn’t have to, but the coin offered was too good. So much for an outsider? He found that interesting, and Logenn the Red Wolf (the best shadow in Luskan and possibly in all the North) charged enough to take jobs only when they interested him.
Even better, the quarry had made this a challenge. Shadowbane hadn’t arrived in the best shape and he’d made a busy time of it since, but still he had the presence of mind to double back and cover his tracks to throw off pursuit. Not that it mattered to Logenn-he enjoyed the hunt and would take pleasure in the kill.
Logenn padded up to the trapped window and pulled it open, bit by bit, until the alchemist fire vial rolled out. He caught it easily.
“Trap foiled,” he said, admiring the vial in his fingers. “What else ya got?”
Then something happened. Somehow, the vial proved too slick and slipped in his fingers. He flailed for it but, try as he might, he could only bobble it into the air.
A white-gloved hand reached around Logenn to catch the vial.
The hunter started to turn, then stopped when a blade touched his back.
“Ah, ah,” whispered a cheery voice. The vial spun in the white hand. “What a delicate thing, with such capacity for destruction. Why, if you were to drop this-”
Logenn gasped as the fingers released the vial, but the gloved hand caught it after it had fallen no more than the length of a dagger.
“Well now,” said the unseen man. “That would have been most unlucky, wouldn’t it? Fortunately for both of us, I overflow in my store of the Lady’s good grace.”
Logenn opened his mouth to utter a curse, but somehow, words would not come. His mouth moved, but he could not hear his own voice. What magic was this?
“Can’t have you crying out for aid, now can I? You’d spoil our conversation.”
Logenn tried to understand what was happening. Somehow, the man had got the drop on him-him, Logenn the Red Wolf-and placed him under a spell. Where had he come from? And how could Logenn fight back? Should he fight back?
“Don’t worry about responding-I can tell what you’re thinking,” the man said. “You are of two minds-two voices, as it were. One voice bids you attack, while another bids you wait. Am I foe or friend? How would you know?”
He reached into Logenn’s tunic and drew the double-faced coin from the tunic’s inner pocket. He examined it, turning it over from the side with a homely but cheery woman’s face to the other, which showed a frigidly beautiful woman wearing a deadly sneer.
Slowly, Logenn reached for the long dagger at his belt.
“We all have those two voices,” the cheerful man said. “Do good or work ill, move or rest, cry out or stay silent-live or die. Life is all about which voice we listen to and whether it leads to good fortune.” He showed the smiling Tymora side of the coin. “Or bad.” He showed Logenn the other, sneering face of Beshaba. “Luck.”
He snapped his fingers and the coin vanished up his sleeve. The wrist at the fringe of the glove was gold. Logenn saw flesh of such a rich color he thought it from another world.
Logenn still couldn’t talk, but he could kill silently, too. He snapped his dagger from its scabbard and slashed around, but his tormentor was gone.
“Oh, very good, very good,” said the man’s soft voice from elsewhere. “I suppose you think you’ve chosen this, don’t you?”
Logenn growled low, his knife raised. With his other hand, he drew out his short sword. He could not see his foe, but the bastard was certainly there.
“Indeed, you chose to follow my cat’s-paw,” the disembodied voice said. “As a consequence, I chose to do something about it. Hence this conversation.”
Logenn thought he could detect the source of the voice-slightly removed toward the mouth of the alley, five paces distant …
“I’ll let you choose again-though make your choice fast, for your luck is about to change.” The man reappeared, his golden face gleaming in the moonlight.
Logenn charged.
“Bad luck, old son.” The golden man tossed the vial casually toward him.
The deadly vial spun end over end in the air toward Logenn. He tried to catch it, but his hands were full of steel. He dropped his dagger and groped for it in the air, but the vial shattered in his fingers.
Then Logenn was on fire and could not hear his own screams.
The scrying ended when the focus-the sellsword’s double-faced coin-disappeared into the man’s sleeve. The water in the gold bowl wavered, distorting ripples flowing across the image, and then it was gone.
“Damn,” said the Coin Priest. “Double damned the luck!”
She lounged back on her divan-so much more comfortable than standing-and pursed her red-painted lips. One gray-gloved hand swept through the water, flicking drops that gleamed gold in the candlelight toward the far wall. The Coin Priest’s frustrated growl sank below any sound a human throat might utter, becoming the dull, threatening rumble of a crouching wolf. If her quarry had been there to hear her, he would have backed away warily-and he would have been right to do so.
It was not merely that an agent of the Smiling Lady probably lay dead this day-or worse-but rather the travesty of seeing Tymora’s agents attacked in the streets that drove the Coin Priest absolutely mad. The disrespect! That, and damned Ebbius had not checked back in after a simple assignment to collect protection fees. What was Luskan coming to these days, if folk saw fit to resist what was best for them?
“Master,” came a voice from the door.
Visitors. It would not do to show a lack of control. The Coin Priest shook off the anger and donned a pleasant, false smile. “Come!”
The doors opened into the room with caution. Two men entered-hard men with the eyes of murderers. Men of Luskan.
“Good, good!” she said. “Just the men I wanted. Not that I know your names at the moment, but you fit the prerequisite of service: superfluous muscle. Mmm. Come closer.”
The men approached cautiously and the Coin Priest scrutinized them. They really were fine specimens, if ugly as all the Nine Hells. Just her type.
“Such muscle, in fact,” she said. “Such fresh, tasty meat. Delicious.”
The two sellswords looked at one another uncertainly, then back at the Coin Priest. “Thanks?” one said.
“And not overburdened with brains. Perfect.” She waved one hand over the basin, showing once again the images the coin had shown. “You see? Bring this man to me.”
The thugs scrutinized the image. “You mean the one who burned the Dustclaws?” one asked. “We could just leave him in a pool of his own blood.”
“No, no, no-idiots!” she said. “Not that one. The other.”
The men fell back, visibly startled. The Coin Priest became aware of a tik-tik-tik sound, and realized what it was. She was tapping her dagger against her most precious possession: a two-faced platinum coin, her holy symbol. Without it, she would have no power whatsoever. Tapping the coin with her knife was an unconscious habit, one that often presaged violence.
That this coin rested in her left eye socket made no nevermind.
The Coin Priest made a conscious effort to stop tapping. “I mean the Horned One,” she clarified. “The Golden Man. The man in these images. Bring him to me.”