Myrin’s eyes widened. “Whose heir? I’m-” The light died in the corpse’s eyes and it slumped around Vindicator.
Tentatively, Rhett grasped the hilt of the sword and pulled. The blade slid easily-all too easily-out of the body. It gleamed as the half-elf held it.
“Well,” Rhett said. “You’re-ah!”
The corpse, now freed of the transfixing blade, climbed to its feet and shambled off, completely ignoring Rhett’s hastily raised defense. When it was gone, Rhett could breathe again-none too well, but at least he could do it.
“I wonder who he meant.” Myrin was staring at the departing corpse, her lips pursed in thought. She noticed Rhett staring and shook herself. “Well, let’s go.”
“You’re just going to take his word for it?” Rhett asked. “The Master of the Throat? That he isn’t behind it?”
Myrin shrugged. “I knew he wasn’t,” she said. “I just wanted to find out what he knew, which-as you’ve just heard-is almost nothing.”
“And to prove you could do it,” Rhett noted.
“That too.” Myrin looked to the beaten man they had rescued-the first time she’d so much as regarded him-and looked stricken. Then she furrowed her brow as though scrutinizing him more closely. “Hold, goodsir,” she said. “What-mmh!” She sank to one knee, grasping her head as though it pained her.
“Myrin? What’s wrong?” Rhett steadied her around the shoulders.
“A mask,” Myrin said, sounding almost delirious. “He’s wearing …”
Rhett looked back to the man, who-he saw for the slightest of heartbeats-seemed different. Instead of a battered human of rugged aspect, he seemed a gold-skinned elf with bright gold eyes. Magic.
Just as suddenly, the image fled and the man was once again the man with the gray eyes. He looked at them quizzically, considering. Then, after a breath, he spoke.
“I’ve heard talk,” he said, “about a ship in the harbor-a derelict that labors under a curse of some sort. You should investigate that.” He turned to go.
“What?” Rhett eased Myrin to the ground and raised Vindicator. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”
“The derelict. It’s important.” The man walked away.
Rhett gave chase, but the man’s head start and his own armor made the difference. The man reached the corner first and when Rhett rounded it, his quarry had vanished as though into the air. Magic again. He hurried back.
“Derelict,” Myrin murmured.
“It’s well,” Rhett said. “You’ll be well.”
He lifted her-she seemed like nothing in his arms-and pressed his fingers to her cheek. Healing magic flowed into her and her eyes fluttered. “Kalen?” she asked.
Rhett smiled and set her on her feet. “Nay, lass-the other one.”
“Oh. I thought Kalen was here.” Myrin’s features tightened-another ache in her head. “Rhett, I owe you an answer.”
“Rhe-oh. Right.” The boy smiled. “An answer to what, my lady?”
“When you asked me about my motives, here in the city,” she said. “I’m not an idiot. I know I can’t save Luskan by myself and I know Toytere probably means to trap me here. I-” She paused a moment, as though considering what to tell him. “I just want you to know that I have a plan and you need to trust me.”
“I do trust you, my lady.” Rhett took her hand and kissed it.
“Rhett, I-” Myrin shook her head. “I think I’d like to go back now.”
“Wonderful,” Rhett said. “Only one question.”
“Yes?”
“Will you be teleporting us again?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
23 KYTHORN (EVENING)
"Oi!” cried Flick. “I see you there!”
The weedy young Rat-who only thought he’d approached the tapped wood keg by stealth-froze, the color draining from his weasel-like face.
Without looking at him, Flick pointed at him as though her finger were a stiletto dagger. “You pay for your damn grug or you belt up and sabruin off-you green?”
“Bah!” The youth, caught, made a face. Lowering his hopeful cup, he rummaged in his belt pouch, plucked out a dried ear, and slapped it down on the counter.
“Goblin?” Flick spat onto the floor. Apparently, she could tell the race by the sound it made on the counter.
“Hobgob,” the lad said. “Fresh, too!”
“Fine. Fill your drink.” The bar matron hooked two tankards over her left hand, then plucked up a big jug of mead, wedging it between her upper right arm and her not inconsiderable bosom. “Only one, mind! Don’t think I can’t hear as well as I can see. You fill two, I’ll know.”
“Aye, madam.” With a mild curse, the lad took the second cup he’d concealed under his arm and hooked it to his belt.
That done, Flick strode around the bar, where one of the Rats was having his way with one of her barmaids. With an annoyed sniff, Flick skirted the two, cut her way through tables filled with murmuring and laughing men, and brought the mead to where Kalen sat watching it all with a faint smile.
“Scribing not paying off the way it use to?” he asked.
“You’re the one burned me shop, Little Dren.” Flick exposed her finely groomed white teeth. She set the two metal tankards on the table. “Can’t go back there ’til Ebbius be found dead-or perhaps every tieflin’ in existence, if it please you.”
Kalen chuckled and she swatted him across the back of the head.
“Count yourself lucky I don’t hock blood in this.” She filled the two cups on the table with mead and returned to her work. “And use the stlarnin’ broom closet, for Sune’s sake!” She shooed away the lovers at the end of the bar.
“Same old Drowned Rat,” Kalen murmured. “Flick was born to tend here.”
“Master?”
Kalen pushed the second cup of mead closer to Rhett. “It’s clean,” he said. “She may swear like a drunken dwarf, but I did save her life.”
“That’s a comfort.” The boy looked at the mead, then back at the bar-or rather, now, to the closet at the end, the door of which shook periodically. “My gods, they-do they really have to do that so loudly?”
Kalen breathed an amused sigh and pointed to Rhett’s tankard. “Have a care with that, by the way. Cups are rare in Luskan and worth more than gold. That’s your cup from now on, unblemished and unpoisoned.”
Rhett almost dropped his tankard right then. “Lady Felicity is generous.”
“Flick,” Kalen corrected, knowing how Flick disliked her given name. He’d only told Rhett grudgingly, because the boy insisted on being so proper all the time. “Lose that one, and you’ll have to steal or kill for another. Or else help Flick in the kitchen. Honestly, I think you’d prefer the violence.”
“Point.” Rhett nodded and put both hands on his mug.
Vindicator lay on the table between them, a barrier and a common ground.
The tavern seemed much as it ever had-a den of drinking, gambling, and rutting, usually as a result of the first two. There were coin lads and lasses aplenty in Luskan, of course-and every Luskar was assumed to be of negotiable virtue, unless otherwise made clear. Letting one’s guard slip, however, could mean an ugly death in a pool of one’s own blood.
“So,” Rhett said awkwardly. “Do you forgive me?”
It was their second night among the Dead Rats. With chastened reserve, Rhett had told him the tale of Myrin’s quest to the north shore, where they faced the Master of the Throat. Also, he imparted what the necromancer had said about the derelict.
“I tried to convince her not to go,” Rhett said. “But she’s-”
“Headstrong, I know. It isn’t your fault.” Kalen shook his head. “And remember you are not my apprentice, and I am not your master.”
Rhett nodded. “As you say.”
Like as not, it was Kalen’s fault. He’d given Rhett the task of supervising Myrin, when he should have done it himself. He’d spent the day spying on gang taverns and listening in common rooms for word of the plague. In all that time, he hadn’t learned as much as the two of them had in a single hour’s trek. True, they’d risked terrible danger along the way, but by all accounts, Myrin had never even seemed worried. Kalen wasn’t sure that soothed him.