"Thank you," Regdar said. "If your people need anything from down here, just have them ask one of the guards and he'll have it brought up."
"Most gracious of you," Haelliuzh replied. The innkeeper looked around one last time and said, "I will leave you to your work then."
Regdar nodded and the man was gone in a flash.
"Well," the half-elf said, fingering a twisted bit of metal sticking out of the side of the fallen door, "here's the catch."
Regdar barely glanced at the ruin of the elaborate hinge and spring-clasp left twisted and ruined by their crowbars. Instead, he stepped to the edge of the dark space and eased his head through the doorway. The opening led to a wide, dark shaft that plunged into the ground past the reach of the light filtering in from the basement. The shaft ran straight down into the sewers. Though Regdar couldn't see the bottom of the shaft, he knew a sewer when he smelled one.
The stench was strong. Still holding his greatsword, Regdar put up one hand to cover his nose.
"The sewers," he announced.
Regdar saw a steel rung mortared into the wall behind and below the opening. The steel rung was the top of a ladder that was built into the wall of the shaft. From below, Regdar could hear the sound of rushing water echoing in the sewers far below.
Nothing else moved or made a sound.
"Do we go down?" the sergeant asked him.
Regdar turned, having quickly made up his mind.
"Not yet," said the lord constable. "Whatever that was, it was big, and we'll be in its territory. We know how it moves now, but there's an awful lot of sewer down there. We need a map, a plan, a mage maybe…weapons and supplies for sure."
"But we are going in?" the sergeant asked, his voice quiet, almost tentative.
Regdar looked at him and smiled.
18
Maelani turned left onto the paved walkway along the strand and sighed in relief when the Thrush and the Jay hid her from Naull's view. She wasn't sure, hut Maelani thought she could feel the woman's eyes follow her all the way down the street. It was a risk turning off the road before she was confronted by the bridge guards, but if they saw her face, she would have to answer to her father.
She ambled along the path with the cowl pulled over her head, trying for all she was worth to appear casual, just a young woman out for a pre-dawn stroll. That was strange enough, even in one of the city's better neighborhoods, but all she needed was to avoid both the bridge guards and Naull long enough to get back into the inn.
A small crowd of watchmen milled about the strand, most of them still looking up at the broken windows of Regdar's room. The memory of floating up to that balcony, propelled by her enchanted sandals, made Maelani momentarily dizzy. She walked slowly, eyeing the guards from the shadows of her cloak. When none of them were looking directly at her, she slipped into the deep shadows of the inn's columned patio.
One of the Thrush and the Jay's house guards was lighting lamps in a line along the wall. Intent on his work, and made nightblind by the lamps only inches from his face, he never saw Maelani step into a curtained alcove.
Reserved for the inn's most privacy-conscious clientele, the alcoves were often rented by the month. Maelani, through her maid, had rented one almost a year before under an assumed name. She paid well for it, having to sell some of her jewelry and trading a favor or two. The portal had cost her even more.
A three-month-old baby was being raised in the Trade Quarter by a peasant couple who managed to make a fortune when they both discovered they had dragon blood and a talent for sorcery. Something in their past made it impossible (at least in their own minds) for them to ascend to the aristocracy, but they purchased the title, held in trust, for their baby when he came of age.
The title was a small thing for Maelani but huge for the family of sorcerers, and it bought her the portal in secrecy.
Pausing in the utter darkness of the alcove, Maelani took a deep breath.
"Regdar," she whispered, then quickly put a hand to her lips.
The place was still crawling with guards and she didn't want to be found, but she didn't want to go home, either. She came to the Thrush and the Jay that night with a purpose, and her mission had been interrupted.
Maelani pushed away the memory of the bed exploding at her, the bedcovers, the stomping, the fear of something lumbering toward her. Instead, she let her thoughts fill with the feeling of Regdar's arms around her, of the lord constable picking her up like she was a baby, and of his cool, confident gaze as he lowered her and the other woman down through the hole in the floor.
Here was a man truly worthy of the duchy and of her, but he was with that peasant, that trollop, that street mage.
Maelani felt her jaw tense with anger, embarrassment, and jealousy.
She thinks he loves her, Maelani thought, and maybe he does, but we haven't been alone yet.
Maelani thought of the potion, and her face relaxed. She wouldn't use it unless she had to, and she truly didn't think she had to, Naull or no Naull, but it was nice to know she had it just in case.
With a smile, she stepped onto an enchanted floor tile, whispered a command word, and faded from the pitch-dark alcove.
19
Regdar stretched, holding his neck. He hadn't slept and the adrenaline high that followed the mysterious attack had long since run its course. While he was still gathering men and resources to begin a search of the sewers, Naull returned. She'd said only a few words to him about having to rest and regain her spells. She seemed angry, but maybe scared as well. The look on her face and the tone of her voice troubled Regdar deeply, but as always seemed to be the case, he had pressing work to do, more immediate problems, and Naull would have to wait-and understand.
Standing knee-deep in waste water, Regdar finished stretching and pressed on. The tracker was several paces ahead of him, and already there was a space of inky darkness between the pools of light from his lantern and Regdar's. The curved ceiling was only a few inches over Regdar's head, and the walls were only a couple feet to either side of him. The sewer passage was a long, brickwork cylinder-a pipe, really. Sounds echoed so strangely in its confines that Regdar eventually gave up jumping at every sudden noise. A drip could sound like a warhorse's hooves, a splash like the beating of a giant heart.
The tracker was another of the city watchmen who Regdar commanded, though he hadn't met the man an hour before. The sergeant told him that the tracker, whose name was Willis, had worked in the sewers and knew their quirks. Having spent an hour following Willis through the worst place in New Koratia, Regdar wasn't so sure. They seemed to just be walking in a straight line.
Behind him followed two more watchmen, whispering gripes and dirty jokes to each other to pass the time. Regdar wished he could join them but he was still working out how a Lord Constable should act, and griping with the men probably wasn't it.
He had three more teams of four men apiece fanned out in the maze of sewer tunnels, each led by someone who claimed to know the subterranean ins and outs. Regdar could only hope that one of those other teams, at least, was on the right track.
He was beginning to think about turning his team around and going back to the Thrush and the Jay when one of the men behind him screamed. Regdar whirled and saw a single, flailing arm surrounded by splashing water. The other watchman moved back and to the side, pushing through the water, pinwheeling his arms so that the sword in his right hand scraped the ceiling and the wall close behind him.
Regdar sloshed toward the commotion, scanning the rippling water for the downed man. Bits of garbage and feces bobbed in the brown water, which was being churned from below. The water was no more than two feet deep, and Regdar couldn't believe the watchman could have disappeared completely in it.