"I'll lower you down first," he said. "So you can carry the torch and have a look around. Let me know when you reach the bottom."
Tennora nodded, afraid to give voice to the nerves that were threatening to make her run back up the stairs, back to her cozy apartment and her books. Back-somehow-to her life as it was before carvestars and lockpicks and dragons. She took a deep breath to clear those thoughts from her mind, but they only scattered to a safe distance, like crows shooed from a garden.
She climbed over the wall and secured the rope around her seat. Veron handed her a torch to carry in her other hand, and he began to lower her down.
She would have liked to drop the torch and hold on with both hands. As soon as she started to descend, the rope began twisting so that she spun like a maple seed, the torch trailing a slow spiral of fire. Moreover, if the air above her had been thick, this was like trying to breathe through a wet rag. The close moistness carried scents so vile, Tennora's imagination ran wild with the possible sources. She gagged until she stopped trying to endure the fetid air and just held her breath. Her weak lungs protested, but it was better than the taste of the air.
As she neared the bottom, the torchlight caught the slow-moving water of the sewer channels, brown and thick. Tennora gagged again and was forced to take a deep breath of the noxious air.
"Stop!" she called, her voice echoing up the leg of the God Catcher. She had reached the spot where the statue had broken through the ancient sewers. The brick for twenty yards across was half a shade cleaner-though that wasn't saying much. Ahead of her, a narrow pathway ran along the wall, a hand span above the water, the access for the repair workers. She tossed the torch over onto the relatively dry pathway. It sputtered for a moment, but stayed lit.
She kicked her legs, like a child on a swing, gathering enough momentum to catch the lip of the ledge with her toes. She twisted and turned, straining to shift her weight over onto the ledge. If she could just turn over, she might be able to She managed to twist right out of her rope harness.
She yelped and landed in the water with a splash. It was shallow, but as foul as it had looked. Tennora quickly scrambled onto the safer pathway, where she vomited in earnest.
"All right?" Veron's voice echoed down from the ledge.
Tennora threw up a little more and spit, trying to clean her mouth. "More or less," she called back. "But you're pretty much certain to hit the water." She shook the filth from her hands.
The rope harness vanished up into the darkness, followed a few minutes later by Veron, lowering himself hand over hand. He came to a stop just inches above the water. He looked at the water as the rope slowly spun.
"I don't suppose there's some way you could…" He trailed off, as Tennora raised an eyebrow. He sighed, leaned back, and slid out of the harness.
Veron came up coughing and gagging, and Tennora felt a small, shallow comfort at seeing him vomit at least as much as she had.
"Oh gods," he gasped.
"These sewers flow out of the Field Ward," Tennora said. "It's pretty crowded. And it's been raining lately."
"Can't you?" He waved his hands in a vague way. "Clean us up?"
Tennora smiled. "We're just going to get dirtier."
They walked until the pathway narrowed into nothing but a half width of brick protruding from the walls, and edged along it on their heels until it too diminished into nothing much.
Tennora gave in and stepped into the flow, torch high and eyes sharp for shapes in the water. Stories of what lived in the sewer plagued the nightmares of Waterdeep's impressionable children-the blindfin, garbage-hungry otyughs, sentient slime. The dumped bodies of victims who returned from the grave, seeking vengeance on their killers. She had squealed to hear tales of basilisks that had grown gills and a construct made entirely of chamber pot refuse. She had promised to take her baths to stave off a visit from the giant crocodile who took dirty babes back down to the sewer where they belonged. They were nursery stories, embellished to keep her squealing or behaving. But such stories had a kernel of truth nestled at their core.
There wasn't a doubt in her mind they would find what did live in the Waterdhavian sewers sooner or later-but she didn't want it to find her first.
"How did you come to be a bounty hunter?" she said to stave off her nerves.
Veron shrugged. "I wanted to see the world. I…" He trailed off. "I wanted to go somewhere where no one knew me."
She glanced back at him. "That's a strange answer. What were you running from?"
"Nothing," he said quickly. "Nothing like that. I… I came of age in Silverymoon. I'm certainly not the only half-orc there, but
…" He sighed. "Look, it's complicated."
"They want you to be something you aren't?" Tennora said.
He stopped, the effluvia swirling around his calves. "Why would you say that?" he asked, and Tennora knew she was right.
"Let's say I'm familiar with the symptoms."
They walked on a little farther before Veron spoke. "Some people think my family is some sort of grand experiment, doomed to fail," he said. "It's bad enough everyone who doesn't know my past sees something monstrous-but at home, I have to stand for every Many-Arrows marriage. If I'm no good, well, the whole kingdom's no good. The very idea of orcs and humans marrying is no good." They both stopped. Veron rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. "I don't know why I'm telling you any of this."
Tennora shrugged. "Because I'm listening? You've definitely got me beat. I'm just supposed to be a proper lady, while everyone's waiting for me to be a thief."
"I thought you were a wizard."
"Apparently not."
The stream they slogged along opened into a large room. Five pipes, wide enough that either of them could stand upright and walk through them, branched off. Veron looked around at them.
"Which way?" Veron said.
"He'll have to be close to his other lair. The antiquary's shop on Jembril Street. That's… south and a little east of the God Catcher." She turned, aligning herself with the streets so many feet above. "That one," she said, pointing to a pipe.
"Are you sure?" Veron asked.
Tennora gave him a puzzled look. "Do you have a better idea?"
Veron looked a little flustered and shrugged. "We should be sure. We should know where we're going."
"Well, we don't," Tennora said, pulling herself up into the pipe she'd indicated. "So you can come along or give up. We know he's probably in this direction, and he's probably in an isolated area."
Veron climbed up beside her. "Why would you assume that?"
"The guard patrols the sewers, but they certainly don't bother with all parts of it. Places where there's no room to walk, places that flood regularly, and places that are hard to get to only get a pass occasionally."
Veron looked impressed. Tennora smiled. If she survived this, she'd have to thank the Marchenors's son.
The next chamber flickered with a strange, cool light-not bright enough to illumine the space or reveal the source, but bright enough to be certain it wasn't a trick of their eyes. Tennora climbed carefully into the room. There was a lip only a foot wide at the mouth of the tunnel. The rest of the room was tiered, ever so slightly, with four rows of rectangular pools, each set a hand span above the next.
"Settling pools," she said. "Something must have gotten into them." Veron raised his torch. The light glinted off the stonework walls separating a dozen pools of sewage, and Tennora clapped a hand over her mouth, willing herself not to vomit again.
The pools seethed with sleek, slimy bodies writhing over each other. One leaped over its brothers and sisters to hang on the edge of the pool near Tennora-sensing food or blood or the gods knew what else-its sucker mouth and tiny ring of teeth working feverishly at the air. Overhead, the domed ceiling danced with the luminescence of the fish.