Iriani had done business with a broker of potions and talismans there before. They found him smoking a pipe outside his shop, frowning up as if the shadows of the buildings’ upper stories over his head contained some bit of occult wisdom just beyond his understanding. “Roji,” Iriani greeted him.
He turned to notice Iriani and winked. “What have you found in your peregrinations across this fine land of ours, my elf friend?”
On the way there, Biri-Daar had handed off the jawbone and demon’s eye to Iriani. She stood close as the half-elf suggested they go inside and chat. “Not every bit of business needs to take place where everyone can see.”
“Fine,” Roji said. He knocked his pipe out and pulled back the curtain across his doorway. “But most of you have to stay outside. None of us will be able to breathe if you all come in. The dragonborn is too big, the halfling will steal everything she can see. I don’t like holy men. So the ranger and the boy can come in.”
Iriani grinned. “It’s settled, then. Remy? Lucan? After you.”
The three of them followed Roji into his shop. They sat on cushions around a low table. “What do you have?” Roji asked. “And why so worried about who might see? This is Crow Fork. Nothing will happen to you here.”
“Something might happen to us as soon as we leave,” Iriani said. “We would prefer to be sure.”
“Sure,” Roji chuckled. “What is sure? Let me see what you’ve brought.”
He looked over the jawbone, tapping on each of the teeth. “Interesting,” he said. “Not the kind of thing I usually traffic in, but I know what I can do with it. Was that it?”
“No,” Iriani said. “This piece is a bit different.” He handed Roji the demon’s eye and watched as the merchant figured out what it was.
With a sharp breath, Roji set it down. “Gods,” he said. “Why didn’t you destroy it?”
“No way to be sure what would happen,” Lucan said. “We know you can make something out of it, and Iriani said we could trust you not to let it find its way back to the wrong hands.”
“Where did you find it?”
“Around the neck of a cacklefiend a day’s ride east,” Iriani said.
“And who put it there?”
“I haven’t tried to find out. You may if you choose. What we want is to get rid of it and make sure it stays gone.” Iriani leaned forward over the table. “Roji, I know you know what to do with things like this.”
“You also know that whatever I do with it, its builder will know it was I who did it,” Roji said.
“I have blinded it temporarily,” Iriani said. “Act quickly and escape consequence. That’s your way in any case, is it not?”
Roji didn’t look inclined to laugh. “What gives you the right to ask this of me?”
“No right. But you can turn it into a mirror, can’t you?”
A mirror? Remy didn’t know what he meant. He had very little idea of what the conversation was about. Why didn’t they just sell what they had to sell and get out of this cramped little space with its shelves of skulls and beakers, its racks of wands and staves imbued with various enchantments…
“A mirror,” Roji repeated. “That might be useful.” Thinking it over, he said, “I’ll take it. But you might as well know that this isn’t the only eye looking for him.” He nodded in Remy’s direction.
A cold knot formed in Remy’s stomach. “How-”
“Hush,” Roji said. “It’s there for anyone to see. You’ve got something that people want, and some of its magic has bled onto you. Anyone on this street would be able to see it. Iriani, this one is going to cause you trouble.”
“I believe that opinion has been expressed,” Lucan said coolly. “But it appears to be of no concern to those whose opinions matter.”
“There is much about his errand that we do not yet understand. Even so, Biri-Daar and Keverel feel-and I agree-that something beyond chance was at work when we ran across the boy in the wastes.” Iriani looked at Remy. “Show him what you carry,” he said.
Instinctively Remy shook his head. “No.”
“I’m not saying give it to him, Remy. Show it to him. He’ll tell us something we need to know.”
“You can count on that,” Roji said. “Even though you ought to be paying me both for taking the demon’s eye and looking at whatever the boy has. Now come, boy. Show it.”
Remy placed the box on the table but kept his hands close to it. Roji leaned over it and looked closely at the sigils on the lid. He waved a hand over it, his fingers making the familiar sign of a magic-detecting spell. “We already know it’s magic,” Lucan said.
“I know what you say you know,” Roji said without looking at him. “I’m trying to figure out what you don’t know you don’t know, if you know what I mean… Ah. Remy, do me a favor and touch the box.”
Remy did. “Why?”
“One of the sigils on it, unless I’m mistaken, is an alarm. Whenever the box leaves your possession, someone somewhere knows about it.” He made another pass over the box and the sigils glowed a soft red. “That one there,” Iriani said, pointing at a corner of the box.
“I know,” Roji said. “This box has a powerful maker, to invoke her.”
“Invoke who?” Remy asked.
Roji and Iriani looked at each other. Then Iriani glanced over at Remy. “Tiamat,” he said. “I had thought so before, but now am sure. We will need to tell Biri-Daar of this.” Iriani rapped his knuckles on the table, the old elf invocation of good luck. “Remy, Lucan, I think Roji and I should finish our transaction in private.”
Five minutes after Lucan and Remy rejoined the rest of the group in the magicians’ alley, Iriani emerged and led them back toward the main gate. Remy had not said a word the entire time. Tiamat? How would the Dragon Queen be involved? What had Philomen gotten him into? When they were clear of the magicians’ alley and out under the sun again, Iriani said, “That went about as well as could be expected. Roji is going to destroy the eye and create something from it.”
He tapped Remy on the shoulder. “He also told me that young Remy here is a target for some kind of attention from the Abyss. And that some of the sigils on the box lid are invocations of Tiamat. But you knew that already, didn’t you, Biri-Daar?”
“I suspected, yes,” Biri-Daar said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Remy asked.
“I will echo Remy’s question. From all of us,” Kithri said.
“There are many signs that mean one thing at one time and place and another when the time and place are different,” Biri-Daar said. “I suspected but was not certain. Now that Roji has confirmed what I suspected, I am thinking that our path is clear.”
Iriani looked thoughtful. “I am thinking that his original errand and ours might be related. Does anyone concur?”
“I am thinking that young Remy ought to stay here and work for his bread while we go off and finish what we have started,” Lucan growled.
“You have made this clear,” said Biri-Daar, in a tone that closed down that angle of conversation. “And now we have decided that Remy must come with us because if we let him go and his errand comes into conflict with ours, we will be fortunate if we have a chance to correct that error.”
“We have decided?” Remy asked. “I haven’t decided anything.” The group looked back at him. No one spoke. “You make me sound a bit like a prisoner,” Remy said, meaning it to come out as a joke but realizing as he said it that it hadn’t.
“You are a bit like a prisoner,” Kithri said before anyone else could say it in a more diplomatic way. “But we’re giving you a full share and letting you buy a horse, so you’ve got it better than most prisoners. Might as well enjoy it.”
The main stable of Crow Fork Market was built against the southwest corner of the wall and ran for more than a hundred yards along the inside of the western wall. The corner end of the building housed travelers’ horses and the opposite end horses for sale. In between were the main sliding doors, through which the potential buyer of a horse entered into a tack and grooming area. At the back of it was a large drain that caught Remy’s attention.