Gathering her strength a second time, Sabira took the three steps, planted her urgrosh, and leaped. This time, her stomach skimmed the top edge of the fiery liquid, and only the armor she wore saved her from a nasty burn.
As she turned to consider the last trap, Sabira hesitated, reweighing her options. The likelihood of making the final jump without harm was slim, but she was guaranteed injury if she tried to simply roll beneath the twin mephit heads.
After a long moment, she decided that the ghost of a chance was better than none at all. That attitude had cost her at the card table more than once, but it had also seen her rake in some of her biggest pots. She muttered a brief prayer to Olladra, the Sovereign Goddess of Feast and Fortune, that the next few moments would be an example of the latter, not the former.
Then she ran for the last remaining trap and jumped.
The goddess of luck must have heard her entreaty, for she cleared the stream with inches to spare. But Olladra wasn’t entirely benevolent; when Sabira’s first foot came down, it slipped sideways on the slick floor. Sabira had to throw her left hand up to keep from falling face-first into the acid spray, and the caustic liquid splashed across the back of her right hand and the adamantine cheek of her shard axe before she could pull either out of harm’s way.
“Host damn it!” she cried, dropping to the wet floor in an attempt to wash the acidic residue off both blade and flesh. The ankle-high water was fetid and cold, and Sabira shuddered to think what she was bathing her wound in, but it had to be better than losing the whole hand.
The shard axe had fared better; once free of the viscous green liquid, the adamantine shone as if freshly forged and polished. Whatever else she might think of the Mrorians, they certainly knew how to make their weapons last.
Once the sting of the burns had faded and she saw that she’d only lost the top layer of skin, Sabira pulled her hand out of the water. She quickly tore a strip from the hem of her shirt and used it to pat the affected area dry. Then she wound the makeshift bandage around her hand several times, tucking the loose end between the layers of fabric lying across her palm.
She’d need to get the wound treated before infection set in, but it didn’t seem like there’d be any permanent damage. A good thing, considering she wouldn’t be able to afford any healing potions any time soon. Not if she wanted to pay Sollego off in time, anyway.
Sabira stood and stepped forward, hoping she wouldn’t have to navigate any more traps. As she did, her boot squelched into something that was definitely not sewer water.
She pulled her foot back quickly as a gray amorphous blob rose up from the dark water in front of her.
An ooze. Wonderful.
She wasn’t risking her shard axe, Mrorian-made or not, against this thing—its corrosive jelly-like innards could eat through most metals in a matter of minutes, not to mention wood, flesh, and bone.
As a pseudopod formed and the ooze took a wide swipe at her, Sabira dodged to the left, slapping her urgrosh into its harness on her back as she did so. The ooze’s blow missed, but it afforded Sabira a view of the area where the pod connected to the rest of the thing’s gelatinous bulk. The hilt of a sword jiggled there, just below the surface, with a skeletal hand and a jagged length of steel still attached.
Before she could think better of it, Sabira thrust her bandaged hand into the quivering mass and pulled the broken blade out, shaking off the previous owner’s death grip with a grimace. The ooze’s digestive juices burned her exposed skin, but the layered cloth protected her from the worst of it and, in any case, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the acid from the Quickfoot trap.
She used the flat of the sword to slap at the ooze as she worked her way around it, striking in quick succession so that the weapon wouldn’t be enveloped again. Even so, every blow damaged what was left of the blade even more, and she knew it wouldn’t last long.
As she circled the ash-colored blob, she searched the floor with eye and foot. Finally, just as the stressed metal of her ersatz weapon gave way and the blade snapped off at the guard, Sabira found what she was looking for.
Throwing the now-useless hilt at the ooze, she darted over to a portion of the wall that had caved in and picked up a length of fractured stonework. Then she spun back to the creature just as it leveled another blow at her. She blocked the pseudopod with the stopgap club and then proceeded to beat the thing about its highest protrusion, perversely imagining it served as the amorphous thing’s head.
The ooze’s acid had no effect on stone, and it wasn’t nearly as fast or as angry as she was. Sabira was able to make short work of the ooze, smashing it into a pulp and taking only one searing blow across her jaw. She soon stood panting over a mound of motionless goo peppered with slimy bones and rusted metal.
She was about to toss the club aside when she noticed movement to her left, and then more to her right. Two more gray blobs rose out of the water in tandem and began slithering purposefully toward her, followed quickly by a third. Whether these were part of the original ooze or were entirely new creatures, Sabira neither knew nor cared. It didn’t take a gambler to figure these odds. Hurling the piece of broken stonework at the closest mass, she made the high-percentage play.
She ran.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sabira found a sewer access point quickly after her encounter with the ooze and scrambled up the dangling rope to the street above. She surfaced in the Marketplace across from the Shiny Shilling and made her way quickly back to the Deneith enclave and Hammersmith’s, ignoring the looks she got as she went.
Once inside, she crossed over to the bar and retook her seat. Her glass still sat there, untouched. Her return drew no more notice than her disappearance had, and Sabira had to wonder about the observational skills of her fellow patrons. Then again, if she’d come here to relax and have fun, she doubted she’d be up in arms over another customer vanishing before her eyes, either—unless, of course, he owed her money or a drink.
Speaking of which, it was far past time to finally have a swig of hers. Raising the tumbler to her lips, she watched a small army of Sabiras do the same in the myriad reflections cast in the bottles and flasks behind the bar. None of those Sabiras showed any sign of Heith’s loving ministrations, but a thousand bandaged hands throbbed as they lifted a corresponding number of glasses to a thousand red and blistered jaws. A thousand faces held back a wince as a thousand raw throats had to settle for a dainty, very un-Sabira-like sip.
“There you are!”
Sabira turned on her stool rather than watch the other Marshal approach in the curved glassware: One Prynn was more than enough.
“I’ve been looking for you since the last bell,” he exclaimed, annoyance writ in bold strokes on his broad face. The irritation morphed into puzzlement as he took in her disheveled appearance. “What in the name of the Flame happened to you? You take a turn downstairs in the fighting pits?”
“Something like that,” Sabira muttered, then quickly changed the subject. “You brought my half of the money?” Somehow, she doubted that was the case.
Prynn snorted. “No. I don’t even have my half.”
Ah. That explained his irritation. The bulk of it, anyway.
His next words explained the rest.
“Greigur wants to see you.”
Captain Greigur sat behind his desk, much as his underling, Sorn, had done a floor below. But where the walls of that office were covered in wanted notices and maps, Greigur’s office contained only a single tapestry on which was written the entire Code of Galifar, woven in archaic black letters on a silvercloth background. Ironic, considering his reputation for flaunting that code was at least as deserved as hers.