“Well?” Zelia asked. “Will you do it?”
Arvin shuddered, remembering the terrible pockmarks on the cultists’ skin. Was that how his mother had looked as she lay dying? He decided he couldn’t bear the foul touch of their fingers again, even if they carried no taint. Even for ten thousand gold pieces.
“No,” he answered. “Not for all the coin in the Extaminos treasury. Find someone else.” He set his ale down and started to rise from the table.
Surprisingly, Zelia didn’t protest. Instead, she took a long swallow of the ale in front of her, gulping down the egg inside it. When she was finished, she licked her lips with a tongue that was longer than the average human’s, with a slight fork at the end of it…
A blue tongue.
Arvin felt his eyes widen. He sank back into his seat. “You were the snake in the rowboat.”
“Yes.”
“You neutralized the poison?”
Zelia nodded.
“Why?”
“I wanted you alive.”
“Knowing-thanks to your ‘hunch’-that I’d return to the Coil, and I’d tell you my story,” Arvin said.
“Yes.”
Anger rose inside Arvin, flushing his face. “You used me.”
Zelia stared at him. “I saved your life.”
“The answer’s still no. I won’t join the cult.”
“Yes you will,” Zelia said slowly. “Seven days from now, you will.”
She said it with such certainty that it gave Arvin pause. “What do you mean?” he asked slowly.
“After I neutralized the poison, I planted a ‘seed’ in your mind,” Zelia said. “A seed that takes seven days to germinate. At the end of those seven days, your mind will no longer be your own. Your body will be mine-to do with as I will.” She leaned across the table and lightly stroked his temple with her fingertips then sat back, smiling.
Arvin stared at her, horrified. She was bluffing, he told himself. But it didn’t feel like a bluff. Her smile was too confident, too self-satisfied-that of a gambler who knows he holds the winning hand. And now that she’d drawn his attention to it, Arvin could feel a faint throbbing in his temple, like the beginning of a headache. Was it the “seed” spell she had cast on him, putting down roots?
“What if I agree to join the cult?” he asked. “If I do that, will you negate the spell?”
Zelia hissed softly. “You’ve changed your mind?” Her lips parted to add something more, but just then, from somewhere behind Arvin, there came a shout of dismay and the sound of chairs being scuffed hurriedly back-and the clink of chain mail.
Turning on his chair-slowly, so as not to attract attention to himself-Arvin saw a dozen men in armor descending the ramp: Hlondeth’s human militia. Each wore a helmet that was flared to resemble the hood of a cobra, with a slit-eyed visor that hid the face from the nose up. The bronze rings of their chain mail shimmered like scales as they marched into the tavern. They were armed with strangely shaped crossbows. Arvin observed how these worked a moment later, when a boy in his teens leaped from his chair and tried to run to a door that led to the tavern’s stockroom. At a gesture from their sergeant-a large man with a jutting chin and the emblem of two twined serpents embossed on the breastplate he wore-one of the militia pulled the trigger of his crossbow. A pair of lead weights linked by a fine wire exploded from the weapon, whirling around one another as they flew through the air. The wire caught the youth around his ankles, sending him crashing into a table.
The silence that followed was broken only by the sound of a mug rolling across the table and falling with a soft thud into the sawdust below. Then, as the man who had shot the crossbow strode across the room to apprehend the runaway, the sergeant spoke.
“By order of Lady Extaminos, I am commanded to find crew for a galley,” he announced. “Those who have previously served in the militia are exempt. Roll up your sleeves and account for yourselves.”
A handful of men in the tavern dutifully began to roll up their sleeves, exposing the chevrons magically branded into their left forearms by battle clerics-chevrons that recorded the four years of service required of every human male in Hlondeth. Arvin, meanwhile, glanced around the tavern, his heart pounding. A galley? Their crews had even less expectation of coming home again than the men who were sent to the Cloven Mountains to fight goblins. Arvin wasn’t so foolish as to get up and run; he’d get no farther than the bare-armed youth who was being hustled toward the exit. The one avenue of escape-the wide, sloping ramp that led up to the seawall above-was blocked by militia, who were only letting men with chevrons leave the tavern.
More worrisome still was the man who stood beside the sergeant. He wore neither helmet nor armor, and carried no weapon other than the dagger sheathed at his hip. He had strange eyes with a curious fold to the eyelid-Arvin’s mother had described the peoples of the East as having eyes like that. Judging by his gray hair and the deep creases at either side of his mouth, he was too old to be a regular militiaman. He stood with one hand thrust into a pocket-closed around a concealed magical device, perhaps-as he scrutinized the faces of the men in the tavern, one by one.
This was no press gang. The militiamen were searching for someone.
Arvin swallowed nervously and felt the bead he wore shift against his throat. “Nine lives,” he whispered. Reaching down, he began to unfasten his shirt cuff. As he pretended to fumble with the laces, he turned to Zelia.
“I won’t be able to spy for you if I’m aboard a galley,” he whispered. “If you have any pull with the militia, use it now.”
Zelia’s lips twitched into a slit of a smile. “You accept my offer?”
Arvin nodded vigorously as a member of the militia approached their table.
“Too late.” With a supple, flowing motion, she rose from her chair. Cocking her head in Arvin’s direction, she spoke to the man approaching their table. “Here’s one for you.” Then she strode away.
As the man’s visored eyes locked on him, Arvin felt the hair at the back of his neck rise. His hand froze on his shirt cuff. Even if the press gang was a sham, the fact remained that he’d never served his time with the militia. In order to keep up the pretense of the press gang, they’d have to arrest him. They’d toss him in jail, where, in seven days’ time, Zelia’s spell would take effect.
Arvin couldn’t allow that to happen. The only way he could find out whatever Zelia wanted to know about the Pox, and save himself, was to remain a free man.
The militiaman raised his crossbow. “Roll up your sleeve.”
Arvin forced his lips into a smile. “There’s been a mistake,” he began, rising to his feet. “I served my four years, and they branded me, but a year ago I contracted an illness that”-his mind raced as he tried to think up a story the man would actually believe-“that left me terribly pockmarked.” He dropped his voice to a confiding whisper. “I think it was plague.”
Arvin widened his eyes in mock alarm, but it didn’t have the expected result. The militiaman stood firm and unflinching. He’d obviously heard similar excuses before.
Arvin pressed on hurriedly. “Only recently did I earn enough coin for a tithe. The cleric who healed me did a wonderful job-he actually restored my skin to an unblemished condition. But in the process, he erased my chevrons. See?”
Rolling up his sleeve, Arvin showed the man his bare arm. As the militiaman looked at it, Arvin felt the base of his scalp begin to prickle. Quickly, he caught the militiaman’s eye and gave him a friendly grin. “Listen, friend, it’s true that I haven’t served,” Arvin said. “But you could let me go this time-right? Since this isn’t really a press gang and I’m not the man you’re looking for.”