City of Towers_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [47]
Even as he searched for an answer, he caught the glimpse of motion in his peripheral vision, two figures stepping into the alley. The possible threat was a welcome release from the question, and he relaxed and let his reflexes take over, stepping back against the wall and setting the chain of his flail in motion. But there was no threat. Just Captain Daine and Lady Lei, exiting the tavern.
Captain Daine eyed the spinning flail, glanced at the bow on the ground, and his hand went to the hilt of his sword. “What’s wrong?”
Pierce let the flail come to a stop. “Nothing, Captain. A misunderstanding. I was just …” He glanced toward the stranger, but she was nowhere to be seen. If he’d had eyelids, Pierce would have blinked in surprise. She had slipped away as smoothly as she had appeared. “… thinking,” he finished.
The captain shrugged. “Let’s get moving then. I’ll fill you in a long the way.”
Pierce nodded. He returned his flail to its harness and picked up his bow, studying the empty alley. He listened to Daine’s words, but his thoughts were far away.
The trip to the tavern had done one thing. It had taken Lei’s mind off of her own misfortune. Lei was full of questions as the trio headed back to High Walls, while Pierce was, if anything, quieter than usual.
“Do you suppose these Tarkanans could have killed his hippogriffs? Maybe they’d been hired by one of these opposing beast groups, and he was trying to find out who was behind it.”
“Possibly,” Daine said. “That, or he knew who killed his mounts and thought that the Tarkanans could help him get revenge on the killers. I suppose that finding the Tarkanans is the next step.”
“It sounds dangerous.”
“This from the woman who fought three hundred warforged?”
“Do you have an army I don’t know about?”
“Good point. Still, there’s something that’s bothering me.”
“What’s that?” Lei said. She was momentarily distracted by a small tower up the street. It appeared to be formed from overlapping steel plates.
“Alina implied that Rasial served her as a smuggler, bringing in contraband through the air. So if he was still flying, if he was still in Sharn, why’d he quit racing?”
“Perhaps he was still trying to find out who sabotaged his earlier bouts,” Lei said. “He didn’t dare return until he’d identified his foe.”
“It’s possible,” Daine said. “But … he was a member of the Sharn Watch! Why would he turn to a group of assassins instead of the forces of the law? Why would they have anything to do with him?”
“I don’t know.”
They walked a ways in silence, eventually reaching the lift. Three other people boarded the lift with them. Beggars by the look, dressed in worn cloaks and tatters. There was a muscular half-orc, a tall, lean man, and a young halfling woman. As the lift began to fall, something about the halfling caught Daine’s eye. She was covered with dirt, and her cloak was torn wool. At a glance, she seemed like any of the hundreds of beggars Daine had seen over the years. But as he watched, a rat came crawling out of the folds of her cloak and climbed up toward her face. It chittered and squeaked, and she whispered quietly to it. Daine remembered the rat he’d seen in the King of Fire, and a chill ran down his spine.
Looking up, Daine saw that the thin man had moved closer to him. Beneath the hood of his cloak, the stranger’s face was horribly disfigured, scarred by pustules and the ravages of disease. His robes carried a sweet odor of rot and decay.
He looked down at Daine and spoke in a deep, rasping voice, “You have information I require, Mourner.”
The stranger seemed quite confident, considering that both he and his companions were completely unarmed. Daine put his hand on the hilt of his sword, making the motion as obvious as possible.
“And you are?”
“I am Bal of the House of Tarkanan, and you will tell me what I wish to know. Or you will not leave this lift alive.”
“I guess that takes care of our next step,” said Lei.
“Is this going to happen