Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [43]
He looked over at Starmara, and added, "That goes for you too, Lady Dagohnlar. Scream once, and you'll get away with it-but my knife will make sure you don't scream twice… or ever again use that lashing tongue you're so proud of, for the rest of your life. However, ahem, short that may be. Bez and I have registered this little debt, you see-so we could seize this house in the regrettable event of your deaths and strip most of its contents before your other creditors awakened to dispute our right to do so."
He waved an airy hand, longknife flashing, and lifted his knee because Durexter had gone a rich, convulsively twisting purple. "Ah, but forgive me: I've forgotten to announce what will happen when we get tired of hauling you up to drip dirty canal-water all over this nice carpet. Assuming, of course, you don't simply remember where in this nice house your rainy-day wealth is hidden, so we your honored guests can recover our losses."
He pointed at his hooded companion with his blade. "Bez here has just taken delivery of a new longknife-show the nice Dagohnlars your knife, Bez! Aha, see!-and he wants to test its edge in real cutting. Now, I've recently noticed that men… and women, too, by the gods, come to think of it… have toes. Lots of them. Little appendages none of us really need. We could relieve you of them, one by one, and collect them for Ponczer down at the Firehelm to cook up for you in a nice dish. Durexter first, I think. When we're done, we'll drop you in your own cellar to bleed and give the rats something to nibble-I hate rats, don't you? Squeaking, swarming, ravenously gnawing things…"
Surth stood up, admired the glittering tip of his own knife, then lifted his eyebrows, looked down at Starmara as if only now remembering her, and said softly, "Ah, Lady Starmara! With your beauty, perhaps we could arrange a pleasanter punishment… or, on the other hand, perhaps you might unfortunately lose that beauty." He watched his knife gleam as he turned it, slowly, and smiled.
"By S-shar herself," Durexter whispered, as the slender merchant bent swiftly to put his knife to Starmara's cheek, "what're you doing, man?"
"Hold still, dear," Malakar Surth said fondly-but unnecessarily, as Starmara had just fainted-and deftly sliced through the belt of her robe, to remove her gag. He turned his head to smile at Durexter and replied, "What am I doing, lord? 'Leering triumphantly' is the appropriate phrase, I believe."
As he felt Aumun Bezrar's rough hands at his ankles and the prickle of coarse rope, it was Lord Durexter Dagohnlar's chance to faint. Enthusiastically, he seized it.
* * * * *
She was panting, now, almost as loudly as the man so close behind her. They were both scrambling on the rooftops in the clinging mists, perhaps the length of a long wagon apart-and Rhauligan was gaining.
Narnra doubled around a buttress of vomiting gargoyles-vomiting birdnests, it seemed, and she slipped and almost fell when they suddenly erupted in black, squawking, fluttering gorcraws or the like-and silently cursed the man. He seemed to know every roof and facade and alleyway, where she did not, and twice now had almost cornered her with no place to leap to, and no safe place to climb down.
Almost, and-blast! Again!
At the far end of the roof she'd just landed on-one with a drenched little rooftop garden, reached through a door protected by a massive, chased iron gate that might have given an army trouble, let alone one thief armed with a few fangs and her fingernails-was… nothing.
A canal, with a near-impossible long leap across it to a grand mansion… and not the roof of that ornate turret-sprouting fortress of stone, either, but a lone dark and open window, high above the dark waters below. Narnra snatched a glance back over her shoulder and saw just what she'd expected: Rhauligan smiling grimly as he gained her rooftop, ready in a crouch for any desperate rush she might make at him… leaving her no place to go.
No place but the desperate fool's leap.