Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [16]
"Grubby, too. Ah, for a bath!"
"The river's just back there," Narm suggested slyly.
Shandril pinched him. "Did you see how many dead fish were floating around those docks? No, thank you!"
"Well, how about yon bright establishment?" Narm waved across the crowded street. More mules than people inhabited Scornubel, it seemed, and thanks to the dung no one cleared away, buzzing flies outnumbered both together. They looked at the bright signboard of a shopfront that seemed grander than most.
"The Sun Over Scornubel," Shandril murmured, squinting through her hood to read the name on the sign aloud. "A club, do you think? Or a proper inn?"
"Well, there's washing hanging, out behind – bedlinens," Narm replied. "I saw it a few paces back … and smell the food?"
"Well, then, why are you holding me back?"
"Do priestesses of Chauntea use inns or just sleep in the fields? And – your penance?"
"Sisters of the Soil certainly slept under Gorstag's roof, back in Highmoon," Shandril said. "Often."
She took a step toward the signboard, pulling her rope harness tight in Narm's grasp. "Come on. I'm hungry."
"And if I refuse?"
"I," Shandril reminded him, with a wry grin that he could hear in her voice, "have the spellfire, remember? I'm not to be argued with."
"Yes," Narm agreed quietly, holding firmly to the ropes that bound her arms to her sides but letting her walk forward, toward the sun, “but does the rest of the Realms know that? And how urgently do you want them to?"
*******
"No, Torm, I'm going alone," Sharantyr said firmly, for perhaps the eighteenth time. "Much as I enjoy your lame jokes and prancing pranks, there are times when stealth is necessary, and a little quiet so one can think, and even something called 'prudence,' which I believe would require Elminster and about a year of his unbroken time to make you fully and truly understand. So bide you here with Rathan, drinking far too much and annoying the good folk of Shadowdale, and let me see to this in my own way."
Wordlessly the thief held out the next piece of her leather war-harness, to help her put it on. He was holding the breastplates, of course.
Sharantyr stepped forward until she filled them, lifted her arms so he could bring the buckles around, endured his novel way of doing so in good-natured silence, and as he casually brought one of his knives up to her throat she intercepted his wrist in a grip of iron and said, "No, Torm. As much as you find it hard to believe that any female could refuse you in anything, I'm going to do just that. Threaten and coerce all you like: You stay here. Now I'd like to be on my way. I'm almost dressed despite your kind help, the sun waits for no laggard, and if you delay my leaving I'm going to toss you in the nearest horse trough and hold you there while Shaerl douses you with all the vile perfumes her older Rowanmantle kin insist on sending her from the highhouse fashion lounges of Suzail – and believe me, you wouldn't like that."
"Ah," Torm said impishly, "but just how far d'you think you're going to get without this?" He opened his hand, and the ranger saw the little ivory skull gleaming in it.
Sharantyr sighed, made a grab for it that he easily fended off – and as he twisted away, chuckling, brought her booted left foot up hard into his crotch with all the force she could put behind it.
His codpiece was armored and would leave a bruise on her shin that might take a month to stop aching, but the thief of the Knights was smaller and lighter than the lady ranger, and her kick launched him into the air with a startled whistle of pain and escaping breath that took him into senselessness with nary another sound – save for the meaty thud of his body falling with full, limp force into the waiting arms of Rathan Thentraver, Stalwart of Tymora. The priest winced, cradled Torm as gently as one might hold a babe, and lowered him deftly to the floor.
"Had he not been armored, lass," he said gravely,
"that would have been far less