Masquerades - Kate Novak [109]
The creature looped backward on itself, and Alias had a clear glimpse of Dragonbait. The saurial had one clawed foot jammed against the beast's lower gum and one hand thrust between two needlelike teeth of the upper jaw so that the monster could not snap its jaw shut and swallow its prey. Blood poured from the paladin's foot and hand as well as from a gash in his thigh. With his flaming sword the paladin was lacerating the monster's upper palate.
Alias pulled her dagger from her boot and launched herself at the quelzarn's head. She managed to catch the fin beside its gill. She could still not reach the beast's eyes, so she tore a V-shaped gash into the flesh behind the gill. Then she began pulling back on the flesh, stripping it away like whale blubber.
The beast breached from the water with a shriek and slammed itself and the swordswoman against the sewer wall, dislodging the saurial in its mouth and the human woman at its gill.
Alias wasn't sure what happened in the moments she was stunned, but when she next opened her eyes, Dragonbait, his hands clenched in her hair, was holding her head out of the water. The saurial was a powerful swimmer, and he was towing the swordswoman toward a side sewer where Olive and Victor stood shouting.
The side sewer was eight feet in diameter; the water level in it was only two feet high, so the adventurers' could work their way against the current. The halfling and the nobleman helped pull the warriors inside. They moved down the tunnel about ten feet, but had to stop to catch their breath and tend to their wounds.
Dragonbait, after first assuring himself that Alias had suffered no life-threatening injury, handed his weapon to the swordswoman and turned his attention to the wounds the quelzarn had given him.
As the scent of the paladin's prayer filled the air, a great roar blasted down the tunnel. The quelzarn thrust its head a few feet into the side passage. Victor, who stood directly in its path, fumbled in the tangles of his cloak, trying, Olive thought, to reach his sword in its scabbard.
The halfling was sure the young lord was about to become the last of the Dhostar line when the quelzarn slid back out of the tunnel and disappeared.
Victor gulped and backed farther from the tunnel exit. "That was too close for comfort," the nobleman said. "If the tide were in and the water higher, it would have come in after us for sure," he said.
Olive nodded, her eyes wide with amazement at the young man's close call. She followed him down the corridor, wondering with suspicion what he seemed to be holding with his hand, which remained buried in his cloak pocket.
"I believe we should be able to follow this sewer to an opening near a street," the nobleman said.
"Yes," Alias added. "And if we're lucky, the fog will still be thick, and no one will notice us."
"They'll smell us before they see us," Olive predicted.
Sixteen
Suspicions
The sewer passage surfaced in a storm drain. After taking a moment to get his bearings, Victor pointed them in the direction of an outdoor ale garden called the Rosebud. There the merchant noble sent a runner for his carriage, and tipped the proprietor generously for the use of his well in the back. Pouring buckets of fresh water over each other, the four managed to scrape all of the sewer muck and most of the smell off their skin and clothes. Olive, gathering up her sopping cloak, excused herself, declaring she had a previous engagement. Alias didn't argue. She was anxious to grill Victor about the source of his key, and she knew the merchant lord would say nothing in Olive's presence.
Shortly after the halfling had gone, a young serving boy brought them three mugs of mulled wine. Alias allowed herself a few minutes to enjoy the sensation of warmth creeping back into her bones, then she forced herself to return to the business at hand.
"Victor, you have to tell