Realms of Infamy - James Lowder [135]
A weasel. A large, gray-furred weasel. And its beady eyes were fixed firmly on Hawklin's face.
"Welcome," a smooth, not-quite-melodious voice said in the noble's ear.
A shabbily dressed man stepped before Sir Hamnet. His face was narrow, with a hawkish nose and high cheekbones beneath the grime and the scars. He was thin to emaciation, clad in tattered clothes and suffused with the stink of cheap gin. Like everyone else in the place, he wore his weapon without peacestrings. From its obvious value, the short sword hanging at his hip had certainly been stolen.
"You look a little ragged, old gent." The stranger's broad smile seemed to radiate welcome despite the rotting gums and missing teeth. "Best get you a seat, eh?"
Sir Hamnet was too stunned to object as the hawk-nosed man slipped a hand under his elbow and guided him to a chair at the back of the room. He was sitting before he finally gathered wits enough to speak. "I need to find a watchman," he said. "There's been a-"
"Shhh!" the stranger interrupted, holding up his left hand to silence the nobleman; his fourth and fifth fingers were little more than discolored stubs of scarred flesh. "The locals don't like the king's men much. You'd best keep your voice down. Look, I'll be right back. There's somebody here wants to talk to you. Maybe he can help."
Sir Hamnet watched the hawk-nosed man weave his way to the bar. It was only then that the nobleman took in the details of his surroundings. The place was a cesspit in every sense of the word.
Fist-sized roaches picked through the spilled ale, chunks of age-petrified bread, and unconscious revelers strewn on the floor, while centipedes as long as a man's forearm pulsed up the walls. They ducked under and around the trophies tacked there. Crude sketches of women in various stages of undress surrounded the crumbling hearth. Nearby hung a gallery of finger bones, the penalty exacted from careless pickpockets by the local watch. Parchment arrest warrants and wanted posters signed by King Azoun and a half-dozen other sires of House Obarskyr were displayed beside nooses cut from gallows all across Cormyr. Many of the ropes still bore the fleshy marks left by the infamous footpads and highwaymen who'd dangled in their choking embrace.
The most prized trophy hung over the door-a helmet once worn by a captain of the city watch. As Sir Hamnet stared at the helm, the wavering torchlight illuminated the eye slits. The captain's head was still housed within the rusted steel, its empty eye sockets staring down in defeat at the toughs crowding the taproom.
The hawk-nosed man suddenly eclipsed the vile trophy. "I told you they don't like the city watch," he said as he placed a brimming mug before Sir Hamnet. With his right hand he presented the weasel from the arena. Blood darkened its muzzle, and bits of terrier fur still clung to its claws. "He's got a message for you."
Sir Hamnet recoiled from the weasel and from the madman holding it. But his discomfort at the beast's proximity was nothing compared to the horror that gripped him when the animal opened its mouth and spoke.
"You were the lone weasel at the Hill of Lost Souls," it rasped softly, so that only Sir Hamnet could hear.
Heart thundering, blood roaring in his ears, Sir Hamnet exploded from his chair. The hawk-nosed man stepped aside as the aged explorer bolted past. "He usually prefers to chat with his own kind, so the message must've been important," he called to the retreating nobleman. "Say, old gent, does this mean you don't want to see the other side of the mirror?"
Sir Hamnet had just crossed the threshold into the alley, but the shouted question stopped him cold, just as surely, as completely, as the poisoned dagger had paralyzed Captain Truesilver. He forced himself to look up. As if following some unheard cue, the fog and the shadows parted, allowing the torchlight to shine fully on the sign hanging overhead. The