The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [87]
Dusk was coming down the steps even more swiftly. It would not be long before these dark underways came to life-and there were some in proud Sirl city who'd stick a knife into even an ugly, stinking dung-carter in hopes of winning a few copper coins… or just for their own dark amusement.
The carter shuffled a little faster, though the steps under his boots just here were wet with something dark and sticky. The general reek and gloom were too great to tell what the spill was, even if he'd cared to bend and peer. It would be good to be gone from this place-and next time he'd choose where they met.
Something moved in the darkness behind a stone pillar. The dung-carter froze, swung his dung-sack in front of him as a shield, and growled, "Who be there?"
The something moved softly forward into what little light there was, and he could see that it was a woman, bared to the world but for a half-mask and a cloak she wore pinned up on one hip, in such a way that it could swiftly be let fall to cover all.
"No danger," she purred softly, "but only Oblarma."
That name seemed to make the dung-carter relax. He set down his dung-sack with a grunt, kicking it to let its contents spill down the nearest swill-chute. "Oblarma," he said in the curiously formal Sirl trade manner, with a grin that displayed many black and broken teeth, "know that Indie am I. Are you alone, but desirous of being less so?"
"Yes," the ivory-skinned woman said softly, as she came forward to let him see that her hands were empty, before she reached forth to stroke one of his arms, "and yes."
Indie the carter gave her a wordless growl as he reached for her, holding up two fingers. She responded with four, and instantly lowered one to leave three. He grinned. "Three 'tis."
Together, arms around each other, they swirled through a dark doorway. Oblarma broke away to unhood a lamp with one deft snatch of an old helm, and let fall a door-bar with her other hand, before anyone else who might have been lurking on the sewer stairs would have had time to do more than blink.
"Nice breasts," the carter murmured, in a low and quite different voice.
"Nice scars," was the reply, as the pleasure-lass snuffed the lamp, plunging the room into smoke-threaded darkness. "The teeth were good, too."
Her voice changed as she spoke, becoming at once deeper and softer, almost buttery. In the darkness, her flesh was flowing. Oblarma's face melted into blankness first, and the breasts Indie had praised slid away into smoothness moments later.
Indie was also changing-dwindling into something thinner and blank-faced. Each featureless Koglaur face then sprouted a mouth like a long tube, and grew a single ear as deep and as cupped as a flower blossom. The two tubes stretched forth into the waiting ears, and no other ear in the room-had there been one, in that noisome, dripping, door-barred darkness-could have heard the conversation that followed.
"Have the Serpent-folk placed anyone in Flowfoam yet?"
"Esabras says not. Their march through the baronies, however, continues unabated."
"Are the townsfolk growing fearful, or are the Serpents deft and quiet?"
"Barons," came the reply laced with dark amusement, "never go quietly."
There was a sound that might have been a chuckle. "All of us can now withstand their venom?"
"All but Tlalash-who I fear can never stand against any Snake-worshipper."
"Then we are as ready as we can be. I would know your thoughts on this, Ashene's plan…"
The words that followed did not take long. When the door was unbarred at last and the Koglaur slipped out, they wore quite different faces.
"Belgur," Weldrin murmured, pressing some coins into the hand of a man he'd already bought many times over, "how many gold coins are you holding?"
The ratlike man looked down at his palm and then up again, in a brief, swift glance that gave no one time to strike while his head was lowered. "S-Six, Wei."
His swordsorn smiled. "That's right. There'll be another four to join them if you bring