Tymora's Luck - Kate Novak [32]
Jas stared out the window as she spoke, never looking at the bard. There were streaks in the dust on her cheeks. They could have been from tears, but they might just have been from sweat. Joel could smell her perspiration across the bed. She'd flown until she'd worn herself out.
"I took a job as a hired sword with an adventurer named Carter," Jas said, continuing her tale. "He was a professional troublemaker. If you wanted to ruin a person's reputation or bankrupt a merchant firm or turn brother against brother, Carter was the guy you hired. He was good at what he did, and he didn't work cheap. He taught me a lot and paid me a lot… It took a while, but slowly I began to realize Carter wasn't such a nice guy, and the things he did weren't either. Still, I couldn't bring myself to simply leave him. I was far from my home and friends. Carter often told me I couldn't survive without him, and I believed him."
Jas pulled her feet up on the bed and hugged her knees. "Then one day," she said, "everything in my life changed. I was in the right place at the right time, I guess. I was keeping watch over an alley door for Carter, waiting for two priests to go through the door. While I'm hiding in this trash bin with a tiny peephole to look through, this thief runs into the alley and tosses a sack into the trash right on top of me. Then three other thieves come barreling into the alley. They corner the first thief and demand their share of the loot from Tymora's temple. The first thief tries to feed them some story about the heist not going off. In the meantime, I'm looking into the sack. The contents are worth a fortune. There's platinum coin and all this jewelry and a cape made of white feathers. Then I see there's something moving around among the feathers. It's about four inches long, slimy and writhing like a worm. Really ugly. Then I see there's this cracked eggshell. The slimy, writhing thing has just hatched, or maybe its shell broke when the thief tossed it into the trash.
"Outside, the thieves are still arguing, and one of them stabs the first one and the first one stabs him back. The pair of them fall down, trying to hold their guts inside their bodies. One of the thieves is a mage. He turns and shoots five magic missiles in the back of the last thief. When he's all alone in the alley, he starts searching for the sack. I know its only a matter of minutes before he looks into the trash. I come spilling out of the trash bin with the sack in hand and take off down the alley, but the mage is fast. He teleports himself into my path and blocks my way out of the alley. He doesn't look human anymore. He's changed into a shadow man with horns and bat wings and fangs. I hold the sack up in front of me like a shield, so he doesn't dare risk using his magic on me. He says if I give him the egg, hell let me have the rest of the loot.
"It wasn't that I was all fired up about protecting the egg thing. I'm not an idiot. I know I'm dead the moment this creature gets his hand on the egg thing. So I refuse his offer, and I draw my sword, still holding the sack in front of me like a shield. I don't really believe I can beat the shadow creature in a fight, but I'm not letting it kill me without one. Just then, two priests of Torm come into the alley. They're the two priests I was supposed to be watching out for when I was hiding in the trash. They see the shadow creature, and right away they start calling out to their god and casting bolts of light. "When the bolts of light hit him, the shadow creature howls like a dog someone stepped on and disappears. The two priests are all solicitous, making sure I'm all right. They're sure the shadow is some sort of sign, so instead of going into the building to which Carter had so carefully lured them, they go back to their temple to pray. I know Carter's going to