Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [23]
The net he was working on suddenly vanished. Arvin waited patiently, keeping his fingers in exactly the positions they had been when the twine blinked into the Ethereal Plane. A few heartbeats later, the twine reappeared and he continued at his task.
In its raw form, the blink dog hair was unstable, shifting unpredictably back and forth between the Ethereal and Prime Material Planes, but when the net was complete, a wizard would attune it to a command word. This done, the net would then blink only when its command word was uttered. Then Arvin would deliver it and collect his coin.
Arvin had no idea who had commissioned the net. The order had been passed along by a middler who already had the coin in hand and who would take delivery of the net when it was done. Arvin would never know if the product would be used for good or ill-for restraining a dangerous monster or for ensnaring a kidnap victim-nor did he want to know.
When Arvin had first begun working for the Guild, nearly twelve long years ago, he’d quickly realized that the magical twines and ropes and nets he had a hand in creating were used in crimes ranging from theft to kidnapping to outright murder. Not wanting blood on his hands-even at one remove-he’d begun to include deliberate flaws in his work.
Those flaws had been discovered, and an ultimatum delivered. Arvin could continue to produce product for the Guild-quality product-or he could go under the knife again. It wouldn’t be a fingertip he’d be losing this time, but an eye. Perhaps both eyes, if the flaw caused a “serious difficulty” like the last one had.
Arvin had nodded and gone back to his work. He kept smiling as he passed the finished goods to his customers-even when he knew they were destined to be used to kill. In the meantime, he’d begun padding his orders for material, setting some aside for himself. A slightly longer section of trollgut here, a larger pouch of sylph hair there. The extra material was used to create additional magical items that he’d cached in hiding places all over the city. One day, when he had enough of these collected, he’d gather them all up and leave Hlondeth for good. In the meantime, he continued to serve the Guild.
At least this time, with the net he was weaving, he wouldn’t have to meet the customer face to face. It was better not to get to know people, to keep them at a distance, even old friends like Naulg. Trying to help Naulg had only gotten him into trouble. Arvin should have heeded the painful lessons he’d learned in the orphanage.
He’d been only six when he’d been sent there as a “temporary measure”-a temporary measure that had lasted eight long years. Before leaving on the expedition that had turned out to be her last, Arvin’s mother had arranged for Arvin to stay with her brother, a man Arvin had met only twice before. This uncle, a wealthy lumber merchant, had cared for Arvin for two months after his sister’s death. Then he’d set out on a business trip across the Reach to Chondath. He’d placed Arvin with the orphanage “just for a tenday or two,” but when he returned from this trip, he hadn’t come back to collect Arvin.
At first Arvin had assumed that he’d done something wrong, that he’d angered his uncle in some way. But after running away from the orphanage, he had learned the truth. His uncle wasn’t angry, just indifferent. Arvin had arrived at his uncle’s home with fingers blistered from net knotting and tears of relief in his eyes-only to have his uncle pinch his ear and sternly march him back to the place again, refusing to listen to Arvin’s pleas.
That was the first time Arvin had been subjected to the ghoul-stench spell. It wasn’t the last. After Naulg’s escape, Arvin had attempted one escape after another. Some failed due to the orphanage’s reward system, which encouraged the children to spy on