Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [24]
Arvin continued working on the net, letting his painful memories drift away in the repetitive thread-loop-loop-tie of netmaking. After a time, his emotions quieted.
Then he saw something out of the corner of his eye-a movement where there should have been none. He whirled around, left hand reflexively coming up to a throwing position until he realized his glove was lying on a nearby table. His eyes scanned the low-ceilinged workshop. Had the length of trollgut on the workbench across the room suddenly flexed? No, both ends of the gut were securely held in place by ensorcelled nails.
Through a round, slatted vent that was the workshop’s only ventilation he heard a cooing and the flutter of wings. Striding over to the vent, he peered out and saw a pigeon on the ledge below. That must have been the motion his eye had caught-the bird flying past the slats. Three stories below was the street; none of the people walking along it were so much as looking up. Above-Arvin craned his neck to look up through the slats-was only the bare eave of the rooftop, curving out of sight to either side of the hidden room that housed his workshop. Satisfied there was no cause for alarm, he wiped sweat from his forehead with a sleeve and returned to his work. He picked up his netmaker’s needle and rethreaded it with a fresh piece of dog-hair twine then began to loop and tie, loop and tie.
“So you escaped.”
Arvin whirled a second time. “Zelia!” he exclaimed.
The yuan-ti was standing against the far wall, her scale-freckled face partially hidden by a coil of rope that hung from one of the rafters. She stepped out from behind it and stared at Arvin with unblinking eyes, her blue tongue flickering in and out of her mouth.
Arvin darted a glance at the spot on the floor where the hidden trapdoor was; it hadn’t been opened, nor should it have been. Arvin was the only one who knew about the three hinged boards in the net loft ceiling, adjacent to a “roof” support post, that opened into his workshop.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
Zelia smiled, revealing perfect human teeth. “Your blood was on the ramp. Fortunately for you, I collected it before anyone else did.”
“And you used it in a spell to find me,” Arvin guessed. But how had she gotten into his workshop? More to the point, had she brought the militia with her? Were they waiting in the streets below?
Zelia’s eyes flashed silver as they reflected the light from the lantern that hung from a nearby rafter. She gave a breathy hiss of laughter that somehow overlapped her words. “I’ve decided against having the militia arrest you,” she said.
Arvin startled. Had she read his thoughts? No, it was an easy thing to have guessed.
“I’m going to take you up on your offer,” she continued. “Find out what I want to know-without alerting the Pox-and I’ll remove the mind seed.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What the Pox are up to-over and above the obvious, which is poisoning people. What is their goal? Who is behind them? Who is really pulling the strings?”
“You don’t think they’re acting on their own?”
Zelia shook her head. “They never could have established themselves in Hlondeth without help.”
“Where do I begin?” Arvin asked. “How do I find them?”
“When I locate the chamber you described, I’ll contact you,” Zelia said. “In the meantime, there are resources you have that others don’t. Put them to work.”
“Use my… connections you mean?” Arvin asked.
“No,” Zelia said, her eyes blazing. “Say nothing to the Guild.”
“Then what-”
“You have a talent that others don’t.”
Arvin shrugged then gestured at the nets and