Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [28]
Across the street, young Kolim, the seven-year-old son of the woman who owned the bakery up the road, was pressing his palm against the stonework of the building opposite. When he removed it, the stone’s magical glow, triggered by the momentary darkness, was revealed. Spotting Arvin, Kolim hurried across the street, pulling from his pocket a loop of string with a bead on it.
“Hey, Arvin!” he called, threading it over his fingers as he ran. “I can do that string puzzle you showed me. Hey, Arvin, watch!”
“Later, Kolim,” Arvin told the boy, gently patting him on the head. “I’m a little busy just now.”
The section of city the yuan-ti preferred to live in lay to the left, uphill from the harbor. Arvin closed the door behind him and strode in that direction. He spotted a woman with green scales coming toward him and, for a heartbeat or two, thought it was Zelia returning to the warehouse, but it turned out to be another yuan-ti, this one with darker hair and a snakelike tail emerging through a slit in the back of her skirt. Wrapped around her neck like a piece of living jewelry was a tiny bronze-and-black-banded serpent with leathery wings, one of the flying snakes imported from the jungle lands far to the south. As if sensing Arvin staring at it, the winged snake flapped its wings and hissed as its mistress walked by.
Zelia was nowhere in sight-she’d probably maintained her serpent form and slithered away. Either that or she’d gone in the opposite direction. Sighing, Arvin slowed his pace.
He was just turning to go back to the warehouse when he heard a man standing in a nearby doorway give a low, phlegmy cough. Arvin glanced in the fellow’s direction, expecting to see someone aged, but the man who had just cleared his throat was even younger than he. And not a human, either, but a yuan-ti-albeit one with a fair amount of human blood in him. The fellow had olive skin, black hair, and a heavy growth of beard that nearly hid his mouth. Arvin could see the small patches of silver-gray scales dotting his forehead, arms, and hands. He wore black trousers and a white silk shirt with lace around the cuffs and neckline. Arvin walked past him, automatically lowering his eyes in the yuan-ti’s presence-and suddenly caught a whiff of something he recognized: a sour, sick odor.
The smell that lingered on the skin of members of the Pox.
Arvin had worked among rogues long enough to instantly stifle his startle. He continued walking past the “yuan-ti,” deliberately not looking at him. Arvin’s escape of the night before had not gone unnoticed. The Pox were looking for him. And they’d found him.
“Lady Luck, favor me just one more time,” Arvin whispered under his breath. “I’ll fill your cup to the brim, I promise.” He continued to walk steadily down the street toward the front door of his warehouse, shoulders crawling as he imagined the cultist behind him, about to reach out and touch his shoulder with filthy, plague-ridden hands…
As Arvin approached the door, he suddenly realized something. The cultist wasn’t behind him. Risking a glance back, he saw that the man was still lounging in the doorway down the street. He wasn’t even looking at Arvin. Instead his attention seemed to be focused on the women who were drawing water from the public fountain.
Arvin paused, considering. Was the cultist’s presence outside the warehouse mere coincidence?
He decided not to take any chances.
Arvin stepped inside the warehouse and scooped up a coil of rope. Then, with the rope looped over his left forearm, he walked up the street toward the cultist. The