Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [32]
“Nine lives,” he whispered.
He stood for a moment with his back against the door, staring at the people in the street. If the cultist’s boasting was true, their days were numbered. Did Arvin really care if they died of plague? He had hundreds of acquaintances in this city but no friends, now that Naulg was gone. He had no family, either, aside from the uncle who had consigned him to the orphanage.
The sensible thing to do was report what he’d just found out to Zelia and see if she would remove the “seed” from his mind. Whether she did or didn’t, he’d clear out of the city as quickly as possible, since staying only meant dying.
If Zelia had been bluffing, Arvin would be safe-assuming that the plague the Pox were about to unleash stayed confined within Hlondeth’s walls. Even if it didn’t, clerics would stop the spread of the disease eventually-they always had, each time plague swept the Vilhon Reach. Maybe they’d lose Hlondeth before they were able to halt the plague entirely, but that wasn’t Arvin’s problem.
Then he spotted Kolim, sitting on the curb across the street. The boy had his string looped back and forth between his outstretched fingers in the complicated pattern Arvin had taught him. He was trying-without much success and with a frown of intense concentration on his face-to free the bead “fly” from its “web.”
Arvin sighed. He couldn’t just walk away and let Kolim die.
Nor could he walk away from something that might produce orphans for generations to come. He thought of his mother, of the trip that had taken her to the area around Mussum. That city had been abandoned nine hundred years ago, but the plague that had been its ruin lingered in the lands around it still.
If Mussum’s plague had been prevented, Arvin’s mother might never have died. Had there been one man, all those centuries ago, who had held the key to the city’s survival in his hand-only to throw it away?
Arvin realized he really didn’t have a choice. If he left without doing as much as he could, and plague claimed Hlondeth, the ghosts of its people-and everyone who ventured near it and died in the years that followed this-would haunt him until the end of his days.
Including the ghost of little Kolim.
Sighing, he trudged up the street to find Zelia.
CHAPTER 6
23 Kythorn, Fullday
Arvin strode across one of the stone viaducts that arched over Hlondeth’s streets, glad he didn’t have to shoulder his way through the throng of people below. The narrow, open-sided viaduct didn’t bother him the way it did some humans. He was agile enough to feel surefooted, even when forced to squeeze to the very edge to let a yuan-ti pass.
Ahead lay the Solarium, an enormous circular building of green stone topped with a dome of thousands of triangular panes of glass in a metal frame that was reputedly strengthened by magic. The sun struck the west side of the dome, causing it to flare a brilliant orange.
The viaduct led to a round opening in the side of the Solarium. The human slave sitting on a stool just inside it rose to her feet as Arvin approached. She had curly, graying hair and wore, in her left ear, a gold earring in the shape of a serpent consuming its own tail. It helped distract the eye, a little, from the faded S brand on her cheek. She held up a plump, uncalloused hand to stop Arvin as he stepped inside the cool shade of the doorway.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.
Arvin peered past her, down the curved corridor that led to the heart of the building. Side tunnels with rounded ceilings branched off from it, leading to rooms where the yuan-ti shed their clothing. The air was drier than the sticky summer heat outdoors and was spiced with the pungent odor of snake. He was surprised to find no one but this woman watching the entrance; he’d expected at least one militiaman to keep out the rabble.
“A yuan-ti asked me to meet her here,” Arvin told the slave. “Her name is Zelia.”
The slave sniffed. “Humans aren’t allowed to use this entry. You’ll have to wait at the servant’s entrance with the