Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [4]
Arvin twitched his mouth into a grin and covered his discomfort with a hearty joke. “Just be sure you don’t let pleasure get in the way of business.”
Naulg laughed. ‘ “Idle hands make merry,’ ” he quipped.
Arvin smiled. “You mean ‘mischief,’ ” he said, correcting the motto that had been drummed into them at the orphanage. Then he tsked. “Brother Pauvey would weep for you.”
“Yes, he would,” Naulg said, suddenly serious. “He would indeed.” He paused then added, “Can we talk later?”
Arvin nodded. “I’d like that.”
Naulg shifted the doxy from his lap and rose to his feet, slipping the pouch into a trouser pocket. The doxy staggered slightly, as if she’d had too much to drink, but Arvin noted the quick, sharp glance she gave the pocket where Naulg had stored the pouch. If she was a rogue, as Arvin suspected, one quick stroke of her hand would see it gone, especially if Naulg was… distracted.
Arvin had labored for two full tendays to make the twine-and he’d spent good coin on the spell that kept the tendrils of assassin vine fresh after their harvesting. Braiding them had been like working with writhing snakes; if he’d let one go even for a moment, it would have coiled around his throat. If the twine disappeared, would Naulg demand a replacement?
As Naulg headed for the door, doxy in tow, Arvin decided to protect his investment. At least, that was what he told himself he was doing. He waited until the pair were halfway up the ramp then rose to his feet.
Hlondeth by night was a city of whispers. Its cobble-stoned streets had been worn smooth by the endless slither of the serpent folk. High above, the ramps that spiraled up the outside of buildings to join viaducts that arched across the street were alive with the slide of scales on stone. Soft hisses of conversation whispered out of round doorways and windows. From the harbor, a few hundred paces away, came the crash and sigh of waves breaking against the seawall, rhythmic as breathing.
The streets alternately widened and narrowed as they curved between the city’s circular, dome-roofed buildings, continuously branching into the Y-shaped intersections that were unique to Hlondeth. Cloaks rustled against walls as people squeezed against buildings in the narrower portions of the street, making room for Naulg and his doxy to pass.
The buildings on either side of the street they were walking along glowed with a faint green light-a residual glow left by the magics used to quarry the emerald-colored stone from which Hlondeth had been built. Its light, not quite bright enough to see by, gave a sickly, greenish pallor to the doxy’s skin, making her look even less appealing than she had in the Coil.
Arvin had been keeping a careful distance behind Naulg and his doxy. He lost sight of them momentarily as the street took yet another sinuous twist then spotted them a few paces later as they entered one of the small, circular courtyards that dotted the city. At its center was a lightpost, wrought in iron in the shape of a rearing cobra. The cobra’s mouth held an egg-shaped globe, which should have been glowing brightly, flooding the courtyard with light, but this one had dimmed, leaving the courtyard in near darkness. Arvin saw at once why the globe had remained untended. The residence whose walls formed the courtyard had windows that were boarded over and dark lines of soot smudged the walls above each window. Its main entrance was in shadow, but even so, he could still make out the yellow hand that had been painted on the door. Clerics had cleansed the building with magical fire more than fifty years ago, but like so many other buildings in Hlondeth that had been subjected to a similar fate, the residence remained vacant. The fear of plague was just too strong.
Arvin watched as the doxy steered Naulg toward the darkened doorway. Naulg either didn’t notice the faded symbol on the door-or was too engrossed in the woman to care.