Venom's Taste - Lisa Smedman [91]
“It’s nothing,” Arvin hissed angrily. Then, seeing Kolim flinch, he hurriedly added, “I’m fine, Kolim, really. I’m just having trouble catching my breath. I’ve been walking all day. I’m hot and tired-and I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
Kolim nodded, uncertain. “There’s a cleric inside your warehouse,” he continued. “They say everything in it has got to be burned.”
Arvin nodded. He’d expected that. Fortunately he had cached his valuables well away from the warehouse-one of them, at this bakery. “Kolim, remember the ‘monkey fist’ I asked you to keep for me?”
Kolim nodded.
“I need it. Can you go and-”
“Kolim!” a shrill voice cried from within the bakery. “Get inside this instant!”
Kolim’s mother, a dark-haired woman with a chin as sharp as a knife blade, stepped out of the bakery and grabbed Kolim by the ear, yanking him inside. Then she rounded on Arvin. “How dare you come here? Get away from my son.” She glanced up the street and waved, trying to catch the eye of the militia.
Arvin took a step forward, wetting his lips. “I knew nothing about the dead man until just now, when Kolim told me about him,” he said, holding up his hands. “I haven’t been inside my warehouse in days. There’s no danger of-”
Kolim’s mother didn’t wait to hear the rest. Abruptly stepping back inside the bakery, she slammed the door shut. A moment later, however, Arvin heard a noise from one of the windows above as a shutter opened. Kolim leaned out of the window, waved, and dropped a ball-shaped knot attached to a short length of twine. Arvin caught the monkey’s fist and signed his thanks to Kolim in finger speech.
Easy going, Kolim signed back. The sound of his mother’s harangue came from somewhere behind the boy, and Kolim ducked back inside.
Arvin hefted the monkey’s fist. It looked identical to a nonmagical monkey’s fist-a round knot, trailing a short length of line, used to weight the end of a ship’s heaving line. But instead of having a lead ball at its center, this monkey’s fist contained a surprise-a compressed ball of powder taken from the gland of a gloomwing. To release it, the correct command word had to be spoken as the monkey’s fist was thrown. When it landed, the knot would immediately unravel, releasing the gloomwing’s powerful scent.
Arvin tucked the monkey’s fist into his pocket and glanced up at the sun, which was slowly sinking behind Hlondeth’s towers. There was one more stop he had to make before meeting Nicco. Fortunately, Lorin’s workshop was on the way to the execution pits. He hurried in that direction.
As he approached the locksmith’s workshop, he heard the sound of a file rasping against metal. Entering the shop, he found Lorin hunched over a bench, filing the pin mechanism of a brass padlock. The locksmith was a tall, skinny man with a wide forehead from which his short dark hair was combed straight back. The hair was tarred flat against his scalp, like that of a sailor, to keep it out of his eyes. Faded chevrons marked Lorin’s left forearm; he’d done his time in the militia years ago, serving as a guard in Hlondeth’s prisons. Rumor had it that he’d been working for the Guild even then, slipping lockpicks to prisoners the Guild wanted freed.
Lorin looked up as Arvin entered the workshop. He immediately set the file aside and rose, but held up a warning hand as Arvin strode forward. “Stop right there,” he said. “I heard about your warehouse. I’d rather not take any chances.”
Arvin halted. “Word travels fast. Did you have a chance to look at the key?”
“Yes.”
“And?” Arvin pulled ten gold pieces from his pocket and set them on the end of the workbench. Lorin made no move to pick them up.
“It was very interesting… but I don’t appreciate objects tainted with plague being brought to my workshop.”
Arvin placed ten more gold pieces on the bench. “Interesting in what way?”
“When I tossed it into the fire to cleanse the plague from it, an inscription appeared on the key.” He folded his arms across his chest and eyed the coins Arvin had set out, waiting.
“I didn’t know you could read,” Arvin said.