The Alabaster Staff Read online

  She watched them draw closer and saw that they were too cautious for her to be able to ambush one of them. Just as that realization crossed her mind, she saw something move at the open end of the alley. The guards turned just in time to see a cloaked figure vanish from sight behind them. They looked at each other, startled and confused, then somewhere nearby the keening cry of the guards’ whistle started again. The two sprinted from the alley to pursue, blowing their whistles in response.

  Kehrsyn sagged against the wall and let herself drop to the ground. She didn’t care that the cold rain soaked its way through the seat of her skirt and into her leggings. Kehrsyn could hear the guards’ whistles moving farther and farther away through the city. She didn’t know who or what those Zhents had chased, but in all likelihood it had saved her virtue and her life. Not knowing what else to do, she reached around, found her pear still in her sash, and took it out. For some reason, it no longer looked appetizing, so she let her hand droop over her knee.

  She hung her head and let silent tears of relief trickle off her nose and join the cold rain that slicked the grimy street.

  Ruzzara stalked the rooftops, cursing the luck that had her chasing a reluctant recruit through near-freezing rain. The throbbing chill in her feet had not abated when she’d put her boots back on. In fact, the dampness of her feet had balled up the lint in her stockings, making them even less comfortable.

  Her feet slid out from under her on the slanting rooftop, dropping her hard onto her left hip. Despite the fact that her legs slid most of the way off the rooftop, dangling over empty space, she appeared merely inconvenienced. She stood back up, muttering an inventive string of rural invectives and rubbing her hip.

  Ruzzara had seen the confusion in Hooper’s Alley, seen how a premature whistle had sent the city guard, the deputized brute squad, and a hopeful bounty hunter all running in the wrong direction, chasing their own alarm like a stampede of maddened bulls.

  She wasn’t sure how the young lass had done it, but it was very clever. In fact, Ruzzara hadn’t expected the young girl to do that well at all. She’d thought the guards would have long since taken care of the “murdering thief,” forever concealing Ruzzara’s role in the killing. Instead, she searched in the rain, trying to find the thief again.

  Ruzzara wasn’t sure where the thief had holed up, but she figured circumnavigating the block on the rooftops would flush her out eventually. Ruzzara peered down into the alleys as she sauntered along, looking for motion or likely hiding places. She hoped she’d be able to find the vagrant, whose fear of Ruzzara’s power made her a useful tool and whose evident skill made her an effective weapon.

  She found her, sitting on a stoop. Ruzzara smiled with relief, then her face darkened into a frown. The young lady was down on the ground, while Ruzzara was on top of the roof, three stories above.

  She contemplated using her magic to spider climb down the wall, but her digits were only just starting to tingle with returning sensation. She had no desire to pull off her gloves and boots and press her numb hands and feet to the cold, wet stones yet again.

  She had a better idea, more comfortable … and more dramatic, besides. She had long before purchased a ring—a magical circle of silver—that protected her from dangerous falls by floating her slowly to earth. She’d bought it for protection, a magical safety net, but it occurred to her to use it aggressively. She rocked it back and forth on her middle finger with her thumb. It was an unconscious habit. So much wealth tied up in one little object made her check its presence almost continually.

  Ruzzara moved as quietly as possible along the rooftop until she was opposite the young thief who cried quietly in the alley. Fidgeting with the ring to reassure herself, she crouched down and let herself lean forward. As she felt herself start to fall, she pushed off the rooftop gently, quietly. Just as her heart started to thrill with instinctive panic, her senses realized that she wasn’t accelerating; she was descending at the speed of a brisk walk. It was an unnerving sensation.

  As she drifted downward, Ruzzara pinwheeled her arms once to right herself, then put her hands on her hips and assumed a cocky and arrogant stance. She landed with a light sound of crunching dirt not three feet in front of her quarry.

  The young woman jerked her head up in fear, staring wide-eyed at the sorceress through a veil of haggard, damp hair. She gasped in recognition, and her mouth flapped in silent amazement.

  “Well, at least I know you can stay silent,” said Ruzzara. The young woman glanced down the alley and back at her. “Oh, come on, hon, don’t look so shocked,” added Ruzzara. “You think the guild lets anyone in if they can’t sneak around?”

  The young woman held up her hands placatingly, one hand spread wide and the other still ridiculously clutching her half-eaten pear. When the thief noticed that she still held the pear, she quickly hid that hand behind her.

  She stammered a few faltering words, saying, “Please, I—please don’t—I mean, I’ll … just don’t call the guards, please …?”

  “Give it a rest, will ya, hon?” said Ruzzara. “You think I want to call them guards back here to barge in on our little private time? No thanks. You know, you got a friend out there, hon, I’d say you do.”

  “A friend?”

  “I saw what happened. You done good, hon, moved like a regular alley cat, but I’d say Mask, God of Thieves, has a soft spot in his larcenous heart for little ol’ you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I sure wish I knew how you done did it, hon, I really do. I swear you were stewed like a rabbit, when all of a sudden you got the whole gaggle of guards galloping off in the whole wrong direction. Showed up just a bit too late to see your trick, but that was slick, hon, real slick.”

  The young woman’s lip trembled. “I—I don’t know what to say,” she said.

  “Well, I’d say you passed the test, hon,” Ruzzara said with a smile. “You kept your head in a tough situation, moved nimbly and quickly, and managed to evade a fine ol’ dragnet of constables and Zhents alike.” She pulled the dead guard’s whistle from a pocket. “So are you gonna do our job for us, or shall I give this a little toot?”

  “Please!” said the fugitive in a panic. She sagged visibly. “No, please don’t. I’ll … I’ll do it.”

  “Aw, now don’t look so sad, hon,” Ruzzara continued. “Life is full of adventure, and every adventure begins with a single step!”

  “I have found more often that what the bards call an ‘adventure’ begins with a single mistake.”

  “Wow, hon, your outlook is as bleak as an eighty-year-old prostitute.”

  “It’s not bleak,” said the young woman. “It’s realistic. The trick is knowing when to stop so you don’t make that mistake.”

  “Whatever you say,” said Ruzzara. She paused and raised one eyebrow. “Are you trying to sneak your hand to that dagger you keep under your bag, hon? My associates wouldn’t take that very well,” she added, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the street, or maybe the rooftops.

  “Uh … no,” said the young woman, avoiding Ruzzara’s eyes.

  “Excellent!” said Ruzzara, though her eyes were as cold as steel. “I’d hate to think you looked at me as a mistake to be unmade.” She studied her quarry and smiled. That was the best time to interrogate, when the last shred of hope had been taken away. “What’s your name, hon?”

  “Kehrsyn.”

  “Well, olaré, Kehrsyn. So where do you live?”

  “I … don’t really have a … a place to stay. Anymore.” Kehrsyn’s voice was very soft.

  “Well, Kehrsyn, I’d say maybe your luck is changing,” said Ruzzara. Once someone had no hope, it was best to be the first one who offered it.

  Kehrsyn looked up, and Ruzzara saw a desperate sparkle return to the waif’s eyes. Kehrsyn stood, ending up a little taller than Ruzzara, which annoyed her. It was harder to be intimidating when looking up.

  “You mean I can sleep in the guild house?” asked Kehrs
yn, with just a shade of fear and hope.

  Ruzzara laughed. She liked the hint of desperation in Kehrsyn’s voice. It was best to cultivate that by keeping the ray of hope to a glimmer.

  “Aren’t you getting ahead of the horse there, hon? We gotta talk about the assignment.”

  “Right,” said Kehrsyn, and Ruzzara was pleased to see that she was focusing her attention so she’d remember what she was about to be told.

  Ruzzara turned so that she faced Kehrsyn squarely. She folded her arms to add gravity to her words.

  “This merchant has somehow laid his grubby paws on an important item of great magical power,” she began.

  “You want me to steal a magic item,” interrupted Kehrsyn, her lower eyelids trembling.

  “No hook in your blade, is there? That’s right. It’s apparently pretty potent. Some daredevil grave robber done said that he dug up this magic staff while under hire from this here merchant. It must be right important if a merchant sends folks after it while the city is under siege, don’t you think? We think we can use that staff to protect our city against the pharaoh’s army, or mayhap even drive them back.”

  “Drive them back?” asked Kehrsyn. “What does it do?”

  “That’s not your concern,” said Ruzzara. “Leave that to those what can handle it. You just need to know what it looks like. It’s a wand one span shy of a cubit, the color of dried bone, and carved all over with those pictoglyph thingies. And there’s a wavy band of bronze all wrapped ’round the top, with a big piece of black amber in the top. We think this here merchant intends to sell it to the Zhentarim. They’ll take it up away to the north, for their own plans. Needless to say, that makes us as mad as a constipated goat, selling out our whole darn future for a few lousy shekae.”

  “Sounds to me like it must be worth a mountain of gold,” said Kehrsyn.

  “That’s beside the point, hon,” groaned Ruzzara. “Keep the big picture here. We’re talking saving Unther’s collective hide from the Mulhorandi army.”

  “Right. Almost a cubit long, you say?” repeated Kehrsyn, measuring the length against her arm. “So where is it?”

  “Do you know where the Plaza of the Northern Wizards is?”

  “No.”

  “It used to be called Gilgeam’s Altar. Where he used to hold executions.”

  “Oh, yeah, that place.”

  “Great. Go down Port Street. At the next corner, on the left, you’ll see a large building called Wing’s Reach. It’s in there.

  “This ought to help,” she added, pulling a piece of parchment from inside her jerkin.

  Kehrsyn unrolled it, trembling. “It’s a map,” she said.

  “I knew you were a smart one, hon. You know how to read that?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. It’s … rather detailed.”

  “Yeah, we found the floor plan in the city archives,” lied Ruzzara. “That map’s as accurate as an elven archer. It’s got the location of that staff thing all marked on there. That should be all you need.”

  “Gilgeam’s Altar, Port Street, Wing’s Reach,” Kehrsyn echoed. “What do I do when I get it?”

  “Go to the Mage Bazaar and look for a Red Wizard named Eileph. He knows what to do.”

  “Won’t he keep it?” asked Kehrsyn.

  “Boy, you just don’t trust anyone, do you, hon?”

  “I haven’t ever gotten much reason to.”

  “Well, to answer your question,” said Ruzzara, “no, he won’t keep it. We gave Eileph a nice retainer.”

  Kehrsyn nodded and thought for a bit.

  “So, the guild house?” she asked.

  Ruzzara chuckled, reached out with her right hand, and gripped the back of Kehrsyn’s left arm, guiding her out of the alley.

  “You gotta remember, hon,” she said, “that only guild members sleep in the guild house. To become a member, not only do you have to prove yourself, but we gotta know you’re quiet as a crocodile.”

  “I won’t talk,” said Kehrsyn. “I promise.”

  Ruzzara laughed again, shaking her head. “Hon, right now, you’re just a contractor. And we never take a contract without security.”

  So saying, she shaped her fingers into a curious pattern and pressed them very hard into Kehrsyn’s arms. With a single command word, she blasted raw magical energy out of her fingertips. They flared, burning through Kehrsyn’s sleeve and searing her flesh beneath. Ruzzara pulled her hand back, before Kehrsyn’s traumatized skin might have a chance to stick to her fingers.

  Kehrsyn cried out and pulled away.

  “That’s our slave mark, hon,” said Ruzzara. “Our brand. You belong to us now. You mess up, any one of us can kill you in broad daylight as you do your little thing in the Jackal’s Courtyard. No one will raise an eyebrow, because you’re nothing but a slave.”

  “I am not a slave!” protested Kehrsyn, pinching the very top of her branded arm in an attempt to strangle the pain.

  “Oh, you know that, hon, and we know that, but no one else knows that. Hey, you’re just a homeless street urchin, right? So just be sure to keep that little ol’ brand covered up, and no one will be the wiser.”

  “I’ll tell them I’m freeborn!” snarled Kehrsyn, eyes narrowed.

  Ruzzara could tell she was just barely holding on.

  “It’ll be hard to tell anyone anything when you’re dead.”

  Kehrsyn stopped in her tracks, trembling.

  Ruzzara smiled disarmingly and said, “Hey, that’ll only happen if you double-cross us. If you do well, why, the future will open wide just for you … nice bed, fancy food, friends who look after you, gold …” Ruzzara paused to let her words sink in. “Ta-ta, hon,” she said as she walked away. “You have two days. Don’t be late. It’d be a shame to ruin a work of art like you.”

  She walked away, whistling. She passed along the word about the new recruit to the one person who needed to know, then wandered back to rejoin her group. By the time she’d drawn a chair up by the fire, kicked off her boots and socks, and finished her first glass of liqueur, all thoughts of Kehrsyn’s plight were gone from her mind.

  Kehrsyn aimlessly walked the streets of Messemprar for the remaining daylight hours. Her partially eaten pear sat in her left hand unnoticed, almost forgotten, its raw surfaces slowly turning brown. Her right hand clutched her left biceps just opposite the throbbing brand. She couldn’t see the burn well and dared not touch it, but the unrelenting sensation of heat, the blisters that surrounded the area, and the bitter odor all told her she’d been injured fairly seriously. Tears of fear, rage, shame, and pain quivered at the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She was an Untheri; she would persevere. Somehow she would prosper just as her nation had persevered and occasionally prospered under the tyranny of the god-king Gilgeam.

  Even worse than the pain of the burn were the knot in her stomach, and the anguish, nausea, and hopelessness it brought to her. She wanted to curl up but wouldn’t. She needed to eat but couldn’t. All the darkest times of her childhood were falling back in upon her soul, wiping away what self-respect she’d had, like a thunderhead blotting out a young spring sky. What little hope she had was offered by a den of thieves … hardly the most auspicious bearers of gifts.

  Her pride urged her to find a way not to let the ugly wall-walking sorceress get the better of her (though, in fact, she already had), but without knowing the guild’s reach she could find no sure solution. She’d been placed into a position in which she had no choice. She’d always told herself before that there was hope, yet she could see none left.

  She tried not to think about the fact that she could have chosen death instead. She failed, of course, and when she thought about it she tried to tell herself that it wasn’t fair that she should die for being a murderer’s scapegoat.

  None of it stuck. The guilt of her capitulation had torn the scab off of her memories—the days of her youth that she hated—and the pain and self-recrimination welled up from the wound once again. She wonde
red whether, even without the threat of arrest, she would have done their bidding just to earn a good meal, a dry bed, a bit of security and a hope of belonging … somewhere.

  The salt in her wound was that someone else would profit from her theft, from her abandonment of her principles. Profit financially, of course, but it was also clear that the sorceress enjoyed exerting power over people like Kehrsyn. She was probably gloating about how she’d directed Kehrsyn like a trained dog.

  Kehrsyn tried to focus her turbulent emotions and turn them against the sorceress. If she could, it would give her motivation and drive, perhaps even help her to figure out some way to get back at that false-friendly wench with the supercilious smirk.

  But, the guilty portions of her mind said, does a thieving little wretch like me deserve vengeance?

  A horn blew somewhere in town, followed by another, and others. The sound snapped Kehrsyn’s mind back to the present. The city guard was sounding the curfew. Soon pairs, trios, and full whips of constables would sweep the streets, ensuring that the refugees were ejected from the city before the gates closed. During a war, only those who owned homes or paid rent were allowed to remain within Messemprar’s walls after nightfall. With the Mulhorandi army looming to the south, those who had space to let, even a spare corner of a common room, were making mintweight from those fearful enough to pay for it.

  Kehrsyn counted her coins. It didn’t take long. One silver. One copper left over from the day before.

  Even if she found someone with space to let, it was not nearly enough. She put them back into her bag, along with her pear.

  She sighed. Without a tent, or even any friendly faces among the refugees, she didn’t relish the thought of spending the night outside. Not in this weather. Even if she could find that kid Jaldi, well, he didn’t look any better off than she was.

  She’d evaded the city guard before, and she could do it again. At least the rain was abating to a light sprinkle.