Erin Evans - The God Catcher

However, the memory of Nestrix bludgeoning a man to death with a broken axe haft was never going to find a comfortable place either. The hollow cracking sound would haunt her thoughts forever. And the man writhing on the floor with a dagger stuck in his chest. The soft pop of his neck breaking…

"My life wouldn't have needed saving if we hadn't been robbing them," she said, desperate to tie the events together in her mind. The antiquary was the victim. Not her, not Nestrix.

"They are lovacs," Nestrix snapped. "And their taaldarax plays lightly with the rules. If they are here in your city, your life would have needed saving soon enough." She stood and drew herself up. "You don't even care what I did for you."

"Not when you're acting like a monster."

"If you're going to treat me like a monster, then I'm free to act like one," Nestrix said, her eyes briefly flaring blue. "And if you're going to act like an ungrateful, law-bound-"

"Get out," Tennora said.

Nestrix drew back. "What?"

"Get out. Get out of my home." She pulled the eggshell in its pouch from her neck and held it out. Tennora felt her hands shaking, even harder than they had when the man with the dagger in his chest had died at her feet. But her gut and her wits screamed the same thing. "I am through helping you."

She expected the dragonfear that flowed over her, but strangely it was weak and almost halfhearted. Nestrix's cheeks flushed, and her eyes had taken on their characteristic glow.

"How dare you speak-"

"I don't care," Tennora said. "I don't care what you think you've done for me, I can't do this any longer. I wish you luck. Get out." Nestrix's mouth snapped shut.

"Fine," she said. "Fine. As you say." She snatched the pouch from Tennora, turned, and stalked toward the door. "You would have made a terrible lovac. It's better that I don't take your help."

She slammed the door so fiercely that a jagged strip, damaged by Tennora's carvestars, fell out of the wood.

Tennora ran to the door and threw the bolt. Stepping back into her sitting area, she eyed the back of the door for a few breaths, expecting Nestrix to return, angry and pounding on the door, full of curses and threats and violence. Her hands itched to grab the dagger, to be ready for the inevitability of the blue dragon turning on her word. To show Nestrix how serious she was.

But Nestrix didn't return.

The quiet unknotted the careful hold Tennora had kept on herself since the night began. Sapped of everything she'd held in reserve, she sank down onto her rug and wept until she fell asleep.

"Pardon me," Veron said to the sailors clustered beside the street vendor selling fishcakes. He held up one of the leaflets printed with Clytemorrenestrix's portrait and information. "Have you seen this woman?"

Like all the people he'd approached that day, they squinted at the paper and shook their heads.

"Wouldn't mind seein' her though," one of the men said. The woman beside him gave him a shove.

"Idiot," she said. "They don't make sheets like that for dancing girls. That's for high crimes. Murderers and robbers and such."

"Indeed," Veron said. "She's wanted for both. If you see her, let me know." He gave them the name of the inn he was staying at, for all the good it would do him. No one on the streets had seen Clytemorrnestrix. No one but the young woman from the statue.

The young woman he couldn't seem to find alone and in a public place. Two days in a row, he had waited in the street, just out of sight. She'd come out twice the first day: once for just for a moment, too quick for him to reach her, before slipping back inside; and once again, but a young man had stepped up to talk to her, and Veron had fallen back.

If anything were out of place, he'd scare off his quarry and possibly end up discussing things with the Watch besides.

Tennora, the hearth house owner had called her. He'd waited in the hearth house that night, though she hadn't come, and when he'd taken his place the following day, the owner had chased him off, shouting that he didn't want to see him around anymore.

After the man's previous cheer, Veron was sure Tennora knew he was watching for her.

"Pardon me," Veron said, approaching a well-dressed man carrying a ledger off a large sailing ship. "Do you accept passengers on your vessel?

The man looked him up and down with naked surprise, his gaze lingering half a moment on Veron's protruding teeth. "On occasion," he said, "but-"

Veron held out the leaflet. "Not for me. I'm looking for a criminal. She's in the city, but I have suspicions she may flee. Would you keep an eye out for her?" "Oh… Of course," the man said, taking the paper. He tucked it into his ledger then looked Veron over again. "You speak very good Common," the man said.

Veron pursed his mouth. "Yes, well, it is my first language."

"Oh," the man said, looking faintly embarrassed. "Raised by your mother then? Good of her."

"I suppose," Veron said, blandly.

"Does she live in Waterdeep then?"

"No, Silverymoon."

"Ah," the man said, with a knowing furrow to his brow. "One of those Many-Arrows brutes then?"

"No, that would be my mother." Veron paused, trying to cool his annoyance. "She's the one from the kingdom of Many-Arrows."

"Eh?"

"She's the orc," he said. "She moved to Silverymoon when my parents wed."

"Oh!" the man said turning a deeper shade of red. "Yes, yes of course. Well… you ought to have said something! Good day to you." He skittered off down the road.

"Perhaps you shouldn't have said anything," Veron muttered. He sometimes wondered if it wouldn't be less scandalous to make up a story about a pillaged farmstead and a roving tribe of berserker orcs. At least the man had had the grace to be embarrassed at his mistake.

He bought a fishcake from the vendor and pondered his next move.

"Coins bright, there?" Veron looked up from his slake to see a red-haired half-elf standing in front of him and holding one of his leaflets. "You're looking for this one?"

"Yes," Veron said, wiping the crumbs from his hands "Have you seen her?" "Maybe," she said. "What's it get me if I have?"

Veron stifled another sigh. "A percentage," he said vaguely. "The goodwill of Cormyr. And I won't tell anyone you're harboring a fugitive."

She gave him a withering look. "Not much of a bargain that. And I haven't said I was harboring her. Just that I might have seen her." She leaned a little closer. "And for what it's worth, the Watch and more might be interested in her too. Her and some little blonde birdie. Know anything about that?"

Veron narrowed his eyes. "I'm only interested in the murder."

She smiled at him. "Pity. Thought we might have had something to talk about."

"Goodwoman," he said, "I'm not leaving this city without my quarry. If you don't-"

"Will you take her dead?"

Veron paused. Dead was not what the Nagaenils had asked for. Dead would not get him his full bounty.

It would get him off of this trail and onto something new.

"It's not ideal," he said, "and I don't recommend you try it."

"That's my problem," she said with a winning smile. "I'll let you know what I find out." Before Veron could ask her name or tell her where to find him, she turned on her heel and disappeared quickly into the crowd.

Tennora startled awake, her thoughts heavy with dreams of knives, blood coming up out of her mouth, and the sound of Nestrix laughing as she held Tennora down with a log of wood across her chest until she couldn't breathe.

The Timehands started chiming tharsun. Tennora rubbed her eyes.

"Hells," she said. She'd been asleep for nearly twelve hours. She glanced back at the door as she sat up. Still locked.

A sharp pain seized her just below the ribs, and she remembered the axe and the cut to her side. She stripped off her clothes and dampened a rag in the remnants of Nestrix's bathwater. She gently scrubbed the blood from the cut on her side. It wasn't deep-the axe had bitten in just enough to peel back her skin in a strip as long as her index finger-but it had turned an angry red and burned, and the flesh beneath was tender and purpled. She frowned at it and smeared a good dollop of ointment over the cut before binding it up with rags.