Richard Byers: The Black Bouquet

Such being the case, she wouldn't play with the werebat, wouldn't torture it or savor its desperation. She lunged forward and drove her fist into the center of its low forehead, shattering its skull.

She took a deep breath, and without a backward glance, she trotted on, carrying retribution and ruin to Oeble as her Dark Father had commanded.

Miri found the stairs at the end of a short, strangely quiet passage off the busy Sixturrets intersection, where her contact, the plump man, had said they would be. As she regarded the steps twisting down into the ground, she felt an uncharacteristic pang of doubt. Maybe Hostegym was right; perhaps it was a bad idea. If she was out of her element in the streets and alleys of Oeble, it could only be worse in the city's Underways, supposedly a labyrinth of tunnels where the Gray Blades never ventured, and rogues of every stripe did precisely as they pleased.

But for that very reason, it seemed the best place to seek news of the green-eyed thief and the stolen treasure. Mielikki knew, Miri certainly hadn't had any luck above ground. So she scowled her misgiving away, loosened her sword and dagger in their sheaths, and adjusted the small steel buckler strapped to her wrist. She didn't much like the latter. The weight didn't bother her, but the armor made her feel awkward when shooting. Still, she thought that in the cramped confines of a subterranean warren, she might find a shield more useful than the bow she nonetheless carried strung and ready in her hand.

She crept down the steps, disturbing a rat that squealed and scuttled on ahead of her. She passed beyond the light leaking down from above into total darkness. Her pulse ticked a little faster.

Then, to her relief, a dim glow blossomed ahead. She stepped off the stairs into an arched tunnel which was neither as wet nor as malodorous as she'd expected. She'd imagined that "Underways" was a fancy way of saying "sewers," and in fact, a faint stench of noisome waste wafted in from somewhere, but there was no stream of muck flowing sluggishly down the center of the passage. Evidently the two systems were separate, at least to some degree.

The tunnel was essentially dark, no hindrance to orcs, goblins, and other creatures that could see in such conditions. Patches of pale sheen smeared the earthen walls in a couple of places, evidently to accommodate those who could not. Miri couldn't tell if they were some species of luminous mold or splashes of a man-made pigment.

Trying to look as if she truly knew where she was headed, as if she belonged down there, she marched away from the stairs. Around the first bend, she came upon two men huddled together, who eyed her speculatively and left off their whispering until she passed by. Not far beyond them, the corpse of a chubby halfling lay facedown. The victim, no bigger than a half-grown human child, bore more than a dozen wounds and had left a trail of blood like a snail. Evidently he'd crawled several yards on his belly while his assailants hacked and stabbed him.

The passage twisted repeatedly, and branching tunnels snaked away into blackness. Miri's sense of direction never failed her in the wild, but she had the unpleasant feeling that, even so, she could lose herself down there. She was glad her first destination was only supposed to be a short walk from the stairs she'd descended, and gladder still when the lamp-lit doorway came into view.

According to the information she'd received, Melder's Door was the only true inn in the Underways, and marginally safer than either of the taverns found "below." It seemed a reasonable place to continue her inquiries.

She pulled open the heavy door and stepped into a surprisingly spacious common room whose walls were lined with stone. The air was damp and chilly, and the glows of the few hanging lanterns, half occluded behind their hinged black iron hoods.

Still, after the gloom outside, she might almost have found the place welcoming, if not for the way all the surly-looking patrons-humans, orcs, towering, dog-faced gnolls, and horned, scaly, diminutive kobolds-turned to stare at her. It was disheartening. An inn, by definition, catered to wayfarers. To strangers. Yet even mere, something about the way she looked or carried herself instantly branded her an outsider.

Well, to Fury's Heart with it. She'd be damned if she'd let a pack of ruffians make her feel self-conscious just for looking like a righteous, law-abiding person. She returned sneer for sneer, then strode toward an empty table.

Until something flitted across her field of vision, then hovered in front of her face. She found herself nose to snout with a tiny dragon or wyvern, its wings shimmering, beating fast as a hummingbird's, its skinny body only a trifle longer than her middle finger. Startled, she recoiled, and the onlookers laughed at her discomfiture.

Their mirth made her flush with anger, and the miniature dragon's scrutiny made her wary. It scarcely seemed large enough to pose a threat, yet it might possess a nasty bite or sting or even the capacity to puff flame or poison into her eyes.

She lifted her hand to swat it away, and a bass voice rapped, "Don't."

She froze, the winged reptile whirled past her and away, and she looked around. A handsome man was smiling back at her. His barbered hair and eyes were black, and his skin was dark in a way that owed nothing to the touch of the sun. His purple velvet breeches and tunic were cut tight, the better, perhaps, to flatter his slender frame, save for exceptionally baggy sleeves that hung all the way down over his knuckles. Looking more like a child's toy than an actual weapon, a dainty hand crossbow dangled from a double-looped scarlet belt with a gold buckle.

More tiny dragons fluttered all around him, as if they were bees, and he, a particularly succulent flower. Miri experienced a sudden, unpleasant mental image of all the creatures swarming on a victim simultaneously. How could any one person defend against such an assault, no matter how adroit an archer or fencer she might be?

"Please don't hit my eye," the dark man continued. "You wouldn't like it if I hit you in one of yours."

"I won't," Miri answered. "The beast surprised me is all."

"No harm done." He sketched a bow, elegant and perfunctory at the same time. "I'm Melder. Welcome to the Door." He grinned and added, "My instincts tell me you haven't come in search of accommodations."

"No," she said, "just beer."

"Ah. We have a good ale brewed hereabouts, a fine dark lager from Theymarsh, and-"

"The local stuff will do. Perhaps you'll lift a tankard with me."

"You honor me. Please be seated, and I'll return in a trice."

She did as he'd bade her, then divided her attention between watching her fellow patrons, who were gradually returning to the murmured conversations her arrival had interrupted, and the little reptiles flying about. They wandered wherever they wished, and even the drunkest and most brutish-looking guests resisted the impulse to slap them away.

Melder sat two foaming leather jacks on the table, then sat down across from her.

"My small friends interest you," he said.

"They're beautiful," she replied.

"They're certainly the prettiest things in this dank old place, or were until a few moments ago," he said with a smile. "They keep the bugs and rats down, too. I believe I introduced myself, but I didn't catch your name."

"Miri Buckman."

"A lovely name. It fits you. And what, dear Miri, brings you below? You have a sensible look about you. Tell me you aren't simply indulging your curiosity, that you aren't one of those fools who think no visit to wicked Oeble complete without an excursion into the Underways."

She sipped her ale. He was right, it was good, the flavor hearty and not too bitter.