Ричард Байерс - Dissolution

«I'm no metaphysician,» said Ryld. «All I know is that somebody should clear the scavengers out of here.» Pharaun chuckled. «What if said clearing had occurred when you were a tyke?» «I don't mean exterminate them—except for the hopeless cases—but why just let them squat here in their dirt like a festering chancre on the city? Why not find something useful for them to do?» «Ah, but they're already useful. Status is all, is it not? Does it not follow, then, that no Menzoberranyr can find contentment without someone upon whom she can look down.» «We have slaves.» «They won't do. Predicate your claim to self-respect on their existence and you tacitly acknowledge you're only slightly better than a thrall yourself. Happily, here in the Stench streets, we find a populace starving, filthy, penniless, riddled with disease, living twenty or thirty to a room, yet nominally free. The humblest commoner in Manyfolk or even Eastmyr can turn up his nose at them and feel smug.» «You really think that's the reason Matron Baenre hasn't ordered the slum scoured clean?» «Well, if that conjecture seems implausible, here's another: Rumor has it that from time to time, someone meets the goddess herself in the Braeryn. Supposedly she likes to visit here in mortal guise. The matrons may feel that the neighborhood is, in some sense, under her protection.» The wizard hesitated. «Though if Lolth has gone away for good, perhaps they don't need to worry about it anymore.» Ryld shook his head. «It's still so hard to belie—» Pharaun pointed. «Look.» Ryld turned. On a curving wall below a dark elf's eye level was a sketch, this time smeared in blue. It consisted of three overlapping ovals, conceivably representing the links of a chain.

«It's a different mark,» said Ryld. «Hobgoblin maybe, though I couldn't tell you the tribe.»

«Don't be intentionally dim. It's the same peculiar, reckless, pointless crime.»

«Fair enough, and it's still irrelevant to our endeavors.» «It's a dull mind that never transcends pragmatics. Two signs, representing two races, implying two specimens of the lesser races demented in precisely the same way? Unlikely, yet why would a single artist daub an emblem not his own?» «Coincidence?» «I doubt it, but as yet I can't provide a better answer.» «It's a puzzle for another day, remember?» «Indeed.» The masters walked on. «Still,» pressed Pharaun, «don't you wonder how many scrawled signs we passed without noticing and exactly what form they took?» Ignoring the question, Ryld pointed and said, «That's our destination.»

The house's limestone door stood open, most likely for ventilation, for the interior radiated a perceptible warmth, the product of a multitude of tenants crammed in together. It also emitted a muddled drone and a thick stink considerably fouler than the unpleasant smell that clung to the Braeryn as a whole. Ryld had been born in a similar warren, had fought like a demon to escape it, and he felt a strange reluctance to venture in, as if squalor wouldn't let him escape a second time. Unwilling to appear timid and foolish in the eyes of his friend, he hid the feeling behind an impassive warrior's countenance. Pharaun, however, freely demonstrated his own distaste. The porcine eyes in his illusory orc face watered, and he swallowed, no doubt trying to quell a surge of queasiness. «Get used to it,» said Ryld. «I'll be all right. I've visited the Braeryn frequently enough to have some notion of what these little hells are like, though I confess I never entered one.» «Then stick close and let me do the talking. Don't stare at anybody, or look anyone in the eye. They're likely to take it as an insult or challenge. Don't touch anyone or anything if you can avoid it. Half the residents are sick and probably contagious.» «Really? And their palace gives off such a salubrious air! Ah, well, lead on.» Ryld did as his friend had asked. Beyond the threshold was the claustrophobic nightmare he remembered. Kobolds, goblins, orcs, gnolls, bugbears, hobgoblins, and a sprinkling of less common creatures squeezed into every available space. Some, the warrior knew, were runaway slaves. Others had entered the service of Menzoberranyr travelers who picked them up in far corners of the world, took them back to the city, and dismissed them without any means of making their way home. The rest were descendants of unfortunate souls in the first two categories. Wherever they came from, the paupers were trapped in the Braeryn, begging, stealing, scavenging, preying on one another—often in the most literal sense—and hiring on for any dangerous, filthy job anyone cared to give them. It was the only way they could survive. This particular lot had likewise learned to live packed into the common space without the slightest vestige of privacy. Undercreatures babbled, cooked, ate, drank, tended a still, brawled, twitched and moaned in the throes of sickness, shook and cuffed their shrieking infants, threw dice, fornicated, relieved themselves, and, amazingly, slept, all in plain view of anyone with the ill luck to look in their direction.

As Ryld had expected, within moments of their entrance, a pair of toughs—in this instance bugbears—slouched forward to accost them. With their coarse, shaggy manes and square, prominent jaws, bugbears were the largest and strongest of the goblin peoples, towering over the rest—and dark elves, too, for that matter. This pair was, by the standards of their destitute household, relatively well-fed and adequately dressed. They likely bullied tribute out of the rest. «You don't live here,» rumbled the taller of the two. He wore what appeared to be a severed goblin hand strung around his burly neck.

Drow occasionally affected similar ornaments, usually mementos of hated enemies, but they sent them to a taxidermist first. It was too bad the bugbear hadn't done the same. It would have prevented the rot and the carrion smell. «No,» Ryld said, tossing the bugbear a shaved coin, paying the toll to pass in and out of the house. «We came to see Smylla Nathos.» The hulking goblinoids just looked at him, as did several others creatures. A scaly, naked little kobold tittered crazily. Something was wrong, and the Master of Melee-Magthere didn't know what. He felt a sudden tension and exhaled it away. Looking nervous was a bad idea. «Isn't this Smylla's house?» he asked. The shorter bugbear, who still loomed nearly as huge as an ogre, laughed and said, «No, not no more, but she still live here. . kind of.» «Can we see her?» said Ryld. «What tor?» asked the bugbear with the severed goblin hand.

The weapons master hesitated. He'd intended to say that he and Pharaun wished to consult Smylla in her professional capacity as a trader in information. It was essentially the truth, though that didn't matter. What did was that he hadn't expected it to provoke a hostile response. Pharaun stepped up beside him. «Smylla sold our sister Iggra the secret of how to break into a merchant's strongroom,» the wizard said in a creditably surly Orcish rasp. «How to get around all the traps. . Only she left one out, see? It squirted acid on Sis and burned her to death. Slow. Almost got us too. It's Smylla's fault, and we come to 'talk' to her about it.» The smaller bugbear nodded. «You ain't the only ones wantin' that kind of talk. Us, too, but we can't get at the bitch.» Pharaun cocked his head. «How come?» «A couple tendays ago,» said the bugbear with the severed hand necklace, «we decided we was tired of her bossing us and her lamps hurting our eyes. We jumped her, hit her, but she chucked one of those stones that makes a flash of light. It blinded us, and she run up to her room.» He nodded toward the head of a twisting staircase. «We can't get through the door. She locked it with magic or somethin'.» Pharaun snorted. «Ain't no door my brother and me can't bust through.» The bugbears exchanged glances. The smaller one, who, Ryld noticed, was missing several of his lower teeth, shrugged. «You can try,» the larger one said. «Only, Smylla belongs to us, too. Hit her, bleed her, slice off a piece of her and eat it, but you can't keep her all to yourself.» «It's a deal,» Pharaun said. «Come on, then.» The bugbears led them through the crowded room and onto the stairs, where they still had to pick their way through lounging paupers. Partway up, the brute wearing the decaying hand put it in his mouth and began slurping and sucking on it.