Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

He would never let her come to harm as long as his only path was to follow her. Another realization hit her: this was the same reason he hadn’t pressed her regarding Chane’s strange habits. From the first moment Ore-Locks had met Chane in the Chamber of the Fallen in the Stonewalkers’ underworld, Chane had proven himself more than adequate at protecting Wynn. That made him useful, and the dwarf would turn a blind eye as long as Chane remained so.

Ore-Locks didn’t care about anything but his own end goal—whatever that was.

Wynn pushed the plate into his chest again and let go of it. She spun around as he huffed and staggered, likely fumbling to grab the plate.

She walked directly into her own room and closed the door.

Sau’ilahk felt an undead presence suddenly manifest in his awareness.

Chane had paused before an apothecary’s shop, his right hand moving to his left. Then he slipped something into a small pouch.

Sau’ilahk quickly blinked into the deep night shadows under an awning half a block farther on. He had felt this same sudden change before in the underworld of Dhredze Seatt. Although Chane somehow hid his nature, there were moments when he seemed to unmask himself, and, once revealed, he appeared to be no more than any mundane vampire.

Sau’ilahk watched as Chane entered the apothecary’s shop, and he desperately wanted to know what was happening in there. But if he could sense Chane’s true nature, he might be sensed in turn if he drew too near.

Sau’ilahk needed a spy.

He focused inward, expending excessive energy in his rush. In his mind’s eye, he shaped a glowing circle for Spirit in the air, the size of a splayed hand. Within this, he formed the square of Air, stroked glowing sigils in the spaces between the nested shapes, and then fixated upon the grand seal as if seeing it hanging before him. Part of his will bled away in a wave of exhaustion.

A silent breeze rushed through Sau’ilahk, though it rustled neither his cloak nor his robe. He ignored this side effect and called the air into the seal. The pattern’s empty center undulated like the heated air above a smokeless fire. That barely visible distortion held its place—a servitor of Air with a hint of consciousness.

Sau’ilahk imprinted it with purpose.

Into the space with a lifeless presence within ...

Record all sound until it leaves that place....

Return and reiterate what you record.

Sau’ilahk released the great seal from his mind’s eye. The servitor shot away, slipping through the top crack of the shop’s door.

The repulsive apothecary eyed Chane carefully.

“Jasmine and heartsease for a love potion?” she asked. “To win your lady from a rival?”

“No.”

He stepped closer through the haze of airborne dust illuminated by lantern light. One did not simply walk into an apothecary’s shop and ask for poison. Or did one in a place like Drist?

Chane pulled a pack from his shoulder and dug out a slip of paper. “I need everything on this list, especially that last item.”

She took the torn half sheet in her bony fingers with their long, yellowed nails. For the most part, there was nothing on it that could not be found in a typical apothecary’s shop. Nothing truly unusual, from glass vessels, a small oil burner, wood alcohol, and varied components he had guessed at.

He watched her, waiting for her to spot the Numan reference at the end to the deadly flower he knew as boar’s bell.

She read it as if it were nothing, but her eye—her one real eye—flickered before she looked up.

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

Chane did not feel any warning within.

No rumble from the beast sounded inside him. No tightening prickle ran over his skin. But he had not cleared his head to listen for deception in her words. Still, it was not necessary in order to know that she would lie. Even here, a poisonous substance would not be sold openly to a stranger.

Chane drew out the pouch that High-Tower had given to Wynn and jostled it once, making it clink.

“Yes, you can,” he whispered. “You will sell it to me ... or I will find it here myself.”

This time, her eye did not flicker, though she did not appear intimidated by his close presence and height. Still leaning on her walking rod, she raised her other hand, shaking the paper slip and her head at the same time.

“No need for poor manners,” she chided.

Without warning, she snapped her hand with the paper out.

White powder exploded from her ragged sleeve into Chane’s face, filling his eyes and nostrils. With startling nimbleness, she rushed backward, watching him expectantly.

Chane wiped a hand down his face, clearing his eyes. He briefly wondered whether the powder was lethal or merely something to incapacitate the unwary. For the first time since he’d entered, the wretched woman appeared uncertain as he took another step.

“Bring me everything on this list.”

She studied him closely, perhaps waiting to see whether the powder took some latent effect. When it did not, she slowly smiled, a gruesome expression. She obviously suffered no moral dilemma over what he’d requested.

It would be so much easier to just kill her.

But word of a dead or missing apothecary, her shop ransacked, would spread by morning when the other businesses opened nearby. There was no telling how long before Ore-Locks found them passage south. Wynn might remember one shop with a simple sign that Chane had paused at on their way through the city. She would remember the particular night that he had been out on his own.

The old crone leaned her cane against the wall, now amply nimble without it as she made her way around the shop, assembling his needs upon the front counter. It was a larger burden than Chane had estimated.

“Do not touch corpse-skirt with your bare hands,” she warned without real concern in her voice.

“And the grain alcohol ... for purifying equipment?” he asked.

She glanced at him from the corner of her one good eye and reached under the counter to pull out a brown glass bottle.

“Perhaps instead you wish to remove a rival or two?” she said. “Clear the way to your heart’s desire, the one you covet?”

Her ironic needling bothered him. The one he coveted was so much farther beyond his reach than something that simple. His rival, if any, was only himself—what he was. That was something Chane could never clear away between himself and Wynn. Without reply, he counted out coins, stacking them on the counter.

When he finished, the old woman smiled again and shook her head.

Chane counted out more until he’d gone through nearly half the coins in the pouch.

It would have been so much simpler—more satisfying—to just kill this decrepit wretch.

Sau’ilahk watched Chane step out of the shop. The vampire paused to shift his pack to a more settled position, and then he took something shiny from his pouch and extended a finger.

Chane slipped on a brass ring.

Sau’ilahk almost lurched out of the awning’s dark shadows as Chane’s undead presence vanished from his awareness. In a thousand years, he had rarely been surprised like this. Was it as simple as a ring?

For all that he had discerned of Chane’s skills, he had never seen this undead display an aptitude for artificing. Chane had not displayed talent enough to make such a device. Why would a vampire need such a thing, when the living would never know what it was until too late?

But Sau’ilahk could see its use. For those brief instances, when he manifested himself fully, that ring could hide him, as well ... from Chane and the dog.

A shift of air broke his obsessed thoughts. The servitor returned and immediately began reiterating all sounds it had recorded inside the shop.