Трой Деннинг - Prince of Lies

"Let's see," the small one said. He unfolded a ragged scrap of paper. "Brown hair. Medium height. Slender build." Wrinkling his face, he squinted up at Rinda in the failing afternoon light. "Yeah, green eyes, too. This is her, Worvo."

"You Rinda, daughter of Bevis the Illuminator?" the fat one asked. Even his words were bloated, full of round vowels and slurred consonants.

Rinda crossed her arms over her chest. "And if I am?"

"Just answer the question, awright?" The weaselly thug spit onto the street and looked around. "We ain't got all day on this."

Like a barricade being rolled into place, Hodur swaggered between Rinda and the thugs. "You got the wrong place. There ain't no Rinda here."

Worvo blinked a few times then let his mouth hang open in an idiot's gape. "We do? There ain't? Hey, Var, if this ain't-"

"Of course it's her," Var snapped. "She's supposed to be smart, right? A scribe." He gestured to Hodur's eye patch with his dagger. "Even a blind old gin-head like this could see she ain't like anyone else around. Her clothes are clean. She's even bathed this month, from the looks of her." He licked his thin lips. "And she's even awake during the daytime. Probably the only woman within a mile of here who don't wake up at sundown — unless her little one-eyed friend here just got her out of bed."

Hodur balled one trembling hand into a fist and grabbed the front of Var's tunic with the other. Both thugs leveled their knives at the dwarf, but Rinda pulled him back from the door before trouble could start. She'd seen Hodur fight. Despite his infirmities, he was more than a match for the two scruffy churchmen — and five more like them. But if a scuffle broke out, the watch might show up, and that meant trained killers. Probably mages, too.

"It's all right, Hodur," she said calmly. The hard look in her eyes cowed the dwarf, and he stepped back into the room.

"So are you Rinda or not?" Worvo asked.

"Yes. What business does the church have with me?"

"Like I said before, you're a scribe, right?" Var nodded for her. "The church needs your services. That's all you need to know."

Rinda frowned. "But I'm not a member of the guild. They can't hire me if I'm not-"

"I didn't say you was going to get paid for this," Var said. He turned to his fat companion. "Did I say this was a paying job?"

"Uh, no, Var."

"See, I thought I was being perfectly clear." He reached out and took Rinda by the arm. "The church wants a scribe with some smarts, and you fit the bill. So, let's get going, awright?"

Rinda reached around the doorjamb and grabbed the thin cloak that hung by the door. "Stay here until I come back, Hodur. Don't worry. I'll be all right."

Flanked by the churchmen, she hurried away from her home, through alleys shrouded with the lengthening shadows of twilight. "Where are you taking me?" she asked.

"Not far," Var replied. His beady eyes darted back and forth, taking stock of every figure huddled in a darkened doorway, every drunkard weaving in his path.

He's no fool, Rinda noted. This part of the Keep often proved a deathtrap for those unfamiliar with the things that stalked its night — the press gangs and assassins and lurking creatures hungry for human flesh. Worst of all, though, were the naug-adar, the Zhentarim wizards who roamed the alleys in search of subjects for their sadistic experiments. No one was safe from these "devil dogs," not even men wearing Cyric's holy symbol.

"Er, we was supposed to tell you he's dead," Worvo blurted. "Your father, I mean. Three nights ago."

"Yeah," Var added. "Right after he recommended you, he had a accident in the crypts below the temple. The church buried him there as a martyr."

"How nice," Rinda said flatly. She swallowed hard to drive down the lump in her throat — not of sadness, but of rage. Betrayal was nothing new to her, especially from her father. What infuriated her now was the thought that Bevis had given over his only child to theChurchofCyric, and he hadn't even saved himself by doing it.

* * * * *

Rinda smelled the parchment-maker's shop long before she saw it. The stench of animal skins and fetid barrels of standing water wafted from the place, making the whole alley stink like an abattoir. From the amount of activity on the street, though, it was obvious the neighbors had gotten used to the unpleasant odor long ago.

In darkened doorways, scantily clad girls called out to anyone sober enough to walk on his own. And if a passerby happened to stumble, they descended on him like crows on a battlefield, taking everything of the slightest value. The body picked clean, the women hurried back to their cold, lightless perches, hacking and coughing from long-untreated maladies.

A pack of grubby children poured out of a rookery at one end of the street. They howled like wolves and overturned everything in their path not nailed down. Before that horde of flying feet and unwashed faces, men and women scattered. The prostitutes slammed their doors closed, waiting for the mob to pass, and Rinda and her escort pressed themselves against a wall. The churchmen drew their daggers to warn away the urchins. Fortunately, the pack seemed more interested in making noise than preying on anyone in particular.

As the children passed and the howling died down, a drunken chorus of bawds took command of the night air. At a tavern down the way, they belted out a paean to Loviatar, punctuating the end of each verse with a loud clattering of mugs on tabletops. Rinda thought she heard the sharp crack of a whip, too — a common enough sound at dusk in Zhentil Keep.

"This way," Var murmured through the handkerchief braced against his mouth and nose. He tugged her toward a small shop crushed between two higher buildings.

Light bled out through thick, latticed windows on the lower floor, pooling in the street that revealed enough of the place for Rinda to see it was a one-story workshop, with two floors of living quarters over it. The upper windows were either boarded up or dark. As she had suspected from the smell, the sign above the door proclaimed it the abode of a parchmenter.

Six Zhentilar stood before the shop, a wall of chain mail and bared swords. These were elite soldiers, Rinda guessed, maybe even part of Lord Chess's personal bodyguard. They stood at attention, watching the passing prostitutes and drunkards and feral children.

Var lowered his handkerchief as he approached the Zhentilar, then batted Worvo's down as well. The soldiers greeted him in return with a picket of raised blades. "Scribe for Patriarch Mirrormane," Var said to the nearest soldier.

After a moment, the man nodded his square chin and let them pass. Rinda shuddered as the light played off the soldier's face. The long scars marring his cheeks announced to the world that his tongue had been removed.

The shop door creaked open. Patriarch Mirrormane appeared on the stoop, wreathed by light and rubbing his hands together nervously. "Ah, at last," he said then fished two silver coins from the pocket of his long purple clerical robe. "Well done."

Var and Worvo took the coins eagerly, their disgust at the alley's smell driven away by greed. "Our thanks, Patriarch," Var offered. He bowed grandly and kissed the death's-head ring the high priest wore. When Worvo lumbered forward to do the same, Mirrormane waved him away.

"One of the Zhentilar will escort you out of here," the patriarch said as he pulled Rinda into the shop. The door slammed closed on the thugs' further exclamations of gratitude.

From the steel in Mirrormane's eyes, Rinda knew that Var and Worvo would be dead before they made three blocks. It was a common practice for Cyric's church: hire a messenger then kill him once he'd completed his task.

The patriarch's face was a mask of wrinkles, his silver-white hair a nest of snakes. He smiled in a poor imitation of warmth and gestured for the scribe to move into the room. They were alone amongst the tilting shelves and rolls of finished parchment.