The Brazen Gambit

The half-giant blocked the stairway up, so Pavek dived past Rokka. The dwarf, reasonably expecting Elabon to end the chase with spellcraft, flattened against the wall. He shared Rokka's expectation, but had to keep going until a spell dropped him in his tracks. But that didn't happen. Vaulting over a stair-rail, he made his escape into the depths of the catacombs.

He ran around the next corner, careened down another flight of stairs, and ran along a lock-lit corridor. Rokka was a coward at heart, but Dova

And then what? Trust himself to Metica?

Throw himself before King Hamanu's mercy? King Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy?

Fear tightened his chest and he stumbled to a halt in the near-darkness. Gasping for air, he swore he wouldn't worry about the future until he reached the street. His ribs relaxed. He spared a heartbeat to listen for Dova

There was method in the catacombs. Corridors crossed at predictable places. Pavek approached each one with caution, working his way across the man-made cavern, far below the room where the zarneeka powder was stored. He allowed himself to believe that he'd gotten behind Dova

Pavek climbed the steps soundlessly on the balls of his feet. The street door was bolted from the inside, which he judged a good omen. With his weight against the wood, he withdrew the bolt from its slot. It squeaked loud enough to wake the dead. He hid in the shadows, counted to fifty, then pushed the door outward. A band of moonlight widened into a rectangle through which he discerned no movement.

The door bumped once against the outer wall, then was still and silent Pavek counted to fifty again and crossed the threshold.

Arms as thick as a man's thighs dropped around his shoulders before he'd taken his third step. Half-giants were massive and strong, but their bodies were put together the same as any human's. Pavek crashed a boot-heel into his captor's knee and dug his fingertips into sensitive gaps in the half-giant's huge wrists. A pained bellow shattered the night as the brute's muscles spasmed. A second good crack into the half-giant's kneecap might have produced both freedom and a head start down the alley, but a well-thrown punch hit his jaw before he got his foot up.

"Damn you. Damn you to life everlasting," Dova

Pavek's neck snapped against the half-giant's hard chest. He was stu

"Get up," Dova

Groaning and retching, Pavek hauled himself to his knees. His last-ditch defiance, which had broken his nose so many times, sent disastrous words to his mouth: Elabon Escrissar can wait until I'm dead. But fortunately, his mouth was full of blood and he couldn't say anything. Dova

"Carry him," she told the half-giant.

That was more indignity than a living man could endure. Pavek spat blood. "I... can... walk."

"Then start walking." Dova

Pavek took one unsteady step after another. He clung to the handrail and pretty much fell down the first flight of stairs. It got easier after that. Dova

The pain was down to dull aches and he was moving fairly well by the time they got to the zarneeka corridor. The locked door was open. Dova

A trestle table had been set up in the center of the storeroom. Rokka stood behind it, busily mixing tiny scoops of zarneeka powder with much larger dollops of plain flour from the half-giant's barrels. He dumped the combination onto scraps of crude paper. Escrissar himself folded the scraps into self-sealing Ral's Breath packets with elegant movements of his taloned fingers.

The mask tilted upward. Their arrival had been noticed. Sharp eyes appraised him coldly from the depths of the mask. He turned away.

There was a halfling in the storeroom as well; he must have been behind the half-giant earlier. A hideous scar in the form of the Escrissar family crest had been burned into the halfling's face. The slave worked alone in a corner, blending zarneeka powder in a bowl with what looked and smelled like golden wine. A similar bowl bubbled on a tripod set over a blue-flamed lamp.

The implication was clear enough, even to a punch-drunk regulator: zarneeka was the necessary ingredient in Ral's breath, but, contrary to Metica-and King Hamanu's assertion-it was also the necessary ingredient in something else. "Pavek, Pavek, Pavek," Escrissar chanted, sucking his teeth and shaking his head between each repetition of Pavek's name. "Whatever are we going to do with you? You've made quite a nuisance of yourself. Too bad you weren't born in Tyr; there they might call you a hero, but here you're just a pathetic little man. A jozhal nipping at the Dragon's heel."

The question was pure rhetoric. Pavek knew what they intended to do with him. He had nothing left to lose or defend. That realization made him reckless. "Haven't you heard-the Dragon's dead-brought down by a pack of jozhals."

Escrissar's enameled talons flashed in the lamplight. They were razor-sharp near the tips and opened Pavek's cheek despite his belated efforts to dodge them. He caught his balance dangerously close to the halfling's tripod. The scarred slave's eyes were dead-black and filled with contempt; that expression did not change when the slave looked past Pavek to his master. Pavek let the wall do the hard work of keeping him upright while he sorted through what he saw.

Slaves did not cherish their masters. Hatred, intense and justified, seethed just below the most obsequious smile. Insolence that fell just short of disobedience had to be tolerated, even in Urik, but no slave should have survived the look the halfling gave his master.

Yet, like Rokka with the druid woman, Escrissar didn't retaliate.

Through the aches and haze, Pavek slowly understood that Escrissar didn't know the secret of the simmering decoction. He stared at the tripod, envisioning his foot thrust through the tripod's legs, overturning the crucible, and blatantly daring Escrissar to pluck his thoughts. The mask chuckled.

"Try it, if it will make you feel better before you die, but heroics will buy you nothing. We already have enough Laq to delude all Urik. We have plans, Pavek, plans for all Athas now that the Dragon, as you said, has been brought down by a pack of jozhals."

Laq.

Pavek's foot stayed where it was. Ral's Breath took the ache out of a strained muscle or throbbing head. Laq made people crazy, then it killed them. It didn't add cleanly, but then, he wasn't an alchemist. That halfling undoubtedly was; and that halfling was making Laq in his crucible. With those hate-filled eyes, the slave was closer to pure evil than Elabon Escrissar could hope to be; closer, even, than the sorcerer-king, Hamanu.