The Brazen Gambit

"Something following you, city-scum?" the half-elf snarled-the first words he had spoken and full of a familiar adolescent whine.

"No, nothing." The stones and scrub where the shadow had appeared were empty now. Maybe there'd be another chance before sundown. Maybe-but no sane man would waste spit on those dice. The cart rolled from the packed dirt of the outside to the smooth, patterned cobblestones of Urik's streets. They reached the first plaza. He veered left, toward the wide, well-traveled avenue that led directly to the customhouse. The dwarf continued straight ahead toward the tangled stalls and alleys where weavers, dyers, and cloth merchants plied their trade. They collided with each other and the cart.

Yohan retreated a pace, giving him another measuring sweep with his eyes. The customhouse had not been mentioned since he'd joined them.

"Is there a problem?" the druid asked.

"He headed for the customhouse."

She laid a reassuring hand on Yohan's shoulder before turning to Pavek. He lowered the cart traces and, belatedly, worked on the cramps in his shoulder and arm.

"Follow Yohan, and don't cause trouble. We must attend other matters first."

He soon discovered the substance of those 'other matters.' Once he'd dragged the cart deep into a thicket of uncut cloth and bright-dyed skeins of wool and linen-where they were screened off from prying eyes and a man's shouts for help would be absorbed by the cloth or lost in the general din of bargaining-he was pummeled by the dwarf until he lay face-up on the cobblestones, with the tapered, metal-wrapped ferrule of the half-elfs staff resting in the hollow of his throat.

"Search him," the druid commanded, and the dwarf did so-efficiently.

"Well now, what have we here? An interesting bit of crockery for a wage-scum to have tucked beneath his belt..."

Yohan held up the glazed medallion.

"A templar! Yellow-robed blood-sucker," the copper-haired youth sneered, and the pressure on Pavek's throat increased.

"Not a templar, Ruari," the druid corrected, taking the medallion from Yohan's hand. "But the templar who gave us so much trouble last time we were here." She dangled the yellow ceramic above Pavek's face. "I am correct in that, am I not? You are that templar...? What happened to your bright yellow robe, templar-scum?"

Pavek was not fool enough to deny the accusation. "The zarneeka-that yellow powder you bring to the customhouse-it gets made into a poison called Laq-"

The half-elf leaned on his staff, and Pavek groaned.

"Ease off, Ru. Let him finish."

Between coughs and gasps, Pavek had a heartbeat to wonder if he hadn't made the biggest mistake in his soon-to-be-ended life. "Ral's Breath was sold freely and cheaply everywhere in the city. Folk who couldn't afford a healer's touch thought it eased their pain. Now your zarneeka gets simmered into a poison that rots a man's mind and turns him into a raving beast before it kills him. I thought you would want to know. I thought a druid-"

Pressure returned with a vicious twist

"Ruari!"

-And eased again.

"I thought a druid would care."

"He's a templar. A liar and a spy. Let's kill him and leave him here. The quicker the better."

The fire-hardened staff wavered in Ruari's hands, but his aim was true enough to kill a helpless man in a few, pain-filled moments. The druid steadied the staff with her own firm grip. "Why should I believe anything you say, bloodsucker?"

"Because you ke

"My name is Akashia," she said, pushing the staff aside. "And I do care. What about you? Since when does a templar care about anything that does not line his purse with gold or power?"

It wasn't an easy question to answer, especially with that half-elf ready to send him to oblivion for every hesitation or ill-chosen word, but he tried. He described the Laq-crazed man storming into Joat's Den, and how that had led him to a woman's broke-neck corpse, an administrator's chamber, the inspection sands and, finally deep in the customhouse itself.

He did not mention names-not Rokka, Dova

Akashia's face, viewed from his current angle, was as hard and passionless as any templar's. He was fat gone from the pan to the fire, and it was just as well that the boy had vanished.

"I've been outcast these last six weeks, with a forty-gold-piece price on my head, waiting for you to return-"

"You are the Pavek written on the wall?" the druid asked, warming slightly and revealing that she, too, possessed forbidden literacy.

He nodded. The movement drew the staff to his throat again.

"A templar-excuse me-a renegade templar with a conscience. Let him up, Ruari."

He got slowly to his feet, dusting his shabby shirt and tugging it smooth beneath his belt. "Pavek-" he extended his hand. "Just-Plain Pavek. I don't like what this Laq poison does before it kills. I don't claim a conscience but-" A length of rust-colored cloth rippled, though the air was still inside the cloth quarter. He stood on his toes, trying to see over the cloth. Once again he caught the impression of a dark, lithe, and fleeting shadow; nothing more-until he felt Ruari staring at him with renewed suspicion.

"The information you'll need if you want to stop-" Pavek caught himself with Escrissar's name on his tongue. "If you want to see that your zarneeka powder isn't turned into Laq."

"And what to you want in exchange for this information, Pavek-since you don't have a conscience to tell you right from wrong?"

She'd insulted him. Pavek was sure of that from her arched eyebrows, but for the life of him, he didn't know how. She'd changed the rules, and he felt shame as he explained himself. "First off, I want safe passage from Urik to your bolt-hole. You must have one. Then we'll trade for my information.''

"He can't be serious!" Ruari exclaimed, then, when the woman did not immediately support him: "Akashia-you can't be serious. He's a templar! Once a yellow-robed bloodsucker, always a yellow-robed blood-sucker. He'll betray us all-if he hasn't betrayed us already. He's been looking all around, like a scum-slime traitor who's led us into an ambush. Shifty-eyed templar-scum."

The youth thwacked Pavek's shin with his staff, drawing blood and, very nearly, retaliation.

"Are you looking for something, someone?" Akashia asked.

His initial judgment had not changed: he wasn't sure he trusted them any more than they trusted him, and he definitely didn't want Zvain involved. Fortunately, there was another acceptable answer: "I've got forty gold coins resting on my head, woman! Of course, I'm jumping at shadows and looking over my shoulders."

"That's a lot of gold," Yohan the dwarf mused aloud.

"Take a very rich man not to be tempted."

"Pyreen protect us," Ruari swore an oath Pavek had never heard before. "Let's just turn him in."

"No," Akashia decided, and her decisions were clearly the ones that mattered. "Yohan-?"

She turned to the dwarf, her fingers fluttering in what, for her, seemed unusual femininity. Pavek had half an instant for suspicion before Yohan's fist blasted into his gut, and the half elf's staff struck hard at the base of his skull. After that there was darkness, and after the darkness, oblivion.