The Black Bouquet

"Oh, sheltering shadows of Mask," Gavath whimpered.

Aeron looked back. The small man had a quarrel and one of the scout's gray-fletched arrows protruding from his torso. His throat rattled, and he slumped motionless.

"Keep moving!" Kerridi snapped.

She reared up as if she didn't realize she had a crossbow bolt sticking in her too, then swayed, fell over backward, and tumbled down the stairs, knocking into the pursuers who'd started up after her.

Aeron sprinted on. There was nothing else to do. For the next few seconds, he had little to fear from the cross-bowmen who'd just discharged their weapons. It took them some time to cock and load. The scout, however, was a different matter. She was already pulling back her bow.

He wondered how many arrows she could loose before he made it up to the wall-walk. Too many, he suspected, for him to dodge them all. Given her manifest competence, he wondered if he could even evade the next one.

Her bow jumped, straightening itself, but the arrow didn't streak at him. It simply dropped at her feet. For an instant, he didn't understand, then he realized the string had broken.

He dashed on, fast as he'd ever moved in his life. A swordsman met him at the top of the steps. He dodged the fellow's blade, then slashed him across the wrist. The guard dropped his weapon, his eyes and mouth gaped open wide, and Aeron bulled him out of the way.

He glanced back. The ranger already had her bow restrung and another arrow drawn back.

He dived over the crenellations, and the ground rushed up at him. He told himself to roll, but he smashed down so hard that afterward he wasn't sure if he'd actually done it or not. Time skipped, and he was sprawled on his back.

He heaved himself to his feet. Evidently the desperate leap hadn't broken any bones. He hurt all over, but that didn't matter any more than the fatigue implicit in his pounding heart and gasping lungs. He had to run before someone took another shot at him from the ramparts, or other foes came streaming out of the gate.

He dashed north, toward the heart of the city with its leaning ramshackle towers, seeking to lose himself in the maze of twisting alleyways. Eventually he found a thin, unmarked flight of stairs at the end of a narrow cul-de-sac, and after descending into the earth, permitted himself to hunker down, utterly spent, and rest. His eyes stung, and he knuckled them angrily.

Bow in hand, guiding the sorrel mare with her knees, Miri Buckman forced her way down the congested lane until it became clear that the thief had outdistanced her.

Could she track him, then? Through a forest or across a moor, almost certainly. But in the city, creaking carts, drawn by oxen and mules, rolled up and down the avenues to erase whatever sign her quarry might have left. Pedestrians milled pointlessly about to complete the obliteration, and moreover, some of the wider thoroughfares were cobbled.

She cursed under her breath. She wasn't fond of cities in general with their crowds, dirt, and stink, and crumbling Oeble seemed a particularly obnoxious one.

By the Hornblade, she thought, the spires look as if they might collapse at any second.

Every other person on the street seemed either to slink furtively or to affect a bravo's strut and sneer. Indeed, every third passerby was a pig-faced, olive-ski

She wheeled the mare and cantered back to the Paeraddyn, where someone had already found a couple healers to tend the injured warriors. It didn't look as if the outlaws had actually killed more than a couple of her warriors. She supposed that was good, though in her present humor, she was half inclined to cut down a few of them herself. Stupid, incompetent-

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, controlling the anger, or at least redirecting it toward the proper target. She had no business scorning the mercenaries for failing to protect the treasure. Ultimately, it had been her responsibility and, maddeningly, her failure, just a few scant minutes before she might have divested herself of her charge.

Hostegym Longstride hobbled up to her with a faltering gait that belied his surname. Not seeing any blood on the burly, azure-cloaked mercenary, Miri surmised that one of the thieves had scored on him with a shrewd kick to the knee, a stamp to the foot, or some such.

"Most of our lads should survive," he rumbled. "Most of the i

"How about the three thieves who didn't get away?" she replied, swinging herself down off her horse. The motion made the top of her head throb where the fraudulent beggar had kicked her.

"All dead," the mercenary captain said. "The arrows and crossbow bolts killed the men outright, and it looks like the big wench broke her neck bouncing down the steps."

"Piss and dung," Miri swore. She'd hoped to question one of them.

A hostler, a pimply, gangling youth, scurried up to her.

"Madame… m-madame ranger?" he stammered, as if uncertain of the proper way to address her, or else simply afraid she might take out her frustrations on him. "A gentleman inside the i

"I'm sure he does. Take care of my mount." She handed the boy the reins, then glanced at Hostegym and added, "You might as well come along, too."

They headed into the common room of the i

Catching a first glimpse of that clean, well-tended hand, Miri had immediately guessed it had never performed any task more strenuous than guiding a quill across a piece of parchment. Seeing its owner up close reinforced the impression. Plump, clad in an unpretentious yet well-tailored tunic and breeches, dove gray with brown accents, he had the look of a chief clerk or steward, a highly placed functionary who spent his days assigning work to other people. Yet the set of his fleshy jaw bespoke a certain resolution, and his brown eyes, a wry intelligence, that persuaded her to defer the contempt she generally felt for such citified parasites.

"So," he said.

"You are…?" Miri prompted.

"The man you were supposed to meet," he said. "The fellow who would have examined the item, then gone and fetched the coin and letters of credit if everything was in order. We don't need to throw names around. Certainly not now."

"I thought this Paeraddyn place was supposed to be safe," Hostegym grumbled.

"My master's house is safe," the Oeble man replied, a thin edge of anger in his mild, reasonable baritone voice, "but your employer insisted we make the exchange on neutral ground, no doubt so I'd have difficulty simply seizing the item and refusing to pay the balance due."

"The folk of Oeble," Miri said, "even the more reputable ones, enjoy a certain notoriety."

"And sometimes," the pudgy man said, "a man spends so much effort looking over his shoulder for dragons that he walks right up on a bear. But I suppose it will do no good to debate what we ought to have done."