The Alabaster Staff

by Edward Bolme

  The sergeant nodded assent.

  Kehrsyn suppressed a smile and said, “Are you ready? Watch closely.” She held out her right hand and placed the coin on it. “There, it’s showing crowns, right? Crown side up, got it? Now watch closely.”

  She held her left hand out next to her right, palm down. With a flick as fast as an arrow, she flipped her right hand down on top of her left, concealing the coin against the back of her left hand.

  “Now, Sergeant,” she said, “tell me which side is up: crowns or verses.”

  The sergeant snorted, “Verses, of course.”

  Kehrsyn faked a heavy sigh and lifted her hand.

  “Sergeant,” she said, “you weren’t paying attention.”

  The crowd gasped; the coin showed crowns. The sergeant blinked a few times and did nothing until the elbowing of his troops prompted him to give Kehrsyn a silver egora.

  “All right, let’s try it again, shall we?” said Kehrsyn.

  The sergeant nodded.

  “Look,” she said, “we’ll try it a different way. I’ll put verses side up this time. Got it? Verses up. Remember that. Ready? Verses up.” Again she flipped her hand over with the speed of a falcon. “For a silver, Sergeant, which side is up?”

  “It was verses up,” mumbled the sergeant to himself, ensuring he had been paying full attention and remembering the chain of events properly, “and you flipped your hand over, so now it has to be crowns. Crowns up,” he said.

  “Sergeant, I’m trying to help. I gave you the answer, you know. I said, ‘Verses up.’ Three times I did.”

  When she lifted her hand, the coin indeed showed verses. The crowd cheered, most especially the soldiers. The sergeant handed over another egora.

  Urged by those around, the sergeant agreed to a third guess. Kehrsyn placed crowns up once more and flipped her hand, but before the sergeant could say anything, the soldier known as Noseminer stepped up.

  “I’ll make the guess this time, wench,” he said, “and I’ll wager three egorae against all three of yours!”

  Kehrsyn paused and glanced around, her face paling.

  “Uh … but the sergeant …” she stammered.

  “I’m onto your trick,” Noseminer proclaimed. He clamped his hands on hers, ensuring that she couldn’t manipulate the coin. “The guess is mine. Don’t back out!”

  Kehrsyn recovered some of her composure and said, “You—you don’t have three silvers on you to wager, so I decline.”

  Ordering one of his fellows to keep a tight hold on Kehrsyn’s hands, Noseminer emptied his purse and indeed found he had only one egora’s worth of copper on him. So, while carefully watching to ensure she held her hands perfectly still, he quickly borrowed two others from his peers.

  “There you are,” he proclaimed. “Three silvers, even if two are in copper. Now show the coin!”

  “Your guess?” asked Kehrsyn.

  “Crowns!” barked the soldier.

  “You’re sure you won’t change your mind?”

  “Quit trying to flummox me and show the coin!”

  Kehrsyn lifted her hand. The egora very plainly showed verses. The audience erupted in laughter and applause. In the midst of the noise, the soldier stared at her in shock and anger.

  “The trick,” she told him, “is knowing when to stop.”

  But before she could scoop the coins from his hand, Noseminer clenched his fist and stormed off, followed by the jeers of the gathered crowd. The rest of the soldiers ambled off as well, chuckling to themselves.

  Despite having been shortchanged, Kehrsyn still had a profit to show for her efforts. She paid the merchant back two silvers as she had promised, and received an ovation for her honesty. But, in the end, applause was all that the crowd was willing to part with.

  She performed prestidigitation and sleight of hand through the early afternoon, to an ever-changing crowd that watched with enough interest to withstand the drizzle, if only for a short while. Finally, however, the ongoing drizzle chilled her thoroughly, and her hands began to shiver. She had to stop. She looked into her little box, open at her feet. Save a thin film of water, it was empty. She had nothing to show for her efforts but a single silver egora and the fading memories of a score or more of bright, young faces. One silver for a young woman with nothing to eat and no place to stay.…

  She hoped the children’s happy memories of her would last longer than her pittance.

  Kehrsyn had stopped her performance, but the shopping in the plaza showed no sign of winding down, despite the cold rain. The initial crowds drawn by the arrival of a new shipment of food were thinner, but still persistent in the face of prices that had doubled, then doubled again. Chilled guards scowled over the newly arrived edibles, while the city watch occasionally roughed someone up.

  Probably just trying to keep warm, thought Kehrsyn.

  She gathered her gear and pulled her hood over her rain-dampened hair. Kneeling, she tipped the water out of her small box and closed the lid, put it back into her bag, and slung the bag’s strap across her shoulder. As she rose, she saw a scrawny youth standing nearby. Kehrsyn recognized him. He’d been hanging around the fringe of the crowd, trying to pretend he hadn’t been watching her. He met her eyes, then dropped his gaze, then tried to look at her again but more or less failed and stared in the general vicinity of her neck.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “You’re real good, Miss,” he mumbled. He reached out one hand to her, hiding his face behind his shoulder. He held a large, ripe golden pear in his grip. “Um … here.”

  She took the offering with both hands and smiled.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much. What’s your name?”

  “Jaldi,” said the lad, with a self-conscious smile. He paused, then blurted, “You’re real pretty, too.” Then he turned and ran away.

  Kehrsyn waved at his rapidly retreating back, but he didn’t look behind him before he left her sight. She took a big, contented bite of the pear, staring vacantly in the direction the boy had gone.

  The delight engendered by his awkward compliment faded and was replaced by a cool dread. The boy’s admiration had put her in mind of the sole other member of the audience who’d watched her entire performance: a harsh-looking man with swarthy features and a dark green cloak. At first, she had taken him for one of the army, so military was his bearing. He had situated himself here and there around the plaza, never obvious, always where the view was best, leaning against a wall or wagon, arms folded across his chest, eyes narrowed, running his thumb back and forth over his lower lip.

  She turned, chewing her lunch, and skimmed the courtyard. There, to her right. The same man was still watching her, over by the horse trough next to the blacksmith’s. While Kehrsyn liked admirers as much as anyone, there was something in the man’s stance that was far too businesslike for her tastes, as if he looked on her as an adversary and not a potential flirtation.

  Kehrsyn casually walked out of the courtyard. She paused to inspect a blade offered by an arms merchant (weapons were priced almost as exorbitantly as food) and, turning the polished bronze weapon in her hand to reflect the Jackal’s Courtyard behind her, caught a glimpse of the dark man moving parallel to her on the other side of the plaza. He was shadowing her, to her left and rear.

  The merchant stooped under his table, and Kehrsyn’s hand strayed to her sash, but she remembered her vow and forced herself to return the blade with a “thank you” and a dazzling smile. She continued on her way to a street leading off the plaza. Once out of the man’s view, she increased her speed and turned into an angled street on her right, quickly enough that he—whoever he was—could not have seen her.

  Just to be safe, she picked up her speed even more, then ducked into a narrow alley that opened to her left, keeping her free hand on her rapier to keep it from bouncing around. She wasn’t certain where the alley led, but, wherever it did, she was certain that she had evaded the stranger.

  Though the alley
protected her from the chill breeze, the rain and the cold remained, enhanced somewhat by the foul smells of rotting refuse. For once, Kehrsyn found a reason to thank the cold weather. In the summers, alleys stank something foul. Her breath steamed around her limp hair as she moved down the alleyway, looking for an outlet to another avenue. Navigating by instinct, she moved through the narrow, winding gap, passing a few branches before coming to a dead end. She paused and stared blankly at the wall in front of her, concealed as high as her waist by a pile of decomposing garbage. She pulled a lock of wet hair out of her face and retraced her steps, but just as she arrived at the first juncture, she saw her way blocked by an armed man.

  She was relieved to see that it wasn’t the same man from the plaza … and, for just a moment, she also felt a slight pang of disappointment.

  He was short, shorter than she. The steam curling from his sneering lip combined with his powerful build to give the impression of a bull or a fighting dog. A thick cloak covered his head and shoulders, and a black tabard with some sort of gold emblem draped off his wide chest, the hem shedding droplets that splashed in the dirty puddles at his feet. A shield hung across his back. He straightened as he saw Kehrsyn approach, and her ears picked up the grate of steel on steel. He’s wearing mail beneath his cloak, Kehrsyn thought, splint or scale.

  “Olaré,” she said, for lack of anything better, and took another bite of her pear. “So, um, what kind of uniform is that? That’s no soldier’s outfit that I know. And you don’t have that medallion the Northern Wizards’ people wear. Are you a mercenary? Or some kind of deputized …”

  Kehrsyn’s words trailed off as the burly man drew a long sword from a well-crafted scabbard. He swung it at his side in a lazy figure eight and stepped toward her.

  Kehrsyn jumped to an unwanted conclusion.

  “I’ll scream,” she said.

  “Go ahead,” said the man in a surprisingly high-pitched voice with a noticeable northwestern accent. “If the local pikegrabbers get here, I don’t gotta trot you all the way over to the damn barracks to get my bounty.”

  Kehrsyn furrowed her brow.

  “Don’t try to act so damn innocent, pretty little thief,” he said, sounding more like a juvenile than the veteran he clearly was. “You stole that pear, and there’s a bounty on freeloaders like you.”

  Kehrsyn’s eyes widened as she stared at the half-eaten piece of fruit in her hand.

  “I did no such thing!” she blurted.

  She began edging backward, down the dead-end alley.

  “Of course not,” replied the man, “ ’cuz I hear that in this city, if you steal food, they don’t chop your hand, they chop your damn neck.”

  “I didn’t steal it!” said Kehrsyn, knowing how thin her protests must sound. “It was a gift! This boy, he liked—” She halted her tongue before she said, “he liked my performance,” knowing full well it would be taken the wrong way. “He liked me …” she continued, even more flustered.

  “Uh-huh,” said the man, swinging the blade unconsciously in his right hand. “We dock here only this damn morning, and soon as we get them pears out, someone steals a whole damn bunch. You leave the market, eating a damn pear. I follow, and you walk faster. When I get close, you run and duck into this damn alley, and now you say you din’t do nothin’. Well too damn bad for you.” Then, looking her over, he added, “Though you maybe could work a deal. The others would like the looks of you, all nice and thin like that. The Zhentarim can be … merciful. At times.”

  “I—I didn’t s-steal it,” stammered Kehrsyn as she continued her slow retreat. Her stomach tightened in knots. “Ask the people at the square. I was performing.”

  “Quit your damn bleating.”

  He reached for her with his free hand, but Kehrsyn hopped lightly backward. Glancing at his extended arm, she saw that he indeed wore splint mail. He stepped forward. She dropped her pear and drew her rapier, holding it defensively in front of her with her left hand. As she’d hoped, that caused him to pause briefly. He lowered himself as if to spring.

  The man studied her, negligently describing easy, lethal arcs with his sword beside him. For a moment, as he examined her stance, he wore the ruthless face of a tiger, then a cruel smile pulled up one corner of his mouth.

  He saw the point of Kehrsyn’s rapier trembling ever so slightly. The rain dripped. The fearful trembling grew. His smile widened, as did Kehrsyn’s eyes.

  The man straightened up again, nodding in smug disdain.

  “So pussycat thinks she’s got a claw, huh?” he mocked. “Here’s what I think of that!”

  He swung his sword crosswise and slapped the blade from her hand with a flagrant, sweeping backhand blow, sending it clattering against the stone wall of the alley. As he did so, Kehrsyn was already thrusting with a dagger in her right hand—her good hand—the blade held vertically the better to slip between the strips of metal splints. Too late the man saw that he had fallen for her bait—believed her trembling, fearful feint—and left his body wide open for a counterattack. The long stiletto struck the man at the top of the thigh, just where his leg joined his abdomen, cutting tendons and lancing innards.

  Though he yet felt no pain, instinctively the man was already doubling over to protect his groin. He tried to strike Kehrsyn with his return stroke, but she nimbly dodged the blow and countered by tracing a gash across one eyebrow.

  The man’s traumatized hip gave way and he crumpled to his knees. He glared at her, but the blood welling up from his cut brow started to sting his eye. Just as he winced, Kehrsyn stepped forward and kicked him as hard as she could on the chin, sending the man backward. He flopped on the pavement, his lower legs doubled back underneath him.

  He groaned as Kehrsyn gingerly cleaned her dagger on his trousers. She sheathed the blade in its hidden pouch on the bottom of her bag, then recovered her pear and her rapier, which was, thankfully, undamaged.

  Glancing back, she saw that the man, despite his injuries and his irritated eyes, had pulled a small vial of bright blue liquid from his sword belt with a trembling hand and was moving it toward his lips.

  In an instant the point of her rapier planted itself just behind the wounded man’s ear.

  “A healing potion? No, you don’t … not yet,” she said. “You can drink it when I’m safely away, so why don’t you just put it back for now, hmm?”

  He obeyed, if feebly, slipping the potion back into its hidden resting place, and Kehrsyn breathed easier that she’d not had to follow through on her implied threat.

  Kehrsyn stepped around him, flicking her rapier’s point to his throat.

  “Oh, and while we’re at it.…” she added.

  She squatted beside him, taking care not to dirty her knees with the alley mud. She placed her half-eaten pear on her lap and patted the man down until she felt his coin purse tucked behind his belt.

  “In Unther, we don’t like foreigners trying to arrest innocent people. There’s a fine of, um …” She yanked his coin purse off his belt, though it took two or three tries before the thin leather thongs snapped. “Three coppers? You pathetic—pah!”

  Kehrsyn looked at the three small coins. Given the day’s events, she really needed them. She clenched and unclenched her fist and bit her lip, but she threw them down the alley.

  She picked her pear back up and stood.

  “You count to fifty before you try drinking that potion in your belt, you hear me?” she said, redirected anger adding force to her words. “And don’t you go looking for those coppers. Understand?”

  He nodded.

  Kehrsyn took two incautious steps, paused for two breaths, then took two more steps, all to give the man the illusion that he’d hear her when she left.

  She intended to glide silently away, but just as she was about to leave the hapless merchant’s guard, she heard the sound of clapping.

  Startled by the sudden applause (even if it only issued from a single pair of hands), Kehrsyn jumped forward, spinning with rema
rkable grace, and drew her rapier again, swinging it from side to side. The whispering sound of the blade slicing the air did nothing to dissipate the loud, arrogant clapping.

  The ovation made up in wet loudness what it lacked in quantity of hands, and the narrow, angled alley echoed the sound all around the startled young woman. Glancing around, Kehrsyn saw the alley was empty of anyone other than the wounded soldier and herself, but as her heart slowed to a more reasonable speed, she finally figured out the situation.

  She hazarded a look up. Despite the overcast, the sky shone brighter than the narrow alley, especially since the winter sun was edging toward the horizon, leaving the alley in relative shade. Kehrsyn shielded her eyes from the diffused light and the drizzling rain with the hand holding her pear.

  There, above her, the silhouette of someone’s torso peered over the roof, elbows moving in rhythm with the clapping sound. Just as she spotted her audience, the person stopped clapping and leaned out over the edge of the roof.

  “Ooh, that was slick, hon,” said a hoarse, dusky female voice. It had a nasal tinge, as if the speaker was thoroughly congested. “You dropped that pasty-face like a poleaxed heifer.”

  Kehrsyn narrowed her eyes, trying to get any better idea of what the interloper looked like, but all she could see was the black of the silhouette.

  “ ’Bout as strong as a piece of moldy bread, I’d say, but you got the dance down right. Yessirree.” She paused to cough and clear her throat.

  “What do you mean?” asked Kehrsyn, stalling, trying to find a better angle to look at her. Had the sun been out, Kehrsyn might have been able to settle herself into a shadow to eclipse some of the brightness, but the clouds evenly scattered the light that bled through.

  “I mean I wouldn’t bet a half-eaten herring on you to wrestle a wolf pup three falls of five, but you got the eyes of a hawk and the strike of a viper.” She paused to clear her throat, hawked up something vile from her lungs, and spat down the alley to Kehrsyn’s left. “Yessirree, I don’t think a black hare could slip past you at midnight under a new moon.”