Mistress of the Night

by Don Bassingthwaite

  “I’ll be back by dawn,” Feena promised.

  As the carriage slowed to a walk, she opened the door and hopped out carefully. The driver twisted around and gawked at her, but Julith rapped on the roof and ordered him to pick up the pace once more. Feena turned away from the carriage and down a street that led toward the chaos of the Stiltways.

  She trotted through the streets in silence. It felt good to be out on her own again. Even with Julith’s support and quiet suggestions over the past several days, even with her performance that night, Moonshadow Hall had started to wear on her once more. Ceremonies, rituals, prayers, meetings with the temple staff, meetings with important followers of Selûne—even when she had left most of those things to Velsinore and Mifano, it appeared there were responsibilities she couldn’t delegate away. Thanks had been delivered to the temple on behalf of the ruling council and the Nessarch, Yhaunn’s mayor, for the swift action that had prevented an epidemic of disease in the slums. Feena had been forced to stand and accept the honor, though Mifano had somehow arranged to make it seem that the idea was entirely his. Velsinore was busy preparing for the New Moon Beneficence, only a few days away, and seemed to want Feena’s official approval on every last detail, even though she’d clearly gone ahead with everything beforehand.

  If there had been any benefit to the night’s confrontation with the tall priestess, Feena hoped, maybe it would be that Velsinore would stop bothering her. How had Mother Dhauna put up with the woman?

  Feena clenched her teeth. And there was Dhauna. The High Moonmistress had woken on the morning after her seizure claiming no memories of the event. Mifano and Velsinore had given Feena knowing looks. Even in private, Feena hadn’t been able to coax Dhauna into admitting that anything had happened. Julith, however, reported that she was skimming through materials in the temple archives with a new and frantic energy.

  There would be answers within a tenday, Dhauna had promised. Feena was beginning to doubt that.

  She’d had no time to look into the threat of Sharran activity. When she raised the issue again with Mifano, couching it in the most diplomatic terms she could manage, he had once more denied the possible existence of a cult of the dark goddess in Yhaunn.

  “We’d know, Feena,” he’d said. “Sharrans can’t hide themselves forever. Shar thrives on sacrifices and wicked deeds. We watch for those but we’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary.” He’d given her a sideways glance. “Except for a suspiciously mauled body in the Stiltways, that is.”

  Feena had said failed to respond.

  Her chances of finding any clues almost five nights later, after Manas and the city guard had already surveyed the area, were questionable. As she’d told Julith, though, she had to at least try. Velsinore had mocked her for leaving the Selûnite battle against Shar to fight the bloody followers of Malar, but it didn’t seem as if Moonshadow Hall was trying very hard in the battle against Shar either. There was something more to be found, something more going on than either Mifano or Velsinore knew about—Feena was certain of it.

  And while she missed the keen insight that her wolf-shape’s nose gave her, there were places two legs could go that four could not. She would enter the Stiltways as a woman.

  The district was busier than it had been before. Its lower levels seemed darker as well. Feena paused in the shadows to let her eyes adjust and to get her bearings, then plunged onward. While her departure from the Stiltways the last time had been hasty and furtive in an attempt to conceal her monstrous hybrid wolf-woman form, she had taken care to make note of landmarks. Even so, her progress through the darkness of the Stiltways’s streets was haphazard. She was forced to backtrack several times. She clenched her teeth. Manas had said the Sharran’s friends claimed he hadn’t frequented the Stiltways. When she’d followed the man, however, he’d moved quickly and with purpose. Even if he hadn’t frequented the mazy district, he’d been more than familiar with the route to the well.

  Feena stayed alert as she walked, not just for the human predators and denizens of the Stiltways, but for signs of more monstrous presences, the kind of creatures that might maul a body. Especially the kind that would maul a body with poison flowing through it. Over the past several days, she’d given the question a lot of thought. It was possible that feral dogs had done the damage, but they would have smelled the poison on the Sharran just as she had and shied away. More unnatural predators might not have minded the poison, but she hadn’t caught the scent of any such creatures before. Was it another werewolf, or other lycanthrope, as Manas had suggested? It was possible, but unlikely—Feena couldn’t understand why any intelligent creature would risk poisoning itself just to ravage a corpse.

  Unless someone had deliberately set out to make the Sharran’s death look more violent than it really had been and to pin that violence on her. In which case, who and why? She couldn’t believe that even Velsinore or Mifano, as much as they disliked her, would stoop to such a thing.

  She found the tiny courtyard and the well. Just as before, the area was deserted. Scooping up a pebble, Feena murmured a prayer to Selûne. A thread of divine energy shivered through her fingers. When she opened her fist, the pebble shone with the light of a full moon. She cupped her hand so that the light shone only downward and played it across the ground. The courtyard was paved with broad flagstones, broken and uneven with time. Dirt and dust blurred its corners, and mingled with a scattering of broken crockery.

  There was only the faintest of stains where the Sharran had fallen. Her human nose wasn’t as sensitive as her wolf nose, but even so, she could smell only the residue of poisoned blood. She looked closer. A wide patch of the cracked stone paving was cleaner than elsewhere in the courtyard and the dust around it was streaked and pocked by water. Some well-meaning soul had tried to wash away the offense of the man’s death, probably with the very water he had been trying to taint. Feena shined her light on the dust and dirt. The only tracks she saw were the prints of boots and sandals. She sighed and looked around the courtyard, then turned her gaze upward to the walkways and platforms above it.

  Two levels up, light glimmered and rough sounds of merriment drifted down—the backside of a tavern, she guessed. She stepped all the way to the opposite side of the courtyard and peered closely at the wall, risking an upward flash of her magical light. It barely reached that high, but she could make out long, wet stains streaking the wall—and the figure of a man who staggered and slurred obscenities, twisting around to peer over his shoulder as the faint light caught him. Feena flicked the light back down and wrinkled her nose. The tavern’s toilet facilities, such as they were, overlooked the courtyard.

  It was a place to start. Some regular patron of the tavern might have seen or heard something to give her a clue. She dismissed the light with a whisper and waited for her eyes to adjust again, then slipped back out onto the street and looked for a way up. A simple ladder two buildings over led up one level; a steep plank ramp led up another. She doubled back along a narrow, creaking platform and found the front of the tavern. It was hardly an inspiring sight. Narrow windows, any glass in them long since broken away, spilled light and the blue smoke of pipeweed into the night. The door of the place had been a window at some point in the past—a frame of rough wood covered the rounded edges of long broken bricks. The narrow alley that led to the courtyard reeked of urine. The tavern didn’t smell any better.

  And only a short time ago, Feena thought, I was walking in a beautiful garden and shaking hands with the great and glorious of Yhaunn.

  She crinkled her nose and stepped through the open door.

  In spite of its appearance and odor, the tavern was packed with customers. A few glanced at her—some wearily, some suspiciously, some with an unnerving lasciviousness—but most ignored her presence. The crowd was a surprising mix of rogues off the streets, sailors up from the docks, respectable craftsmen, and well-dressed merchants, all of them squeezed in and sweating together. A bard was giving a raucous performance in
one corner. In another, a big, muscular woman in shining bracers was arm-wrestling a burly dwarf to the encouragement of the crowd. Their chants—“Lahumbra! Lahumbra!”—mixed with the screeching of the bard to create quite a din. Feena forced her way through, trying to guess who might be a likely patron to have witnessed something in the courtyard.

  She settled on an old man wedged into a corner near the thick plank that served as the bar. He looked as comfortable as if he had grown there, but his eyes were bright and sharp, not addled with too much ale. She stepped in close to him.

  “Good evening to you, sir!” she said over the noise of the tavern.

  His eyes went wide and Feena bit her tongue. She’d gotten too used to speaking in the stilted, precise register of a high priestess. She forced her voice back to its normal tones.

  “Well met, old father!”

  The man’s long eyebrows twitched. “Well met, young daughter.” He switched the stem of a clay pipe to the other side of his mouth as his eyes traveled slowly up and down her body. Feena fought back an urge to growl at him. He sighed regretfully. “Lass, if I were thirty years younger, your virtue would be in danger.”

  She gave him a sharp-toothed smile. “Really?” she asked. “From what?”

  The old man choked on his pipe smoke and let out a long, rattling laugh.

  “Well, aren’t you a shark out of water,” he wheezed after a moment. His eyes fixed on her face. “Eyes like an angel, tongue like a guard. You’ve got questions, don’t you?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “When anyone comes into the Cutter’s Dip and doesn’t belly up to the bar first thing, they’ve got questions.” His pipe switched sides again and smoke drifted out of his mouth with his words. “But you’re lucky. I’ve got nothing to hide, especially from a woman as lovely as you.” His eyes began to wander downward again. “Ask away, daughter, ask away.”

  Feena ground her teeth and crossed her arms over her bosom. The old man puffed smoke in disappointment. Feena drove straight to the point.

  “The walkway behind this place—it looks over a courtyard,” she said. “I’m trying to find someone who might have seen anything happen there five nights ago.”

  The man’s pipe drooped in his teeth, then snapped up as he clenched his jaw. His fingers made a sign against evil.

  “Beshaba’s ivory arms,” he hissed. “Are you mad? It was a werewolf—tore a man to bits down there.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Feena said. “I’m looking for more information. If anyone was back there and looked down or if anyone in here heard anything, I’d like to know.”

  “Listen for yourself, girl! You can’t hear from one side of this place to the other!” The old man reached for a mug of ale with a trembling hand. “I was in here that night. Sat right here while a man was slaughtered not sixty feet away. If I’d gone out to have a splash at the wrong time, that could have been me down there!” He gulped from his mug.

  “Here, Noyle, what’s wrong?”

  The barkeep leaned over sharply. Other patrons standing by the bar turned to look as well. Before she knew it, the old man had become the center of attention, and Feena along with him.

  “The wolf of the Stiltways,” Noyle moaned. He glared at Feena. “I don’t know what a woman like you would be doing looking for a beast like that, daughter, but let me tell you—I’ve a friend and his grandson’s wife saw the monster prowling that night.” He slammed his mug down. “Aye, she chanced to be awake and look down from her window as it stalked out of the Stiltways, its fur slick and red with blood by the full moon’s light, and in its claws—” he stuck out his hand, his fingers curled up—“it carried the heart of its victim!”

  Feena swallowed. The Sharran’s flask, of course, and her own russet fur, altered by the sleepless woman’s tales.… She ran her tongue around her lips.

  “Actually, the full moon was a tenday ago,” she said awkwardly.

  All eyes turned to her. Noyle shook his curled fingers under her nose.

  “Have some respect for a murdered man, girl!” he said. “By the twin gauntlets of Torm and Helm, I hope that when they catch that monster they stretch its skin over Yhaunn’s gates and sink its bloody corpse in the harbor!”

  “Here, here!” cheered the spectators around the bar.

  A shudder of discomfort ran down Feena’s back. As the spectators raised their mugs and drank, she slipped away.

  Or tried to. Her back bumped up against a man’s firm chest.

  “Well, would you look at this, Drik! It’s our feisty missus from the other night!” Hands spun her around and Feena found herself staring into Stag’s leering face. He bared his teeth in a nasty smile. “Well met, red bird! Going to show us your legs again?”

  CHAPTER 8

  Feena clenched her jaw, hissed, “With pleasure!”—and jabbed her knee up at Stag’s groin.

  The bandit twisted deftly out of the way.

  “Not this time, red bird,” he said. “Not so easy to surprise us when we know you’ve got fight in you.”

  He shoved her back hard and another pair of hands clutched at her—Drik. She slapped at him, but he ducked. Her blow clipped another man across the back of the head.

  “Hey!” the bystander snapped, and spun around to glare at her.

  “Your pardon, sir,” Feena gasped quickly in her most polite high priestess voice.

  She tried to duck around the man, but Drik was already there, boxing her in.

  “Not going to leave so soon, are you?” he asked.

  There was movement behind her as Stag closed again. Feena flung an elbow at him, but once again he just stepped out of the way and she was forced pull back or hit someone else. In the moment that she hesitated, Stag popped up inside her reach. He grabbed her arm and twisted it, bringing her into a close, painful embrace. She snapped at him but he only leaned away and laughed. She tried to wrench free, but his grip was too strong.

  “Let me go,” Feena spat, “or I’ll scream so loud everyone in this bar will hear me!”

  “Sing your lungs out, missus,” Stag said with a nasty grin. “This isn’t a country clearing.” He nudged the man Feena had accidentally slapped. “Is it, Kor?”

  The man turned and glared again. “Some of us are drinking, Stag,” he growled, then looked away as if utterly unconcerned with Feena’s captivity. Her eyes widened.

  “See, red bird,” cooed Stag, “this’s our own pretty little clearing right here. No one’s going to bother us.”

  He started to tug her toward the back of the bar, and Drik stepped forward to take her other side.

  As the second bandit closed, Feena reared back against Stag and kicked out at Drik with both feet. The blow connected, and Drik stumbled into Kor, who roared in frustration. When he whirled around, beer dripped from his face. He cuffed Drik hard with a meaty fist. Startled, Stag relaxed his hold on Feena. She twisted half free of him and leaned toward the corner of the bar.

  “Noyle!” she shouted. “Noyle!”

  The old man looked up from his story. His eyebrows rose. Other people swung around as well, just as Stag grabbed for her again, trying to pull her back into his grasp. Drik was rising, too, an ugly look of rage burning on his face. He grabbed her free arm and used it as leverage to drive a punch against her chin. Feena’s head snapped back.

  “Torm and Helm!” Noyle gasped.

  Through a brief wash of bright pain, Feena saw him start up from his chair and turn to face Stag. She started to pull herself away from the bandit—

  “She’s the one who beat you down?” asked Noyle.

  Feena froze. Stag’s hand tightened on her right arm.

  “She’s the one,” the bandit said. “Fights like a demon and twice as dirty.”

  “Stag and me were lucky to get away,” Drik chimed in, seizing her left arm. “She charmed us like fools with her country girl act, then turned on us faster than you could pick a pocket. That’s probably what she had in mind for you too, Noyle.”

/>   The old man flinched back. Drik twisted Feena’s arm painfully.

  She gasped and growled but Stag jabbed her hard under the ribs before she could say anything. The blow left her struggling to suck air into her lungs and would have doubled her over if the two bandits hadn’t been holding her up.

  “Got to be careful of her,” Stag said. “She’s got some kind of magic, too.”

  Noyle pulled away in alarm and said, “She’s probably some kind of wild hedge mage.” He spat on the floor in her direction. “Beshaba’s arms hold you, bitch!”

  Feena managed to get her breath back.

  Moonmaiden’s grace, Feena, she cursed, you picked a fine tavern to start poking around in, didn’t you?

  She fought back the rising fear that surged in her belly. Selûne’s magic wasn’t going to help her. Drik and Stag would stop her at the first sign of a spell. Anywhere else, she might even have considered changing shape—her hybrid form was strong and fierce enough to take on four men or more—but in this place? If she revealed herself as a werewolf, she’d be facing an angry mob.

  Stag and Drik couldn’t have the entire tavern on their side, could they? Bright Lady of the Night favor me, she prayed.

  She twisted around as best she could and screamed over her shoulder, “Help me! Somebody help me!”

  A few people looked up, startled, but friends held them back. Others glanced at her, then laughed.

  “Now, didn’t I say no one would bother us, red bird?” sneered Stag. “You know, there’s a reason people are afraid to come down here after dark.” He grinned at his partner. “Hey Drik, let’s show missus how alone she really is!”

  Drik’s face split in a horrid smile. “Aye, Stag!” His voice rose. “Dip’s stagger!” he shouted out.

  His call got more attention than Feena’s scream. All around the tavern, people shouted back eagerly as they turned to face the bandits and their captive. Stag and Drik hauled roughly on Feena’s arms.