The Black Bouquet

by Richard Lee Byers

  Perhaps he felt it stick or shiver. In any event, he sensed he had to let go immediately. He snatched his hand back, and thunder boomed a split second later. The blast slammed him onto his back and brought loose twigs and dead leaves showering down from the branches overhead. Half dazed, he climbed back up onto his haunches, felt a wetness in his mustache, and wiped a smear of it onto his fingertips. His nose was bleeding.

  He felt a jab of anger, a regret he’d ever come within a hundred leagues of that wretched box that had killed his friends. He wanted to grab it and fling it into the underbrush, never to be found or trouble anyone again.

  But naturally, he didn’t really feel that way. No thief truly wanted to cast away his loot. Had he won it at great cost, that was just reason to prize it all the more. He swallowed his frustration and pondered the task at hand.

  Maybe the glyphs were only decoys. In any case, spoiling them hadn’t silenced the thunder, and he didn’t see any other way to attempt it.

  But so far, the blast had only sounded when someone inserted a pick or skeleton key in the lock. Maybe he could open the case in another way. He turned it around so he could get at the hinges.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t loosen the pins. If was as if they weren’t merely fastened but frozen, glued, or rusted in place. He assumed another enchantment was to blame.

  Well, maybe he had the countermagic for that one. He opened another of Burgell’s vials and poured a quantity of viscous blue fluid on each of the hinges. Brewed by one of the outlaw community’s more capable alchemists, the oil wasn’t merely slippery. Rather, according to the gnome, it embodied the fundamental idea of slipperiness. Aeron wasn’t sure what that really meant, and he had a hunch it might just be impressive-sounding mumbo jumbo, but he knew from personal experience that the lubricant was slick enough to unstick almost anything.

  He resumed his assault on the hinges. The component parts seemed to loosen grudgingly, by infinitesimal degrees, only to tighten back up as soon as he released pressure from them. At first, in the uncertain light, he wasn’t sure, but eventually he saw that that was exactly what was happening. Like living creatures, the mechanisms were resisting vivisection, screwing and jamming themselves back together.

  Most likely that meant he wouldn’t be able to disassemble them. By loosening them, he had, however, temporarily opened a crack between the lid and bottom of the box, which until then had fit perfectly together. In desperation, he drew his largest Arthyn fang, a blade sturdy enough to double as a lever, shoved it into the gap, braced the coffer, and pried with all his strength.

  The hinges tore with a screech of tortured steel. The two halves of the strongbox popped apart, and the thrice-damned thunderclap boomed once more, bashing him like a club. He gasped a curse, and when he succeeded in blinking the tears of pain from his vision, perceived that the coffer hadn’t yet finished giving him trouble.

  A vapor wafted from the interior of the box, swirled, and coalesced into a squat, dark thing. At first glance, it was vaguely toadlike, but then he made out the six stubby arms terminating in four-fingered hands and the three eyes, positioned asymmetrically and shifting around at the ends of flexible lumps. The central mass of it was either all head or all torso, depending on how one cared to look at it, with a bizarre vertical maw that opened it almost all the way down to the sexless crotch when it bared its fangs. It oriented on Aeron and charged, covering ground as fast as a man despite the seeming handicap of its stumpy legs.

  Aeron scrambled backward, tried to poise his Arthyn fang to meet the threat, then realized he’d lost hold of it, the largest and most formidable of his weapons, when the final thunderclap boomed. He snatched out a throwing knife, a flat, leaf-shaped blade with a leather-wrapped handle, and hurled it. It pierced the guardian demon’s flesh, but the creature kept coming.

  Still retreating, Aeron flung a second dagger. Though it put out one of the apparition’s eyes, that didn’t stop it, either. It suddenly sprinted even faster, leaning forward so its jaws were poised to bite off the legs of its prey.

  His heart pounding, Aeron made himself stand still until the last possible instant. That way, the demon would have trouble compensating when he dodged. Unless, of course, he delayed too long, in which case it would simply catch him in its spikelike teeth.

  He spun to the side and stabbed with his fourth and next-to-last dagger. The demon’s teeth clashed shut, missing him, and the blade rammed deep into its flank. Using his off hand, he bashed it with his cudgel.

  Unfortunately, that still didn’t slow it down. Pivoting, yanking the hilt of the knife from his grasp, it grabbed at his leg with its broad, stubby-fingered hands, no doubt seeking to hold him fast long enough to bring its jaws to bear. Its talons jabbed through his breeches and the skin beneath. He wrenched himself free, but he lost his balance in so doing. He reeled backward, fell on his rump, and the demon pounced on top of him.

  It jaws gaped, reaching for his head. Terrified, he jammed the club between them. It served to hold them open for a moment, but the wood bowed under the pressure. In another second, it would snap.

  Aeron whipped his final knife from his boot and plunged it into the demon’s side. The creature thrashed, made an ugly gargling sound, and stinking slime geysered up from its maw. Its death throes broke the cudgel in two, and it slumped motionless.

  Aeron dragged himself out from underneath the carcass, then sat until he stopped panting and shivering. He was used to fighting people, even if he didn’t often enjoy it, but demons were another matter.

  Still, he’d bested the vile thing, and it was time to see what his victory had gained him. Trying to brush away the sludge the spirit had puked onto his tunic, he strode back to the sundered halves of the broken strongbox.

  His prize lay in the padded bottom section, where it fit snugly. It was a big, old-looking book bound in black.

  As he reached for it, it occurred to Aeron that perhaps he still hadn’t reached the end of the wards. But shadows of Mask, he’d already contended with the warning screech, the glimmering that neutralized his invisibility, spells of locking, thunderclaps, and a guardian imp. Surely even the most cautious shipper would have deemed those protections sufficient, and in any case, Aeron was simply too impatient to muck around with Burgell’s tools and powders any longer. He picked up the book, and nothing disastrous happened as a result.

  The tome had a title embossed on the cover and spine with a few flecks of gold leaf still clinging to the letters, but since Aeron couldn’t read, that was no help. His father had sometimes encouraged him to learn, but it had always seemed like a lot of effort for a minimal return.

  His best guess was that he’d stolen a wizard’s grimoire, for what other kind of book could be valuable enough to warrant such elaborate defenses? But he’d handled a couple of those in his time, and when he leafed through it, he didn’t find the elaborate pentagrams and illustrations of mystical hand gestures he was expecting.

  What he did discover were lines of text, pictures of leaves and flowers, and a hundred smells, many exquisitely sweet, faint yet still perceptible even through the musty, nose-tickling odor of aged, decaying parchment.

  The dark street was narrow, and the towers crowded close on either side. Miri found it oppressive. Considering that she was comfortable in even the deepest reaches of primordial forests like the Chondalwood, with gigantic mossy trees looming all around, it was ridiculous, but true nonetheless.

  Well, at least she had a patch of open sky above her head once more and hope of completing her mission without the necessity of a return to the claustrophobic confines of the Underways. In fact, if she could only ease her mind on a certain matter, she might feel better than at any time since Aeron sar Randal made off with the saddlebag.

  The problem was figuring out how to broach the subject with a comrade who’d been nothing but helpful, who had, indeed, saved her life. As a general rule, Miri believed in directness, yet she had a sense that in that situation, she’d feel lik
e an ingrate if she failed to muster a degree of tact.

  “I still can’t make out how you knew,” she said as they hiked along.

  “About Mistress Dalaeve’s face?” Sefris replied.

  “Yes.”

  “We Broken Ones can see through illusions sometimes. Open eyes are a benefit of our meditations.” As they neared an intersection, Sefris pointed to a frieze of manti-cores decorating a crumbling wall and said, “This is where our informant told us to turn.”

  Miri peered around the corner, studying the path ahead. Even up in what was allegedly the law-abiding part of Oeble, it appeared to her that an absurd number of folk were skulking about in the dark, engaged in business that, were it wholly legitimate, they would have conducted by day. But none of them looked like they were lying in wait for outlanders, so she and the monastic proceeded on their way.

  “But how did you know she was so worried about keeping her scars hidden that a threat to unmask her would break her will?” the ranger asked.

  Sefris shrugged and replied, “It was a guess, based on what we’d heard and seen. Her reclusiveness. The dim lighting and frilly furnishings. Her taste in reading matter, and the fact that the false visage she affected was absolutely perfect, like a statue’s face.”

  “Very clever,” said Miri.

  His cane tapping and bowl outstretched, a stained strip of linen tied over his eyes, a beggar meandered toward the two women. Reminded of sar Randal’s disguise, Miri scowled, and the “blind” mendicant, who evidently saw her forbidding expression perfectly well, veered off.

  “Thank you,” Sefris said. “Yet I sense you don’t wholly approve of my tactics.”

  “It’s not that, exactly. I suppose I’m trained to fight with my hands, not by finding a person’s private shame and rubbing salt in the wound. It just felt dirty, somehow.”

  Sefris arched an eyebrow and said, “I intended to master the wizard through the exercise of our martial skills. You stopped me.”

  “Because unlike the yuan-ti, who tried to enslave me, she hadn’t done anything that made her fair game.”

  “Operating a haven for the foulest kind of outlaws and goblin-kin doesn’t qualify?”

  “It seems like it should,” Miri said with a sigh, “doesn’t it?”

  “Yet you pity her.” To her surprise, Miri thought she heard a trace of scorn in the monastic’s generally calm, mild tone, and she wondered if it was directed at Naneetha or herself. “Consider this, then. Suppose something scarred you. Would you spend the rest of your life hiding in a hole?”

  “No. It wouldn’t make all that much difference to me, I suppose.”

  “Nor me, nor anyone who wasn’t bloated with vanity to begin with. Whatever distress Mistress Dalaeve experiences is the result of her own stupidity and weakness. You and I are not to blame.”

  “And your deity is tender Ilmater, god of mercy,” said Miri with wry incredulity.

  “Whose sympathy and help are given first and foremost to the innocent and those who strive for the right. Like you, my friend, and the good folk who you say will benefit when we recover your stolen treasure. There. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  The scout peered and saw that Sefris was right. Ahead and to the left were the broken foundations of two spires, like decaying stumps in a row of teeth. One tower had evidently fallen sideways, demolishing its neighbor in the course of its collapse. Imagining the catastrophe, Miri winced at the probable loss of life.

  But it had happened long ago, and all those unfortunate souls were beyond her power to help. What mattered then was that if her informant, one of Oeble’s apothecaries, had told the truth, Aeron sar Randal lived on the top floor of a tower three doors farther down.

  Miri and Sefris stalked forward, stepping silently and gliding through the shadows. The ranger spotted a hobgoblin lurking in a recessed doorway, its cloak draped so that it half concealed the crossbow dangling in its hairy hand. She stopped and raised her hand, whereupon Sefris, too, halted instantly. Miri pointed.

  “A lookout,” she whispered.

  “Yes, I see it now. Aeron’s sentry, do you think?”

  “It’s possible, but it feels wrong. At the Paeraddyn, his accomplices were all human, and if I understood Naneetha correctly, he doesn’t even belong to a gang himself. He might not have any partners as a general rule.”

  “Well, whoever it is, it’s likely no friend of ours, not unless you have other allies you haven’t told me about.”

  “No,” Miri replied.

  “I can’t fling a chakram that far, but you can surely hit it with an arrow.”

  Miri reached for a shaft, then left it in the quiver.

  “I can’t just kill it without knowing for certain who it is or what it’s doing,” she said. “It might be working with the Gray Blades.”

  “A hobgoblin?”

  “I know it seems unlikely, but Oeble is full of townsfolk the rest of the world disdains as savage marauders. Maybe some of them even spy for the law.”

  “What should we do, then?” Sefris asked. “Creep around to the back of the tower and look for another way in, one the watcher can’t see?”

  “I’ll do that. You keep an eye on the hobgoblin and this approach, and hoot like an owl if you need to alert me to anything.”

  Sefris smiled and said, “I remind you, this isn’t the wild.”

  “They must have a few owls,” Miri replied. “Anyway, we need some sort of signal.”

  She started toward the alley that ran between the two buildings, and the door to Aeron’s tower opened.

  Several ruffians, a couple human, the others not, skulked out onto the street. The one in the lead was a tanarukk, the first of that infamous breed Miri had noticed among Oeble’s motley population. Stooped and massive, curved tusks jutting from its lower jaw, it stalked along with a heavy battle-axe in one fist and a lead line in the other.

  The trailing end of the rope bound the hands of a human prisoner, who hobbled as best he could with a burlap sack over his head. For a moment, Miri wondered if it was Aeron, then decided it couldn’t be. The captive was excruciatingly gaunt, not lean, and carried an assortment of old scars on the exposed portions of his skin.

  The hobgoblin lookout emerged from the doorway to join his comrades. Miri laid an arrow across her bow.

  Sefris touched her on the arm.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  Miri was surprised that a Broken One, sworn to help the victims of cruelty, would ask.

  “I’m going to shoot an outlaw or two,” the ranger replied.

  “Why? We don’t know this is any of our affair. The toughs and goblin-kin look villainous enough, but perhaps they have some legitimate grievance against this man.”

  “Then let them go to the law with their complaint. I thought that’s what towns are supposed to be good for.”

  “How many acts of injustice and brutality have you seen since coming to Oeble?” asked Sefris. “How many chained thralls wailing that they were enslaved unlawfully? How many pimps beating their whores and bravos terrorizing shopkeepers for protection? Yet you passed on by, because you’re on a mission, and if you deviated from it to right every wrong you stumbled across in this den of scoundrels, you’d never get it done.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to close our eyes every time.”

  “Something about the plight of this particular wretch has stirred your sympathy, but surely your guild masters taught you that mere emotion is no reason to abandon a strategy.”

  “I admit, they did, but …”

  Uncertain, hating Sefris a little but herself more, Miri watched the kidnappers, if that was what they were, lead their captive away.

  “All right,” Miri said when the street was clear, “let’s get this done.”

  She promised herself that once it was, and she’d delivered the strongbox into the proper hands, she’d depart Oeble within the hour, never to return. Unless it was at the head of an army, to raze the filthy place.


  She and Sefris scurried into the tower and on up the shadowy spiral stairs. The risers were soft, treacherous, half rotten, but they managed the climb quietly even so. On the third-floor landing, a door opened, and a halfling in a feathered hat started to emerge. He took one look at the two grim-faced human strangers striding by and retreated back inside.

  The door to Aeron sar Randal’s garret apartment was standing open. Miri and Sefris ascended the remaining stairs warily, then they peeked beyond the threshold. Someone had torn the flat apart. At first the exercise had likely been a search, but had included simple malicious destruction before it was through. Shards of shattered bottles littered the floor, and the varnished scraps of a broken mandolin lay in the reeking puddle of spilled wine.

  No one was inside, though Miri was reasonably certain she’d seen the vandals only minutes before.

  “Look,” Sefris said, pointing. The light of the garret’s one surviving lamp sufficed to reveal the outline of an axe scrawled in crimson chalk on the wall. “The Red Axes signed their work.”

  “And plainly,” Miri said, “it was them we saw coming out of the tower with their prisoner. Otherwise, the coincidence is just too great. Curse us, we should have waylaid them.”

  “Perhaps so,” the monastic replied, “but let’s take a moment to think it through. Who do you think they abducted, Aeron’s father?”

  “Somebody dear to him, at any rate, someone they hope to trade for the box.”

  “Not a bad idea, and if we take the hostage from them, we can try the same thing.”

  Miri frowned and said, “We’re not kidnappers, to hold a man prisoner and barter his life for treasure.”

  “Do you think the captive an innocent? My guess is that he’s as wicked a knave as Aeron himself, for what bond of affection could exist between such a thief and a righteous man?”