The Black Bouquet

by Richard Lee Byers

  She gestured, and the shadow of a brown-and-white horse standing in the traces of a parked hay wagon lengthened and deformed into a tentacle, which then reared from the ground. The animal whinnied and shied, and people nearby cried out in alarm. Aeron turned, saw the length of darkness lashing in his direction, and tried to dodge. He wasn’t quite quick enough. The tentacle spun around him and held him fast. He thrashed, struggling to squirm free. Agile as he was, with that skinny frame, he might actually do it, but it wouldn’t save him. By that time, Sefris would have closed to striking distance. She raced forward.

  Broadsword in hand, a Gray Blade scrambled out of the crowd to bar her path. With his slender frame, ivory skin, and vivid green eyes, he looked as if he might possess some elf blood.

  “Hold it!” he said. “I saw you ca—”

  Sefris drove her stiffened fingers at the half-elf’s solar plexus. He had excellent reflexes. He jumped back in time and brought his round target shield up to block. His sword leaped in a head cut. She shifted in so close that the stroke fell harmlessly behind her. Sefris rammed the heel of her palm into his jaw, snapped his neck, and raced on toward Aeron.

  Maddeningly, a second Gray Blade—middle-aged, stocky, and entirely human—lunged at her. Apparently he’d been hurrying toward Aeron and the tentacle, but had spied his partner’s fate and turned back around to avenge him. His sword point streaked at her face. She sought to deflect it with a press, and avoiding the block, it dipped down to threaten her midsection. She had to retreat a step and twist at the hips to keep it from piercing her guts.

  She gave him a roundhouse kick to the knee. Bone snapped, and he fell down. She stamped on his chest, breaking ribs and rupturing his heart.

  She ran on. People scurried to get out of her way, which afforded her a good view of the conjured tentacle. It writhed and shifted from side to side, clenching and unclenching, its coils empty. The Gray Blades had delayed her long enough for Aeron to wriggle free.

  She dashed down the steps into the Underways, cast uselessly about, chose a direction at random, and sprinted that way. After she passed a couple intersections, she realized further pursuit was futile. The thief had escaped her for the time being.

  But not forever. She’d eavesdropped on Aeron’s conversation with Kesk, and was convinced that the tanarukk was right about his fellow rogue: The redheaded thief would keep on trying to liberate his father. That meant she’d have another chance to catch him, and surely he couldn’t be so lucky twice in a row.

  Miri woke feeling sore, yet drowsily contented. Judging from the warm covers and medicinal smells, her comrades had carried her to the healers’ tent, and she was going to be all right. She could feel it, and in any case, the important thing was that she hadn’t disgraced herself.

  Standing behind the bramble barricades with the senior rangers and their allies, waiting for her first battle to begin, she’d been frightened she wouldn’t be able to bear it, that she’d throw down her bow and run away. And when the enemy—orcs, ogres, and huge, shapeless, crawling masses of mold—appeared among the trees, it was as terrifying as she’d imagined. But somehow she’d stood her ground, loosing arrow after arrow until the foe overran her position, then frantically hacking with her broadsword. She cut down two orcs, turned, and saw an ogre swinging its club at her. The world went dark.

  Evidently her side had won the fight. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be lying in a clean, soft bed. She realized her throat was dry, opened her eyes fully, and looked about to see if one of the priests had left her some water.

  She wasn’t in a tent but a small, sparsely furnished candlelit room with bare whitewashed walls. A thin young man with a red beard sat watching her. The sight of him made her snatch for the sword that no longer hung at her side, even as it pierced her confusion.

  It wasn’t an ogre that had wounded her—that had happened years ago, in the Winterwood—it was a collapsing balcony in Oeble, after which, what? Had Aeron sar Randal found her and decided to make her his prisoner?

  As if by magic, a long, heavy fighting knife appeared in the thief’s hand.

  “Calm down!” he said. “I don’t mean to hurt you. If I had, I wouldn’t have carried you to Ilmater’s house for healing.”

  She sneered and replied, “Yet you pull a dagger on me, even though I’m injured and unarmed.”

  “According to the healer who attended you, you’re only a little bit hurt at this point.” He smiled crookedly and added, “Besides, this afternoon I found out just how tough an unarmed outlander woman could be.”

  “You met Sefris.”

  “I did if she shaves her head and moves like … I don’t know what. A cat? Lightning? Flowing water? Whatever you liken it to, it was scary.”

  “That’s her.”

  “Who in the Nine Hells is she? How do you know her?”

  “How do you? What happened?”

  “I’m the one with the knife,” said Aeron, “so I’m going to ask the questions.”

  She glanced surreptitiously around. Her weapons were nowhere in evidence, nor was there anything much she could grab and use for self-defense. Even the pewter candlestick was out of reach. Still, perhaps her plight wasn’t all that desperate.

  “If this truly is a house of healing,” she said, “all I need do is shout, and someone will rush to my aid.”

  “Faster than I can stick an Arthyn fang between your ribs?” he countered. “Don’t count on it.”

  “Are you ruthless enough? I don’t see it in your eyes.”

  He sighed like a man with a headache and said, “I already said I don’t want to do it. I’m just hoping you can tell me something to help me get my father back.”

  She felt a reluctant twinge of sympathy for him. She remembered how it had felt to lose her own parents, when the white fever took them both within a tenday of one another.

  “I saw a gang of ruffians march him away with a sack over his head,” she said. “One of them was a tanarukk.”

  “Right, the Red Axes. I know who kidnapped him, but did you overhear them say anything about exactly where in the house they’re holding him, or how he’s restrained, or guarded? Anything like that?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Curse it. Really, I don’t even know what I thought you might be able to tell me, but I prayed there’d be something. What were you doing in my garret?”

  “Looking for you and the strongbox.”

  “You can say ‘The Black Bouquet.’ I know what I’ve got. Sort of. Were you up there questioning my father when the Red Axes showed up?”

  “No,” Miri replied. “Sefris and I were just approaching the tower when the Red Axes and your father came out.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Then you,” he said, “this Sefris woman, and Kesk are all working together?”

  “No. I mean, Sefris and I aren’t on the same side anymore. It’s complicated,” Miri answered. She blinked when she absorbed the implications of what he’d just said. “Are you telling me Sefris has joined forces with the Red Axes?”

  He frowned, considering, then said, “I assumed so at the time, but now that you ask, I guess I can’t be absolutely sure. Anyway, I told you I’ll ask the questions, and I think we’re going to have to start at the beginning and go step by step for me to make sense of the answers. What is The Black Bouquet? A perfume maker’s cookbook, I know that much, but what makes it so valuable? A secret message hidden somewhere inside?”

  She hesitated, then decided that, since he knew so much already, it wouldn’t hurt to tell him. In the course of interrogating her, he was likely to reveal things that she wished to know as well.

  “No,” she said, “it’s just a formulary, but the formulary of Courynn Dulsaer.”

  Aeron looked blank.

  “Until I got involved in this affair,” Miri admitted, “I’d never heard of him, either, but evidently he’s famous if you care about perfume. In fact, he was the most famous perfumer who ever lived. His concoctions wer
en’t magical, but they might as well have been, for they delighted anyone who got a whiff. These days, when some lucky soul discovers an unopened bottle, it sells for thousands of gold pieces.”

  “Because nobody knows how to make any more.”

  “Right. Courynn never took on an apprentice, or taught anybody else his secrets, and The Black Bouquet disappeared mysteriously at the time of his death. That was three hundred years ago, and everyone thought the book lost forever. Recently, however, in Ormath on the Shining Plains, Lord Quwen’s agents uncovered and destroyed a temple of Shar. They found The Black Bouquet with the rest of the cult’s treasure.”

  “And it’s truly valuable,” Aeron said.

  Plainly, the thief was still trying to wrap his head around the idea that anyone cared so much about perfume. Miri had had the same reaction when she’d first heard the story.

  “I’m no merchant—thank the Forest Queen!—but I’m told that if the right person used the book to set up a perfume manufactory, he’d probably wind up as rich as a prince,” the ranger continued. “Anyway, Ormath has had its problems recently. It’s had to cope with three bad harvests in a row, fend off raiders, and fight an actual war or two with its neighbors. For that reason and others, Lord Quwen was more interested in selling the book and turning a profit quickly than going into the perfume trade himself. He put out the word that he had it …”

  “And a rich merchant here in Oeble arranged to buy it,” Aeron finished for her. “Which one?”

  “That, I can’t tell you.”

  He scowled and said, “Ranger …”

  “Threats won’t move me. Come at me if you want, and we’ll find out if an unarmed scout of the Red Hart Guild can defeat a common cutpurse waving a knife.”

  “Oh, calm down,” said Aeron. “Maybe it doesn’t matter who wanted it, or maybe we’ll come back to that point later. For now, go on with your story.”

  “At the buyer’s insistence,” she continued with a nod, “the negotiations were conducted in secret, Lord Quwen dickering with the merchant’s factor in Ormath. Finally they struck a deal. The buyer made a down payment, the balance due when he took delivery of the book. Quwen undertook to get the volume to Oeble. Since that too was supposed to happen secretly, he didn’t want to use his own troops to move it. Instead, he applied to my guild for an experienced guide—me—and I in turn hired a company of mercenaries. In addition, Quwen’s court wizard cast spells of warding on the strongbox and saddlebag intended to hold the Bouquet.”

  Miri sighed and added, “You know the rest of the story better than I do. The sellswords and I carried the formulary all the way here, and you stole it mere minutes before I could hand it over. Because, plainly, the expedition wasn’t a secret. How did you know we were coming?”

  “Only because Kesk hired me to steal the coffer. My guess is, he knew because somebody asked him to get it. Kesk’s a power to be reckoned with here in Oeble, but I doubt he has spies in faraway cities. Though he might have one in a rich man’s household here in town.”

  “I take it he’s the most dangerous scoundrel hereabouts.”

  Aeron shrugged and said, “One of them.”

  “I’m surprised you dared defy him.”

  “He held back information that might have kept my friends alive,” Aeron replied. “It made me angry. Though why I turned on him, then saved you who actually killed Dal and Gavath with your own hands, is a puzzle.”

  “I killed them in a fair fight you outlaws started.”

  “Does that make them any less dead?”

  “No, and if you feel the need to avenge them, come ahead.”

  “Maybe we’ll get to that,” Aeron said. “Tell me about Sefris.”

  “What do you know about the followers of Shar?”

  Aeron frowned and replied, “Just what everybody knows. They’re vicious, mad, and worship an evil goddess.”

  “I don’t know a great deal more myself, but I have heard of a cult within the cult. Or that watches over the main cult. Something like that. They’re called the Monks of the Dark Moon, and they learn a special, highly effective style of fighting. Sefris claims to be one of them, and I believe her. Evidently her order sent her here to recover the treasure Quwen plundered from their goddess.”

  Aeron cocked his head and asked, “So what were you doing wandering around with her?”

  Miri felt her face grow warm.

  “At first,” she said, “I didn’t know who she was. She tricked me into accepting her as my comrade. For some reason, she must have thought she’d have better luck getting her hands on the Bouquet if we hunted it together. In the end, she turned on me, because I wouldn’t agree to help her take your father from the Red Axes and hold him hostage ourselves, and that was when she told me who she really is. We fought until your balcony collapsed beneath us. She managed to scramble off, but I didn’t. It’s a miracle I’m not dead.”

  “You didn’t fall all the way to the ground,” said Aeron. “You landed on a Rainspan partway down. If Sefris wants to take the book back to the cult, and Kesk wants it for some other reason, how could they work together?”

  “I don’t know. You’re fairly certain they are?”

  “I palavered with Kesk today. Sefris stalked me when I left and tried to capture me. How did she know to find me there unless that pig-faced bastard told her?”

  “If she tried to catch you, you were lucky to get away. As lucky as I am to still be alive.”

  “I realize that. The first time she threw a spell at me, it didn’t take, but I felt a kind of tickle in my head. I glanced around and spotted a woman standing in a wriggling blot of shadow, or twilight, in the middle of the sunshine. It only lasted a second. If I’d looked a heartbeat later, I wouldn’t have seen anything funny. I might have decided the tickle was just my imagination, and not known I was in danger until it was too late.”

  Miri stared at him and asked, “Sefris threw a spell?”

  “Yes. You didn’t even know she was a sorceress? Shadows of Mask, you are thick.”

  “She didn’t cast any spells when we were together. Magic must be the secret weapon she likes to hold in reserve.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I assume Kesk offered to ransom your father for the formulary?” Miri asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “I don’t see how I can. I figured that if I tried, he’d play me false. Seize the book, take me prisoner, and kill both my father and me. He’s like that: mean, treacherous, and vengeful. But I wasn’t sure of it, so I arranged a meeting in Slarvyn’s Sword to feel him out. After what happened, I’m positive I can’t trust him. Though maybe if I’m clever enough, I can set up the exchange in such a way that he has no choice but to keep his word.”

  “You sound doubtful,” Miri said, “as well you should.”

  She decided she was tired of sitting up in bed like an invalid, so she pushed back the covers, and swung her bare feet to the floor. Someone had dressed her in a white linen shift sufficient for modesty.

  “Why don’t we do the sensible thing?” she asked.

  He arched an eyebrow.

  “Go to the authorities,” she continued, “and report that the Red Axes abducted your father. If you have the kind of reputation I suspect, they might not take your word for it, but the Red Hart Guild is known far and wide as an honorable fraternity, and I’ll back you up. I won’t even tell them you’re the thief who committed the outrage in the Paeraddyn and escaped to tell the tale, and in exchange for my help and forbearance, you’ll return The Black Bouquet.”

  Aeron chuckled grimly and said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “First off, I’d have to trust you, and all I know about you is that you killed my friends, and stood and watched as the Red Axes kidnapped a sick old man. I didn’t think ‘honorable’ rangers were supposed to behave like that.”

  The barb evoked a rush of shame in Miri, which she did her best to hi
de.

  “I’ve seen a hundred cruel and depraved acts since I came to this cesspool of a city,” the ranger said. “I couldn’t interfere with all of them. Anyway, who are you, a miserable thief, to lecture me on my duty?”

  He shrugged and said, “Nobody, obviously, in your eyes. Anyway, there are other reasons I don’t want to go to the Gray Blades. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them are in Kesk’s pay, or beholden to the person who hired him to get the book. Even if they’re not, they’re as leery of the Red Axes as the gang is of them. They wouldn’t want to break into Kesk’s stronghold just on our say-so. They do know I’m an outlaw even if they’ve never been able to hang anything on me, and while your guild may be known the world over as honest and true, you’re still an outlander, which means you don’t count for much.”

  “The rightful owner of the book does. If I can convince him to speak up….”

  “It’s still not a sure thing. Look, my father was a notable robber in his time. The law hasn’t forgotten, and it doesn’t love him, either. But let’s say we could convince the Gray Blades to raid Kesk’s mansion. Do you think they’d find my father alive? The house surely has secret rooms, and sits on the river to boot.”

  “So the only answer is to out-trick Kesk?” Miri asked. “And his henchmen? And Sefris?”

  “I imagine.”

  “In that case, let me help you, and when your father is safe, you’ll return The Black Bouquet to me.”

  “Right,” Aeron said with a snort, “and as soon as I turn my back, you knock me over the head, tie me up, and torture the location of the book out of me. Or hand me over to the law and let them do it.”

  “I swear by the Hornblade that I won’t.”

  “Oh, well, that changes everything.”

  Miri felt a surge of anger, and quashed it as best she could. In his world, perhaps it wasn’t a deadly insult to doubt the sanctity of another person’s oath.