Redamancy

by T D Cloud

  “Any day now, brat,” Sorin called out from within the tunnel, his voice echoing even as he doubled back to gesture Khouri in. “I can’t guide myself through the dark, and we do have a time table to be keeping.”

  Slowly, Khouri dropped his hands from his face. That answered his question well enough, he supposed.

  “How did you manage last time?” he wondered, pushing himself to just get it over with already. He took a step and then another, shivering violently as the drafty chill bit through his clothing like needles. “I’d like to pretend you didn’t waltz down here with me tossed over your shoulder, but I’m legitimately curious how you managed like that without getting lost or killed or strung up by the watch.”

  Sorin shifted a bit and moved aside to let Khouri brush past him. “Very carefully,” he said after a pause. “It wasn’t easy. I think I lost a good chunk off my life from the stress of it all.”

  Khouri gestured for him to follow, giving him a curious look. “You had a guide, didn’t you?” They weren’t that hard to come by. Surface-dwellers weren’t an enormous oddity in the Duskriven. Adventurers came frequently to plunder the depths, and though Drow rarely offered their services as guides, plenty of other would if the price was right.

  “I didn’t exactly have much time to plan things,” Sorin grumbled, reaching into his pack for a lumin stone. It provided a wane bluish light that illuminated a few feet around his fist and not much else. “I had time to buy a few of these and ask a few deep-Gnomes for directions. Had to move quick because... You know.”

  He had to move quick before the sedative wore off. Sorin didn’t need to say it aloud; Khouri read it easily in the silence that followed. He let out a sigh and tugged on Sorin’s sleeve, leaving the light of the entrance behind them. Getting mad about all of that wouldn’t do him any good right now. His mood was low enough already from this cold.

  Looking around, Khouri had to shiver from the temperature and the setting alike. There was something so unsettling about descending into the darkness. Khouri felt the change come over him instantly. His ears twitched, and his eyes widened, taking in his surroundings with a keenness that he rarely ever felt while up above. For good reason, he had to think. For all he’d traveled and seen above, none of it compared to the danger endemic to the tunnels that led below.

  “You were an idiot to come down here without a guide,” Khouri said, moving quickly as he led the way down. “One wrong turn and you could find yourself in a flesh-wrust nest.” Even the most seasoned travelers didn’t make it a habit to explore the tunnels more than necessary. For all the centuries the Drow had lived down here, there were scores of tunnels that had yet to be mapped or even seen.

  Sorin had the good sense not to disagree with him. If anything, he walked closer to Khouri, his hand brushing Khouri’s sleeve every few seconds as if to reassure himself that Khouri was still there. “Well, I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter,” he muttered.

  Khouri glared at him. He made sure Sorin felt it through the dark. “Are you really going to try that with me?” he asked frigidly.

  “Nope,” Sorin said, the smartest thing he’d said so far today. “I think I’d rather listen to you tell me how much of an idiot I am.”

  “Well,” Khouri huffed, smiling despite himself. “I’m glad you’re a lot more honest in the dark.”

  Sorin brushed his hip with the back of his hand, and Khouri could just make out his smile behind his hair. The conversation faded to silence for a while. It was almost peaceful down here if only because he knew he wasn’t alone. It was cold, but the body next to him was warm like the sunlight he’d left behind. The steady drip drip drip of water from the stalactites provided a rhythm for their footsteps. Music, some likened it to. Khouri had never found it so poetic, but he couldn’t deny that it was calming.

  After an hour or so of walking, Khouri began to notice the familiar signs that pointed towards Drow territory.

  Signs. Khouri rolled his eyes at that. More like warnings for the few stray creatures that ventured this far down. The watch and the tunnel sentries didn’t suffer visitors well, let alone the lost. Khouri made sure to find Sorin’s hand and lace their fingers together as he pulled him through a low tunnel, knowing that once they reached the end of it, they’d be right in line with the outer slums rimming the Undercity proper.

  “So, how did you manage once you reached this point?” he asked quietly, pulling his hood over his head and gesturing for Sorin to do the same. Not much would hide his pale skin or enormous size, but covering up his equally pale hair might give him a bit more camouflage at the very least. “There are sentries that patrol regularly. They would have stopped a human the second they saw you.”

  Sorin shrugged and resettled his ax in its harness. “I did get stopped a few times,” he said breezily. “Didn’t run into much trouble until I got into the city, though. Told them I was on an errand for a noble. Most of them took it at face value, but when the ones after that pressed me, I just showed them the contract with Navidae’s seal on it. They became very, very helpful then.”

  He paused for a moment. The hand holding Khouri’s squeezed gently. “I think they thought I was returning a runaway slave or something.”

  Khouri looked at the ground, squeezing Sorin’s hand back. “You had my face covered, didn’t you?” he asked softly. “And my hood covering my hair.”

  it.”

  “Yeah. Figured with your coloring it would be best to hide

  His lips formed a smile despite himself. “They would’ve known who you had on your shoulder if you hadn’t,” he said, humored by the idea of Sorin getting accosted left and right for having the Lord Marrowick’s missing and unconscious pet slumped over his back. What a fright that would have caused the guards. “I’ve told you before, Sorin. I’m very important down here.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re saying it was a good idea or a bad one,” Sorin complained, and Khouri had to stifle a laugh when he saw that Sorin was squinting at the ground beneath his feet, shuffling forward in hopes of not tripping over some invisible obstacle.

  “It got you where you needed to go without too much hassle, so it must’ve been good enough of a choice to make,” Khouri answered. “The sentries wouldn’t have minded, but the watch might’ve.” Not to mention any agents of the nobility who might have recognized Khouri and acted on the easy target Sorin made himself into while traveling without a guide.

  Sorin stopped moving suddenly. “Sorin?”

  “Did you hear that?” he whispered, cocking his head to the side like a dog.

  Khouri looked around. “I don’t see anything.” They were in a Drow tunnel now, so there shouldn’t be any sort of creature lurking about.

  “No, no, I swear I heard something,” the hunter insisted, reaching back for his ax.

  Khouri was about to call him paranoid when he caught a shimmer of movement out of the corner of his eye. Khouri sighed, calming Sorin with a hand to his arm. The sentry—and that was all it was—stared at him oddly from atop a rock formation. Usually they weren’t so cautious, but hearing voices speaking in a surface-tongue probably surprised them. “It’s just a sentry, Sorin. Try not to frighten yourself too badly.”

  Looking up at the sentry, Khouri held up a hand and made a sign to signal he was Drow. “You can come down,” he called out in their language.

  After a moment of consideration, the sentry jumped down in front of them. Sorin startled horribly, his hand automatically going for his ax. “Calm down,” Khouri hissed, shoving him with his shoulder. “You’ll get yourself killed if you act like an idiot here.”

  “Shut up, brat,” Sorin grumbled. He stiffened when the sentry drew her sword, the shick of sharp steel loud in the darkness. Khouri just squeezed his arm before letting it go.

  “Who are you?” she demanded, her curved helmet all the more imposing in the dark. “These are restricted routes.”

  Khouri tugged back his hood and made sure the sentry saw his face and hai
r. “I am the lover of Lord Navidae Marrowick, Purveyor of the Western Dusklands,” he said in their language. “The one who provides you your wages, I believe. I am returning home from a long trip. This man is my bodyguard. I pray we don’t have a problem with him accompanying me?”

  The woman swallowed audibly, glancing between Khouri and Sorin with quick, beady eyes. She stood a little straighter and covered her unease with a cough. Sorin relaxed when she sheathed her sword. “A thousand apologies,” she said, moving aside to let them pass. “Be on your way quickly. The dark-hours approach soon, and even pets must follow the curfew.”

  Khouri nodded and yanked on Sorin’s sleeve to get him moving. “Understood,” he murmured, not bothering to watch as she disappeared into the shadows. The sentries liked to show off like that, acting as if they were cut from the same cloth as the night up above. Sorin stumbled after him through the crumbling archway, swearing when his lumin stone failed to help him at all.

  “That’s not going to work,” Khouri told him. “The checkpoints at the city’s borders have security spell work on them. It messes with charmed trinkets like lumin stones.”

  Sorin sighed. “Is that why it went out last time I was here?” he muttered, tossing the stone back into his bag. “I thought someone had just sold me a faulty one.”

  “It’s meant to curtail the usability of surface things. The Council likes to control the goods that go in and out of the Undercity. It’s also why the black market is so popular in the slums,” Khouri answered.

  “Wonderful. What did that guard say to you?” Sorin asked next, running his hand down Khouri’s shoulder until he found his hand. The light would get stronger the further into the city they got, but here on the outskirts, it was still too dim for the likes of a surface-dweller. “We’re not in trouble or anything, right?”

  Shrugging, Khouri began walking again, guiding Sorin through the chipped and barren streets of the outer slums. “She told me even pets need to mind curfew,” he said. “Nothing to worry about, though.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you?” the man asked, ducking beneath an overhang that hadn’t been built with tall humans in mind.

  “Does what bother me?” “Being called a pet.”

  Khouri snorted. “Why would that bother me? It’s true.”

  Sorin wrinkled his nose. “Because you don’t belong to him,” he said, acting like that made any sense at all. “You’ve got value outside of Navidae. People don’t need to see you as his pet to respect you.”

  The surprise those words elicited was so great that Khouri had to stop walking. Sorin bumped into his shoulder and nearly sent him tumbling to the ground, but their joined hands were enough to keep him on his feet. “Inden’s Eyes,” Khouri breathed, reverting to his mother tongue for a moment in his disbelief. “You really don’t know anything about life here, do you?”

  Sorin squinted, and Khouri realized the man could hardly see him. Khouri rubbed at his eyes and tried not to smile at that.

  “Do you know what my life was like before Navidae?” “...You stole things,” Sorin said. His rueful tone told Khouri

  well enough that he didn’t know, and he was upset by the realization.

  “Yeah, I stole things. I spent every single day down here hiding my face and hair, hoping I wouldn’t be seen by the watch and sold off to some noble as some sort of exotic plaything.” Khouri squeezed Sorin’s hand as they navigated the uneven streets he once called… not home but as good as he thought he would ever get. “I lived in a drain pipe beneath the street for decades,” he answered, laughing a little once he caught sight of the look on Sorin’s face. It looked like Sorin had forgotten again just how old Khouri really was.

  He rubbed his shoulder against Sorin’s arm, hoping to lighten the man’s gloom. “Oh, don’t make that face.” In a place like this, there was gloom enough to go around already. “I was lucky to have what I had then. It was shelter. Hard to destroy if the watch came calling for their fees. It was cold and damp, but I was safe in it. That’s about as much as one can hope for down here.”

  Sorin’s hand tightened around Khouri’s. “Does Navidae know?” he asked.

  “Know what?”

  “Where you lived before him.”

  Khouri brought up his free hand to tap at his chin. Fifty years was a long time. He’d told Navidae a lot about himself over the years, but that… “I don’t think so,” he decided after a moment of thought. “I told him about Yorden, my friend who helped me out when I lived on the streets, but I don’t think I ever bothered telling him that. Why?”

  Sorin shrugged, following easily as Khouri led him across a bridge that would take them into the fancier districts. This close to curfew, there weren’t many travelers around to share the road with. Khouri moved a little faster when he caught sight of a fancy carriage further ahead.

  “Just curious, I guess.” When Khouri side eyed him, Sorin rolled his own. He wasn’t squinting as much now. The foxfire lamp posts were brighter here, giving him enough light to see on his own. “You found Navidae after that, right?”

  Khouri smiled at the damp cobblestones. Not a very graceful deflection, but he would let Sorin have it. “I guess you could say that.” It wasn’t wrong. Khouri had found him. He’d found Navidae in his bed, half naked and asleep until he botched an assassination that gave rise to the best thing to ever happen to him. “That’s why it’s not something shameful, being a pet. I’m envied and lucky, really, since Navi likes me. There’s a difference between being a pet and being a plaything, Sorin.”

  There was a difference between a man like Navidae and a man like Jinkan.

  “If you say so. That's all...” He fumbled for the words and sighed when he didn't find them. “You’ve lived quite a life,” Sorin said simply.

  “It’s been what it’s been,” he replied, resting his head against Sorin’s arm as he led them through the gates that separated the nobility from the rest of the Undercity’s populace.

  Things were beginning to look much more familiar now despite the rampant sameness of the noble houses around them. Navidae’s would be a few streets over, the tallest one in sight with that spire of his. The hour was late and the darkness of the place thicker than ever despite the small pockets of light glowing above the street. Khouri held tight to Sorin as they passed in front of the buildings, knowing that even though he held power here, the nobles wouldn’t hesitate to try something if they felt they could get away with it. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not really,” Khouri said quietly, tugging him along until they came to Navidae’s street and then his lane. “I just don’t like being out in the open like this. It’s best if we move quickly and get off the streets before someone takes issue with us.”

  Sorin raised a brow. “Takes issue with us or with me?”

  Khouri rubbed his hands together and apologized to them silently before he shoved the massive, wrought iron gate. The latticed bones shined dully in the faux light of the streets, their scorched etchings highlighted to the point that they appeared to burn. “First with you,” Khouri grunted, shoving with all his might to make it open an inch. He nearly pitched forward when it suddenly lurched open, Sorin shouldering through with no visible sign of exertion on his part. Khouri quickly shoved his hands beneath his armpits, shivering already. “Thanks. But yeah. They’ll take issue with you first since you’re obvious.

  Then they’d see me and only the Gods could predict what they’d do about that.”

  Sorin wrapped an arm around Khouri’s shoulders, sharing his warmth freely. “Aren’t you protected by Navidae?”

  Shrugging, Khouri nodded at the open gate. “Close that, will you? Navi can protect me well enough, but if someone grabbed me off the streets and left no witnesses to speak of it, I highly doubt he’d find me quickly.” At least, that’s how Navidae had worded it way back when as he told Khouri there would be no more wandering unaccompanied anymore. Whether or not it was a valid concern, Khouri didn’t know. It wasn’t unlikely, and
Khouri could certainly name plenty of nobles who might try it should they feel they could get away with it.

  The screech of the gate dragging shut against the stone walkway filled the air for a moment. Sorin muscled it into place and then looked to Khouri to lead. “I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you,” he said.

  Khouri smiled, reaching out to snag his hand. “I know,” he said, pulling him towards the front entrance to the manor. “But it’s best not to take chances down here.”

  The conversation bled into silence at that, giving way to the manor before them. Khouri didn’t bother knocking or anything like that. He opened the door and pulled Sorin in behind him, blinking a bit at the brightness of the foyer. Navidae must have added more foxfire in anticipation of Sorin’s arrival, which was kind of him.

  The expensive tile floor had been cleaned meticulously, and every ornament in the room looked polished to perfection.

  “Do you think he expected us?” Khouri wondered, looking up at Sorin who seemed transfixed by the sudden light. He blinked owlishly and rubbed at his eyes.

  “If he expected us, wouldn’t he be here to greet us properly?”

  Well, it wasn’t as if they’d sent a messenger ahead to let him know they’d be down today. Khouri cupped his hands around his mouth and inhaled deeply.

  “Navi!” he shouted, his voice echoing through the enormous room. “Navi, I’m home!”

  Sorin rubbed his ear and scowled at Khouri. “Is he a dog now?” He shook his head and dropped his bag to the ground. “This manor is enormous. What if he isn’t close enough to hear?”

  “I can always shout louder…” Khouri began, trailing off as he heard a side door open and then the sound of hurried footsteps. Khouri had just enough time to turn before a blur of red and dark barreled into him and dragged him off his feet.