Ordinarily, Cale would have ignored a fool like that, but his parting with Thazienne had left him in a foul mood. He grabbed two fistfuls of silk shirt, lifted the half-drow off his feet, and pulled him nose to nose. A few faces turned their way, but only a few. The Stag's patrons saw fights and violence most every night. A confrontation didn't get interesting until steel was drawn.
'And you mind your tongue, irinal,' Cale spat into the half-drow's face.
He'd deliberately chosen to insult the half-drow with a word that surface elves used to refer to the drow. It meant 'forsaken,' and the drow were notorious for their dislike of the term.
Surprisingly though, the half-drow showed no anger. His expression didn't even indicate that he understood the word. Instead, he stared Cale in the face with crazed eyes, smiling hard. His hand moved to his sword hilt but he did not attempt to draw.
'If that blade comes a fingerwidth out of its scabbard, I'll split you right here,' Cale promised.
The half-drow held his smile and said, 'If you've ripped my shirt, I'll have first your tongue, then your heart.'
Cale's knuckles whitened, and for an instant he considered tearing the half-drow's shirt intentionally, but thought better of it. The fool was likely just an adventurer with too much bravado and too little sense. Cale had seen his type before. Hells, Cale had killed his type before. But that night, he would let it pass. He had business with Riven.
'I don't have time to waste with you, irinal,' said Cale. 'Consider yourself fortunate.'
He tossed the half-drow aside.
To his credit, the half-drow showed some agility by managing to keep his feet and avoid bumping other patrons. He did not look up at Cale, but examined his shirt with exaggerated care.
Cale put the incident out of his mind and began walking toward Riven's table.
Before he had taken five strides, above the thrum of the crowd he heard the half-drow call after him, 'It's not ripped after all. Wrinkled though. Consider yourself fortunate … Cale.'
That stopped Cale cold. He spun around-
— and somehow the half-drow had vanished into the Stag's crowd. Cale went after him a few steps, pushing a few patrons out of his way while scanning the crowd. He did not see the half-drow.
The hairs on the nape of Cale's neck rose. How had he vanished so quickly? More importantly, how did he know Cale's name? Cale was certain he'd never seen the man before. He would have remembered a half-drow. And he had been careful to keep a low profile in Selgaunt's underworld. The last thing he wanted was a reputation. One of Riven's men, maybe?
Maybe. He turned and headed for Riven's table.
The assassin greeted him with his signature sneer. To Cale's surprise, he saw that Riven wore a featureless black disc, perhaps of carved onyx, on a silver chain around his neck. A holy symbol of Mask? That tangible evidence of Riven's and Cale's service to the same god made Cale feel soiled.
Riven noticed Cale's gaze and his sneer deepened. He held the disk from his neck for Cale to see.
'Maybe it's exactly what you think, Cale. That make you uncomfortable?'
Cale stared in Riven's good eye and said, 'No, but I'll wager it makes you uncomfortable.' He pulled out a chair and sat. 'I guess even Mask has lepers among the faithful.'
Riven grunted an insincere laugh, took a pull on his tankard, and nodded at a spot behind Cale.
'I saw that bit with the half-elf,' he said. 'You stooping to picking fights with the itchies now?'
Professional assassins often referred to adventurers as 'itchies'-as in, itching to prove themselves, itching for a fight.
Cale knew then that the half-drow was not one of Riven's men. That alarmed him.
'He's not one of yours.'
Riven scoffed. He'd interpreted Cale's observation as a question.
'Are you jesting?' Riven said. 'A little drip of piss like that? I'd as soon work with your boy Fleet.'
He took another quaff of his beer.
Cale ignored Riven's barb at the halfling. Jak had once stabbed Riven in the back and the assassin had never forgotten-or forgiven.
Cale's mind turned to the half-drow. Who was he? If he was not one of Riven's, then for whom did he work? An uneasy feeling took root in his gut. His instincts told him to heed it. He resolved to hear Riven out, tell him to bugger off, and get the Hells out of the Stag as quickly as possible.
Riven eyed Cale over the rim of his tankard. Cale stared back. The silence stretched.
Riven lost patience first. 'Well? I don't have time for more cryptic nonsense. What have you got? Your note was as clear as fog.'
Cale's breath caught.
'My note?' he said. 'You sent me a note.'
They stared at each other for only a heartbeat.
'Dark!' Cale breathed.
'Damn!'
Both jumped to their feet, toppling their chairs in the process, and looked for the nearest exit. There! A large, open window.
Riven was off like a bowshot, dancing nimbly between the patrons. Cale, trailing a step or two behind and much larger than the assassin, had to shove his way through. He had no idea what was coming, but he knew it would be bad.
'Get out! he shouted to the patrons as he ran. 'Everybody out now!'
Eyes looked his way, questioning glances and furrowed brows, but no one paid his words any heed.
Riven hopped atop a table, scattering plates and startling the two mercenaries seated there. He dived through the window as the sellswords jumped to their feet and went for their steel. Before they could draw fully, Cale shouldered one to the ground and drove the other back with a punch in the chest.
'Get out!' he shouted at them.
He jumped atop the table and grabbed the window jambs. From out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tiny orange sphere streak through an open window on the wall kitty corner. He knew it for what it was.
He cursed and launched himself through the window as the pea-sized ball slammed into one of the Stag's crossbeams. It exploded into a hell of fire and heat. Screams erupted, but only for an instant before being cut off by the dull roar of the explosion. The pressure of the blast and the superheated air blew Cale through the window and sent him flying. He hit the ground with a grunt a full dagger toss away from the Stag, in the middle of the street.
It took him a moment to recover his wits. When he did, he rolled over onto his back and stared up into the night sky, breathing heavily. His pants below his knees smoldered and the fire had scorched his boots, but otherwise he was largely unburned. He patted at his trousers dazedly and slowly rose to his knees. His eyes went to the Stag.
Fire engulfed the first floor, and thick black smoke gushed from the windows of the second. The street was alight in orange. Waves of heat blew from the blaze, so intense they stung Cale's face. The Stag had gone up like kindling-wood walls, wood tables, wood chips … and human flesh.
Cale had expected to see a flood of flaming people, screaming in agony and streaming from the doors and windows. He would have healed those whom he could have, but no one came out. The smoke and fire had done its work almost instantly. The only sound was the hungry crackling of the flames. The Stag had been reduced to an inferno in a matter of moments. So too the people inside. Dozens of them. A few charred corpses that the explosion had blown clear of the building lay smoldering in the street. He didn't see Riven.
The second floor of the Stag began to give way. Timbers cracked, the sound like bones snapping. Great showers of sparks rose into the night as the building shifted.
Without warning, another orange sphere streaked from somewhere to his left, flew into the Stag, and exploded with a roar. Flames blew from every window in long streamers, as though the building was spitting fire. The upper floor, already weakened, collapsed with a crash into the first. Flames and sparks roared into the sky like a swarm of fireflies.
Cale traced the path of the second fireball back to two men standing in the shadows of an alley a block and a half up the street. In one of the men Cale recognized the slim build and finery of the half-drow who had bumped him
