Entreri caught a minute flicker, a subtle flash of reflected light from the table, then a second. Long before Theebles had come to visit, he had chipped the rim of one of the glasses ever so slightly. Entreri had then painstakingly aligned the table and the seat he’d chosen. With every rotation, the tiny chip in the glass would flicker a reflection of the torch burning in the nearest wall sconce-but to his eyes only.
Entreri silently counted the elapsed time between flickers, measuring the table’s speed.
“Why would you take such a risk?” wary Theebles asked, verbally prodding the young man’s concentration. “Have you come to hate me so much in a few short tendays?”
“Long months,” Entreri corrected. “But it has been longer than that. My fight in the street was no coincidence. It was a set-up, a test, between myself and the man I had to kill. And you are the one who arranged it.”
The way that Entreri described his adversary, “the man I had to kill,” tipped Theebles off to the young rogue’s motivation. The stranger in the dusty street had likely been Artemis Entreri’s first kill. The lieutenant smiled to himself. Some weaklings found murder a difficult thing to accept; either the first kill, or the inevitable path it had set the young man on, was not to Entreri’s liking.
“I had to know if you were worthy,” Theebles said, admitting his complicity. But Entreri was no longer listening. The young rogue had gone back to his subtle study of the spinning glasses.
Theebles eased his brake, slowing the rotation considerably. The hub was well greased-some even claimed there was a bit of magic about it-so the top did not need much momentum to keep spinning at a nearly constant rate.
Entreri showed no sign of distress at the unexpected speed change. He kept completely composed and began silently counting once more. The marked glass flickered exactly an eighth of the circumference from Theebles’s chair. Entreri adjusted his cadence to make each complete rotation take a count of eight.
He saw the flicker; he counted and as he hit nine, abruptly pulled the brake.
The tabletop came to a sudden stop, liquid sloshing back and forth inside the glasses, droplets of it splattering to the table and the floor.
Theebles eyed the glass in front of him. He thought to remark that the young rogue didn’t understand the proper protocol of the quarter table challenge, for the brakes were supposed to be applied slowly, alternately between the opponents, and the challenged party would make the final stop. The fat lieutenant decided not to make an issue of it. He knew that he had been taken, but didn’t really care. He’d been expecting this challenge for almost a tenday and had enough antivenin in his blood to defeat the poison of a hundred Thesali vipers. He lifted his glass. Entreri did likewise, and together they drank deeply.
Five seconds passed. Ten.
“Well,” Theebles began. “It would seem that neither of us found the unfortunate quarter this day.” He pulled his huge form from the chair. “Of course, your insolence will be reported in full to Pasha Basadoni.”
Entreri showed no expression, didn’t blink. Theebles suspected that the young rogue was hiding his surprise, or that he was fuming or trying to figure out how he might escape this unexpected disaster. As the seconds passed, the young man’s continued calm began to bother the fat lieutenant.
“You have had your one challenge,” Theebles snapped suddenly, loudly. “I am alive, thus you have lost. Expect to pay dearly for your impertinence!”
Entreri didn’t blink.
Good enough for the young upstart, the fat lieutenant decided with a snap of his fingers. As he departed, he thought of many ways that he might properly punish Entreri.
How delicious that torture would be, for Basadoni could not stop Theebles this time. The guildmaster, who by Theebles’s estimation had become much too soft in his old age, had intervened many times on behalf of Entreri, calming Theebles whenever he learned that the fat lieutenant was planning a brutal punishment for the young upstart. Not this time, though. This time, Basadoni could not intervene. This time, Entreri had certainly earned the punishment.
The first place Theebles went when he returned to his lavish private quarters was the well-stocked cupboard. The antivenin to Thesali viper poison was known to cause great hunger after the poison was introduced, and Theebles had never been one to need much prompting toward food. He pulled out a two-layered cake, a gigantic, sugar-speckled arrangement, decorated with the sweetest of fruits.
He took up a knife to cut a slice, then shrugged and decided to eat the whole thing. With both hands, he lifted the cake to his mouth.
“Oh, clever lad!” Theebles congratulated, returning the cake to the table. “Sly upon sly, a feint within a feint! Of course you knew the effects of Thesali antivenin. Of course you knew that I would run back here to my personal cupboard! And you have had the time, haven’t you, Artemis Entreri? Clever lad!”
Theebles looked to the window and thought to throw the cake out into the street. Let the homeless waifs find its crumbs and eat them, and all fall down dead! But the cake, the beautiful cake. He couldn’t bear to be done with it, and he was so, so famished.
Instead, he moved across the room to his private desk. He carefully unlocked the trapped drawers, checked the wax seal to be certain that no one had been here before him, to be certain that Entreri could not have tampered with this supply. Satisfied that all was as it should be, Theebles opened a secret compartment at the bottom of the drawer and removed a very valuable vial. It contained an amber-colored liquid, a magic potion that would neutralize any poison a man might imbibe. Theebles looked back to the cake. Would Entreri be as clever as he believed? Would the young rogue really understand the concept of sly upon sly?
Theebles sighed and decided Entreri just might be that clever. The vial of universal antidote was very expensive, but the cake looked so very delicious!
“I will make Artemis Entreri pay for another vial,” the now-famished lieutenant decided as he swallowed the antidote. Then he romped across the room and took a tiny bit off the edge of the cake, testing its flavor. It was indeed poisoned. Experienced Theebles knew that at once from the barely perceptible sour edge among the sweetness.
The antidote would defeat it, the lieutenant knew, and he would not let the young upstart cheat him out of so fine a meal. He rubbed his plump hands together and took up the cake, gorging himself, swallowing huge chunks at a time, wiping the silver serving platter clean.
Theebles died that night, horribly, waking from a sound sleep into sheer agony. It was as if his insides were on fire. He tried to call out, but his voice was drowned by his own blood.
His attendant found him early the next morning, his mouth full of gore, his pillowcase spotted with brownish red spots, and his abdomen covered with angry blue welts. Many in the guild had heard Dancer speak of the previous day’s challenge, and so the connection to young Artemis Entreri was not a hard one to make.
The young assassin was caught on the streets of Calimport a tenday later, after giving Pasha Basadoni’s powerful spy network a fine run. He was more resigned than afraid as two burly, older killers led him roughly back to the guild hall.
Entreri believed Basadoni would punish him, perhaps even kill him, for his actions; it was worth it just to know that Theebles Royuset had died horribly.
He had never been in the uppermost chambers of the guild hall before, never imagined what riches lay within. Beautiful women, covered in glittering jewels, roamed through every room. Great cushiony couches and pillows were heaped everywhere, and behind every third archway was a steaming tub of scented water.
This entire floor of the hall was devoted to purely hedonistic pursuits, a place dedicated to every imaginable pleasure. Yet to Entreri, it appeared more dangerous than enticing. His goal was perfection, not pleasure, and this was a place where a man would grow soft.
He was somewhat surprised, then, when he at last came to stand before Pasha Basadoni, the first time Entreri had actually met the man. Basadoni’s small office was the only room on this floor of the guild hall not fitted for comfort. Its furnishings were few and simple-a single wooden desk and three unremarkable chairs.
The pasha fit the office. He was a smallish man, old but stately. His gaze, like his posture, was perfectly straight. His gray hair was neatly groomed, his clothes unpretentious.
After only a couple moments of scrutiny, Entreri understood that this was a man to be respected, even feared. Looking at the pasha, Entreri considered again how out of place a slug like Theebles Royuset had been. He guessed at once that Basadoni must have hated Theebles profoundly. That notion alone gave him hope.
“So you admit you cheated at the quarter challenge?” Basadoni asked after a long and deliberate pause, after
