Venom in Her Veins

“You can see it written on his face like lines of ancient imperial poetry every time he looks at her.”

“Love? Nonsense, he’s her baby cousin,” Alaia sighed. “When did I get so old, Krailash? I know I never married, but there was a time when I at least dabbled in thoughts of love, when I had the free time. And the boy is nearly sixteen now, isn’t he? I’m sure he’s been falling in love with housemaids and shopgirls and his tutors for years by now. Naturally Zaltys would catch his eye.”

“And her being an adoptee means they’re not necessarily idle thoughts,” Krailash said.

Alaia groaned. “I can’t think of political marriages-or the possibility of a brat from the Guardians trying to put his hands on my daughter-just now. You don’t think … does Zaltys reciprocate his feelings?”

“I’ve seen no evidence of anything more than familial affection on her part,” Krailash assured her.

“That’s something,” Alaia said.

“Here’s the plaza.” Krailash pointed. “Where we found Zaltys as a baby.”

“Let’s hurry along to the place where we’ll find her as a teenaged girl, then, hmm?”

Krailash took her to the false grave, noting the two holes, one of which opened down into darkness. He set his men to widening the opening-it was far too small for a dragonborn, or even the larger human guards-while Alaia paced impatiently around the wreckage of the temple. After a few moments when the only sound was picks and axes striking the ground, Alaia tapped Krailash on the shoulder. “I’m an idiot,” she said. “Look at me. I’m wearing robes. To go crawling around in caves and tunnels.”

He nodded, having wondered when she was going to notice that, and opened his pack. “Quelamia caught me just as I was leaving camp and handed me this. She said you might need it.” He passed over a bundle of bluish- black cloth embroidered with tiny white stars.

Alaia shook it out and held it up, frowning. The exotic cloth aside, it was a simple enough gown, if elegantly cut. “Rather fancy dress for grubbing about in holes in the ground.”

“Quelamia says it’s as good as leather armor at a tenth the weight.” He shrugged. “Wizard things, I imagine.”

Alaia squinted. “I think this is a robe of stars. Quelamia mentioned owning one once.”

“Sounds quite mystical,” Krailash said politely.

“I gather it can be used to bring light to dark situations. I won’t test that now, but if it can turn a sword blade, I’m well pleased. I’m going around this wall to change.”

“Not without an escort. I’ve lost one of the family to derro already, and won’t lose another. Rainer just went around the corner once, and he was stolen in moments.”

“Fine, then, come along, but don’t ogle.”

“You aren’t even my species,” he grumbled. “It would be like ogling a monkey. No offense.” He followed her around a fragment of freestanding wall, and averted his eyes while she changed.

“Well?” she said, and Krailash looked her over. She was rather regal in the garment, and the stars seemed almost to twinkle.

“You look like a magic user, all right,” he said.

“Oh good. Stab me?”

Krailash sighed, took a dagger from his belt, and pressed the point very gently against the sleeve of the gown. “Feel anything?”

“Pressure. No pinprick. Give me a slash.”

Krailash swung the knife, at an angle shallow enough that it wouldn’t cause much damage beyond shaving off a bit of skin if it got through. But the blade bounced off as if he’d struck boiled leather. “Won’t do you much good if a boulder falls on you, but it will afford some protection. Do you think you can crawl around on hands and knees in it if need be?”

“Without even scraping my knees,” she said. “Nice thing about magical robes-they tend to adjust to fit. All right, now that I’ve held everyone up, let’s get moving.”

When they came back to the false gravesite, the hole was big enough for the whole party to descend. Krailash sent three men ahead, then himself, then Alaia, and the last three men in the back. They were all well- provisioned and well-armed. Krailash began to regret bringing his great battle-axe Thunder’s Edge when they entered the old mining tunnel, because it would be impossible to swing with any power in such confined space, especially with his allies pressed in so close.

“Wait,” Alaia said, and the company halted. “My spirit companion is just up ahead, in a sort of nexus room connecting many of these tunnels, and it senses movement.” Her eyes widened. “Derro! They’re coming in from all sides, they’re going to-”

The guard at the front of the tunnel screamed as dozens of crossbow bolts struck him simultaneously, his death cry a counterpoint to the demented giggling of the onrushing derro attackers.

Chapter Eleven

Julen woke up with entirely too much understanding. There was no blissful moment of confusion, no disorientation, no instant when he thought he might be having a terrible nightmare. His years of training at the hands of the Guardians had made such self-delusions impossible, and when consciousness returned to him, he knew exactly what was happening.

He’d fallen into a pit, and been drugged and captured by derro slavers, and his future would either be very short and very unpleasant, or very long and indescribably more unpleasant. The heavy metal shackles binding his ankles were attached to similar cuffs around his wrists, the two sets of restraints joined by short chains, forcing his knees into a drawn-up position. He lay on his left side, curled body scraping painfully against the rough tunnel floor as his captors dragged him by a long chain attached to the shackles. There was precious little to see, as the tunnel was dark, and the derro apparently had no need for light. They weren’t giggling, but they were talking to themselves, in guttural tones that must have been Deep Speech, along with occasional fragments of Common, words that made no sense out of context and probably didn’t make much sense anyway: “melon,” “candlelight,” “fencepost,” “dung,” “matrimony.”

The histories he’d read all said derro were mad, but that only made them more dangerous. His father had taken him to an asylum once, to see a man who’d killed fourteen respectable women in Delzimmer before being captured. That man had chatted amiably with voices only he could hear, and claimed to take his murderous instructions from a neighbor’s pet wolfhound-the wolfhound had been examined, and was determined to be an ordinary dog, not a lycanthrope or demon in disguise or anything else unusual, and certainly nothing capable of controlling a man’s mind. The killer had, unquestionably, been insane, but he’d eluded the authorities for months, carefully laying false trails that pointed blame toward his imaginary enemies, and his booby-trapped basement lair had taken the lives of a dozen city guards before he was apprehended. His father had told him all that, and said, “You see, Julen, madness doesn’t mean stupidity. The mad can be clever and cunning-sometimes even wise-and because their motivations are often impossible for sane men to comprehend, they are almost impossible to predict and troublesome to manipulate. Some like to employ the mad as assassins or enforcers or ultimate threats, but I advise against it. If such measures seem necessary, invest in a skilled actor who can pretend to madness. Actors are easily manipulated, especially by the lever of vanity, and often have the sort of moral flexibility that proves useful in our operatives.”

The derro weren’t actors. They were twisted beings, despised even by the other races in the Underdark, tainted by their dark researches and assignations with aberrations, and they couldn’t be bribed, or begged, or outsmarted, or reasoned with, which limited his diplomatic options. Trying to kill the mad was also troublesome, as they often fought on happily when sane people would have given in to the inevitability of death. The situation wasn’t hopeless-the Guardians held that almost no situation was-but it was certainly dire. Escaping from the derro was the main priority.

Julen examined the shackles as best he could by feel, probing for the lock with his fingertips, because he’d been lockpicking since he was old enough to hold a burglar’s tools. But there was no lock, and as he shifted, the metal grew warm and contracted, squeezing his hands and ankles more tightly. Magic, then. That was problematic. He wondered if the green knife in his pack could help, but one of the derro must have taken it. The dagger at his