wings. Striding over to the vent, he peered out and saw a pigeon on the ledge below. That must have been the motion his eye had caught-the bird flying past the slats. Three stories below was the street; none of the people walking along it were so much as looking up. Above-Arvin craned his neck to look up through the slats-was only the bare eave of the rooftop, curving out of sight to either side of the hidden room that housed his workshop. Satisfied there was no cause for alarm, he wiped sweat from his forehead with a sleeve and returned to his work. He picked up his netmaker’s needle and rethreaded it with a fresh piece of dog-hair twine then began to loop and tie, loop and tie.
“So you escaped.”
Arvin whirled a second time. “Zelia!” he exclaimed.
The yuan-ti was standing against the far wall, her scale-freckled face partially hidden by a coil of rope that hung from one of the rafters. She stepped out from behind it and stared at Arvin with unblinking eyes, her blue tongue flickering in and out of her mouth.
Arvin darted a glance at the spot on the floor where the hidden trapdoor was; it hadn’t been opened, nor should it have been. Arvin was the only one who knew about the three hinged boards in the net loft ceiling, adjacent to a “roof” support post, that opened into his workshop.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
Zelia smiled, revealing perfect human teeth. “Your blood was on the ramp. Fortunately for you, I collected it before anyone else did.”
“And you used it in a spell to find me,” Arvin guessed. But how had she gotten into his workshop? More to the point, had she brought the militia with her? Were they waiting in the streets below?
Zelia’s eyes flashed silver as they reflected the light from the lantern that hung from a nearby rafter. She gave a breathy hiss of laughter that somehow overlapped her words. “I’ve decided against having the militia arrest you,” she said.
Arvin startled. Had she read his thoughts? No, it was an easy thing to have guessed.
“I’m going to take you up on your offer,” she continued. “Find out what I want to know-without alerting the Pox-and I’ll remove the mind seed.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What the Pox are up to-over and above the obvious, which is poisoning people. What is their goal? Who is behind them? Who is really pulling the strings?”
“You don’t think they’re acting on their own?”
Zelia shook her head. “They never could have established themselves in Hlondeth without help.”
“Where do I begin?” Arvin asked. “How do I find them?”
“When I locate the chamber you described, I’ll contact you,” Zelia said. “In the meantime, there are resources you have that others don’t. Put them to work.”
“Use my… connections you mean?” Arvin asked.
“No,” Zelia said, her eyes blazing. “Say nothing to the Guild.”
“Then what-”
“You have a talent that others don’t.”
Arvin shrugged then gestured at the nets and ropes and delicately braided twines that hung from the rafters and from pegs, leaving not one blank spot on the wall. “If it’s an enchanted rope you want, I can-”
Zelia moved closer, her body swaying sinuously as she made her way around the hanging clutter. “You’re a psion.”
Arvin felt the blood drain from his face. “No.” He shook his head. “No, I’m not.”
Zelia’s eyes bored into his. For once, the unblinking stare of a yuan-ti was getting to him.
“Yes you are. In the tavern, when we first met, you tried to charm me. And later, you used psionics to distract the militia.”
A cold feeling settled in the pit of Arvin’s stomach. He opened his mouth but found himself unable to deny Zelia’s blunt observation. For years, he’d told himself that his ability to simply crack a smile and have people suddenly warm up to him was due solely to his good looks and natural charisma, but deep down, he’d known the truth. What had happened this morning-when Tanju had been distracted in the tavern-had confirmed it.
Arvin’s mother had been right about him all along. He had the talent.
“The Mortal Coil,” he began in a faltering voice. “That droning noise…”
“Yes.”
Arvin closed his eyes, thinking back to the day he’d finally succeeded in running away from the orphanage. He’d been in his teens by then-hair had begun to grow under his arms and at his groin, and the first wisps of a beard had begun on his chin. His mother had always warned him that “something strange” might start to happen when he reached puberty. Arvin, surrounded by the rough company of children “rescued” from the gutters by the clerics of Ilmater, had developed his own crude ideas of what she’d been referring to-until that fateful day, just after his fourteenth birthday, when he’d found out what she’d really meant.
It had happened at the end of the month, on the day the clerics renewed the children’s marks. The children had been summoned from their beds, and Arvin contrived to place himself last in line-an easy thing to do, since those at the end of the line had to wait longest to return to their beds. As the cleric who was applying red ink to the children’s wrists worked his way down the line, staining the symbol of Ilmater onto the wrists of each child with quick strokes of his brush, Arvin stood with fingers crossed, wishing and wishing and wishing that somehow, this time, he might be overlooked.
One by one, the children were painted and dismissed, until only Arvin remained. Then, just as the cleric turned toward Arvin, brush dripping, something strange happened. It started with a tickling sensation at the back of Arvin’s throat. Then a low droning filled the air-the same droning that had filled the tavern this morning.
Suddenly, the cleric had glanced away. He stared at the far wall, frowning, as if trying to remember something.
Arvin seized his chance. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, deep enough to hide his wrists, and turned away. Then he began to walk out of the room, as if dismissed. From behind him came not the shout he’d expected, but the sound of a brush being tapped against a jar. The cleric was cleaning his brush and preparing to leave.
Later that night, when he was certain the other children in his room were asleep, Arvin had climbed down from a third-floor window using the finger-thin rope he’d secretly braided over the previous months. After four days of hiding in a basement, what remained of the previous month’s mark had faded enough for him to venture out onto the streets. He was free, and he remained that way for several tendays… until the Guild caught him thieving on their turf.
Thank the gods he’d still been carrying his escape rope at the time. The rope appeared ordinary, but woven into it were threads that Arvin had plucked from a magical robe owned by one of the orphanage’s clerics. The resulting rope had chameleonlike properties and magically blended with its surroundings-allowing it to dangle against a wall, undetected, until the moment it was needed. One of the rogues who had captured Arvin had tripped over it-and cursed the “bloody near invisible” rope. The other rogue had paused, dagger poised to chop off another of Arvin’s fingertips, then slowly lowered his dagger.
“Where did you get that rope, boy?” he’d asked.
Arvin’s answer-“I made it”-had saved him.
In the years since his escape from the orphanage, Arvin had deliberately avoided thinking about what had happened to the cleric that night. He’d hadn’t been willing to face the truth. He hadn’t wanted to wind up like his mother, frightened by her own dreams-and dead, despite her talent for catching glimpses of the future.
Arvin opened his eyes and acknowledged Zelia. He could no longer deny the obvious-even to himself. “I do have the talent,” he admitted.
Zelia smiled. “I could tell that by your secondary displays-by the ringing in my ears when you tried to charm me, and later, by the droning noise. Beginners often give themselves away.”
“That’s the thing,” Arvin hastily added. “I’m not even a beginner. I haven’t had any training at all.”
“I’m not surprised,” Zelia said. “Psions are extremely rare, especially in this corner of the world. Their talent often goes unrecognized. Even when a high-level power is manifested, it is usually attributed to some other magical effect.”
“High-level power?” Arvin echoed. He shook his head. “All I can do is make people like me. I have no control over it. Sometimes it works… and sometimes it doesn’t. And once, no, twice ever in my life, I was able to
