heartbeat or two, thought it was Zelia returning to the warehouse, but it turned out to be another yuan-ti, this one with darker hair and a snakelike tail emerging through a slit in the back of her skirt. Wrapped around her neck like a piece of living jewelry was a tiny bronze-and-black-banded serpent with leathery wings, one of the flying snakes imported from the jungle lands far to the south. As if sensing Arvin staring at it, the winged snake flapped its wings and hissed as its mistress walked by.
Zelia was nowhere in sight-she’d probably maintained her serpent form and slithered away. Either that or she’d gone in the opposite direction. Sighing, Arvin slowed his pace.
He was just turning to go back to the warehouse when he heard a man standing in a nearby doorway give a low, phlegmy cough. Arvin glanced in the fellow’s direction, expecting to see someone aged, but the man who had just cleared his throat was even younger than he. And not a human, either, but a yuan-ti-albeit one with a fair amount of human blood in him. The fellow had olive skin, black hair, and a heavy growth of beard that nearly hid his mouth. Arvin could see the small patches of silver-gray scales dotting his forehead, arms, and hands. He wore black trousers and a white silk shirt with lace around the cuffs and neckline. Arvin walked past him, automatically lowering his eyes in the yuan-ti’s presence-and suddenly caught a whiff of something he recognized: a sour, sick odor.
The smell that lingered on the skin of members of the Pox.
Arvin had worked among rogues long enough to instantly stifle his startle. He continued walking past the “yuan-ti,” deliberately not looking at him. Arvin’s escape of the night before had not gone unnoticed. The Pox were looking for him. And they’d found him.
“Lady Luck, favor me just one more time,” Arvin whispered under his breath. “I’ll fill your cup to the brim, I promise.” He continued to walk steadily down the street toward the front door of his warehouse, shoulders crawling as he imagined the cultist behind him, about to reach out and touch his shoulder with filthy, plague-ridden hands…
As Arvin approached the door, he suddenly realized something. The cultist wasn’t behind him. Risking a glance back, he saw that the man was still lounging in the doorway down the street. He wasn’t even looking at Arvin. Instead his attention seemed to be focused on the women who were drawing water from the public fountain.
Arvin paused, considering. Was the cultist’s presence outside the warehouse mere coincidence?
He decided not to take any chances.
Arvin stepped inside the warehouse and scooped up a coil of rope. Then, with the rope looped over his left forearm, he walked up the street toward the cultist. The man paid no attention to Arvin’s approach. Either the cultist’s presence here truly was coincidence-or he was as good at hiding his emotions as any rogue. He glanced at Arvin only at the last moment, as Arvin stepped into the doorway with him.
“Hello, Shev,” Arvin said in a hearty voice, greeting the fellow with what was a common name among the yuan-ti of Hlondeth. “So good to see you! The thousandweight of rope you ordered has just come in with the shipment from
As Arvin spoke the glove’s command word, the dagger appeared in his hand. He jabbed the point of the weapon into the man’s side and let the rope looped over his forearm slide down to hide it. “Let’s go to the warehouse,” Arvin continued in his falsely hearty voice. “I’ll show it to you.”
The cultist startled then flinched in realization that Arvin meant business. He allowed himself to be marched down the street, toward the warehouse door. Not until he’d stepped inside did he suddenly spring away. Arvin, however, had been expecting something similar. He had, accordingly, steered the cultist slightly to the left as he marched him through the door. As the man jumped, he barked out a command word. A coil of what appeared to be ordinary hemp rope lashed out toward the cultist, spiraling around him like a constricting snake. Confined in its coils, the cultist toppled like a felled tree and landed in a patch of sunlight that slanted in from one of the barred windows above. He immediately opened his mouth to cry out for help; in response Arvin threw his dagger at the man. The blade sliced open the cultist’s ear and thudded into the wooden flooring behind him; at a whispered command, it flew back to Arvin’s hand again.
“Be silent,” Arvin growled as he closed the door behind him. “And I might let you live.”
The cultist did a credible job of imitating a yuan-ti. “Release me,” he spat arrogantly, glaring as he blinked away the blood that was trickling into his right eye. “And I might let
Arvin chuckled. “I know what you are,” he told the man. “You might as well drop your disguise. I can see-and smell-Talona’s foul touch all over you.”
The cultist hissed in anger, still trying to convince Arvin that he was really a yuan-ti then gave up. The magical disguise in which he’d cloaked himself dissipated, revealing a young man whose mouth was so disfigured by scars that his lips would not close. A faded gray-green robe with frayed cuffs and a torn neck covered all but his hands and feet, which were covered in pockmarks. Arvin made a mental note not to touch the magical rope that entangled the fellow; perhaps even to burn it, despite the expense that had gone into its manufacture. He bent over a burlap sack and carefully wiped the cultist’s blood from his dagger.
The cultist strained against the rope for a moment but only succeeded in causing it to constrict further. He glared up at Arvin. “What do you want?” he said in a slurred voice.
“I’ll ask the questions,” Arvin countered. “For starters, why were you watching me?”
“Watching you?” The cultist seemed genuinely puzzled. He tried to purse his disfigured lips together, but they formed an uneven, ragged line. Staring down at the fellow, Arvin suddenly felt sorry for him. This man had been handsome, once, but those lips would never again know the soft caress of a woman’s kiss.
Surprisingly, the cultist laughed. “You pity me?” he slurred. “Don’t. I
Arvin felt a chill run through him. “You did that to yourself deliberately?” he asked. He’d given little thought to the motivations of the Pox. He’d assumed they were driven to worship Talona after illness claimed them in the hope that she would free them from their afflictions. He’d never dreamed that anyone would afflict himself with plague on purpose. Yet that was what this fellow seemed to be saying.
He thought of the liquid they’d forced him to drink. “The liquid in the metal flasks,” he said, thinking out loud as he stared at the terrible pockmarks on the cultist’s skin. “Is this what it’s supposed to do to people? Make their skin… like that?” He resisted the urge to touch his own skin to make sure it was still smooth.
The cultist started to speak then gave another of his phlegmy coughs. He glanced around as if about to spit. Without intending to, Arvin backed up a pace.
The cultist gave him a penetrating look. “You’ve seen something, haven’t you? Something you shouldn’t have.” He paused for a moment, and his expression turned smug. “It doesn’t matter. Cry all the warnings you like-it won’t help you. Talona will soon purge this city, sweeping it clean for the faithful. We will rise from the ashes to claim it.”
Arvin shivered, suddenly realizing what the Pox must be up to. Last night’s ritual hadn’t been an isolated sacrifice. Thinking back to the rash of disappearances that had taken place in recent tendays around the waterfront, Arvin realized that he and Naulg weren’t the first to be subjected to the Pox’s vile ministrations. Nor would they be the last. The Pox meant to spread plague throughout the entire city.
But if that was their goal, why hadn’t their victims been turned out into the streets, where they would spread their contagion to others? Perhaps, Arvin thought, because they had all died. But if they had, why weren’t the cultists dumping their bodies in the streets instead?
Maybe the cultists were saving them up, intending to scatter them throughout the city like seeds when they had enough of them.
As Arvin stood, these dark thoughts tumbling through his mind, he became dimly aware of noises from the street outside-the chatter of voices, the
The public fountain, one of dozens from which Hlondeth’s citizens drew their daily drinking water.
The one the cultist had been watching when Arvin spotted him.
Arvin suddenly realized the answer. If the Pox wanted to spread contagion, what better way to do it than by tainting the city’s water supply? All they had to do was carry to each fountain a little of whatever was in the flasks and tip it into the fountain under the pretense of filling their vessels. But would this work-or would the volume of water in the fountain dilute the plague, rendering it ineffective? How much did a person have to ingest for it to kill?
