and his head fell back. Duulgrin butted him again. And again.
If the piercings cut him, the half-orc didn’t show it-all he felt was the thrill of inflicting pain, of blood spurting in his face. His father’s rage had taken him-the old way of the orc once more rising in his veins. The madman moaned, and Duulgrin laughed.
Finally, he pulled back and shook his head. Blood flew. “You like the taste of that?” he said. “Eh? How do you like it?”
The madman-his face reduced to ground meat-burbled a reply.
“Aye?” Duulgrin leaned down. “Feed, perhaps?”
Blood spurted from the ruined face like a geyser, coating Duulgrin’s nose and mouth. The half-orc reeled back, startled. The taste was foul beyond foul, tinged with rot. He wiped blood from his eyes and glared around the room-at his men, at his mistress, at the fool thief who’d tried talking his way out of the half-orc’s wrath. Duulgrin growled, blood trickling from his lips.
No weakness.
He spat the blood back in the madman’s face. The man fell back to the floor, twitching but making no more noises.
Duulgrin shook his head once to clear some blood from it, then grinned at his men. “Back to your posts,” he said. “Don’t bring this bloody shit into my house. You come through those doors again, you bring me something I want, not just something to kill. Though”-he grinned, blood trickling over his chin-“this gave me something to do.”
He could see the big men trying not to tremble.
“Now get out.” Duulgrin waved to the corpse. “Take that with you.”
The two Calishites dragged the mess no longer recognizable as a man out the doors, leaving a trail of blood.
Duulgrin gestured to the thief. “Now, where were we?”
The back door to the alley opened and the two guards hobbled out, the bloody body between them. They stepped down from the threshold and walked three paces into the alley. They hefted, swung the corpse twice, and tossed it against the opposite wall.
The first Calishite paused and looked around warily. “Hold.”
“What is it?” said the other.
“Nothing,” the first said. “A mirage.”
The second one grunted. They went back inside.
After a moment, a shadow-which had slipped out behind them-nodded, satisfied there were no onlookers. Then Kalen parted from the wall and moved toward the corpse, his hand on his dagger’s hilt. He hadn’t found Myrin anywhere in the tavern. Kalen had found holding cells, but they were all empty. Nor had they looked like anything that could hold Myrin, with her magic. No, someone else must have her.
He’d also spied on the chamber of the gang chief in time to see the guards bring in the hapless madman. Based on that performance, Kalen never wanted to face Duulgrin himself. Fortunately, Myrin hadn’t been there. If she had … well, then he would have fought all of them.
The Dustclaws didn’t have her, which was one gang down. They had, however, been kind enough to leave a dwarf-crafted dagger unattended-a match to the one on Kalen’s belt. Now, it was time to move on. Still, he couldn’t shake his unease regarding the madman’s fate.
He crouched next to the corpse. Something had happened to that man-something that couldn’t be explained with a single blow to the face, no matter how hard Kalen had struck him. Perhaps the body would yield up clues.
He shot a look both ways down the alley-no one was approaching-then scanned the dead man’s body for hints as to his fate. Had it been a spell that broke his mind? The madman lay on his chest against the wall, his shirt ridden up around his midsection. His clothes were badly torn in a way they had not been when Kalen had attacked him and half a dozen red-yellow welts rose from his back.
Bites? Rabid dogs might have caused this, but the slavering madness took hold slowly, not suddenly. Vermin of some kind? He’d seen spider venom that could do awful things to a man. Or were they plague sores?
Kalen wondered if this had something to do with the supposed plague that had led the Waterdhavian Guard to quarantine the city. These wounds, however, looked like insect bites more than anything else. He raised his scarf over his mouth and nose just in case, then he reached to lift the shirt away from the welts for a better look.
The flesh puckered oddly around the injuries: red and inflamed, but also hard. It looked vaguely … crystalline. He tapped his dagger against it.
No sooner had he touched the body than the flesh began to sag away from the bones. He drew back, but the damage had been done. Like a soapy bubble, the skin burst, letting brackish blood and pus flow, along with an odor of putrescence that made him cover his mouth and nose. Though the madman hadn’t been dead more than a few moments, his body looked as if it had been rotting for tendays.
Rotting from the inside.
Kalen froze, his eyes going to the madman’s back, and tracing among the wounds. He could have sworn the flesh had moved, as though something lived under the surface. A great abscess had formed on the corpse’s back, where the flesh had begun to blacken. Kalen drew his dagger, but before he could prod at the necrotized mound, he heard footsteps out in the cobbled street. Time to go.
He drew a clay flask from under his cloak, tossed it through the back door of the Dustclaw tavern, then walked away. The flask broke and flames spread. Kalen walked on, his cloak drifting around him in the sea breeze.
A pair of Dustclaws came around the corner, racing toward the fire. They stopped after seeing Kalen and their faces twisted with rage. They raised their weapons.
“Good,” Kalen said. “I was worried this would be easy.”
He drew his two long daggers.
CHAPTER FIVE
22 KYTHORN (EARLY MORNING)
Dawn broke and the sun rose over Luskan like a scalding brand.
The dark things of night fled as sunlight returned with Luskan’s sweltering heat wave. The filth in the streets began to sizzle within moments. Not that the buildings would catch fire-the weather was too dismal and damp most of the year for flames to take hold, as though the city were too damned to burn. If a good fire got going, it would do little more than scar one or two houses, leaving blackened heaps of wood and stone.
Summers such as that of the Year of Deep Water Drifting dealt cruelly with the city of thieves. On the longest days, the breezes off the Sea of Swords faltered and the streets grew bakingly humid. Clean water was hard to find and more precious than blood.
Worst of all, the vermin of Luskan-flies, lice, rats, and all manner of things that crawled and clicked-grew bold in summer. Far outnumbering the population of the city, they feasted on the rotting vegetation, the buildings, and the people alike. The chittering, scratching, biting barrage drove folk in Luskan mad.
As the sun climbed, Kalen shuffled along an alley off the Street of Storms. In Luskan, it was common practice to defile the signs to say something foul that one scoundrel or another had found amusing once upon a time: streets and avenues of
