Shadowbane

“I’d rather just pay.” She grimaced. “Donate to the cause, that be.”

“Cause?” Kalen asked.

“Church of Tymora-or maybe it’s Beshaba. None can say for sure,” Flick said. “Settled in five years back, started handin’ out bread and soup and ale to the poor, which is everybody. Really tryin’ to save the city.”

“Save it or squeeze it?”

“Either. Both.” Flick narrowed her eyes. “You’re really him?”

“Who?” Kalen waved a hand in front of Ebbius’s face. The tiefling was very, very out. He hoisted the tiefling over his shoulder. “Thugs’ll wake up in the length of a song or two. You should get out of here before then-it’s not safe.”

Flick shrugged. “I look like a blushing maid to you?”

If Kalen remembered little else about Flick from more than a decade ago, he knew she could convince anyone of anything. The woman was steel cloaked in silk.

“Farewell.” He got to his feet and stepped around the counter toward the alley.

“Wait. You’ll need this.” Flick pressed Ebbius’s half-emptied bottle of rum into his hand. She appraised him shrewdly, hands on her hips. “You didn’t have to do what you did, Little Dren, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful.” Then she smiled her familiar toothy grin. “But get out of my shop, you hrasting scamp.”

Kalen stared at her a moment, then nodded grimly. “I won’t be back.”

He pushed through the door into the alley. The reek of vomit and mostly dried blood assailed his nostrils, but he put the smells out of his mind. Two hours here, and he’d already grown accustomed to the stench.

Little Dren.

He didn’t like returning to this city for many reasons, but the biggest was who- what-he’d been. He didn’t want to go back to that, but if he had to, he would.

Bending low, Kalen set Ebbius against the wall then leaned back on his haunches, considering. He uncorked the bottle Flick had given him and reversed it over the tiefling’s head, pouring a flood of dark liquid over his horned head. Then he rose and started pacing before the tiefling, prowling like a hunting cat.

In a breath, Ebbius sputtered into wakefulness. He coughed and reached up to his head. “Ow, what the Hells, Little Dren? This any way to treat an old friend?”

“The girl.” Kalen cracked his knuckles.

“Girl? What girl-gah!” He cried out when Kalen smashed the wall next to his ear with his fist. “Crazy blaggard! What the-”

Kalen studied his numb hand. “Tell me about the girl.”

“Trying to scare me won’t wash, hark? You and that Flicking bitch can just-ah!”

Kalen punched again, this time closer and harder. His fist met the wall with an audible crackle. Still, he felt nothing.

The tiefling glared at him, all defiance. “You won’t hurt me. You could have killed my men, but you didn’t.” Ebbius’s tail flicked around contemptuously. “Sorry, Little Dren-if that is you-but I know you too well.”

“You knew a boy,” Kalen said. “You do not know me.”

With that, he plucked up Ebbius’s darting tail and slammed it into the wall. Bone cracked, and the tiefling howled. “Well, well, very well!” Ebbs cried. “What do you want?”

“I told you,” Kalen said. “I’m looking for a girl taken about four days back. You’d remember her. Slim, about a score of winters, blue hair.”

“Blue hair? Boyo, now you’re just fantasiz-ahh!” His words cut off in a cry of alarm when Kalen grasped his left hand as though to slam it into the wall next. “Blue-haired girl. Of course. I heard things.”

Kalen clenched Ebbius’s hand tighter. “Things?”

Ebbius swallowed sharply. “Blue-haired girl, traveling with a dwarf caravan. Ambushers killed some dwarves, took the lass prisoner. That’s all I know.”

“Was she hurt?”

Ebbius shrugged. “She’s just some girl. Why do you care?”

His words cut off when Kalen grasped him by the collar and shoved him back against the wall. The tiefling raised his hands over his face to ward off Kalen’s blade before it got to his face. “Ai-ai! Don’t be sore! Just being plain!”

“Where is she?” Kalen demanded. “Who took her?”

The tiefling shook his head. “Don’t know.”

“Where?” Kalen slammed his fist into the wall next to Ebbius’s ear. Bone crunched and cracks spread up the stone.

“I don’t know!” the tiefling cried. “Godsdammit, I don’t know!”

Kalen believed him-not merely because of the clarity in Ebbius’s eye, but also because of the darkening stain on the front of the tiefling’s breeches. Ebbius was too afraid to lie. Disgusted, he dropped the soiled tiefling to the ground.

Once again, anger had risen in him-anger so foolish it had broken his hand. The old monster was scratching to come out. He made an effort to suppress it.

Leaning against the wall, Kalen loosed a sigh. “Who has the power to do this?”

“What?” Ebbius coughed, grasping his throat. “What do you mean?”

“Myrin isn’t weak and dwarves don’t travel unarmed.” He turned to Ebbius. “So I’ll ask one more time: Who has the resources to get this done? One of the Five?”

“One of ’em, perhaps.” Ebbius narrowed his eyes and bared his teeth. “The Dustclaws out of South Shore. Bruisers break anything if the coin’s right-windows, doors, heads, what-have-you. Leader’s a half-orc, name of Duulgrin. Nasty piece.”

“I know all about the Dustclaws.” Kalen remembered them from his boyhood: eight or ten of the toughest brutes in the city. They must have grown in power and number in his absence. He gestured back to the building. “Your hired hands are Dustclaws.”

“Right, right,” Ebbius said. “Crush ’n’ grab’s their game. That clan of dwarves got beat pretty fierce, which fits the Dustclaw way of doing things. Maybe they did it.”

“But they didn’t,” Kalen said.

“Could be.” The tiefling shrugged. “Could be the Dragonbloods.”

“The Shou, you mean?”

Ebbius nodded. “The old garrison on Blood Island-it’s a regular empire now, as much as is possible in Luskan. The Dragon could have done it.”

“Their leader,” Kalen said. “Is he an actual dragon?”

“Nobody knows.” Ebbius spat and wiped his mouth. “That one’s paranoid as a closet moondancer in shady Netheril. You get his true name, you tell me, aye?”

Kalen nodded “That’s two of the Captains. There are three more.”

The five powerful chieftains who called themselves “Captains” had ruled over Luskan for over a century. The moniker hearkened from back when the city still had a real government, when the rulers had been genuine seafaring pirate kings. The name stuck by tradition.

“Master of the Throat,” Ebbius said. “Pretty thing like yer girl make a fine consort.”

“Not him,” Kalen said.

“Necromancers get lonely too.”

“Not. Him.” If it was the necromancer, then Myrin was already dead. And worse.

Ebbius shrugged. “Spinners wouldn’t do it.”

“Spinners?” Kalen frowned. Flick had mentioned the church of Tymora.

“New outfit, the Coin Spinners,” Ebbius said. “They moved into the old temple, became one of the Five a year or so back. More like an armed camp than a church-they do food ’n’ beds, not kidnapping. ’Course it’s a front, but isn’t everything? You’d like ’em.”

Now Kalen understood the significance of the painted gold coin with the horns marking Flick’s shop. It was