Evidently her side had won the fight. Otherwise, she wouldn't be lying in a clean, soft bed. She realized her throat was dry, opened her eyes fully, and looked about to see if one of the priests had left her some water.
She wasn't in a tent but a small, sparsely furnished candlelit room with bare whitewashed walls. A thin young man with a red beard sat watching her. The sight of him made her snatch for the sword that no longer hung at her side, even as it pierced her confusion.
It wasn't an ogre that had wounded her-that had happened years ago, in the Winterwood-it was a collapsing balcony in Oeble, after which, what? Had Aeron sar Randal found her and decided to make her his prisoner?
As if by magic, a long, heavy fighting knife appeared in the thief's hand.
'Calm down!' he said. 'I don't mean to hurt you. If I had, I wouldn't have carried you to Ilmater's house for healing.'
She sneered and replied, 'Yet you pull a dagger on me, even though I'm injured and unarmed.'
'According to the healer who attended you, you're only a little bit hurt at this point.' He smiled crookedly and added, 'Besides, this afternoon I found out just how tough an unarmed outlander woman could be.'
'You met Sefris.'
'I did if she shaves her head and moves like… I don't know what. A cat? lightning? Flowing water? Whatever you liken it to, it was scary.'
'That's her.'
'Who in the Nine Hells is she? How do you know her?'
'How do you? What happened?'
'I'm the one with the knife,' said Aeron, 'so I'm going to ask the questions.'
She glanced surreptitiously around. Her weapons were nowhere in evidence, nor was there anything much she could grab and use for self-defense. Even the pewter candlestick was out of reach. Still, perhaps her plight wasn't all that desperate.
'If this truly is a house of healing,' she said, 'all I need do is shout, and someone will rush to my aid.'
'Faster than I can stick an Arthyn fang between your ribs?' he countered. 'Don't count on it.'
'Are you ruthless enough? I don't see it in your eyes.'
He sighed like a man with a headache and said, 'I already said I don't want to do it. I'm just hoping you can tell me something to help me get my father back.'
She felt a reluctant twinge of sympathy for him. She remembered how it had felt to lose her own parents, when the white fever took them both within a tenday of one another.
'I saw a gang of ruffians march him away with a sack over his head,' she said. 'One of them was a tanarukk.'
'Right, the Red Axes. I know who kidnapped him, but did you overhear them say anything about exactly where in the house they're holding him, or how he's restrained, or guarded? Anything like that?'
'No. I'm sorry.'
'Curse it. Really, I don't even know what I thought you might be able to tell me, but I prayed there'd be something. What were you doing in my garret?'
'Looking for you and the strongbox.'
'You can say 'The Black Bouquet.' I know what I've got. Sort of. Were you up there questioning my father when the Red Axes showed up?'
'No,' Miri replied. 'Sefris and I were just approaching the tower when the Red Axes and your father came out.'
His eyes narrowed.
'Then you,' he said, 'this Sefris woman, and Kesk are all working together?'
'No. I mean, Sefris and I aren't on the same side anymore. It's complicated,' Miri answered. She blinked when she absorbed the implications of what he'd just said. 'Are you telling me Sefris has joined forces with the Red Axes?'
He frowned, considering, then said, 'I assumed so at the time, but now that you ask, I guess I can't be absolutely sure. Anyway, I told you I'll ask the questions, and I think we're going to have to start at the beginning and go step by step for me to make sense of the answers. What is The Black Bouquet? A perfume maker's cookbook, I know that much, but what makes it so valuable? A secret message hidden somewhere inside?'
She hesitated, then decided that, since he knew so much already, it wouldn't hurt to tell him. In the course of interrogating her, he was likely to reveal things that she wished to know as well.
'No,' she said, 'it's just a formulary, but the formulary of Courynn Dulsaer.'
Aeron looked blank.
'Until I got involved in this affair,' Miri admitted, 'I'd never heard of him, either, but evidently he's famous if you care about perfume. In fact, he was the most famous perfumer who ever lived. His concoctions weren't magical, but they might as well have been, for they delighted anyone who got a whiff. These days, when some lucky soul discovers an unopened bottle, it sells for thousands of gold pieces.'
'Because nobody knows how to make any more.'
'Right Courynn never took on an apprentice, or taught anybody else his secrets, and The Black Bouquet disappeared mysteriously at the time of his death. That was three hundred years ago, and everyone thought the book lost forever. Recently, however, in Ormath on the Shining Plains, Lord Quwen's agents uncovered and destroyed a temple of Shar. They found The Black Bouquet with the rest of the cult's treasure.'
'And it's truly valuable,' Aeron said.
Plainly, the thief was still trying to wrap his head around the idea that anyone cared so much about perfume. Miri had had the same reaction when she'd first heard the story.
'I'm no merchant-thank the Forest Queen! — but I'm told that if the right person used the book to set up a perfume manufactory, he'd probably wind up as rich as a prince,' the ranger continued. 'Anyway, Ormath has had its problems recently. It's had to cope with three bad harvests in a row, fend off raiders, and fight an actual war or two with its neighbors. For that reason and others, Lord Quwen was more interested in selling the book and turning a profit quickly than going into the perfume trade himself. He put out the word that he had it…'
'And a rich merchant here in Oeble arranged to buy it,' Aeron finished for her. 'Which one?'
'That, I can't tell you.'
He scowled and said, 'Ranger…'
'Threats won't move me. Come at me if you want, and we'll find out if an unarmed scout of the Red Hart Guild can defeat a common cutpurse waving a knife.'
'Oh, calm down,' said Aeron. 'Maybe it doesn't matter who wanted it, or maybe we'll come back to that point later. For now, go on with your story.'
'At the buyer's insistence,' she continued with a nod, 'the negotiations were conducted in secret, Lord Quwen dickering with the merchant's factor in Ormath. Finally they struck a deal. The buyer made a down payment, the balance due when he took delivery of the book. Quwen undertook to get the volume to Oeble. Since that too was supposed to happen secretly, he didn't want to use his own troops to move it. Instead, he applied to my guild for an experienced guide-me-and I in turn hired a company of mercenaries. In addition, Quwen's court wizard cast spells of warding on the strongbox and saddlebag intended to hold the Bouquet.'
Miri sighed and added, 'You know the rest of the story better than I do. The sellswords and I carried the formulary all the way here, and you stole it mere minutes before I could hand it over. Because, plainly, the expedition wasn't a secret. How did you know we were coming?'
'Only because Kesk hired me to steal the coffer. My guess is, he knew because somebody asked him to get it. Kesk's a power to be reckoned with here in Oeble, but I doubt he has spies in faraway cities. Though he might have one in a rich man's household here in town.'
'I take it he's the most dangerous scoundrel hereabouts.'
Aeron shrugged and said, 'One of them.'
'I'm surprised you dared defy him.'
'He held back information that might have kept my friends alive,' Aeron replied. 'It made me angry. Though why I turned on him, then saved you who actually killed Dal and Gavath with your own hands, is a puzzle.'
'I killed them in a fair fight you outlaws started.'
'Does that make them any less dead?'
'No, and if you feel the need to avenge them, come ahead.'
