Holding the back of the guard's head with one hand, she pressed the healing potion to his lip, but as she did so, he coughed up the blood that was trickling into his lungs, spraying the precious liquid and spattering Kehrsyn's face and hands with crimson and cobalt.
She flinched, pulled back, and wiped her eyes. She opened them again and saw the guard slump to the side, the shield on his back grinding slowly along the stone wall. He hacked and gasped, his face twisting in agony and going pale with shock. His breathing, what there was of it, was forced and noisy.
Trembling, Kehrsyn tried to force the remaining fluid into his throat, but he flailed his arms, desperately clawing for air. She was able to get the vial to his mouth as his movements faded, but the blue liquid pooled in his cheek and dribbled out onto the grimy alley floor. A moment more, and Kehrsyn heard his dying breath rattle its burbling way out of his lungs, giving up its last shred of warmth to the cold winter's air.
'Great gods!' gasped Kehrsyn, appalled at the turn of events. She glared at the sorceress on the wall. 'You- you killed him!'
The woman had pulled her kerchief back out with her free hand and was rigorously trying to clean her nose some more.
'No, hon,' she said as she explored her nostril, still gently dangling the dagger between the fingers of her other hand, 'you killed him. You took him down. You stopped him from drinking his healing potion. Your dagger slit his throat. Your face wears his blood. Any divination spell will show all that. If the Zhents here don't have a wizard at their immediate disposal-' she shrugged, helpless, and returned the kerchief to its hiding place-'why, I'm sure they can locate a freelance mage somewhere around here.'
She paused to clear her throat, then coughed a few times to get something clear of her lungs.
'But I tell you what, hon,' the sorceress added with a conspiratorial wink, once she'd gotten control of her cough again, 'we of the guild got to stick together against the cold, cruel world.' She gestured vaguely around, at once taking in the vast city that surrounded them as well as the chill, gray weather. 'I can personally guarantee you that no one will hear of this, no one will find your dagger, and no diviner will offer their services to the Zhentarim. All you have to do is provide us with what we need.'
Kehrsyn looked at the blood and liquid on her hands, and, cringing, used the dead man's cloak to clean them and her face. When she was done, she picked up her rapier and looked up at the sorceress again.
'Why don't you just get it yourself?' she asked. 'You can walk on walls and stuff. I can't do that.'
'It don't work quite like that, hon,' the woman replied with a grimace. 'I use magic to augment my skills, but, you see, magic is not the best tool for slipping into a manse.' She waggled her fingers, sending the blue strands of energy spiraling around. 'Little lights, little flashes, little noises of spells or incantations, they all attract attention, and good merchants have wards and other traps to snare those who try to magic their way into a valuable area. No, far better to go tippy-toe like a little mouse, all small and quiet and twitchy whiskers. And that, hon, is something I wager you're darned good at. So confident, in fact, that I'm choosing you for the task.'
Since the sorceress had shown spells-wall-walking and a little telekinesis-Kehrsyn was growing bolder. Not only was the woman staying out of easy reach, but Kehrsyn knew that the spells she'd used were little more than minor cantrips. She'd seen magic-real magic-several times in her life, and the sorceress's offerings were a far cry from those spells. She believed she could parry or dodge whatever telekinetic assault the woman might launch with her dagger, and the studded leather vest Kehrsyn wore beneath her blouse offered her vitals some protection.
She paused as if considering, and studied the woman some more, letting time pass. The sorceress was clearly suffering from some kind of contagious catarrh or grippe. Kehrsyn sucked in her lips and nodded, as if she was indeed deciding to go along with the woman's demands.
She waited until the sorceress cleared her throat again-Kehrsyn well knew how the grippe sapped people's willpower-and coughed to see how suggestible the woman might be.
Very, as it turned out.
No sooner had Kehrsyn cleared her throat than the woman stretched her neck and tried to clear hers. Kehrsyn put the pear to her mouth as if to take a bite and forced a sudden cough around the fruit. That brought a coughing fit upon the unhealthy woman as well. Kehrsyn watched for just a moment while the rasping cough gathered momentum, and just as the woman's eyes started to close with the force of her hacking, Kehrsyn made her move. Pear held in her teeth, Kehrsyn leaped forward, jumped up the wall with one boot clawing for just a bit of traction and stability, and neatly flicked her rapier at the woman's hand. The tip of her rapier caught her dagger just below the hilt and spun it out of the sorceress's helpless fingers. Deftly Kehrsyn caught the dagger by the handle as she landed on the uneven alleyway ground.
'You w-cough!' spluttered the woman, pointing with her newly emptied hand while the other futilely clawed at her collar.
Kehrsyn sheathed her rapier and took the pear from her teeth.
'The only protection I need,' said Kehrsyn, 'is for you to cover your mouth, so I don't catch my death.'
She slung the blood from her dagger, sheathed it, and withdrew.
Kehrsyn hazarded one last glance over her shoulder before she turned a corner in the alleyway to leave the sight of the coughing woman. She caught a glimpse of the woman making mystical passes with her hand once more. Blue motes sparkled around her fingers, and something small and shiny zipped through the air to the woman's hand. Kehrsyn had just an instant to wonder what it might be.
The woman moved her hand to her mouth, and a high-pitched two-tone whistle filled the alley. Kehrsyn recognized it instantly: a constabulary whistle. One long, shrill blow was the signal for riot or assault upon a guard.
The response was immediate. Like feral dogs echoing the baying of the pack, other whistles began calling in the surrounding streets. Kehrsyn staggered, frozen by the abrupt flare of mortal fear, the return of the all-too- familiar feeling of being human prey.
The sorceress fixed Kehrsyn with a look of disgust as she slung the whistle back at the guard's corpse.
'Guess we'll see how good you really are now, won't we, hon?' she called out. Then, at the top of her lungs, she screamed and yelled, 'Thief! She killed him!'
Kehrsyn turned and fled as the false witness broke into another fit of coughing. She ran down the twisting back alleys, dodging barrels of refuse and ducking under laundry lines, puffs of steamy breath peeling from the sides of her panicked face. When she'd been pursued as a child, she'd used her small size, fast feet, and knowledge of the terrain to evade pursuit, but she had none of these left to her. She was an adult, somewhat the weaker for chronic hunger, and had only been in Messemprar a few months. Worst of all, she was outnumbered far worse than she'd ever been as a kid. An entire city's worth of guards and deputized mercenaries had become her foes. Her only hope was that they couldn't identify her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kehrsyn ran down the haphazard scattering of alleyways, trying to find a way out into the main city streets. The whistles petered out, but she knew they'd sound again if she were spotted. In the meantime, she was certain the sorceress had given the city watch a good description and that the information would leap like sparks from guard to guard.
The thought struck her that carrying a half-eaten pear in her hand was not a wise idea. She almost tossed it away, but her gnawing stomach overcame her fear, so instead she slipped it in into the rear portion of her sash, where her cloak concealed it. The meager camouflage wouldn't pass a close inspection, but she hoped to avoid that possibility.
With her left hand she held her bag against her body, while her right gripped the hem of her cloak and wrapped it around her rapier's scabbard, both securing the blade and thinly concealing its deadly purpose.
Kehrsyn slowed to a jog. Moving adroitly through three thousand years' worth of urban growth proved more than she could handle. She didn't want to run pell-mell into a dead end, or worse, a whip of city constables, but though she slowed her feet, Kehrsyn's heart continued to race. She had never exited the Jackal's Courtyard in that direction before, and she knew neither where she was nor where she should go. On top of that, she wasn't sure whom she should fear more, the Messemprar constabulary, who would obey the law, harsh as it was; or the Zhentarim, of whom the sorceress had spoken in such dark tones. It didn't help that Kehrsyn knew next to nothing
