Authors: Jaleigh Johnson
Her eyes narrowed. “Your hands are cold and dry, when any other man’s should be shaking and clammy. You don’t seem the least bothered that there is a dead animal reeking in the street behind us, an animal that almost killed you in a grisly fashion. You look as serene and collected as if you weie hosting a dinner party and I had suddenly become the honored guest. Please let go of my hand.”
She jerked away and immediately began walking in the opposite direction. Cerest had to admire her quick wit. She would be difficult, just like Elgreth had been.
“Wait, please.” The elf matched hei stride easily. “Icelin. Icelin, listen to me. Please don’t run away. I don’t want our acquaintance to start like this.”
“We have no acquaintance,” Icelin said curtly.
Oh, but you’re wrong, Cerest thought. You don’t know how very wrong you are.
He allowed her to pull slightly ahead of him before he fired his next shot, “Don’t you remember me, Icelin?”
That stopped her cold. She spun to face him. “What did you say?”
“Of course you wouldn’t. I shouldn’t have expected…”
“Stop it.” But she was looking at him now, her eyes raking his features, searching for something recognizable. No one had ever looked at him so intimately after he’d been maimed. His heart sped up. Gods, she was beautiful, more beautiful than Lisra____
She raised her hand to her mouth. Her chest heaved up and down. “Gods, no, it can’t be. No. I’m sorry, I have to…”
She turned and fled, cutting down a back alley. Two carts jammed the way. She slid underneath the closest, ignoring the shouts of the drivers who had to steady their horses.
Cerest watched her go. He was too shocked to follow. What had caused the reaction in her? A breath ago she’d been grinding his teeth in the dirt and giving him a dressing-down for carelessness, and now she was a frightened waif running away from him as fast as she could.
He laughed out loud, startling the men who’d come to clean up the horse gore. Icelin was a strange woman and fascinating. Gods, he was almost glad she’d run. It made everything more exciting. Now he had to know her better.
He wanted to keep her forever.
The elf turned and broke into a run down the’Way. He had to find Riatvin and Melias. They were better trackers.
His men would get her back. Now that he’d seen her, he didn’t want to lose her again. His hands trembled from an excitement that was almost sexual. Come back to me, Icelin. I’ll explain everything. I’ll make you remember.
Cerest’s men were waiting for him at the wagon. Riatvin and Melias were gold elves, like himself; Greyas was the only human who served him. Cerest sometimes thought that, despite the inferiority of Greyas’s race, the human understood him better than most eladrin. On a more practical level, Greyas was the only human who possessed tact enough to avert his gaze from Cerest’s scars. A burly man with black hair sprouting from his head, chest, and nose, Greyas looked anything but tactful. He was sorely out of place between the two smooth-skinned elves.
“I need you to retrieve someone for me,” Cerest told them.
“Deal go sour?” Greyas asked.
“The deal is in progress,” Cerest corrected. He turned his attention to the elves and described Icelin in detail. He would never forget her face now. “You two go and find her. Bring her to the house. Hurry!” he snapped. “She moves fast, but someone will have seen her on the streets. Question them if need be, but discreetly.”
The elves nodded and took off, moving like glowing streaks through the crowd.
She won’t outrun them, Cetest thought. “Greyas, I want you to find out where she lives.”
“How?”
“Go to Kredaron. He’ll still be in the ward.” Cerest’s mind raced. An idea started to unfold. “Ask him politely where Icelin Team dwells. Apologize, but tell him you bear unhappy intelligence. Tell him that Icelin has stolen the jewels he sold to me. Ask him to please give an inventory to the Watch of the items in the transaction, as I had no time to make a record of them before I was robbed. That will remove Kredaron from the situation and assure him that I have no ill intentions.”
“Do we?” Greyas asked. ‘
Cerest looked at him, but his mind was still occupied with other things. “Find out if she has any family left. If she does, that will be problematic for what I intend.”
“You want me to remove the problem?”
That was why Cerest employed Greyas. He was unlike most humans, just as Cerest was different from other elves. His tone was businesslike; he passed no judgments, nor offered any reassurances on the consequences of Cerest’s actions. For all his human frailties, Greyas was an instrument that cut quickly and without emotion. Cerest needed more men like that, but for now he could not afford them.
“Yes,” he said. “Remove the problem, but do it tastefully. I don’t want Icelin to suffer more than necessary.”
Icelin ran all the way back to Blacklock Alley, pausing only once for breath and to see if she was being followed.
Rustling movements disturbed one of the trash piles in the alley. Icelin nearly swooned. But it was only a small gray dog, snuffling through the garbage. It raised its head, sniffed the air around Icelin, and went back to foraging.
Shaking, Icelin pressed a hand to her stomach. She was nearly home now, but she couldn’t go to her great-uncle like this. She glanced in one of the glazed shop windows. Her hair stuck out crazily from her braid; her dress was caked in dirt from her tumble with the elf. She couldn’t let him see how wild she was, how terrified. And what if the elf still trailed her?
Leaning against a building, Icelin hid herself in the shadows. She would wait, for a while at least, to make sure the elf wasn’t coming for her. In the meantime, she tamed her hair as best she could and tried to relax.
Cerest and his scars floated in her memory. Gods, did the elf truly know her? Had he been there five years ago? She hadn’t known the names of any of the folk involved, except Therondol. She hadn’t wanted to know their names or faces. How could she carry them in her memory and survive? Nelzun had been bad enough. Her teacher.
Don’t blame yourself.
She heard his words again. They haunted her. If the elf came after her for what she’d done, she could hardly blame him, could she?
Icelin pressed her forehead against the cool stone building. She would ask her great-uncle. Brant would know. He’d raised her, protected her, even after what had happened. He would know what she should do.
Icelin stepped around the side of the building and glanced at the sign above the door. She saw with some surprise that it was
the butcher’s. “Sull’s Butchery,” it stated, in blocky brown letters over a painted haunch of meat.
I didn’t even notice where I ended up, Icelin thought. A dangerous lapse, in Blacklock Alley. Well, she’d wanted meat…. Maybe the everyday chore would calm her. Anything was better than being in the street alone.
A bell jangled loudly when she entered. Icelin gritted her teeth at the sound. She wanted to be home where it was quiet and safe.
“Be right out!” The bellow sounded from somewhere in the back of the shop, a cross between a lion’s roar and a ram’s gravelly tenor.
A breath later, a giant human figure crowded the doorway. He carried a half-carcass of deer, dangling by a metal hook. Grunting, he heaved it down on a covered portion of counter at the far end of the room.
“Sull?” she inquired. She half hoped the imposing man wasn’t the name above the door.
“That’d be me.” He turned to give her a friendly smile, exposing a wide gap between his two front teeth. Red, frizzy hair covered his head, ending in two massive sideburns at his jowls. A shiny bald circle exposed the top of his head. “What can I do for you?”
“I need some….” she trailed off, watching him wipe the animal blood on his apron. The streaky red stains reminded her of the dead horse.
“Aye?” He looked at her expectantly. “Are you all right, lass?”
“I’m fine.” Icelin swallowed. “I’d like two cuts of boar and one of mutton, if you have them.”
“I do, and you’re welcome to ‘em. Just let me take care of this beauty.” He took a long cleaver from a padded pocket in his apron and cut into the carcass on the counter. “Lass a little older than you is comin’ in for this one.” He took a fistful of salt from a jar on the counter and sprinkled it like snow on the cut meat.
“Aw, you can make a hearty stew with deet ot boar, and that’s the truth. I got my own seasonin’sbest recipe you’ll find at any fine inn. Most folk have me prepare em in advance, tenderize ‘em, let the juices mingle a while. Delicious.”
The big man reached into another apron pocket and pulled out three small jars. “Peppers, some ground-up parsley, and more salt. Nothin’ fancy. The key’s in the quantity. I’ll show you what I mean. It’s best on the raw meat, when it’s drippin’ just a bit.”
The bell at the door jangled again as the butcher headed for the back room. “Be right back,” he hollered.
Icelin turned. A pair of gold elves stood in the doorway. They were dressed in servants’ liveries. Neither paid her any attention, but Icelin felt sick in her gut.
They were Cerest’s men. She knew they were.
The shorter of the two elves took up a position by the door. The other came forward to lean an elbow against the long counter.
They all move like dancers, Icelin thought, as if the ground beneath them could be measured and controlled through their feet. Would they fight the same way?
Pinned between them, Icelin weighed her options. She could run, but they would be on her before she reached the street. If she screamed, would the butcher come to aid het ?
The last thing she wanted was for harm to come to him or his shop. She couldn’t use her magic for the same reason.
“Your master is persistent,” she said, stalling for time. If she could just get “them to move, take the inevitable fight to the alley….
The elf at the counter regarded her coolly. He said something to his companion in Elvish. Sharp, elegant words to match theif looks. The other elf nodded.
“You know, that’s terribly rude behavior,” Icelin said. She crossed her arms. “Talking as if I’m not in the room. If you’re going to execute a successful kidnapping, the least you could do is be straightforward with your intentions.”
The pair exchanged a glance. Icelin couldn’t tell if they were amused or annoyed.
The elf at the door looked her over. “You’ve a blunt tongue,” he said in Common. “I don’t suppose if we were ‘sttaightforward’ and asked you to come with us, you’d cooperate without resistance?”
“Ah, if only a woman’s intentions bore any degree of
predictability,” Icelin said, smiling. “Let me think. If I kick and scream and conjure fire to boil the flesh off your lovely cheekbones, does that count as resistance?”
“I believe it does,” the elf said, genuinely amused now. “But I think you’re bluffing.”
“You think I don’t have magic? I suppose I don’t give much of an appearance of sorcery.” Icelin reached up to grasp the coin-purse at her neck.
“Hands at your sides!”
Her head cocked, Icelin obeyed. “But I thought I was bluffing,” she said. “The pouch is too small to hold any useful weapon.”
“Mefilarn stowil!” the elf at the door said sharply to his companion. “Make her hold her tongue, Melias.”
“Your friend’s right, Melias, I do talk too much. And that’s a fault to reckon with,” Icelin said. “But don’t interrupt me now, I’ve only just got going. The pouch can’t contain any weapon deadly to you. So what am I keeping in here, if not some datk magic that you both fear?”
“Empty it,” Melias commanded.
“Not here,” Icelin said, “in the alley. We can have a nice, quiet conversation”
“Sorry to be so long!” Sull’s booming voice cut through the tension in the air like a saw grating on wire.
“Watch your hands.” The butcher tossed a pair of bundles wrapped in brown paper onto the counter next to Melias. “Seasonin’s, I was talkin’ of.” He uncapped the jat of salt again and poured a fistful into his large hand. He gestured at Icelin and sprayed salt across the counter.
“Large crystals, that’s what you want,” Sull said. “Not ground as fine as fot a noble’s table in North Wardthat bleeds the flavor outbut try talkin’ sensible cookin’ to a noble, eh? The salt’s what teases the tongue. You put some pinches of this on the fire while your boar meat’s simmerin’ in my spices, the whole
thing’U be so tender it falls juicy onto your spoon. Make a man weep unashamed pleasure, that’s the truth.” He looked at the elves as if he’d only just remembered they were there. “Sorry ‘bout that, gentlemen, I like to blather. What can I get the pair ofyou?”
“Nothing,” said the one by the door. “We didn’t see anything worthy of our master’s tastes. The lass and we are leaving.”
“Aw, shame, that,” the butcher said, looking crestfallen. “This is prime meat, you know. Here now, maybe you’d like this cut instead.”
The red-haired giant turned, yanked the meat hook from the deer carcass, and swung it in a downward arc. The hook sank into the countertop, the curved metal trapping Melias’s delicate wrist against the wood.
Screams of elf fury filled the shop.
“Told you to watch your hand,” Sull admonished. He threw his handful of salt at the elf by the door, grabbed Melias’s head in his other hand, and slammed the elf’s skull against the countertop.
Blood poured down Melias’s face. He fell back over the counter, his hand still pinned awkwardly under the hook.
The elf by the door took the salt in the eyes. Crying out, he drew his sword and scraped a hand across his face.
Stunned by the violence, Icelin almost didn’t react in time. Reaching into her neck purse, she chanted the first simple spell that came to mind. The elf at the door brought his blade up, but Icelin got to her focus first and hurled a handful of colored sand into the air.
A flare of light consumed the sand and shot at the elPs face. Luminous colors filled the small shop; Icelin covered her eyes against the brilliance.
She heard the elf fumble his sword, but he didn’t drop it. Instinctively, she ducked. Wood splintered from the wall.