No One's Chosen (11 page)

"But—" The younger meant to protest.

"Would you slay her with no blade drawn? For words?"
To Aile's great surprise, the larger officer wheeled back a hand
and struck the younger across the face without turning. The words
boomed from the man. "And you claim to protect the honor of our
Treorai?!"

The younger made no complaint. He moved only to
sheath his sword and cover his freshly split lip.

"Now, Drow." The older began, directing his words at
Aile. "What confidence could I have that you have come to
Spéirbaile with an intent other than making mischief?"

"Oh, I mean to make mischief." By now several archers
had gathered on the bridge way above the gates. Aile reached into
her pocket and heard the shiff of arrows being drawn from their
quivers in unison. She retrieved the paper and held it aloft.

The gate guard made his way toward her cautiously.
Aile cast a glance upward and saw the bows nocked and drawn. The
guard took his time looking over the writ. It did not seem he
wanted to believe it was genuine. He thumbed the wax seal a dozen
times, holding it close to inspect it in detail. Finally, he handed
the writ back and spit at the ground. Sweat rolled down the guard's
head as he stared at her. Aile matched his gaze with a sideways
smile.

She was beginning to think she might be better off
behind her horse when the guard relented. He snapped a turn and
called up, "Raise the gates!" Aile wanted so badly to laugh at the
whole affair. Her heart pounded away in her chest. She had won, for
whatever it was worth. Goddess, it was exhilarating.

The deep red wood of the gates seemed to eat the
light of the day as they swung into the shadows of the first
Crescent Wall. Aile took the bridle of her horse and casually made
her way into Spéirbaile.

With her horse stabled and her bags now on her back,
Aile made her way into the Outer Crescent wondering if she'd get to
play that game again at the inner gate. A marmar had flown over
after she passed the gate. No doubt word would reach them before
she did that a Drow was in the city waving about a pass from a
noble. It was rare to see one of the ugly, little desert birds in
the north. They lacked any sort of feathering on their flecked,
knobby bodies, save the wings, but they were fast fliers.

The stares in the Outer Crescent varied between
reverent and terrified. There were always rumors of Drow making off
with naughty children and secreting them back to the Blackwood for
raping and eating and Goddess knows what else. Aile had left the
Blackwood fairly young, but she didn't seem to remember ever eating
much other than deer and voles and the like. She had always
imagined that their meat would be tough and stringy. Like an old
goat.

Even with the stares the walk wasn't altogether
unpleasant. Aile peeked in the windows of a few shops, making a
mental note of what was where. A few things had changed since last
she was in the city. It wasn't uncommon in the Outer Crescent, she
knew. A look above the tops of the houses told her that she was
nearing the inner wall and that she ought to rejoin the main road,
so she did. As she rejoined the road, a young elf came running up
to her in a near panic.

"Drow!" he called, breathless.

Aile sighed at the call. Was there really no other
way to get her attention? "You are the courier?"

The messenger had likely been at a dead sprint from
the Bastion to here, considering the time he'd made. "Aye." Even
exhausted as he was, he stared at her unblinking.

"You have words for me."

He seemed almost startled to remember his job. "Ah!
Aye, I do."

Aile took the folded parchment. It was a plain piece
of paper, sealed with black wax flecked with gold. The highborn
didn't lack for dramatic flair, it seemed. She turned it over,
inspecting both sides. There was nothing on the front.

Aile looked up to see the courier still standing
before her. "I have received the paper. Go." At this, the messenger
ran off, though she did not care to pay attention to where.

The Drow had stopped in the middle of the street. She
could feel their eyes on her and the collective holding of breath.
It didn't bother her though she occasionally had to wonder if
things might be simpler if she took to killing people in the
Blackwood. At least there, the color of her skin would not mark her
out for every little misfortune that fell upon a place she was
visiting.

It was only really a bother when she meant to relax.
Some guard or local authority would undoubtedly find a barrel
overturned or a stillborn calf and bring the damned thing before
her as though she was some mystical harbinger of ill fortune. It
could ruin a nice bath to find yourself surrounded by decidedly
unnude elves.

She loosed the wax of its grip on the paper and
unfolded the missive. The note was brief and sloppily scribed as
though it had been an afterthought. Aile was ambivalent. Too much
care and odds were there was some greater machination she wasn't
apt to catch from her position. Too little and she would be
attempting an unlikely escape from Spéirbaile.

The letter was brief and pointed. The inn where
exchanges would take place was in the Inner Crescent. A regal place
called The Sky's Haven. She need not give her name. That was
all.

"Less than ideal," she thought. She figured the logic
behind her employer's decision to be twofold. The first was that it
would allow the noble to walk around with neither particular notice
nor a deviation from his daily routine. He likely owned the inn,
even. The second was that her own appearance in the Inner Crescent
would lead most to assume she was an envoy from Blackwood there for
some patronage from the local shops. It was rare, but it had
happened occasionally enough that the Drow would send a trader out
to the elf cities in search of scarcer goods. Spéirbaile was often
plied for salts, which were abundant in the western mountains of
the province. Likewise, shipments of marble slab were arranged to
be sent to the edge of the Blackwood.

While her presence was apt to be seen as more welcome
in the Inner Crescent, it did not remove the reality of attempting
to abscond from the place should things go awry. Aile made for the
gates. They were closed. She knew the travel between districts was
restricted but she could never quite remember the rules.

As she neared the gates the traffic of the main
thoroughfare dwindled and she was alone in her approach to the
guards. She had prepared herself for another round of prodding
reactions from them but, rather than animosity, she was met with a
pleasant smile.

"Welcome, milady. A moment, please." The female elf
was chipper and unsarcastic. She walked to a cart-sized pair of
doors that had been cut into the gate proper and pounded on them
with a mailed fist.

Aile was dumbstruck. The smaller doors creaked open
and she was waved through. Was it a trap? It was a poor one if it
was. Left with no real other option, Aile walked through the
gates.

In the Inner Crescent with such little bother. This
was not how things went normally. What sort of power must it have
taken? Aile's mind was boiling with possible explanations. She ran
them one after the other. A powerful businessman? Perhaps he had
the coin to cover her sort of costs, but having such an influence
would be another thing entirely. A noble with the ear of the
Treorai? It was possible. And that need not be exclusive from the
former guess. She had heard the Spéirbaile Treorai was a loose
woman, in more ways than one could count, but that seemed unlikely.
And what of the marmar from before? It must have been a Binseman.
The sort who decides which gold goes where could more easily sway
both guard and innkeeper. After all, what good would a writ from a
businessman do? And a noble would have no means to sway guards to
that degree. Even then, the job before had been clearly in support
of the effort against the hippocamps. Aile's work in Spéirbaile had
suddenly become most interesting. She would play this hand for all
it was worth.

Aile began down the main thoroughfare. A brief walk
from the wall found her surrounded by shops and stalls of every
sort. The Inner Crescent could not have responded more the opposite
to the elves outside its walls. The Inner Crescent was home to
artists and scribes and bards. All enamored of the exotic and the
beautiful.

"I must paint you, milady! I pray you!" an artist
shouted, gesturing to a canvas, already half painted with some
other vignette.

A bard ran up, lute in hand. "Milady Drow, I know all
the songs of the Blackwood. Would you favor me that I might sing
for you?" He was backpedaling at Aile's pace, energetic and smiling
a stupid smile. She was beginning to miss the icy stares and
reverent silence.

The calls from the stalls had picked up as well.
Beckoning her come look at their fine wares that she might take
them to the Blackwood. More had changed than she thought. It must
have been eighty years since she was last in the Inner Crescent.
She remembered it as less hostile than the tightly packed commerce
of its poorer sister, but this was somewhat insane.

The bard tried again to implore her to pay him for
his verse, but Aile needed something more useful from the singer.
"I have no need of your wailing." The smile fled from the bard's
face in an instant. "Tell me where I might find The Sky's Haven."
The bard turned to the side and stopped. He pointed, frowning.
"Good. You have my thanks."

The expression of the bard must have bought her some
respite from the constant selling. It would calm down in a day at
the worst, she figured. New and exciting, but they needed to gauge
whether or not she could be taken for coin. She could not.

The Sky's Haven was a short walk off the main
thoroughfare and an impressive inn to say the least. Four floors
and luxuriant to see from the outside. She could only imagine its
inners were as fantastic. It didn't much matter. She would spend
only as much time in this inn as she must. She had no intention of
aiding her employer in monitoring her comings and goings.

Inside it was as the letter had said. Aile was handed
a key with a number etched on the stem. The room was on the second
floor which Aile judged ideal for escaping should it come to that.
They could not cover both of her exits with any reliability and the
jump was not so far as to mean death if she lost her footing. This
was assuming it afforded her a window.

And it did. She took a quick moment to glance out to
the street below and judge the distance to rooftops and other
routes she may have need of then shut the curtain. The wall
mentioned in the letter was not marked, but there was a bed along
the one wall and a curious piece of ornate stained glass on the
other. It was worth quite a bit and she figured it was likely to
keep people well away from it.

The trap door was fairly plainly disguised. A false
edge had been placed on rounded wooden board. With the slat
removed, the board would rotate freely. The hollow allowed items to
be passed between the two rooms. She opened the cache and found a
purse of gold sitting atop a letter.

The bag was immediately placed among her items, as
Aile had no need to second guess a pouch full of gold. It was the
reason for it that puzzled her. She'd been paid the stipend and
salary enough for two weeks when in the city. Travel reimbursement?
She doubted the kindness of the sort of hired assassins extended
that far.

Aile opened the letter. It was written much more
neatly than the previous. Most likely a different hand entirely
unless she was mistaken. "Our Binseman is not alone," she mused to
herself.

The tersely letter reminded her that her services
included cleaning up after this northern noblewoman and that she
would be paid for such tasks in the same manner as the previous
work. Half up front. Aile had hoped to at least have a night of
rest before she began, but it was not to be apparently. There was a
most important task that required her attention in the Outer
Crescent. The Drow took her things, reset the compartment, and left
the hotel.

It would be nearly three hours of searching before
she found an inn that was quite to her liking. It was a subtle
place, too out of the way to happen across but opulent enough to
warrant its place in the Crescent. It bordered the wall which made
it ideal for avoiding guards in the night. More importantly than
the lot of it, however, was that each room was host to a private
bath. It would do.

Night fell on Spéirbaile and Aile wasted no time
exiting the hotel through her window. She could not afford to be
implicated even in jest. That sort of thing tended to fester in the
minds of idle guards. She slunk down to the street and made off for
the wall. Along the walls of the Inner Crescent were a series of
drainage tubes that kept the battlements from overrunning with
water from storms or melted snow. They were easy enough to reach,
but as both sides sloped down sharply, it was nigh impossible for
anyone to breach them.

Aile stood in front of one such drain sizing it up.
She'd ridden hard through the day and would need stamina. The climb
was only a half dozen yards at most, but it would take a good deal
of effort. Aile closed her eyes. She touched her thumb to the tip
of her ring finger and extended the others. The Drow's hands began
to glow a dim orange and she placed her palm to the metal. It
sizzled, her hand stopped glowing, and it cooled with enough
texture to grip.

Over the course of the next half hour, she made her
ascent. It was slow going but if she did not concentrate, it could
be disastrous and she was not intent on immolating herself in a
drainage tube. She made it out the Outer Crescent side and
immediately made for her target. It was another fifteen minutes
before she arrived. Foot traffic was fairly light but there was
always the risk of some drunkard stumbling into her if she wasn't
careful.