The Unseen Hand

Ch 14: Sunken Treasure

Ristor, Ninth of Sund'im, 445 A'A'diel 

Distorted memories of the massacre swirled in Avaren's mind. Ashen faces. Cold flesh. Blood. She struggled to breathe; writhed under the assassin's weight.

"Help!"

Avaren awoke to the echo of her scream and a thousand wings beating in unison. The morning light had not yet stolen into the aperture of the cave when the colony of bats returned to their roosts. The tiny creatures circled the quiet pool before darting into the dark recesses of the cave.

Lying beside her, sprawled on the shore with his boots still in the water, lay her rescuer. Jarle was unconscious; his fingers curled into a claw-like grip; his breaths shallow. Avaren got up and crawled to the man's side. She brushed the hair away from his face and pressed her palm to his cheek. Jarle was cold to the touch; his lips so pale they appeared bloodless.

Gently, Avaren slapped the man's cheek. Jarle didn't stir nor move a muscle. Looking at him more closely, it occurred to her that the man appeared almost frozen as if locked in a strange torpor. Avaren thought back to the moment when her eyes had met Jarle's in the landing below Ca'd'Cel. She had asked questions to which Jarle had blinked back answers, but she couldn't remember what they were. Avaren swallowed hard. She couldn't remember anything past—.

"Paulo." Her voice sounded weak and raspy, and her throat was sore from the assassin's handling.

Suddenly, Avaren didn't want to remember. She wanted to forget. The sight of Jarle's anguished pose banished the memories and returned her to the present. The madness that caused her to ignore her rescuer's injuries the previous evening was gone. It didn't make a difference if she knew what was wrong with Jarle or not. He was hurt, and she needed to help him.

Avaren's hands trembled as she began to undo Jarle's armor. She unlaced his pauldrons and vambraces and tossed them aside in her urgency. His bandolier and hood followed suit. The wet leather straps that held his cuirass together were difficult to thread through the buckles, but the chest piece gave after a few hard tugs. Cuirass, weapon belt, boots, hose, and gloves landed in a pile.

Piece by piece she undressed him until all that remained were his breeches and shirt. A search of his pockets yielded a wire similar to the one the assassin had used to strangle her, mirrors, a pouch of spikes, a wax-sealed cylinder, a set of files, several items that seemed to have no purpose whatsoever, and finally, her jewelry. Earrings, necklaces, combs, and brooches twinkled in the morning's early light. The thief had stuffed the entire contents of her vanity into his pockets!

Rising to her feet, Avaren walked away from Jarle. She paced along the shore in a futile effort to remain calm. Her face grew hot, and her heart pounded in her chest. After Rigo and her father's murderer, Jarle was the lowliest creature ever to cross her path.

The curskin thief represented all the ills of Reyza and its loathsome underworld; the greed and lust of its shiny-eyed hawkers; the lopsided, claustrophobic tenements where newborns were discarded in tubs of fish guts by impoverished mothers; dockside streets crowded with urchins, beggars, drunkards, and whores; bawdy taverns; fetid gambling halls; cathouses; and every manner of evil that lived and breathed in the city's rotten underbelly.

Some believed curskins were a plague sent by the gods to punish the seven bloodlines for interbreeding. Her father had openly sided with those that thought they should be rendered sterile—a belief that had always irked her considering that her mother was a creature from beyond the realm of men.

The jewels dug into Avaren's palms. Her head ached. It was possible that Jarle had been telling the truth and wasn't working with the man who had killed her father, but it was just as likely that he was.