Wizard-Thief by Jonathan Moeller

Author:Jonathan Moeller [Moeller, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Azure Flame Media
Published: 2024-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

9

AEGIS

The next morning, Rivah awoke and gazed at the ceiling of her room, mildly surprised that no one had tried to stab her or burn down the tavern. It seemed that she had indeed eluded the mercenaries who had been waiting for her.

Which meant they either didn’t know where she lived, or they had decided not to attack her at Tobell’s Tavern. That made it more likely that Marandis had hired them. Tar-Carmatheion was a dangerous place even when it was at peace, which it currently was not, and if Rivah was killed on the streets, Marandis could claim she had been attacked by mercenaries or perhaps kobolds.

Rivah had used that ploy herself. She had never told anyone that she had killed Zeno and his crew when they had tried to capture her and sell her to the Chained Guild.

If someone tried to kill her at Tobell’s Tavern, or if the attackers burned down the building, that was something different. The tavern was a safe house of the Court, a sanctuary and neutral ground, and an attack on it would inspire reprisals. Maybe from the Carnifex, maybe from the Masked King himself.

Or maybe the mercenaries had been entirely unconnected to Marandis and the Court.

Rivah shook her head and sat up, grimacing a little at the way she smelled. The odor of the various exotic plants in Lord Aederius’s garden still clung to her hair. She went downstairs to the common room and looked out the windows, but didn’t see anyone watching the tavern, and no sign that anyone was waiting in ambush.

She thought about it for a few moments, then walked up the street to the bathhouse. Blacksmithing was sweaty work, and so the bathhouse on the Street of Smiths did a brisk business and opened early and closed late. Rivah paid the attendant for a private room and spent an enjoyable half-hour bathing in a wooden tub and scrubbing the scent of the garden from her limbs and hair. She made sure the door was locked, and even in the bath, kept the repository ring upon her hand, ready to unleash a spell if anyone tried to kick down the door. After everything she had survived in her life, getting stabbed to death in a bathhouse was not how she wanted to die.

It sent her thoughts back to her childhood in Lord Telmirian’s palace when her mother had been his favorite concubine. Rivah had lived in luxury and never wanted for anything, whether food, drink, or hot baths whenever she wished. At least until her mother had gotten sick, and then she learned what her father intended for her …

She pushed aside the thought. No use dwelling upon the past.

By then, she was as clean as she was going to get, so she dried off, got dressed, and returned to Tobell’s Tavern. Once back in her room she changed to the clothes of a courier and set off down the Street of Smiths to the northern wall of the western city.

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