Wraithblood: The Elixir, Episode 4

You decide to go along with them and use your paralytic at the earliest opportunity.

And the earliest opportunity comes in about five minutes. The two thugs clearly do not consider you a threat at all, and march with you between them, their hands on your upper arms. You wait until you are an acceptable distance from your workshop, and then trigger the spring-loaded daggers on your leather bracers.

The poison-coated blades sink an inch or so into the thugs’ hips. They bellow in outraged pain…or start to, anyway, until the paralytic takes effect. Then they slump in boneless heaps to the ground.

You squint at them for a moment. They’ll be helpless for an hour or so. In this district of the city, they won’t be kidnapped into slavery. Though they’ll be robbed and naked by the time they regain control of their limbs. Mathematically speaking, killing them both would be the logical thing to do. But the priests who weaned you off wraithblood would not approve of casual murder, and their irrational morality, you fear, has begun to infect your thinking.

“I suppose,” you say aloud, “that your equations will not end today. At least, barring statistically improbable events.”

The thugs do not respond.

You walk to Istarinmul’s Cyrican Quarter, passing hundreds of slaves in orange kilts or robes (for by the Padishah’s command, slaves can only wear orange, to hinder escapes). The Cyrican Quarter houses mostly merchants, selling coffee and rice from the plantations of Cyrica and the Vale of Starifel, and the slaves toil beneath heavy bags of crops, or the sedan chairs of their masters.

The coffeehouse of Megabyzus sits off the Quarter’s main bazaar, and you slip through the door. Inside men sit around low tables, sipping coffee, merchants from Cyrica and Anshan and the Nighmarian Empire. Slave girls in orange tunics carry trays of coffee and bread.

You are, you realize, the only woman here who is not a slave.

You hurry across the floor to the back room. A hulking guard stands there, sullen in mail, and gives you an indifferent look.

“Transmutation,” you mutter.

The guard gives you a sharp look, then nods and steps inside.

You enter the coffeehouse’s back room. Ibrahaim Nasser stands at the head of a table, elegant in his finery. Next to him sits a athletic man with the look of an Anshani nobleman, clad in a yellow-bordered blue robe, a fine scimitar at his belt and oil gleaming in his black beard. Across from him sits a grizzled man with the look of a Caerish mercenary, clad in leather and mail, sword and dagger at his belt.

In the corner stands a man in a slave’s orange robe. No, not a man, you realize, looking at his hairless face. A eunuch, common enough in the households of the shaykhs and emirs. The eunuch seems terrified, his hands trembling, sweat gleaming on his smooth face.

“Ah,” says Nasser in his rumbling voice. “The final member of our crew, gentlemen. Welcome. Permit me to make introductions. This is Azaces,” he gestures at the Anshani nobleman, “Riordan,” he nods at the mercenary, “and Tarquin.” He offers a nod to the eunuch.

“Chief steward of the Master Alchemist Callatas’s household,” adds Tarquin.

Riordan snorts and rolls his eyes.

You blink in surprise. A Master Alchemist?

“This is Nerina Strake,” says Nasser, “the finest locksmith in Istarinmul, and…”

“Wait,” says Azaces, getting to his feet. “Look at her eyes. She is a wraithblood addict.”

“I understand she has not taken the substance for some months,” says Nasser.

“I’m not a fool, Nasser,” says Azaces, glaring at you. “Wraithblood addicts are useless. And the women are the worst of all. They’ll do anything for a vial of wraithblood. Anything at all. Watch. I shall prove it.”

He reaches into his robe and produces a small clay vial, the sort used to hold wraithblood.

The world seems to shrink to the vial of Azaces’s gold-ringed hand.

“A vial of wraithblood,” he says. “I took it off a man who tried to rob me. Take off your clothes and dance on the table for us, and I’ll let you have it.”

Nasser says nothing, and you get the impression he is curious to see how you will react.

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