Burdensome contracts, idiotic squires, and inquisitive sisters forgotten, Huan chased the red flash and pickled scent of his prey down the alley but soon was forced to slow to sidling speed as the alley narrowed. Still, he thanked his luck. The alleys here were much cleaner than the ones in Anders, so he only smelled wood and rotten fruit instead of refuse and sewage. Pushing into an intersection, Huan finally caught sight of the target as it rounded the corner. He hesitated. It was the little girl from the shop, not the grey skinned assassin.
How did she hide her scent before?
Catch her!
Picking up speed, Huan followed her around the corner. Ahead of him, the little girl vaulted over a pile of empty crates, slid past a collapsed drunk, and then turned north at the next intersection. Growling, Huan crashed through the crates, tripped over the drunk, took the left, and met a beam of wood headed the opposite direction. The blow knocked Huan onto his ass, and pain addled his vision for a moment. Dropping the wood, the little girl kicked Huan in the chest once for good measure then booked it down the alley. Rubbing his forehead, Huan pulled himself to his feet and gave chase, following the scent of pickles over more crates and around more corners until he was out of the alley and in Walton’s late morning crowd. The girl was gone, the funk and stench of civilization covering her scent as effectively as a blanket over a candle. Shoving his way into the crowd, Huan kept sniffing and searching. His hand inched to the mask hidden underneath his scarf. He jerked it away.
I can find her.
“No!” Huan’s refusal only drew the occasional startled glance. Once they saw his armor, most of Walton’s market crowd continued on, unperturbed, though some were alarmed at the idea of a Tuquese being in charge of their safety. Only two pairs of eyes narrowed in suspicion, those belonging to a pair of city guards leaning against the wall of a house.
Tiger’s recommendation was succinct. Kill them.
Huan’s jaw clenched. In the middle of the street in the middle of the day? We’ll be swinging from a noose by tomorrow’s end.
We can kill them and move on. Let’s just grab what we want.
“No!”
The city guards stood up straight and approached.
“Are you okay?” asked one, her right hand clasping her sword hilt.
Huan tried a smile.
She recoiled.
Huan kept himself from wincing. “No, I’m good. I’m just running an errand and I, uh, had a bad breakfast.”
They didn’t believe him, but he wasn’t really their problem yet.
Still, their hands didn’t move from their weapons. “Do you need help getting back to the garrison?”
Just rip out their throats and move on.
“No, no, I’m good.” Huan sniffed. A southerly wind had blown in. “Just gotta walk-” The smell of pickles cut through to man and beast. They were on the trail again. “Excuse me.” Huan pushed away the city guards and ducked into another alley. His quarry was still heading northeast.
Towards the Jungle. How apt. Huh?
The smell had changed from the familiar tang of pickles to the rich flowery scent of ambersoul, the same stuff Dwayne used to make his strange spell vials.
Maybe this was how she’d hid her scent before, but this time she was in a hurry. Licking his lips, Huan followed this new smell through a half dozen alleys and right into a slum. Apparently, the town of Walton had three distinct sections: the posh wood and stone houses near the garrison occupied by pale Sourans like Magdala and Lord Kalan, the brightly colored tents set up around the town where the darker sort of Sourans lived, and, finally, in between the tents and the houses a bunch of wind beaten grey wooden buildings, the Jungle.
Huan slowed. Here everyone stared at him, wondering why a Souran soldier had charged into their midst. Stouter, shorter, and darker than any Souran Huan had met so far, the residents of the Jungle were dressed in colorful billowy sleeveless tunics that showed off shoulders, calves, and arms in ways that would make a Tuquese courtier blush. For a moment, he thought that they were all women, but then he saw a long, wavy haired man who was stripped to the waist, drawing water from a well while another person watched, their fingers playing with their short hair. Both froze when they saw him, the man shrinking back, his partner stepping in front of him.
A tingle ran up Huan’s spine. They didn’t see a Tuquese boy. They saw a Souran soldier.
Why were they so scared?
A person walked up to him, adjusting a light green, blue, and purple tunic that looked as if it could have been freshly pulled from the sea. Huan took in the beardless face and the folds of cloth covering the chest and gave up trying to guess their gender.
“Do you need help, soldier?” they asked.
Huan’s eyebrows shot up, but he wrangled them back into place. He recognized the lilting, almost musical accent. These people were Vanurian.
Huan raised his chin and deepened his voice. “No, you can go about your business.” Hopefully they would leave him alone if they thought he wasn’t there for them.
The Vanurian’s eyes widened for just a moment, but they nodded and stepped back. “Yes, yes, of course.”
Slowly, the others returned to their work.
Huan’s nose still had the little girl’s strange scent, and so, with a swagger proclaiming that he owned the place, he followed it. After an hour of walking, the scent led him to a weathered house that could have doubled as an abandoned pile of wood. After looking around to see if anyone was looking, he dropped the act and oriented himself using the Southern Line. Currently, he was on the far northeastern edge of Walton, almost in the scrublands. More importantly, he was nowhere near the shop, which had been near the main road. Tapping his foot, Huan considered the building, which wasn’t perfect, but was exactly the kind of shambles he’d choose to do clandestine business in. After all, the rest of Walton had guard patrols, and scared foreigners don’t report anything. After one last check to see if the coast was clear, he snuck up to the house, pressed his ear against the door, slowed his breathing, and listened. Nothing. He sniffed then coughed as ambersoul and pickles punched through his senses. There was too much here for just the girl and Lord Kalan’s attacker, but he was definitely on the right track.
Allowing himself a small smile, Huan slid around to the back of the house, not bothering with the locked front door. When he reached a window set low in the back of the house, he reached for his sword and cursed. It was still locked up in the garrison armory.
I’m going to steal it back the first chance I get.
It’s a good blade. Slices well.
Ignoring Tiger and the unease growing in the pit of his stomach, Huan sidled up to the window and peeked in. The inside was dark with the light streaming from the window illuminating the wood floor. In the shadows beyond that bright bent rectangle, nothing moved. The unease sped up Huan’s already pounding heart, but he’d already come this far, and so he opened the window and slipped in. He landed, and the floor creaked as loud as a shout. Freezing in place, Huan waited for discovery. When nothing happened, he sniffed. There’s no smell of life here.
That thing did not smell like life.
Gulping, Huan took two deep breaths to slow his heart, eased the window closed, and padded deeper into the room, placing each of his steps on the quietest parts of the old floorboards. His eyes adjusted to the gloom.
If the house was a shambles on the outside, it was a dump on the inside, and it reminded Huan of Lord Kalan’s tent before Dwayne’s regular cleaning sessions. The house’s floor plan was simple: a single room with a stove tucked into a corner, the remains of a bed tucked into another, a desk standing next to the door, a chair standing next to that, and three boxes of varying sizes near the far wall. Everything was buried in something, the stove under a pile of pots and glassware, the desk under a heap of books and pens, and the floor under tall stacks of discarded paper. Huan picked up a single sheet off a stack that came up to his chest and squinted to read it, but the characters, which were like Souran but had a more angular look to them, were completely indecipherable to him. Returning the sheet to its stack, Huan searched for his passport, but instead of his target, he found a map that depicted the jungle on the other side of the Southern Line and that was covered in red X’s and unintelligible notes. Huan tsked, pocketed it, and then moved on to the boxes.
Two of them were rectangular with scratches and cracks like they’d been dropped from a great height and then dragged a long ways. The largest box was chained shut, but the medium sized one was open and full of old straw and some puffy stuff that looked like clouds brought down to earth. The third and smallest box had Tuquese characters painted on it.
Huan frowned. Fireworks?
Deciding not to puzzle that out, he left the boxes behind and approached the desk. Searching its drawers, he found a floor plan of Walcrest, again covered in unintelligible notes. This he recognized. This was a break-and-enter plan.
A key turned in the front door’s lock and Huan froze. A shoulder thumped against the door, but the door resisted.
Lucky!
Huan scrambled away from the desk and dove behind one of the paper stacks, covering his mouth.
Behind him, the door burst open, and, after some grunting and another heavy thump, the door scraped closed. Someone sighed. Keeping his hand clamped over his mouth, Huan peeked out to see Lord Kalan’s adversary.
Now sitting in the chair at the desk was a dark, wavy haired Vanurian, who was dressed in a rich tunic dyed with every shade of red, which looked out of place in the shabby surroundings. Their gender was a mystery, but regardless they didn’t look strong enough to carry any of the boxes in by themselves. After relaxing in the chair for a bit, the Vanurian got to their feet, strode to the largest box and placed their hand on it. “Fo, Liraya.“
The first syllable was familiar. Dwayne had said something about Fo magic.
Maybe the second word was their name? Sounds female.
The box popped open, revealing Lord Kalan’s assassin. Huan swallowed a gasp. She was dead.
In repose, the assassin looked like a thin woman with straggly black hair and pale grey skin. She was dressed in a thin ashy version of the brightly colored tunics that living Vanurians wore, and her chest didn’t move an inch, her closed eyelids didn’t move with unknown dreams, and her hands hung limply at her sides.
The longer he looked, the more a scream tried to claw its way out of Huan’s mouth. I gotta get away.
Unaware of Huan’s rising horror, Liraya pulled a small metal case out of her tunic, opened it, and plucked out a needle and thread. Humming to herself, she started to sew up the cuts Huan’s sword had inflicted on the assassin.
“HahahahaHAA!”
While Huan had a heart attack behind the paper stacks, the Vanurian abandoned her work, went to the desk, and pulled out a skull covered in arcane symbols out of the left drawer.
The skull spoke. “Liraya, imphum.”
Despite his horror, Huan managed a smile. He’d been right. While Liraya gave her report to the skull in trilling lilting gibberish, Huan slid back to the window, his eyes darting between the Vanurian and the corpse, waiting to see if either would move. Reaching the window, he eased it open and turned to leave.
From outside the house, the little girl stared back at him through the window, her painted blue eyes widening. Before Huan could do anything, she screamed.
Admaeus Speaks 
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