Aazen felt the abrasions at his wrists where one of the guards had briefly put him in manacles. "Minor wounds. We have a problem."
"I'm aware," Balram said grimly. "A watch commander, Aazen?"
"It was the only way I could see to escape. I took him as hostage. His own men fired the bolts."
Balram nodded, letting it pass. "Jubair was here before you. It seems a member of the Chadossa family approached a contact within the Cowled Wizards concerning a rumor he'd heard about black market magic."
"A rumor including the location of the exchanges and the contents of the latest shipment?" Aazen asked.
His father nodded. "So it was Chadossa."
"No doubt the family is having second thoughts about dealing with the Shadow Thieves," Aazen guessed.
"But their son is not."
"What do you mean?"
"Chadossa broke off all contact with us just before their betrayal, all except the boy, the youngest son," said Balram. "He's still buying. There's an exchange tonight. I've left the location up to you. I trust you will be discreet."
Aazen shrugged. "Perhaps he was not privy to his family's intentions. Or they were not aware he was also our client and so failed to warn him. What do you propose to do?"
"I intend to send a message. Chadossa's son will bear it for me, and his sire will learn the price of betrayal."
"You risk the wrath of a powerful family," Aazen warned, but he already knew what his father would say.
"My own family's resources far outstrip any the Chadossas could gather," Balram said confidently.
"And will your family support such a bold action?" Aazen dared to ask.
Uncharacteristically, his father waved it off with a chuckle. "Even Daen could not argue with the profit already amassed in this venture. And if Chadossa acts anything like I expect him to, the authorities will never trace the message back to us." His father's expression changed as he looked on his son. "You'll have to deliver the item to him, Aazen." Aazen kept his face neutral.
"Is there no one else?"
"None of the others will touch the broken items," Balram said. "They're afraid."
So was his father, though the man would never admit it. He should be afraid, Aazen thought. Any rational person would be.
"I'll take care of it, Father," he said. "There is another issue."
"What is it?"
"When we retrieved the items, we encountered a woman in the Delve—a Harper."
Balram's lip curled. "They turn up in the most inconvenient places. Did you deal with her?"
"I left her to bleed out, but perhaps I shouldn't have. She knew the wizard. She may have been his apprentice. If so, we could have used her."
Balram shook his head. "Too risky. Secrecy is our best advantage in this, and it's possible she knows another way out. Your only mistake was in not making sure she was dead. We'll take care of that tomorrow."
Aazen nodded. If he had had his way, they would never have returned to the Delve at all. The memories it held for him were not pleasant ones. He still felt it—the distant menace, the sensation of being trapped—whenever he went down there. "What if more apprentices unexpectedly turn up?" he asked.
"As with the woman, they'll find the Delve a place much changed from what it was before," Balram said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Howling Delve
3 Marpenoth, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)
Meisha opened her eyes to a blurry world of smoke and stink—the full, cloying smell of sweat and unwashed bodies, broken only by the pungent odor of some kind of herb.
She was still underground, lying on a pallet of blankets. She could make out the uneven rock ceiling by the light of a torch suspended on the wall above her head. Smoke from the brand drifted languidly in the air until it reached the ceiling, then it was swept away like river water to a darkened corner of the room. If Varan's magics still functioned, he must be nearby, Meisha thought.
She tried to sit up and felt pain lance through her lower back. The stab wound was still fresh. She should be dead. Someone must have found her and treated the wound—Varan?
Meisha felt a stiff bandage encasing her abdomen, which seemed to be the source of the herb scent. But she could tell at least some of the bones in her wrist had reknit while she slept. Whoever had treated her had done so with some magical aid, but not much.
She examined her surroundings. The chamber around her was wide, with a low ceiling that dipped almost to the ground in some corners and fluted upward sharply in others. This place Meisha recognized. She'd made her pact to become Varan's apprentice here, over a pit of flames.
As an apprentice, she'd taken meals here or used the space for study that did not involve casting. Despite the cold and damp of the underground environment, Varan had had the chamber richly appointed. Placed in the center of the room was a round, cherry wood table—with thicker legs than her own—surrounded by soft, wingback armchairs. Two couches with tasseled silk pillows had flanked a bookcase wedged along the wall. All of it had huddled around small fire pits, with Varan's ventilation magic handy to carry the smoke away through one of the carved flues in the ceiling.
But now the chamber was stripped of all furnishing. A sagging length of rope hung around her pallet and held a stained sheet for privacy. Meisha could make out dozens more of the boxed-off areas around the chamber. Distorted shapes moved within them like a complex shadow play. People, Meisha thought—a fair number, at that.
She could hear their voices, sometimes whispering in low tones, other times pitched loudly to carry across the chamber.
"I'm tellin' ye, pick one day for butchering, and we won't have that awful stink to wake to."
"Five toys just today—that's got it, my time's coming up. Always does when yer five times as likely to lose an eye."
"Where's Iadra? Somebody'd best tell her to be puttin' the mark up."
Footfalls tramped on the other side of her sheet. Meisha tensed, but the male voice that drifted over the thin cloth was somehow familiar.
"Tymora's best odds, all I'm saying. Tymora's best odds she don't live through the night."
"You said as much last night," an overly patient female voice answered him. "Return it, please."
"She's not gonna care! You didn't see this blood pool, Har. I pulled her out—no one else was there with her to do the honors. She'd want me to have it."
"Get out of my way, Talal."
"Fine. At least let's nudge her and see—see if she's still kicking."
Hands flung the sheet aside to reveal a pair of large eyes surrounded by a nest of dirty blond hair that had not been combed with anything more elaborate than fingers and spit for many years. The boy couldn't have seen more than two decades of life, and they'd been lean years. His wrists were the breadth of broom handles, and he crouched like a frog, his spindle legs thickening with muscle at the thighs, as if he squatted and crawled more often than he walked. He wore a baggy shirt and breeches. When he moved, the odor wafting off them made Meisha gag.
"It's awake," the boy said, too brightly, as if he were hiding disappointment. "See?" He pointed at her triumphantly, her Harper pin clutched in one dirty hand. "Did that last time. Thought she was dead and whew!" He waggled his fingers and pulled a ghoulish face at the woman who was attempting to push him aside with her hip. "Back to life again." The boy didn't seem to notice the woman's exasperated shoving. "No one dies reliably these days."