Venom in Her Veins (11 page)

But she knew temple guardian apes and shambling mounds wouldn’t hesitate to use any advantage they could get over
her
, so why should she feel guilty?

Julen watched her try out her new bow, clapping and making appreciative noises as she tested its capabilities on the straw targets. Night was falling, though, and archery was less enjoyable by torchlight, especially for spectators, so she acceded to Julen’s suggestion that they sit and talk awhile.

They walked to the far northern edge of camp, just outside the perimeter of carts but well inside the shifting protective fence of guards out in the woods. They sat on a couple of mossy boulders, and Julen grinned. “Look what I have.” He drew a small bottle of wine from a bag, along with a pair of wooden cups.

“Did you steal that?” He
was
doubtless trained in a dozen forms of larceny, and it
was
a nice gesture, but pillaging caravan supplies was a bad idea.

“No, it was a gift from, ah …” he frowned. “Someone. She said a woman with all your responsibilities should be able to drink all the unwatered wine she wants, and that we should celebrate your new position. I wish I could remember who it was.”

“It’s okay, I think I know.” Zaltys took the bottle, uncorked it, and sniffed, flickering out her tongue as she did so. The liquid inside had a hint of spiciness, and she knew, even in the dimness, that it would be bright red, some of Glory’s tiefling fire-wine. Something best drunk in moderation, no doubt, but a nice gesture nonetheless. And Glory was right—Zaltys
should
celebrate. The work began tomorrow, but until then, it was the pure pleasure of achieving one of her dreams.

Zaltys poured her cousin a cup and then one for herself, and after their initial gasps at the strength of the wine, they sipped in eye-watering silence for a while. Finally Julen said, “I’m sorry my gift wasn’t as good as the others.”

She waved her hand. “Don’t be silly, Cousin. It was very generous and thoughtful of you, and it’s appreciated. I’ll be sure to send you something when you come of age in a couple of years.” He leaned back on a log. “So. Heir to the Travelers. The backbone of the family fortune, at least, according to the Travelers, though it’s funny, the Guardians say the same thing, and I bet the Traders do too. Still, that’s got to be a weight on your shoulders.”

“It’s what I’ve been training for my entire life,” she said seriously. “I learned how to supply a caravan before I learned to read. I was taught how to scout the jungle and lay false trails before I was taught multiplication. It will be an honor to serve my family.”

“Easy for the heir apparent to say.” Julen took a sip of wine and coughed, eyes watering, then grinned. “I’m so far down in the pecking order sometimes I think my father’s forgotten my name. Oh, they’ve taught me all sorts of things—lockpicking, poisoning, how to tell if someone’s lying, how to creep around. But no one’s grooming me for leadership.”

“I’m sure they’ll find a place for you,” Zaltys said. It was hard to think of Julen as an adult, though he was very nearly. They’d played together as children, and in part of her mind, he was still the laughing boy with jam smudged on his face, racing through the gardens.

Julen shrugged. “Probably. Everyone in the family has to pull their weight, and being a Guardian is a proud and noble thing, and so forth. There’s talk of apprenticing me to my eldest brother. He does business with dwarves and even drow sometimes. He’s always going down into caves and mines and tunnels.” He made a face. “Sounds even worse than living in the jungle, honestly. I was hoping for a posting to one of our trading partners across the gulf, some city where I can enjoy myself, out from under father’s thumb. But he keeps giving me scrolls and books to read about the Underdark lately, so I think they’re serious about apprenticing me. Sending me out here to the jungle is supposed to help me toughen up or get practical experience or something.” He belched.

“Practical experience in getting drunk, maybe,” Zaltys said with a laugh.

“I’m counting on you to be my teacher in this as in all things,” he said with a grin.

Z
ALTYS WOKE UP WITH A COTTONY TONGUE AND A
thudding head. She sat up by the fading ashes of the fire, moaned, and picked up a canteen, sloshing the water around in her mouth for a while before swallowing. The sun was barely up, but by the standards of the camp, she was running late. She needed to get to Krailash’s cart and see about those rotations.

One of the sentries posted by the barrier carts shouted in alarm, and Zaltys sprang to her feet and raced in his direction. (Her mother had commented often on her tendency to run
toward
danger.) “What’s happening here?” she said. Three sentries were crowded together, their backs to Zaltys. One of them, a young man new to the caravan, turned, and his eyes widened. “Ah, an intruder, he somehow made it past the men posted in the woods.”

“Let me see,” Zaltys said, clambering up on the back of the cart so she could look down on their prisoner, who was on his knees, his hands raised in a show of helplessness. The guards had their spears leveled at him, but the man hardly looked a threat—he resembled one of the
homeless drunkards who slept in the alleys of Delzimmer, his clothes filthy rags, hair a long and tangled mass, beard like a ragged pelt clinging to his face. His pale hands trembled, and with red-rimmed eyes, he gazed up at Zaltys and babbled something. Half the sounds were guttural and harsh, but interspersed were recognizable words and phrases: “darkness,” “caves,” “slaves,” “cages,” “trapped,” “help me,”—and “Krailash.”

Zaltys narrowed her eyes. “You, new man. Go and get Krailash. And tell my mother someone has wandered in.”

“Yes, Krailash,” the prisoner said, and then put his head in his hands, and began to weep and sob and speak again in that strange guttural tongue.

Quelamia arrived suddenly in that soundless, subtle way she had, stepping up to the back of the cart to stand beside Zaltys. “Oh, my,” she said. “That’s Deep Speech.”

“What?” Zaltys said.

“Undercommon,” Quelamia said. “The trade language of the denizens of the Underdark.”

“He’s awfully pale to be a drow,” Zaltys said.

“Human,” Quelamia said. “I can always tell a human.”

Julen clambered up on the cart too. “Wow!” he said. “I heard they caught a spy!”

“You think he’s a spy?” Zaltys said. “He looks … crazy. Sick. Lost.”

“Good disguise for a spy,” Julen said, crunching an apple, chewing, and swallowing. “You know? Send someone in as a poor lost wanderer or jungle refugee in need of help, hoping we’ll take care of him, and give him a chance to see what we do in camp, learn our secrets, all that.”

Krailash arrived, axe in hand, and pushed through the barrier carts. “What’s this, then?”

The prisoner lifted his face and stared at Krailash. He shouted wordlessly and flung himself toward the dragonborn, clutching one of his scaled legs and weeping against his knee. Krailash grunted. “Were you lost in the jungle, my friend?”

The man looked up. “Krailash,” he said, and the dragonborn stiffened. “I have been lost in the
dark
. I never thought I’d find you again.”

“Rainer,” Krailash breathed, then began bellowing, shouting at his men to lower their spears, to fetch blankets and food and water, to bring Alaia, to
go now
. Zaltys gaped as Krailash picked up the prisoner and strode off toward the center of the camp, carrying the man like a father cradling a baby.

Julen took another bite of his apple, watching them depart. “Who’s Rainer?”

“He was a guard,” Quelamia said. “He disappeared a long time ago. We’d assumed he was killed. Apparently he just got lost.”

“Lucky he was able to find the camp again,” Julen said.

“Yes.” Quelamia had a faraway look on her face, but then, she usually did. “Quite remarkable, actually. Almost unbelievable.” She hopped off the cart—she somehow managed to do it gracefully—and moved off after Krailash.

“Are mornings always this exciting?” Julen said.

“People hardly ever wander in out of the woods and then hug our chief of security,” Zaltys said.

“More’s the pity,” Julen said. “Funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.”

Zaltys was hoping to find out more about the man, but he was taken into Alaia’s cart, along with Krailash and Glory, and when Zaltys knocked, her mother irritably told her to come back later, they were busy. So much for being a full member of the family, she thought, and went out to walk the perimeter. She looked for Julen, thinking she could teach him about the camp’s defenses, but he was nowhere to be seen—apparently the Guardians taught you how to avoid work along with how to pick locks and poison knives. The jungle beckoned—she wanted to try out her new gifts, especially since no guards would trail after her—but she was unwilling to leave when the camp was buzzing with rumors and speculation about the wild man who’d somehow cheated death.

A few hours later Zaltys found Glory near the cook tent, gnawing a rib bone and frowning. Zaltys sat down on the rough wooden bench across from the tiefling and said, “Is that man all right? Rainer?”

Glory grunted. “I scanned his mind. Ugly mess in there. Very dark. Lots of mental blocks, which I didn’t care to push through, because who wants to see what kind of horrible snakepits of memory he’s had to cover up? He is who he says, though, as far as I can tell. Poor bastard.”

“He was underground?” Zaltys said, horrified. “All this time?”

“You know about the Underchasm,” Glory said.

Zaltys nodded. “Where all that land collapsed.” The Underchasm was a pit the size of a sea, collapsed in the great upheavals that had made Delzimmer a coastal city.

“What do you think all that land collapsed
into
?” Glory said. “There are vast caverns beneath us. The Underdark.” She shuddered. “Rainer’s been down there.”

“What, lost?”

“Enslaved,” Glory said. She tossed the bone, picked clean, on the ground for the camp dogs. “His mind’s a wreck, but he’s in good shape physically. Toiling for monsters underground is good exercise. Be careful if you go out in the woods. Whatever monsters took Rainer and dragged him underground could be looking for him.” She yawned. “Probing his mind was too much like work. They had me clean things up in there a bit too, so he could maybe sleep again someday. I couldn’t take away all the bad experiences, though, not without turning him into nothing but a body without thought or will. The bad experiences are too much a part of who he is. Ugly business. I need a nap.” Glory rose and sauntered away.

Zaltys went to her mother’s wagon, knocked on the door, and entered at her mother’s call.

Alaia looked up from her folding desk, where she was writing a letter. “Oh, hello, dear,” she said absently. “Quite a lot of commotion this morning, hmm?”

Zaltys unfolded one of the camp chairs tucked into a corner and sat down. “Is that man all right? Rainer?”

Her mother sighed. “For a certain value of ‘all right,’ I suppose so. He went through terrible ordeals, things we can’t even imagine. But Glory was able to soothe him a bit.”

“What will happen to him now?” She thought of the broken men she saw sometimes in Delzimmer, begging
for coins by the harbor or just sitting, blank-faced, in empty doorways. Would that be Rainer’s fate?

“He was lost and injured while in the employ of the family,” Alaia said. “So the family will care for him, just as we would for a laborer crippled in the fields or a soldier maimed in our service. He’ll always have a livelihood in our employ.”

“He won’t … He can’t become a guard again.”

Alaia shook her head. “He was one of Krailash’s best men, but that was long ago. If he recovers fully and he wants to—but no. I think, once the family physicians and healers have made sure he’s not too ill, he will be given some less difficult task to do. A position in one of the households, or working in the gardens or kitchens. And if he’s not up to even that much work … Don’t worry, he’ll be kept comfortable.”

Comfortable
. Zaltys imagined him sitting in a chair at a window, staring out at some peaceful vista, his mind broken. “Where is he now?”