Lillandra

Lillandra stared at the little elf girl, and then stared at Arai, incredulous. "You're feeding her?"

"She was hungry," he said, shrugging. He glanced down at Shell, who was seated at a table in the inn's common room, working on her second bowl of stew.

"She's a thief," Lillandra hissed.

"She's a little kid," he returned. "At least, I think she is. How old are you, Shell?"

"Eleven," she answered, in between slurps.

"There, you see? Eleven."

"She broke into our room."

"I'm aware of that," he said dryly, "and I'm not condoning it, but she was obviously pretty desperate. Look how skinny she is."

"I don't care how skinny she is. You're rewarding her for stealing from us. You're an idiot."

Arai shrugged again. Maybe he was an idiot. He knew what it was like to be hungry, though, and he hated to see anyone starving.

When she had finished her second bowl, and devoured almost an entire loaf of the innkeeper's wife's bread, she pushed the bowl away and sat there quietly, with her hands in her lap. Arai sat down at the table, across from her; after a moment, Lillandra reluctantly did the same.

"I'm sorry," she said, eyes downcast. "For robbing you, I mean."

"What made you decide to target us?" Arai asked.

"I saw you coming out of the jeweler's," she said. "I figured you'd just made a sale. And I thought, since you were foreigners, you might not know enough to call the guards on me." She looked up at them. "You are foreigners, aren't you? Your Addish is perfect."

"We are foreigners," he admitted. "We're from a country called Velon."

"I've never heard of it."

"I'm not surprised," he muttered. "Now, what was this about your brother?"

She blinked at him. "My brother? Oh, my brother." Her eyes once again began to well with tears. "He's in trouble."

"So I gathered," Arai said. "But what's the problem?"

"He signed up to join the guards a few months ago," she said. "But his fellow guards teased him and bullied him, probably because he was an elf. There aren't many elves in the guards. Anyway, he finally left, but without permission, and if Captain Rainer catches him he'll kill him. We decided to leave the city, to head back to Turuni, but it's a long journey, and we needed some money..." She trailed off, her lower lip quivering. "We ran out of food a few days ago."

"Where's your brother now?"

"Hiding out."

"And where are your parents?"

"We don't have any parents. We're orphans."

"Ah." That was too bad.

Lillandra was studying the girl skeptically. "That's some story," she said.

"I'm sorry I stole from you. I know it was wrong. I just...I just..." And she burst into tears again, saying, "I'm sorry!"

Arai patted her on the shoulder. "Everything will be all right. Would you like another bowl of stew?"

"Yes, please."

He ordered another bowl from the innkeeper's wife. The little girl dove into it immediately, attacking it with her spoon.

Lillandra pulled Arai aside. "Don't tell me you believed that sob story."

He frowned. "You think she made it up?"

"I think she'd say anything to get out of trouble."

"Those tears looked pretty real."

Lillandra snorted. "She's a good actress, I'll give her that. But she's a thief. She doesn't deserve your sympathy. She certainly doesn't deserve a third bowl of stew."

"She's starving."

"She looks healthy enough to me. Anyway, you can't believe a word she says. If you want my advice--"

"I don't, actually," he said, suddenly annoyed with her. "I don't want your advice." He got out his coin purse and handed Shell a single silver coin. "Here," he said. "Use this to get your brother out of the city."

She stared at him with those huge, emerald-green eyes. "You mean it?"

"Just promise me you won't rob anyone else."

"I promise!" she exclaimed, accepting the coin and suddenly leaping out of her chair to embrace him. "Thank you, thank you! I'll never forget this."

"Don't mention it."

"And thanks for the meal, too." The little girl bowed to them both, and then, grinning from ear to ear -- and with a bit of stew still on her upper lip -- she ran out of the inn.

"That was stupid," Lillandra remarked.

"She needed help. Those years I spent fighting your armies, I was never too busy to stop and help someone in need. And I'm not about to start now."

The innkeeper's wife appeared. "Another copper for that stew, please," she said, extending her hand.

"Ah." Arai reached for his coin purse...and frowned. It wasn't there.

He looked around frantically. Had he dropped it? He had had it just a moment ago.

And then he remembered the hug the little elf girl had given him. He groaned.

"What's the matter?" Lillandra asked.

"I guess you were right," he muttered. "She just picked my pocket."

The Night Queen laughed darkly. "Kindness. See where it gets you?"

* * *

She didn't laugh for long. With no way to pay for the food, the innkeeper and his wife promptly put them to work -- Lillandra was forced to wash their dishes and do their laundry, while Arai was ordered to skin onions and peel potatoes. The situation was almost comical -- Lillandra, the Queen of the Night, and Arai, the heroic leader of the rebellion, reduced to taking orders from a sweaty innkeeper and his grouchy wife.

They finished their work in the early morning, and retired to their chambers again after that, in order to secure a few more hours' sleep. The innkeeper was pleased with their work, but he wasn't about to put them up for free, and at noon the next day he kicked them out of the room and ordered them off the premises.

Yawning -- he hadn't gotten much sleep -- Arai pulled on his boots, strapped his sword to his belt, and headed out the door with Lillandra. "That was humiliating," she muttered, as they stepped out onto the street. "If you hadn't been taken in by that little thief..."

"You don't have to remind me."

"What are you going to do now? We're right back where we started, only we don't have anything to barter now, except for your sword and your armor."

Arai frowned. It was true they had no other valuables, but he was never going to part with Silus, and he was loath to part with his armor, which had been given to him by his father and which he felt he would almost certainly need for the journey back to Velon. The set consisted of breastplate, spaulders, vambraces, and greaves; he had lost the helmet fighting his way up the Nightfall. Perhaps, he thought, he could at least sell the spaulders, which he seldom wore.

They also had the Stone of Many Tongues, which they no longer needed, but Arai was reluctant to part with it as well; he thought it might come in handy again at some point.

He sighed. Things were going from bad to worse here. They needed money, and they needed it badly. Were they going to have to get jobs here in Kingsaile? Lillandra didn't seem to have any special skills, apart from her magic, and Arai had spent most of his life fighting with the Steelmen; his only real skill was his swordsmanship. He could ask to join the royal guards, he supposed, or the city watch, but he didn't want to spend months, or years, in this strange city -- he wanted to go home.

But the guards probably wouldn't accept him into their ranks anyway; he was obviously a foreigner.

"I'm hungry," Lillandra commented.

He gave her a glare. Lillandra was another complication. They had declared a truce, of sorts, since arriving in Addis, but she was still technically his prisoner, and he was afraid to let her out of his sight for long.

What were they going to do? He clenched his fist. If only he hadn't fallen for Shell's story...

Well, there was nothing for it now. "Let's find a place to sit down." The sun was hot, and he wanted to get off the street.

They found a bustling tavern on one of the wide boulevards that ran the whole length of the city, from one gate to another. Arai couldn't read the sign over the door, but the drawing beneath the characters depicted a boar with a spear sticking out of its back.

They entered the tavern and found a table. It was a busy, boisterous place -- all around them, people were chatting and eating lunch, and the smells coming from the kitchen were very enticing indeed -- the cook must have been grilling some kind of meat back there. Arai sighed. He was hungry, too.

"What are you going to do now?" Lillandra asked him again.

He resisted the urge to tell her to shut up. Instead he said, "Let me think."

A couple of grizzled-looking men were sitting at the table adjacent to them, quaffing ale. "Forget it," one of the men was telling the other. "Those salamanders are bad news."

"He's offering forty pieces of silver."

"For a chthonic salamander?" He snorted. "He's out of his mind. Do you know how big those things get?"

"Excuse me," Arai broke in, intrigued by the mention of forty silvers and the prospect -- however unlikely -- of making some money. "I couldn't help but overhear. What's a chthonic salamander?"

"A kind of monster," the man replied, gulping down some more ale. "You get 'em in the Dwellmer, sometimes; the magia can get pretty thick down there."

"The Dwellmer?"

The man squinted at him over the rim of his stein. "You're new in town, ain't ya?"

He nodded.

"Well, the Dwellmer's what we call the catacombs beneath the city. Kingsaile was built over these big natural caves, see, and people used to inter their dead down there. But some of the caves got flooded, and the catacombs got all mixed up with the city's sewer system, and now, well, it's a big mess."

"And there's monsters down there? Beneath the city?"

"Yeah. It's the magia. In the mountains, the monsters are made of rocks, and in the forests, they're made of plants and vines, but in the cities you get weird things like salamanders." He took another sip of ale and said, "It wouldn't be a problem, except there's people living down in the Dwellmer, too."

"There's people living in the sewers?"

"Poor people," the other man clarified. "People with nothing left to lose. There's hundreds of 'em down there."

Arai recalled that he hadn't seen many beggars or obviously poor people on the streets of Kingsaile. Perhaps that was because the really hopeless cases ended up in this Dwellmer place. "I see," he said. "But what was this about forty silvers?"

The man chuckled. "Looking to make a little coin, are you? Captain Bagra has offered a reward to anyone who can kill this salamander, and bring him back a piece of maginite as proof that it's dead."

"Captain Bagra?"

"One of the four gate captains. The Dwellmer is his responsibility; he has to at least pretend like he cares about the people down there. But it's not worth it. Chthonic salamanders are bigger than elephants -- bigger than wyrms, even -- and forty silvers won't get you very far in this city anymore."

Arai rose to his feet. "Where can I find the entrance to this Dwellmer?"

"You're not actually thinking of going down there, are you?"

"I might be."

The men shook their heads in dismay. "For forty pieces of silver? You must be crazy."

"How can I get there?"

"There's entrances all over the city," one of them said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, "but the closest one is near the South Gate. It's a big road that runs right underground; it's hard to miss."

"Thank you."

"You're really crazy, you know, if you think you can kill that salamander. You probably won't even be able to find it. The Dwellmer is like a maze. It's very easy to get lost down there."

"Thank you for your concern," he said brusquely. "Let's go, Lillandra."

She followed him out the door. "You can't be serious," she said to him, when they were back out on the street.

"I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Hunting monsters is the perfect job for us."

"Oh?"

"Silus cuts through monsters like butter. All we have to do is find this thing, strike it down, and collect its maginite, and we'll be up forty pieces of silver. That's enough to buy us new clothes, new boots, and a ride to the next town."

"You make it sound very easy."

"You've seen Silus in action. It cancels out everything magic, and monsters are made of magic. I just need to get close enough to strike the damn thing a few times with my sword."

"Your sword is remarkable," she said, "but it doesn't make you invincible."

"It's an opportunity to make some money," he argued, "and to help some people along the way. Who knows how long this salamander has been terrorizing the people of the Dwellmer? Who knows how many people have been killed already? I think it's worth the risk. Besides, do you have any other ideas?"

"You're an idiot," she muttered. "All right, fine. Let's go get ourselves killed."