The Sable City, Book I of the Norothian Cycle

The Sable City, Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Six

The party slew more than a dozen demons in the tower before they reached the top and found a trapdoor out to the flat roof. Actually, Shikashe and Deskata had done most of the slaying, while Tilda, Zeb, and Heggenauer handled the leftovers.

Tilda herself had picked off two, one clawed thing with a beak on the third floor, then on the fifth her arrows had found the heart of a four-legged, dog-like creature with a disturbingly human head, though it had barked plenty. The party cleared each floor before ascending to the next and while the others were busy Tilda had managed to slip a jeweled collar off one of the slain creatures and secret it in a pouch. She was not quite sure why she had done so, but for a moment some Miilarkian part of her had taken over. She had determined that whatever else happened, she should at least give herself some chance to profit monetarily from this whole awful mess.

Since the fight with the bearded devils the day before, Tilda had felt a coldness growing in her stomach as gray and cloudy as the sky above the Sable City. Before that encounter she had told herself that the legionnaires who had abducted Claudja had a good chance of staying alive in Vod’Adia, so long as they stayed on the streets during daylight hours and found safe havens at night. But the attack in the open had given the lie to Tilda’s hopes. While her own party had dispatched the half-dozen devils without much trouble, they had a samurai with fearsome magic swords, a Dragon Cultist throwing lightning, and a Jobian cleric to bless weapons so that they told against the beasts. Claudja was the prisoner of three legionnaires with no magic, and a Wizard who Zeb had insisted was not a bad fellow, but who was also far from an archmage.

Claudja’s odds were that of a misag uyak as they called it at the Island Stakes in Miilark. The Fool’s Bet. The Duchess was almost certainly dead already.

Tilda was aware that the likelihood of Claudja’s demise should not have weighed on her nearly as much as it did. She had only known the Duchess for a matter of weeks, and though they had talked at length over the long days on the bullywug Gorpal’s slow-moving raft, they were really little more than acquaintances. Furthermore, Tilda had plenty of reason to believe that the determined little Duchess had paid Gorpal’s crew to cut the throats of six Daulmen while they slept. An efficient decision, but hardly endearing.

Yet Tilda had chosen to come into this dark city in order to help the Duchess if she could, and when Brother Heggenauer had asked her why she had said it was because Claudja was a friend. She had meant it too, but now Tilda had the feeling that she should not have trusted her own judgment. She had entered the city because it was her own choice to make, not John Deskata’s, not Captain Block’s, not the great House back in Miilark. The reason the Captain had brought Tilda to this continent was surely moot unless John pulled off a miracle and somehow used the Wizard, probably dead by now as well, and a book, probably lost, to send him magically back to the Islands. Tilda had not entered Vod’Adia for that slim chance. She had made a choice to do something of her own choosing, rather than doing what was expected of her. It was the second time in her life she had done such a thing. The first had been when she left her father’s shop on Chrysanthemum Quay, and applied for entry into the Deskata Guild.

From her vantage point now, neither choice looked to have been a good bet.

Tilda’s literal vantage point at the moment was in fact quite impressive. The climb to the top of the tower had been worth the fighting, for from seven stories above Vod’Adia’s black streets the city was laid out before the party like a map. The rain above had stopped and while the dome of mist seemed close enough to touch from the tower roof, the view all around was unobstructed. To the north the streets the party had traveled for days could be traced almost all the way back to Vod’Adia’s gate, while to the west the black wall they had been skirting since yesterday was revealed as enclosing a district of sprawling houses large as mansions in their own walled yards, with paths and open plazas filling the spaces between. Looking ahead to the south the party could see that they did not need to enter that district at all.