Blood of the City Read online

  Luma jumped, and the city propelled her into the air. She grazed the dripping crystals of the great hall's chandeliers, leaving them rocking and tinkling. Breathing deep, she braced for the coming landing.

  Her outstretched feet struck Noole in the back. She rolled, hitting the pedestal of a statue to a long-dead contralto. She made her way up, watching Noole as he rose and drew a rapier. Her own weapon lay on the rug a few feet away; she'd dropped it to avoid cutting herself as she landed. Feigning dismay, she let him come at her midsection. The thin sword jabbed skillfully at her. With equal aplomb, she evaded the thrust. Continuing the motion, she snatched up her sickle and dove at her opponent. He kept her at bay with a feint of his blade. They circled one another, Luma leaving ghostings of flour wherever she stepped.

  "I can't guess what you want with me," the gnome said, "but I want nothing to do with you."

  "Drop your weapon and I'll explain," Luma answered.

  He held it out as if ready to let it go, then lunged. The blade caught Luma on the side of the neck. It hurt, but she could tell the wound was only superficial. She swiped at his legs with her sickle; he hopped back with flamboyant ease. Adopting a perfect fencing stance, he waited for her to come at him.

  His moves so far revealed one fighting style disguised as another. Noole added flourishes to what was, at its core, a cautious waiting game of precisely timed blows. He was waiting for Luma to make a mistake he could capitalize on. In this, and in his general deftness and quick reactions, he favored an approach to combat that was also Luma's. One patient, calculating scrapper faced another.

  This could go on all day ...

  The Pathfinder Tales Library

  Novels

  Prince of Wolves by Dave Gross

  Winter Witch by Elaine Cunningham

  Plague of Shadows by Howard Andrew Jones

  The Worldwound Gambit by Robin D. Laws

  Master of Devils by Dave Gross

  Death's Heretic by James L. Sutter

  Song of the Serpent by Hugh Mattews

  City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt

  Nightglass by Liane Merciel

  Blood of the City by Robin D. Laws

  Queen of Thorns by Dave Gross

  Journals

  The Compass Stone: The Collected Journals of Eando Kline edited by James L. Sutter

  Hell's Pawns by Dave Gross

  Dark Tapestry by Elaine Cunnningham

  Prodigal Sons edited by James L. Sutter

  Plague of Light by Robin D. Laws

  Guilty Blood by F. Wesley Schneider

  Husks by Dave Gross

  Short Stories

  "The Lost Pathfinder" by Dave Gross

  "Certainty" by Liane Merciel

  "The Swamp Warden" by Amber E. Scott

  "Noble Sacrifice" by Richard Ford

  "Blood Crimes" by J. C. Hay

  "The Secret of the Rose and Glove by Kevin Andrew Murphy

  "Lord of Penance" by Richard Lee Byers

  "Guns of Alkenstar" by Ed Greenwod

  "The Ghosts of Broken Blades" by Monte Cook

  "The Walkers from the Crypt" by Howard Andrew Jones

  "A Lesson in Taxonomy" by Dave Gross

  "The Illusionist" by Elaine Cunningham

  "Two Pieces of Tarnished Silver by Erik Mona

  "The Ironroot Deception" by Robin D. Laws

  "Plow and Sword" by Robert E. Vardeman

  "A Passage to Absalom" by Dave Gross

  "The Seventh Execution" by Amber E. Scott

  "The Box" by Bill Ward

  "Blood and Money by Steven Savile

  "Faithful Servants" by James L. Sutter

  "Fingers of Death—No, Doom!" by Lucien Soulban

  "The Perfumer's Apprentice" by Kevin Andrew Murphy

  "Krunzle the Quick" by Hugh Matthews

  "Mother Bears" by Wendy N. Wagner

  "Hell or High Water" by Ari Marmell

  Blood of the City © 2012 Paizo Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

  Paizo Publishing, LLC, the Paizo golem logo, Pathfinder, and Planet Stories are registered trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Pathfinder Campaign Setting, and Pathfinder Tales are trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC.

  Cover art by Adam Danger Cook.

  Cover design by Andrew Vallas.

  Map by Robert Lazzaretti.

  Paizo Publishing, LLC

  7120 185th Ave NE, Ste 120

  Redmond, WA 98052

  paizo.com

  ISBN 978-1-60125-456-6 (mass market paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-60125-457-3 (ebook)

  Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

  (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

  Laws, Robin D.

  Blood of the City / Robin D. Laws.

  p. ; cm. — (Pathfinder tales)

  Set in the world of the role-playing game, Pathfinder.

  Issued also as an ebook.

  ISBN: 978-1-60125-456-6

  1. Druids and druidism—Fiction. 2. Balance of power—Fiction. 3. Imaginary places—Fiction. 4. Betrayal—Fiction. 5. Good and evil—Fiction. 6. Fantasy fiction. 7. Adventure stories. I. Title. II. Title: Pathfinder adventure path. III. Series: Pathfinder tales library.

  PS3612.A87 B56 2012

  813/.6

  First printing August 2012.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  With glaive-guisarmes raised

  in memory of

  Dave Arneson & E. Gary Gygax.

  Chapter One

  Shadow

  Crouched over broken cobblestones, her siblings hidden nearby, Luma opened herself to the citysong. Its melody, perceptible only to a special few, played on all five senses.

  Overhead hung the ruined expanse of the Irespan. From this angle, the bridge's cracked basalt canopy blotted out the sky, casting the shadow that gave the district its name.

  Luma heard the wind rattling across it. The city, building from these simple notes, rushed in on her. She felt the first light of dawn strike the Seacleft, the great cliff that divided the city into its two halves: the Summit above and the Shore below.

  Atop the reaching tower that was the Arvensoar, a watchman coughed. The cries of peddlers and hawkers chorused in, echoing from marbled walls. Galleons laden with trade goods groaned in the harbor. Foreign tongues counterpointed on the piers. In the temples incense wafted, pungent with prayers to a dozen gods. Rich men of the Summit snored on velvet beds; in their kitchens rose the smell of flour and lard as servants kneaded bread for their breakfasts.

  Heat from these distant stoves, carried to her by the citysong, warmed Luma's bones. She felt the aching muscles of Bridgeward quarrymen as they picked up chisel and hammer to stumble to yet another day of labor. In a shop of the high-moneyed Vista district, the scent of citrus and cloves escaped from a toppled perfume bottle. For an instant, Luma burned with the shame of the shopgirl who knocked it over. The flash of emotion disappeared back into the pulsating citysong, one story among thousands. Other glimpses fleeted by: despair and a rattling chain in the depths of the Hells, a hookah-smoked hangover in a Lowcleft brothel, a face soothed in the pure waters of the Seerspring, and by the loamy reek of its surrounding garden.

  The city sang the greed of thieves, the hunger of beggars, the frustration of actors, the waywardness of husbands, and the determination of wives. Luma flapped as a crow across slate-roofe
d warehouses, scuttled as a rat through trash-strewn gutters, and whickered as a horse stabled near the Bazaar of Sails. Together, these parts—people, places, animals, and the workings of nature, ever present and ever persistent—formed a greater whole, which was the spirit of the city. And from this spirit, Magnimar in its essence and entirety, flowed Luma's power. Such as it was.

  Few in the city of Magnimar, or for that matter in all of Golarion, could tell you about cobblestone druids—or citywalkers, or streetcallers, or whatever one chose to call them. Those few who felt qualified to speak might say that each city boasted its own celestial guardian—if not a god, something akin to one—from whom the citywalker gained divine magic. Luma herself did not much understand it, but as far as she could tell, there was no city god. Not for her, at least. Instead there was the song. To draw on it was not to pray, but to listen.

  Though thirty years old, Luma was frequently mistaken for a girl of half that age. Her father, and others inclined toward kindness, attributed this to her elven blood. The smoothness of her pale skin, her blue and slightly oversized eyes, and her small, pursed lips combined to convey a falsely callow first impression, they said. That was not all there was to it, though. Even as she hunched down in a district of troublemakers and thieves, sickle in hand, ready to fight, Luma held herself with a child's diffidence. A gust tousled at her wild tangle of bright red hair. A strand fell across her face. Unaware of the gesture, she wrapped it pensively around a forefinger, then chewed on it.

  Luma shook off her apprehension to focus on the objective at hand. A boarded-up hovel, its decaying timber scourged by salty air, stood kitty-corner from her position. Assuming their informant had his scuttlebutt straight, they'd find their quarry and his kidnappers inside. Luma ran through the situation again. Once inside, any tiny detail could tip the balance between victory and humiliation.

  The adversaries were Shoanti extortionists. Luma had heard fashionable people speak of the Shoanti with admiration—always making it clear they meant only those who dwelt far away, and not their degenerate city-dwelling cousins.

  On the plains of Varisia, particularly the uplands of the Storval Plateau, Shoanti existed as wild men, surviving off the fruits of the faraway land. Tales of their hunting, foraging, and occasional raids fed the city-bound imagination.

  Stories about Shoanti gangs in Magnimar, however, recounted incidents of vicious mayhem, many of them mostly true. People called them savages, fiends, headchoppers. The trades they plied brought trouble out of proportion to their meager numbers. In gangs of their own, or in service to local criminals, they lived by ransom, theft, and extortion. To them, the city Luma loved was just another wilderness. This was what her brother Ontor liked to call an ironic reversal.

  Luma had a simpler observation: in a fight, Shoanti were tough, unrelenting opponents.

  Even a conversation with one bore a constant potential for sudden violence. Prone to offense, they bore some improbable grievance against the ruling Magnimarian people—people like Luma and her family—and loved to go on about it. To Luma, who shied from any hint of politics, the prospect of arguing with Shoanti was almost as bad as having to fight them.

  The objective of the raid was a prisoner, Alam Scarnetti. His father, Gradon, oversaw a timber empire from a tomb-like manor squarely in the Summit's dearest quarters. The younger Scarnetti could blame his predicament on a taste for wagering. He owed money to gamblers, who sold his debt to the Shoanti, who took him hostage, demanding a payout with considerable penalties. The older Scarnetti, it turned out, would rather hire private enforcers, risking his son's life, than hand over the ransom. Luma, who never met with clients, gathered that Scarnetti senior was not much fonder of his son than he was of extortionists.

  This introduced a dangerous ambiguity: Alam could be an accomplice in the scheme. It wouldn't be the first time a wastrel scion had teamed with shady creditors to squeeze a higher allowance from a reluctant family. She'd be careful not to turn her back to him.

  Whatever motivated Gradon, it wasn't parsimony. Of all the squads her father hired out, the services of the family team warranted by far the highest fees.

  Luma's siblings had considered and discarded various complicated plans, leaving as their best option the old smash and grab. They'd launch a sudden assault from all sides. If it worked, one of them would spot the target and separate him from the extortionists before they could slash his throat. If it didn't, they wouldn't be paid.

  Members of her family, the Derexhi, had been paid for missions like this for generations, starting back when the city was nothing but a collection of wagons and shacks atop the big cliff. Luma wasn't worried that they'd fail to save their man. What plagued her instead was the thought of another mistake, like last month with the half-orc squatters. They'd won then, and been handsomely paid, but that didn't stop the scolding afterward.

  Beside the one-story hovel teetered a higher tenement, also deteriorating. Ontor rose from its roof. He took a few seconds to survey the state of the tenement wall, then clambered down, gripping free-handed its rotting plank facing. Ontor wore supple black leather armor, shorn of ornament and modified for ease of movement. While on the job, he kept his flowing black hair tied in a topknot. A proud smirk animated his elongated features. Its swagger cast a favorable light on his beakish nose and pointed chin, which in another man could have seemed homely.

  Ontor landed soundlessly on the hovel roof. Pressing himself flat, he shimmied to its edge. He withdrew a flat chisel from his belt and found a gap between the hovel's roof and wall. His efforts revealed it as predictably ill-constructed: in this case, the planks had been nailed directly into the side of the roof. One plank at a time, he set to work widening the gap. When he'd pried a plank away to his satisfaction, he reached down to tug free its nails. He then let the plank fall back into place, turning the poorly fashioned wall into a false front.

  A voice, languorous and sibilant, spoke into Luma's ear. "Be ready. They may waken, or have a sentinel posted." It was Luma's sister, Iskola, magically watching from a hiding place inside yet another nearby tenement. Her wizardry would be carrying the same words to the others as well.

  Ontor raised a beckoning hand. Luma crept from her corner position. The others emerged from their hiding spots.

  Broad-shouldered Arrus cricked his thick neck from side to side, as was his habit before battle. Shafts of sunlight, which shone below the bridge for an hour each morning, highlighted the red in his close-cropped hair and beard.

  Mouthing a silent dedication to his god, Eibadon produced a bulbous mace. The family priest closely resembled Arrus, save for the good looks. Though the younger of the two, Eibadon appeared older. His clerical tonsure did little to flatter him, instead emphasizing the roundness of his jowls and double chin.

  Ulisa, her shaven head adding to an overall impression of skeletal gauntness, gathered her saffron robe about her, expression turning inward. She neither carried nor needed a weapon.

  Arrus unsheathed his longsword, giving the signal.

  Ontor lowered himself onto the roof. He lay on his back and kicked, knocking down the planks he'd loosened. The hovel's front face collapsed, leaving only the odd board in place. Luma let Arrus take point, then followed, with Eidabon and Ulisa keeping pace.

  Inside the hovel, Shoanti brawlers scrambled from their sleeping mats. They seized axes, clubs, and daggers.

  Ontor swung from the roof into their midst, planting a knife between the shoulder blades of his closest opponent. The thug dropped to his knees, flailing behind him to grab the hilt, then went still.

  The Shoanti howled in wordless rage.

  Arrus entered the hovel, swinging his sword. It struck true, and another rebel collapsed, clutching his throat.

  Nearing the now-gaping threshold, Luma spotted the prisoner lashed to a bench in a darkened corner, thick seafarer's rope coiled around him.

  With the deftness of a woman used to pressing through city crowds, she dodged the swipe of an in
coming axe. Her sickle returned the blow, slashing her enemy's wrist. His axe clattered to the floor. As he came for it, Luma waved her weapon at him. Something about the ropes holding Alam Scarnetti tugged at her attention. Distracted, she failed to keep her enemy at bay; he snatched up the axe and plunged at her.

  Ulisa stepped in, seizing his other arm and folding it neatly behind his back. The axe man contorted in pain. The manipulated arm fell limp at his side. He came at Ulisa, but the injury had thrown off his balance. Easily ducking his blow, she snatched his axe from his hand. In a single movement, she bashed its butt into his glottis and hurled the axe into a support beam, where it stuck, quivering.

  Shoanti reinforcements boiled into the hovel. Luma paid them no heed, intent on the prisoner. Something was amiss.

  Ontor slid behind a rebel to stab him in the spine, then lunged to free their target.

  "No!" Luma shouted.

  Shoanti had a way with simple but ingenious traps, and with toxins. In this they were scarcely alone; the Magnimarian passion for poisoning ran deep. Luma reached into the citysong, calling on the dark part of it that reveled in venoms, blights, and corruptions. Its tune altered, bubbling with the whispers of crooked apothecaries, clinking with bottles and jars, crunching with the grinding of pestles. The citysong reverberated at her from a spot amid the ropes: a long, thin needle jutted through the coils, a nearly invisible lacquer covering its tip. The lacquer joined the citysong. I am poison, it sang, at a frequency only Luma could hear.

  She pointed to it. "Poisoned," she told Ontor.

  The needle had been positioned so that any careless attempt to untie Alam Scarnetti would plunge its tip into him, his rescuer, or one and then the other.

  "Don't move," Ontor told Scarnetti.

  The prisoner barely managed to speak. "I won't."

  A burly figure, easily a foot taller than Arrus and elaborately muscled, burst toward them. He seized Luma by the shoulders and hurled her into a wall. Before she could right herself, he was on her, kicking and punching. Each blow landed with bruising intensity. She scrambled for her sickle; it lay on the floor, out of reach. He kicked her again, then bent over her, seizing her by her leather cuirass. His head was hairless save for a greasy ponytail which dangled into her face. On his forehead was a tattooed Shoanti emblem: a two headed-snake wrapped around a pair of jutting axes.