Of False Treachery and Tainted Gold
Ninth Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC
Carrying a glass case filled with magic-eating leaches was considerably less pleasant than the basket full of dream cats. Even terrified about where he was taking them and asking hundreds of questions he could not answer in the open, the kittens had just made him want to walk faster so he could get those damn collars off them and replaced with fake ones so they could be free. The leaches just squirmed over one another, their many glowing mouths sucking at the glass. The only reason Maelor wanted to get them back to the shop faster was so he would not have to look at them anymore.
Thankfully, the Fakir seemed to have believed his story about wanting a weapon to use against his master in full. The boy had thus allowed the efreeti merchant to 'trick him' into buying the lot of them, not just the handful he would need for an assassination. He had paid mostly in 'embezzled' coin, with three of the Erinyes' old bows added in to make the trade look authentically desperate. One of the bows had once even belonged to Sarell, but she had not acted strange about it like so many would. 'Sell it, break it in front of a tree, or do anything else useful with it, I have a better bow.'
A lot of folk could stand to learn that sort of sense, Melor thought as he walked down the silent Street of Ashsweeps.
Silent, instincts honed in the narrow alleys of Mantarys screamed at him to stop. This was the quiet time of day, that is why he had chosen it for his supposedly treacherous meeting, but quiet was not the same thing as dead silence. When the air goes dead chances are something else's gonna follow.
"Well... well... what have we here? Perhaps a guilty conscience?" A voice like jagged bone scraped over his nerves and echoed in the boy's mind as a clanking skeletal thing stepped out from a twisting alley. At first Maelor thought it was some kind of walking corpse, gilded bones peeking out beneath grotesque face-skins. Looking into the hollow sockets of its eyes, however, Maelor saw shadows dripping and congealing like old blood, and knew the thing for what it was, one of the would be masters of flesh and form, a
Kyton Bonesinger.
Maelor slipped his left hand in one of the many pouches on his belt, reaching fingers curling around the angular edges of the Sending stone. He was glad he had the foresight to ask Sarell to trail him, even if they could not afford to keep close enough to pass messages through her own mind speech.
"A guilty conscience in the City of Brass? Bloody strange that," he scoffed aloud as he set the case of leeches down and very deliberately put a few steps between himself and it. The last thing he needed is to scatter them all over the street or worse. "Are you gonna announce that it might be a bit warm out next?" he taunted again.
"Not all sins are treachery," the fiend proclaimed, pointing one bony finger at him accusingly.
"No one cares for a traitor's fate, but your master might pay handsomely for your skull once I wrap it in gold and set it with blood-bright rubies."
"Lies have short legs," a cruel yet strangely childlike giggle rang out through the empty street. "They are so short 'cause I cut them off at the knee..." The figure that emerged into the light seemed almost human, save for the eyes half-rotten in their sockets and the dozens of knifes piercing its flesh, including a dozen lodged in its head like a macabre crown. Another Kyton, this one a
Truth-Speaker, one of those who fancied they could flay primordial truths from the flesh of theor victims.
"So you are going to try to kill me and then hand my body to my master as a traitor on the words of the Fakir of Fortune." the young mage shook his head with every appearance of sadness though he wanted nothing more than to curse and rage at the treacherous merchant. "I wonder what the two of you have done that he would send you to your death thus," he added, keeping up the mummery.
"Alive or dead, you will tell us of your master. There is so much of use locked up in that skull of yours, so much beauty also..." The greater fiend did not step forward but glided upon the air, bones clinking and clanking, the stiched faces of its garments seeming to move in a silent scream.
"I was about to say the same thing about you... except for the beauty part, you are ugly as sin," Maelor said as he called to the shadow and flame in his blood. A lance of black fire flew from his hand and where it struck the vestment of skin the flames burst into greedy crimson light, two magics twined together as one.
The thing's gaze looked out hungrily from the dimming flames, caring nothing for its ally, only its prey, as it lunged forward. For a moment Maelor felt his stomach turn over at the horrors reflected in that hollow gaze, but he had seen the depths of the Pit itself in his dreams and he would not relent. He did not flinch when a lash of leather and silk darted towards his head... though he did smile when the weapon was turned aside by a flash of his warding amulet.... and then he cast the same spells as before, flinging himself backwards from the roaring flame of his own spell, trusting the guard against fire to do the rest.
Somehow he came out of that unsinged, though he would have been satisfied with 'alive'. Looking wildly around for the second fiend, he saw Sarell standing on its corpse, sword dripping with inchor. "I did not want to steal your kill after you promised to take his skull," she said simply.
Maelor briefly considered the matter. "Fair enough," he shrugged. "Come on, we have some leeches to deliver than we have to think about how to deal with the bastard who set those two on us."
OOC: I was tempted to cut off before the fight, but in the end I decided to push through, though it is now super late. Not yet edited. 
