From the rooftops, the roads of Amanthus wound around the buildings like shining, writhing black snakes. The lampposts were pinpoints of light—eyes looking upward to the sky, searching for their sisters, the stars, that were hiding behind the cloak of cloud. Sound from carriages or the occasional person’s footsteps against pavement sounded like faint tinny bells—discordant wind chimes muffled against a thick night air. The air was a bit clearer at this height, but the stench of Old Amanthus still beckoned, a rotting carcass to flies and vultures.
A break in the clouds revealed that the moon was not as full. It was slightly slimmer than the previous night—waning, giving way to darkness.
Zan followed Caradon among the roofs, skirting vents and chimneys as they steadily made their way toward the city interior. He had said that the route would be quicker and safer than following the open major roads. As she followed him over a ledge to the roof of a shop on Market Row, she wondered if this had been his method for traveling the previous night, if he had followed her thusly. A pity she had not glanced up as well as behind and around her.
Caradon stopped at the edge of a roof facing the street running parallel with Market Row, on the old city side. Most of the lampposts on this road were dark—only a few flickered dimly, lighting occasional patches of the road. She stood beside him, looking down at the street. It was busier than most as a many seedy taverns and pubs lined the streets along with a brightly lit house at the end of the row of buildings—the loudly laughing women in brightly colored dresses and drunk men waving bills about marked it as a brothel, a gaming hell, or both.
The building they were on top of was one of the many drinking taverns on the street. She watched the men stumbling out, drunk and tired, and quickly narrowed in to one figure who moved and smelled familiarly. The lanky man was wearing a long coat that came nearly to his ankles and a battered hat smelling of soot. He stood leaning on the tavern’s outside railing at a drunken stoop and fumbled in a pocket to light his pipe. From the high angle on the roof, she couldn’t make out the man’s face.
Someone standing inside the tavern, just before the threshold of the front door, laughed loudly and threw something into the street which clanked noisily along the pavement. The figure at the railing gave no indication that he heard the noise. “You watch your back, you hear?” said the person inside the tavern. “With that conjunction coming up and all those culties agitated, beware of all those demons.”
“Yah!” the man on the railing scoffed. Then he rasped in a sneering drawl,“You’ve gone to one of those church sermons again, haven’t you, Willie? You’re too gullible about all that fire and brimstone lecturing. The only sort of hell on earth we’re going to see are the usual sort of things—murder, thievery, no beer.”
There was laughter from Willie. “It’s your own fault they ran out of beer when it comes to you. No coin, no drink, Eridanus. Everyone knows that. Nothing’s free, you know.”
“Ha! I’m a right regular customer. There should be specials for people like me.”
“You know they serve no specials to anybody. I’m not kidding—watch your back on your way back to your hole. I’ve heard from this one bloke who’s in the know about the Temple goings on. The culties are expecting the border between here and the other world to thin and the demons will be out in force, I grant you that.”
“Oh? Will there be organized armies?” Eridanus replied in a mocking tone.
“That would be too obvious. Demons can come in different forms. They can look like you or me except for their red eyes. Some of them come in different animal forms like dogs and foxes and cats and crows.”
“And fish too, I suppose. Fish with red eyes. I can see it, Willie. Fish with red eyes cause all the shipwrecks that happen on the sea—not the storms.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Demons like forms that can cause harm. If you see any talking dogs…”
“Talking dogs! Just listen to yourself. I think you’re the one who’s drunk too much, Willie. There are no such thing as demons—it’s all superstition.”
“Humph. Disbelieve all you like, but I suppose you have cause to be arrogant. Go wrap yourself up with all those amulets you give away for money. You’ll need them, mark my words.”
Slowly, the amulet shop owner straightened up from the railing. “Perhaps I’ll just go and do just that. There’s no talking to someone who’s in your state.”
As Eridanus walked off into the street, Willie laughed uproariously before stopping abruptly with a hiccup. Willie cursed and hiccupped some more before stomping back into the busy tavern. The amulet shop owner didn’t turn around to say goodbye to his acquaintance.
Caradon and Zan slipped down a narrow iron stairway bolted to the side of the tavern and kept to the shadows as they tailed the amulet shop owner who seemed quite cavalier about walking on a street in Old Amanthus at night.
I suppose you have some idea on how to find out information from our drunk little victim?
She gave her patron a hard look. This is serious, not some silly little adventure!
You don’t have a plan, do you?
She was tempted to bat his nose with a paw, but she kept her eyes on the amulet shop owner instead.
The man wavered through the streets, passing other drunks and some gamblers, surprisingly avoiding getting accosted from any of the criminal class that were surely lurking in the old city. The two fox-shifters followed him deeper into Old Amanthus via a strange twisting path through small streets and alleyways until he turned onto Galen Avenue, the address for the amulet shop. They watched him amble up the stoop to the front door and slip through his door with no more than a faint jingle of his keys.
Zan eyed the closed door in vague frustration. She wanted answers, and being locked out of the man’s amulet shop was not going to get her any. She glanced at the windows in the shop front and tapped the panes with her paws. On the second window, a shutter gave way and quickly, she leaped up the window ledge and slipped into the front room of the shop. Caradon soon followed her and for a moment, they waited at the bottom of the window, watching the shop owner open a door at the back of the room and disappear into that room. Then they heard him stumble up a flight of stairs.
The room behind the store front was a combination of a sitting room, a study, a dining room, and a kitchen. A small wood stove sat in the corner, at the moment, unused. A worn couch was pushed against a bare wall and across from that was a chair and a battered desk strewn with small, odd objects, papers, and books. On the opposite wall were a wall of cupboards and a wooden stand holding a brass statue of some old pagan god. Zan took a closer look at the objects on the desk and quickly dismissed them as broken bits of amulets—perhaps in the middle of repair.
Perhaps those are his accounts. I think it’ll be a better idea if you look through them. And I’ll see if I can wring some information out of him myself.
Caradon jumped onto the chair and opened one of the books with his paw. You want me to do this? Can’t I ask the questions?
You don’t even know what questions to ask, she replied. Check the books and see if there are any transactions with my uncle. Or anyone from the Academy for that matter.
Well, you haven’t told me what sort of questions you were going to ask.
If you want to learn, then listen in. She left him in the back room and ventured up the stairs, slowly and cautiously, ears pricked for any sudden noises.
At the top of the landing, there was only one door, but it was open. The shop owner did not notice her dark form in the doorway. He had dropped his coat on the back of a chair in his sparse bedroom and had flopped into his unkempt bed with all his clothes still on. He snorted as he pulled a ratty, moth-eaten blanket up to his shoulders.
Zan padded closer and jumped up to the nearby bed stand to look at the drowsy, drunk man. She projected a thought: Quite full of yourself, weren’t you?
The shop owner suddenly sat straight up, eyes wide. He turned and saw the black fox on his bed stand and he shrieked.
Mr. Eridanus, theatrics are most unbecoming.
“Ah!” He grabbed something from beneath his pillow, but she was too quick for a man who had his senses dulled by liquor. A shot went off before she chomped down on his wrist. The bullet hit the ceiling and plaster rained onto the bed. The shop owner gave another high pitched scream with the pain of teeth on his hand and he dropped a small pistol which bounced on the blanket before clattering on the floor.
Zan?
I’m all right, she privately told Caradon. He was too surprised, that’s all.
“What are you? How do you know my name?” the shop owner whispered as he clutched the edge of his blanket when she let go of him.
Didn’t your friend at that drinking tavern warn you about talking animals?
Eridanus made a choked sound at the back of his throat. “Demon! Demon, get out of my house! I have all sorts of magical artifacts that will send you straight back to hell!” Then he pulled out something else from underneath his pillow. A very large, silver cross.
She simply blinked. You think that will stop me? I’m here to account for your business, Mr. Eridanus. You’d better give me truthful answers or something might happen to you.
The shop owner dropped the cross and pulled out a vial which he unstopped and flung the contents over her while shouting, “May the power of God compel you! May the power of God compel you!”
Oh, I don’t think holy water will work either, Mr. Eridanus. She shook her head and gave him a large toothy grin. First you will tell me who you sold your little amulets to this past month.
He wailed. “You must be one of the old pagan gods. I’ll do anything. Just don’t hurt me.”
Answer my question.
“My customers were the usual lot, you know. Those little old ladies and those wormy chaps down at the stews. You know, the superstitious lot,” he rambled. “I sold charms for wealth and love and health and keeping away the evil spirits. They probably don’t work, you know. You just say that they do and those gullible ignoramuses will believe anything. And then there were the culties. They all want the same thing so I have them specially made for them. Just some decorative jewelry, that kind of thing. They’ve never told me what it means or whether they are amulets at all besides the decorative aspect. However, some of them have told me that they like to wear them at the Temple or the surrounding ruins because it is said that the Ancients built them on spots where there was a great upwelling of energy or magic or the power of the gods or whatever it is that they believe.” He paused to take a breath.
Is that all?
“Well, there were some eccentric people, you know. The kinds who think demons are after them all the time so I have the usual charms and amulets for them. There were a couple of new eccentric old biddies too, but I suppose they just got word of my shop, you know? Some of them ordered needles made of a variety of materials, especially some made of resins like jet and amber and…”
The store owner had attempted to distract her with his blabber as his hand inched toward the heavy silver cross that he had dropped. Zan noticed a fraction too late as he swung the cross. At least her reflexes were faster and he only hit her nose which caused her to yip in pain. But before he could aim another blow, she bit down on his wrist again and swiped at his face with her claws. He screamed.
She could feel Caradon’s anger bubbling through her as he pounded up the stairway to the bedroom, heedless of the noise that he made, and pounced onto the bed. He placed a clawed paw on the man’s neck and stared into his face. The shop owner flailed uselessly and made a gurgling sound as sweat trickled down his temple and his eyes glazed over in fear.
“Two demons!” Eridanus gasped out.
That’s right. Caradon opened his mouth so that the amulet store owner stared into a maw of teeth. And you had better be careful of who you irritate. Otherwise, your face might not be the same when morning comes.
The shop owner squeaked and tried to nod.
Privately to her, Caradon said, I found your uncle’s transaction. Are you done here?
She rubbed a paw against her nose in irritation. I suppose so since you’ve so effectively ended the interrogation.
As they left the bedroom and headed down the stairs, they heard the door slam and then the frightened chanting of the store owner as he recited some sort of purification ritual designed to clear a house of spirits and demons.
