The next couple of days, Arne would occasionally wonder what the others were doing with their time and quietly worry. However, he had steadfastly refused to do anything rash, sudden and suicidal, so these days were relegated to information gathering.
He had found a perch on the roof terrace of an adjacent town house building that was taller than the one the Family occupied, so he had a good view of three of the streets surrounding the compound and large parts of the layout.
It was as always quite satisfying simply stealing a servant’s uniform and walking into the house of a wealthy scholar aristocrat. Whenever he had done that, he’d rarely been caught and never been incapable of talking his way out of it. When he was younger, a fair bit of his early earnings that he had been able to build on had come from this activity.
The Family complex, he had learned, had several small gardens hidden along the walls of the grounds. And from this, his mind had begun to spin a sort of tentative plan. He had seen several of both the red- and purple-embroidered robes exit the temple proper through what he assumed would be a door at the back of the connecting hallway with the plants between the ritual orgy hall and the dining hall. They would come out at the time after the orgy was done, in the early dusk.
The two days he had been observing them, they had been four people, two purple, two red. They came outside, walked across a small garden and entered a narrow house along the far wall of the compound which he assumed was a bath house. A private one, for the priests and officiants, it seemed.
It was full dark when they left the bath house. From this distance, he didn’t know for certain, but he thought it looked like they had wet hair which just supported his bath house theory.
And gave life to a plan.
o-0-o
“Abduct?” The grin on Dia's face grew wide. Equally disturbingly, so did Toog’s.
“Yes. We have a window of opportunity just after nightfall. They go to the bath house, so far four at a time and come back out after it’s gone dark. If we intercept them there, we’re out of range of any tentacles. Knock one out, kill the others.”
“Again!” Dia interrupted.
“Kill the others again, yes, then we can grab one of the priests, haul them over the wall, lob them in a box and walk away from there, nice and easy. So we can ask them politely what they are up to.”
“That’s a really excellent idea.” Toog smiled kindly. “I will say, though, that while I like working in the gnomish quarter of any city, right now we might need a different location.”
Arne felt his face begin to look puzzled but stopped himself in time. He was pretty sure gnomes had not been mentioned in any shape or form. “Not a problem, I have a few locations that can work. We will need a wagon, but I can make that happen problem free. It seems the safest way to ensure we don’t run into that thing again. Since the priest obviously don’t bring it to the bath house with them.”
“I should take a look at the location and set up my gear,” Toog said serenely.
“Yes, you… should. We should also carefully consider what information we need, exactly, before we begin,” Arne stated.
“You just can’t go with the flow, can you?” Toog asked, looking at him with what seemed like genuine worry in the brown eyes.
“Under no circumstances, no,” Arne confirmed. “Whenever I have let myself do that or been unable to do anything else, the flow has led me to some really stinky places. So we will have a list of questions we need answered before we go anywhere near abducting, torturing and murdering a newly resurrected priest of a tentacle monster love cult!”
“You’re a criminal, Arne. Live a little.” Dia muttered. “Who rammed that paladin stick up your ass?”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
o-0-o
Arne ran through the mental checklist for the last time as the sun set. The wagon drawn by two nice calm unimpressive donkeys was waiting for them in the street where it wouldn’t be in the way. The list of questions was prepared and ready after a very long and contentious session of arguing, the box was waiting for a comatose tentacle priest, the secure location in the other end of town where nobody asked questions was ready, and he had a trusted crew on standby to take care of the corpse with fire or acid, whatever worked, since he was not taking any chances of the priest coming back from this to tell anyone.
He had even brought a ladder on the wagon which was parked as far between the night braziers in the middle of the street as possible. There was no way Dia was scaling a wall, as far as Arne saw her.
He would vastly have preferred working with professional thieves or assassins who were used to minding their step, but as he had said to himself several times now, he wasn’t in charge of who he worked with. The Vampire was to blame for making poor decisions on the composition of the team. It would have to do. Even if they came back from having taken care of the priests and found the city guard waiting or something disastrous like that, Dia would undoubtedly make sure there were no witnesses.
They met in the dusk street in the hubbub of stalls closing for the day and traders loading their wares on their wagons or their backs. None of the cafes in the area were open after dark, and the rest of the Zihr area was residential, so there wasn’t a lot of traffic after dark.
Dia stood leaned on the wall a way off, looking casual enough, though painfully unrelated to the area in her odd, mismatched clothes. At least the tunic was expensive, even if it was made for a man, Arne thought as he stood with Toog nearby.
Dia nodded to herself and came over. “They just went over to the bath house,” she stated matter-of-factly. “You were right.”
“Don’t sound surprised, please,” Arne answered.
“Let’s just get this over with.”
Toog quickly looked up and down the street, then took a few steps back and then ran up to the wall in a few easy bounds and jumped up to reach the crown of the tall wall around the compound. Like a squirrel, Toog shimmied up and over, and was soon only visible as a hand on top of the brick wall above.
For a few seconds, Arne just stared in awe, then he shook his head, looked around in the gathering darkness and put the ladder up for Dia. Well, and himself, eventually, since scaling a wall unaided with a knocked-out priest wasn’t his first choice.
On the other side they found themselves in a small garden, secluded in the corner of the building, with a little grass, some generous shrubbery and a lot of places to hide both themselves and the ladder. Dia trudged about noisily, until Arne silently made her just sit down half hidden behind a bush. It was far from perfect, but preferable to the noise happening now. He was somehow unpleasantly surprised and dismayed at how Toog was gone. Doubtlessly behind a shrubbery, but there was no sound and no sight. Silently, Arne sneaked to the side of the bath house, where it would be easy to get the drop on them when they emerged from the nearby door.
He leaned on the wall, listening. There was a sound of running water and every now and again a splash like a washcloth being wrung out but no conversation, no chatting. Just four silent people presumably washing the orgy off.
It was unnerving and if he hadn’t known already that they were wrong and strange cultists or something horrible, he would have guessed it now.
Finally, there was silence for a little while. The darkness was thick around them and the city that surrounded them had largely fallen silent, the private residences going quiet for the evening when the various aristocrats had left their homes to go to parties or theatres or whatever other pleasure lured them away from their material wealth.
The door to the wash house opened in the darkness and Arne saw from his hiding place around the corner that no light streamed from the inside, nor were the priests carrying lamps or light sources. They had been four naked people washing in silence in the darkness.
And then they stopped, when Dia stood up from her half-hidden perch behind the bush. She brushed her tunic off.
“So, this time, try to put up a little bit of a fight?” she suggested and held out her arms.
Like last time, Dia's victims sucked in their breath like a heaving half scream and then stood uncertain on their feet for a second before she pointed a finger at one of them, the one closes to her, while she put one foot behind her to brace herself. The young man suddenly flew violently backwards like an enormous dining table flung by a miffed tentacle monster. He impacted with a palm tree near the wall with a sickeningly audible crunch and fell to the ground in a heap.
“You will be asked to leave,” Dia growled and then stomped over to where the man had fallen, ignoring what happened around her.
Arne quickly stepped forward and in two quick steps he had his arms tightly around one of the priestesses, hand clamped over her mouth to prevent her from screaming as he stabbed her chest repeatedly. From his viewpoint over the dying woman’s shoulder, he saw Toog suddenly appearing in the dark close by, do a strange lightning quick pirouette and kick one priestess in the face before quickly sidestepping to grab the last one of the four from behind and choking them in an arm lock around their neck. A few seconds later, the priest grew limp in Toog’s arms and collapsed.
Even in the gloom, Arne could see the white teeth clearly when Toog gave him a big, bright smile.