~ 4 ~

Yuk pulled himself, hands and leg, up the narrow stairwell. He went slowly, if for no other reason than to spite the Toren boy. He would not be that brat’s efficient tool. In truth, though, it was mostly because he was missing half a leg.

He passed the first room, peeking inside as he went by, but found it contained little of interest. Wooden furniture, a window, and something Yuk assumed was meant to prepare food. Stacks of crates, barrels, and sacks of foodstuffs had been piled against one wall. Not a treasury, not Yuk’s problem.

The top floor was more interesting. Yuk thought again of fire, and the folly of placing one’s living quarter’s at the top of a highly flammable shack with no escape routes. The whole bed-frame, for another, was made of wood. The luxurious curtains covering the windows would go up in flame faster than anything else in the room, cutting off the only other exit. The dozen-or-so bottles of wine and other spirits scattered about might even go off like bombs.

Not to mention the grunting bear of a man, swaddled in layers of blankets atop a cushy mattress, snoring like a bellows in a forge.

Humans seemed to court disaster at every opportunity, Yuk decided. What other species would contract with demons to steal a necklace? He snickered and set to investigating drawers, shelves, and footlockers. Nearly all of them were filled with simple earthly treasures or unintelligible documents. A couple held clothing, some others held herbs and carefully measured salts or powders. He ignored all but a few of the shinier trinkets, which he set aside in piles on the floor for later.

Three piles of glittering jewels and golden rings, chains, and brooches sat in stacks near the window by the time Yuk grew frustrated. The pearl necklace was nowhere in sight. He had half a mind to begin disposing of the piles as Toren had ordered, if only for a breath of fresher air. The snoring brute—Dorst, Yuk remembered—seemed to generate stink in his sleep, and the room was so filled with his stench that Yuk’s other senses had dulled.

Had it been a volatile gas, Yuk might have risked everything just to watch a spark blow the whole place up. The thought of the man combusting like a bomb underneath blankets full of human odor nearly put Yuk in a fit of giggles. Rings blowing off of fat fingers like corks from wine bottles, earrings landing a mile away from—

Oh. Yuk knew where the necklace was hidden.

Yuk clambered atop the mound of blankets and pillows on his three remaining limbs.

The necklace was a simple amulet of some cheap metal—not silver, as Toren had said—but the pearl set inside it seemed a mortal treasure beyond any other in the room. It lay on the man’s clavicle, half buried in wiry black chest hair like a chunk of pure white gold hidden among weeds.

Yuk paused. Invisibility would not save him if he was unable to remove the necklace from the sweating human. The man kept an imp-catcher as a pet, so he suspected others would use magic against him. He would be familiar with invisibility and after the initial shock of the amulet floating off his neck wore off, Yuk would be discovered.

That meant the other, much more fun option.

After he wrapped the pilfered treasures in a stolen pillowcase and cracked open the window for a quick exit, Yuk returned to the bedside and cast his spell over the sleeping man.

Dorst’s face slowly twisted with fear. Beads of sweat oozed up from his brow, nose, and upper lip. Soon he was moaning unintelligibly.

Yuk bared his teeth in perverse joy, then reached down and snapped the amulet from the oily neck. Dorst, locked in the supernatural nightmare, only whimpered.

Prize in hand, Yuk turned to leave. He took one lurching step before Dorst abruptly flung his hand out with a cry and sent Yuk flying into the wall. Yuk thumped to the floor, dazed. Dorst had not woken up, so the quasit staggered onto his remaining foot and hurried to the window. He had just reached the readied bags of treasure before two pairs of heavy footfalls thundered up the stairs.

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The door to the man’s room nearly flew off its hinges as the guards from the street made their entrance. Leading them was the imp-catcher, eyes glowing with hunger and infra-magic sight.

Dorst awoke in an instant. “Guards!” he cried to the standing cronies, eyes white and wide with magically induced terror. “I’m being attacked!”

“Sir, there’s nothing here,” said one, hurrying to Dorst’s bedside.

The second guard remained by the door, eyes narrowed as he swept his eyes across the room.

He could not see the invisible quasit, but the imp-catcher could.

Yuk did not wait to see how the rest would play out. He shoved the necklace in his mouth and scrabbled forward on hands and foot as the cat charged ahead of the cautious guard, who at that moment had been contemplating the piled jewels beneath the window. The man shouted in surprised as the pearl necklace floated up the wall and out the window.

The imp-catcher leapt the last six feet of air between them. Yuk had no time to pull the window shut. The miniature panther landed dexterously on the sill as Yuk hefted the makeshift sack of assorted jewels.

Then, balancing on one foot, Yuk swung the sack with all his might. The cloth-wrapped jewels slammed into the imp-catcher, throwing it back into the room with a yowl of surprise. The bag’s momentum nearly ripped his arm from his socket as he tried to pull out of the swing.

The lack of a tail was not helping, either.

Yuk ignored the commotion coming from within the room, braced himself, and threw the pilfered goods to the roof above. He shifted back to a centipede and scrabbled up the wall as the cat landed on the sill below.

At first, Yuk did not notice anything unusual about the view the roof afforded him. His compound eyes saw only a pinprick of grey light where the moon glared down at him through fuzzy shadows, while his antennae observed the cat trying to reach with its tentacles to the lip of the roof. The guards’ voices came as pounding drums, unintelligible as they reverberated through the walls.

It wasn’t until he shifted back into his demonic shape that he noticed the massive trees growing overhead. Far overhead, their broad limbs supporting twisting staircases, delicate bridges, and elegant spires. Glowing orbs of soft light hung from branch and structure alike. Everything was as deliberate and pristine as the Dregs’ hovels were ramshackle and filthy. Atop Dorst’s tower it became clear that the slum was only a tiny piece at the edge of a much larger city.

And that city belonged to elves.

Yuk swallowed his dread as the imp-catcher pulled itself onto the roof behind him. It could not teleport far, Yuk knew, but it would not have to. Burdened by stolen gems and missing a fifth of his body, Yuk had not gone very far.

So, when Yuk made it to the edge of the sagging roof, he stuffed the sack into his mouth next and jumped.

He jumped, polymorphed into a bat, and then abruptly plummeted as the jewelry pulled him down like ballast.

The pillowcase – nor the pearl amulet – did not transform with him. Better polymorphists could do it, but not Yuk. Somewhere overhead, Yuk heard the cat hiss in frustration, no doubt wondering if Yuk could make it to the next rooftop or if he would fall the whole way to the muddy alley below.

Yuk wondered the same thing.

He banked left, aiming for the place where the children awaited his return. He was falling fast. Too fast, with no way of slowing his descent. One of the children saw him and pointed. Well, not him, Yuk realized, but the treasure-laden pillowcase floating, jostling, and weaving toward them, their mother’s precious necklace leading the way.

And then he was crashing, face-first, into the piss-soaked grime of the alleyway. He returned to visibility — and his true form — panting from exhaustion. He was missing half a limb and had nearly died twice, but now that it was over, it all seemed too easy.

“It did it!” squealed Lina. “It found mom’s necklace!”

Toren was on top of Yuk in an instant, snatching the necklace before throwing a kick firmly into Yuk’s ribs. The quasit flew three feet through the air and then landed in a stagnant puddle.

“It also seems to have forgotten I’d told it to wait before returning,” Toren said, advancing on Yuk.

Yuk looked up as Toren brought his foot to rest an inch from Yuk’s face. Hatred and anger seized his bones, but the demonic pact kept him from lashing out at the boy. The conflicting motives froze him in place.

“Don’t forget I can squash you in an instant,” Toren said. “I can make you hurt, and there’s nothing you can do to fight back.”

“Toren, maybe we should go,” Lina muttered.

“You failed, demon. You were supposed to scatter the other items to cover our tracks. You’re useless!” He removed his heel from over Yuk’s face and spat. “Let’s go. Grab the sack, Lina.”

She did as she was told, throwing a pitying glance toward Yuk as she chased after her older brother.

Yuk picked himself out of the mud, obedient against his will, and cast one last glance back to Dorst’s tower. Two pinpricks of shining green-violet light watched from the rooftop.

The quasit suppressed a shudder and hobbled after the children, back into the shadows.