From: aaron@space.ualberta.ca (Aaron Humphrey)
Subject: [MI] Alfvaen[Yirma's]: Blowing His Cover
Reply-To: aaron@space.ualberta.ca
Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 04:04:46 GMT


Alfvaen was just pretending to dither drunkenly over his choice of rooms when
he heard a scream.  "ELFMAN!"

Little Rat, he thought.  Pushing Yirma aside, he moved with lithe and sober
swiftness in the direction of the scream--a back staircase.  A half-dressed man
had Little Rat in one arm and was dragging her down the stairs.

Quick as lightning, Alfvaen pulled a dagger from a hidden sheath and whipped
it through the air.  It hit the man in the shoulder, missing Little Rat by
inches.  The guard swore and dropped her, groping for the hilt of his sword
with the other hand.  "I wouldn't, if I were you," Alfvaen said, balancing
another dagger in his hand.  "You want to have at least one working arm
tomorrow, don't you?  The child is with me."

Yirma walked up, slightly bruised and somewhat confused.  "Excuse me, Mr.
Lushrike?  I have my own children here--you don't need to bring your own.  Mine
are guaranteed clean, too."

Alfvaen motioned to Queriche to pick up Little Rat, while continuing to keep
his dagger at ready.  "Sorry, Yirma.  I guess I should have checked with you
first."

Delmara ran up and checked Little Rat.  "Are you OK?"

Little Rat seemed slightly surprised to see Delmara.  "'Mara?  I thot dey'd got
you.  But you got your necklis still, and you're OK.  I stept onna nail."

"Rat, you saw another necklace with the whip on it?"  At Little Rat's nod,
Alfvaen asked Delmara, "Who else would have a necklace like that?"

"I gave one to--oh!"

"Right."  Alfvaen grabbed Yirma with one arm and held the knife to her neck.
"Talk, bitch.  Elstree was here.  Where?  Who brought her?"

"Who?" Yirma squeaked.  The guard seemed unsure of whether to defend Yirma or
not, but Queriche's grin and hefting of his spear made him choose the better
part of valor.

"A girl was brought here by the Demon Spiders.  Blonde hair, beautiful, wearing
a token of Aditi--a necklace with a silken whip.  Now where is she?  Rat, where
did you see it?"

"Inna room downstairs.  It was fulla crates an' had rope anna blanket.  Da
guard and a lady was doin' the Bad Thing across the hall."

Alfvaen pushed Yirma forward.  "We'll take the madam of this fine establishment
down there.  Maybe she'll remember then."  Just then, he remembered.  "Or maybe
we should just let Batobo at her.  Batobo!" he called.

The imp crawled down from the rafters.  "You called, Master?" it sniveled.

"All right, all right!" Yirma said.  Noctu'd fucked her over good, he had.  Why
shouldn't she do the same?  "Buncha Demon Spiders brought her in last night.
They took over the downstairs rooms, and they musta been keepin' her in one a'
them.  About an hour ago they started movin' out, and they're probably all gone
by now."

"How did they leave?  Where did they go?"

She shrugged.  "Out the back, I guess," she said.  Her gaze was steady--if you
learned one thing in this trade, it was to lie with a straight face.

"All right.  Let's go down back, then.  Maybe there'll be some clues in the
room they kept her in."  They went down the stairs.  The guard was gone, and
so was the girl he'd been dallying with.  The guard stoned on Joystix still
remained, and Yirma snorted in disgust when she saw him.

The room was mostly bare apart from the crates, the blanket, the rope and the
token.  "What's in these crates?" Alfvaen asked.

"Suppies," Yirma said.

"Joystix, probably," Delmara said.  She was bandaging Little Rat's foot after
removing the nail and doing a minor healing.

"There's scrape marks on the floor," Queriche noted.

"Like the crates were moved recently," Alfvaen mused.  He tried a nearby one.
"These things are mostly empty.  Queriche, give me a hand."  They moved a few
crates away from the wall, and soon it became obvious there was more than a
wall behind them.  "You know about this?"

Yirma sighed.  "Where I get my shipments," she said.  "The Spiders probably
snuck out that way, then."

"With your help, or else who moved the crates back?" Alfvaen muttered.  He
contemplated killing her in sheer disgust, but he didn't want to end up like
that guy that got framed for the murder of the fence, that Queriche had told
him about.  So far in his life he'd managed to stay out of dungeons, and he
wasn't about to start.  (Not that this was really part of his life anyway...)
In the end, he settled for clubbing her into unconsciousness.  "She can move
the crates back herself, or get Blotto down the hall to do it."  After some
prying, they managed to open the trapdoor previously hidden behind the crates.
Alfvaen grabbed a torch from the wall to light their way in the depths below.

They went through in single file--Batobo first, then Alfvaen, Delmara, Little
Rat(now only limping slightly), and Queriche.  When they closed the trapdoor,
Queriche noticed a latch.  "This door was meant to be locked from this side.
If that latch had been done, then we'd've had to bash this down.  So why didn't
they latch it?"

Alfvaen shrugged.  "Don't know.  Maybe they were in too much of a hurry, or
the last one through didn't have a free hand.  Maybe Elstree unlatched it for
us."  Or maybe this whole thing is a trap.

The tunnel they were in shortly ended in a narrow staircase leading down into
what must be the sewers, or the Gaps, as they were called here.  At the bottom
of the steps, they stood indecisive, the tunnel leading both ways.  "Now what?"
Alfvaen asked.  "If Elstree could, she'd leave us a trail."  If she even knew
we were following--but if this is a trap, there should also be a trail, or at
the very least an ambush.  "Batobo, see if you can find a trail either way."
The imp set itself to sniffing along the ground.

After trying fruitlessly on one side, the imp turned to the other, and soon
started snuffling excitedly with its misshapen nose.  "Master, there is a very
strange scent along the ground here.  A most loathsomely sweet one."

"Probably perfume from Yirma's," Delmara said.  It was barely discernible
through the other stenches, but when he tried, Alfvaen could smell it too.

"Right.  So let's go!  Lead on, Batobo," Alfvaen said, and they trekked through
the Gaps following the imp and the trail of perfume.

--
---Alfvaen(Canadian SF Quasi-Activist)
"I'm a few bricks short of a load, but a full load always hurt my back."
   ---Barenaked Ladies
Current Album--The Best of Marianne Faithfull
Current Read--Evelyn Waugh:The Loved One