As Rori stepped out of the government building, a dark shape separated itself from the shadows and moved up to his side.
“Well, that took forever,” said Nolan.
“Sorry. I had to work to convince someone to get a message to her. Then it took even longer convincing her to make time to see me, but eventually we got together.”
“I can see that,” said Nolan as he leaned over and began looking intently at Rori’s feet.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to see if you are actually floating above the ground or just giving off that impression.”
“Very funny.”
“I take it she was appreciative.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Rori now overly defensive.
“Calm down, lover boy. I just meant that she got the book back and was happy with the state of things. Not too upset about the knife hole in the cover or anything like that.”
“Oh. Then yes, she was appreciative. She said that as a senator of Lorenthia she ‘owed me’.”
“I believe the first government official that ‘owed me’ was a minor clerk in an accounting office, but if you want to start with a senator, so much the better.”
“Are you through?” asked Rori looking sideways at Nolan as they walked.
“And then she kissed you,” said Nolan with a grin.
Rori blushed up to the top of his ears as Nolan said, “Okay, now I’m done.”
After they had passed out of the government district and travelled several more blocks Rori said, “So, are we heading back to the inn now or somewhere else? Shouldn’t we head back before the guys get into too much trouble?”
“Sure. Though I was hoping we could stop by one place on the way. I need to pick up something.”
“Do you know if Dade has us travelling back to Lycea today?”
“I’m not sure. He wanted to do a little asking around in Willowsbrook, but I think we are pretty much done here. Ulbricht okayed his mission, so there is no reason to hang around. Unless you have some reason to stay until tomorrow?”
“Not really,” said Rori who then gave Nolan a stern look. “Wait, was that another comment about Karyn?”
“Karyn, is it? I only know her as Senator Ulbricht, but either way, who said anything about her?”
“You’re a laugh riot,” Rori said dryly. “Where is this ‘place’ you need to pick ‘something’ up?”
“About three streets over that way if we turn at that building,” said Nolan pointing in front of Rori to his left. Rori started to look, but then found his eyes drawn instead to movement on the rooftops.
“Did you see that?” Rori asked.
“Indeed,” answered Nolan.
“I think our assassin friend is going to give it another try,” he said.
“I think you mean your assassin friend. Nobody is trying to kill me,” said Nolan.
“Is it the assassin?”
“Can’t say. It could be, but they weren’t exposed enough to be sure. Though it’s a poor job on their part to have been spotted at all,” said Nolan dropping his voice down to a whisper and barely moving his lips. “It could just be somebody is creeping around up there. Not everything that happens in the world necessarily involves one of us.”
“Okay, so what do you want to do?” asked Rori.
“Well, we have three choices as I see it. First, we could use up some more charges on this wand and disappear. Though that would leave us with just as little information on the topic as we have now. Second, we could continue on as if oblivious and wait for them to spring their trap or ignore us. Of course, if we’ve missed something that could end up not going as we’d like.”
“And the third option?” asked Rori.
“We could just go over there and confront whoever it is. But again, there’s the possibility that we’ve missed something or that we’re outnumbered or outclassed. What do you think?”
“Let’s rush them. Should we act like we don’t see them until we get closer, or do you want to just start sprinting from here?”
“We should probably try to get as close as possible before tipping them off. Of course, we’ve now been standing here in the street talking about it for far too long. So, if they are watching us, they are probably already suspicious.”
“I’ve been bursting with energy ever since she kissed me on the forehead. Add into that everything that has happened since then and I feel like I could take down a dragon. Let’s just rush them,” said Rori as he began sprinting towards the buildings on the far side of the street.
“Wait . . .” Nolan started to say, but Rori was already almost halfway there. “Well, here’s hoping youthful exuberance doesn’t get one of us killed.”
Rori ran towards the other side of the street looking for a place to get onto the roof. The nearest building had enough windows and was made out of rough enough stone that he knew he could climb up if he needed, but it wouldn’t be quick, and he’d be exposed to attacks from above. There was a balcony in front of the next building down, but there didn’t seem to be any good, quick way to get up to it. He supposed he could run inside the building and up the stairs, but that would also take far too long.
In the end he trusted his instincts and, when he got close, he leapt up and hoped he would be high enough to grab onto the bottom of the balcony’s railing. He was quite a bit surprised when he cleared the railing and landed cleanly on the balcony. Two more steps and he used the railing on the far side to launch himself up onto the roof.
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He raced across the final roof top and easily jumped the gap between this building and the next. He hit the ground in a tumble and used his momentum to spring back up into a run without losing any speed.
Nolan was right, the assassin had spotted them and had now moved down to the next building. He was still wearing the same clothes and mask as the last time he’d attacked Rori, but this time it looked like he was alone. He was evidently waiting on Rori to appear because he had his blowgun readied to fire as soon as Rori came into view. The dart was well shot and directly on target, but it was only one dart and Rori easily avoided it. The assassin turned and ran.
Rori raced after, dodging the odd jumbles of rooftop debris. Though Lycea and Willowsbrook were both in the Lorenthian Empire, they were both also on the western side of the continent near many other countries. Further, they were both cities situated on a major trade thoroughfare. Thus, once you got away from the government buildings, the people and the architecture of the city got quite varied.
In some places the roofs were nothing more than that. A functional top to the building meant to keep out the weather, created on a slant to quickly send the rain into the streets and alleys. But there were also parts of the city where the roofs were used more like an additional level of the building. They had flat tops with chairs and tables set up for meals in the open air. Others had washtubs and laundry lines. Still others had gardens or tools for prepping meals. As far as Rori was concerned, it was all just a lot of stuff he had to go around or over.
Initially the distance between him and the assassin increased so rapidly he thought that he would surely be quickly left behind and the chase would be over. But then either the assassin slowed down or Rori sped up. For quite a while Rori could not seem to even begin to close the gap between them, but neither did it appear to be getting any bigger.
He wondered how far he could run in this fashion, leaping over furniture, sliding under clotheslines and skittering around flowerbeds. But so far, he wasn’t feeling fatigued at all. He chanced a glance backward at one point but there was no sign of Nolan. But then as he leapt across one of the bigger gaps between buildings, he noticed that Nolan was managing to keep pace, he was just doing it down on the street below. Rori thought it was possible Nolan was trying to tell him something, but the brief glimpse he got of Nolan was not enough to figure out what it might be.
Without warning the assassin turned to the right, ran across the back of the building and onto the roof of the building that abutted against it. He continued to the front of that building and jumped down to the ground and out of sight. Rori tried to speed up in hopes of catching sight of the assassin before he disappeared forever.
Once Rori got closer he could see there was a courtyard in front of this building. That meant there should be plenty of room below to jump into. Given that the assassin had made a quick jump as well, it should mean that the area below was safe. Rori decided to risk it and leap off the building without stopping.
He quickly closed the distance and adjusted his pace so his foot would hit the lip of the roof perfectly. He could now see that the courtyard was essentially empty, so he didn’t need to worry about landing on anything or anyone.
He leapt forward into the air and immediately realized his mistake. The assassin hadn’t run at all. Instead, he was waiting directly below with his back to the building. As Rori moved up into the air, the assassin let loose with two hands full of darts. Six darts sped upwards to intersect with Rori in his flight.
Rori immediately began twisting his body in the air, flipping around such that when the darts arrived, he was now aligned with the direction of their flight, with his feet pointed directly away from them. Four of the darts passed by without any chance of connecting and he easily knocked the other two aside with his hands.
Once the darts had passed, he quickly tried to swing his feet back around to the ground, but there was only time to turn about halfway. He crashed into the ground on his right side and half slid half tumbled to a stop on the stone courtyard.
He immediately sprang up to defend himself, but there was no need, the assassin was already on the run again. Rori took up the pursuit while trying to assess how badly he had hurt himself in the fall. There was a sharp pain in his right leg and another in his side, but as he ran both the aches began to fade. He mentally gave thanks to Meredith and her amulet that he was wearing. There was a lot about it he didn’t know, but he did know that it rapidly accelerated the healing of his wounds. By the time he reached the corner the pain had faded to a dull ache, and he picked up his pace.
Again, he raced on, barely managing to keep the assassin in sight. There were two instances where he was sure he’d lost the pursuit, but both times he made a lucky guess and at the next intersection spotted the assassin again.
During a particularly long straight stretch he again risked a glance behind. Just as he was about to turn the corner, he spied Nolan in the distance doggedly keeping up. Nolan was again gesturing and saying something, but Rori couldn’t stop to find out what it was without losing the chase. Especially as it looked like he seemed to be gaining ground on the assassin. Two turns later he was met with another surprise.
He sped around the corner to see the assassin almost two blocks ahead of him. The surprise was that directly in front of him were two men wielding long curved blades blocking the route. Rori sped directly at them and then without slowing simply jumped over them both. He cleared them without even coming in range of their weapons, hit the ground on the far side and continued on without bothering to see if they were trying to pursue him.
Rori turned down the alley the assassin had taken to find a large wooden fence blocking the alley in front of him. Though there was a gate, he simply leapt over the fence as well. Twenty feet later there was another fence. The area between the two fences was a small yard where a guard dog sat staring up at the place on the far side where the assassin had clearly just gone.
The dog turned when Rori hit the ground, but if the animal had any thoughts of attacking in mind, it was simply too slow to act upon them. Rori was over the next fence before the dog could even growl.
Rori raced forward once again just catching sight of the assassin turning down a dark street ahead.
Boswick Umbershade was a halfling and a gambler. He was a halfling in the traditional sense. Short, a bit hairy, and fond of good eating. Some would argue a halfling with a gambling problem was also fairly predictable, but his gambling was less traditional. He rarely played games of chance. They were too unpredictable and the payoff too small scale to excite him. Boswick preferred to risk his money in games of business and enterprise. He had started over a dozen businesses during his life and most of them had gone quite well. A few he had even sold for fairly large sums of money once they had become successful and the excitement of trying to run them had ended.
Of course there were others that were less successful. One such venture had been his foray into growing exotic plants in the city. His research had assured him that the main problem with this would be creating the right environment for the blooms. The most expensive blooms were the most delicate and required specific amounts of moisture and daylight to thrive at all.
Afterwards, Boswick realized the main reason he had failed was that he had tried to grow too many different kinds of plants at one time. If he’d settled for just one, he probably could have pulled it off, but trying to grow several different types all at once was beyond his horticultural skills.
He’d definitely given it his all and had made quite a go of it. He bought a building with a flat roof where the plants that needed it could get lots of sunlight. He’d modified one of the inside rooms to be a sauna for tropical plants and for those plants that liked more darkness he’d bought the alley next door. Unlike most alleys, this one, through some quirk of bad planning, was essentially just a dead end. Only one other building had a doorway into the alley, and it had entrances and exits onto other streets, so for them the alley was unnecessary, and the owners of the nearby buildings had been glad to sell Boswick their share of an alley they never used anyway.
Once he owned the alley, Boswick had installed a roof and front wall, and then gone about blocking the light that managed to seep through any of the cracks. The result was a room in which he could exactly control the amount of light in the growing environment. Then he gathered seeds and seedlings for some of the most exotic, rare and difficult to grow plants on the planet.
Four months later the business had gone bust. He could have simplified things and tried again by focusing on growing plants in just one type of environment, but that wasn’t the type of halfling Boswick was. He was a ‘go big or go home’ type of guy and having tried and failed he wasn’t interested in trying again. Besides, he already had an idea for his next big venture. So Boswick had cut his losses and sold what he could and moved on.
It was into Boswick’s pitch black alley that Rori raced. And as soon as he did, the doors swung shut behind him, sealing him in the absolute darkness.
