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Stealing the Alabaster Staff . . .
Kehrsyn
stepped in and closed the door behind her. A lamp hung from one wall, so
she lit it and trimmed the wick to a mere glimmer. She looked around the
room, searching for the necromantic wand. A badly weathered wooden case,
Eileph had said. She poked behind sausages, wax-covered rounds of
cheese, cooking tools, and coils of rope, until she found a plain,
battered wooden box shoved to the rear of a bottom shelf and labeled "orc
bitter tea." It looked like it was the same size as the open box
illustrated in Eileph's drawings.
Rather than
pull the box out, Kehrsyn decided to play it safe. She cleared the other
items away from it, pulled her skirt-cowl up to cover her nose and
mouth, and undid the latch with her dagger. A quartet of long needles,
curved like cobra fangs, lanced out of their hidden recesses, scything
through the air where Kehrsyn's hand would have been, had she been
careless.
She pursed
her lips. Clearly, that was where the disguise ended. Opening the box
could be even more dangerous. She found a small bolt of cloth tucked
next to the cooking supplies. She leaned the cloth against the box as a
sort of shield, then reached the dagger around to the side and pried the
lid open.
She heard a
crack, a spatter, and a hiss. Acrid smoke wisped from the back side of
the cloth. Kehrsyn pulled the cloth away, and saw some pungent liquid
eating into the fabric. She shoved the cloth aside, held the lid of the
box open with one hand, and used the dagger to pry the precious wand up
from its crushed velvet bed. A razor sliced up from the side of the box,
cutting right where her wrist would have been and nicked its own blade
as it impacted her dagger.
Once she'd
scooted the tail end of the staff out of the box, she cut herself a
square of the cloth to protect her hand and she picked the treasure up.
"There now,"
she whispered. "That wasn't so bad." |
