Ruby Ruins

we talk.”
The bruised one snorted. “They hauled him out of ‘ere. He looked as white as grave mold. Doubt he’ll live.” He gave Ōbhin an accusatory look. “You hacked his leg off.”
Ōbhin nodded, his hand resting on his blade’s pommel.
“See, gettin’ your bones broke is comin’ off light,” Fingers growled. “If you fought him, you’d all be lyin’ in pieces instead of takin’ your ease.”
“Don’t know where they took him,” said Dirk. He sank back down to the steps. “Just paid to guard him. He was supposed to do somethin’ for the Rangers. I reckon they’ll want to piss on those who messed up their plans.”
If Creg was with the Rangers, then they already knew about Dualayn. This was why he needed to protect the healer and keep him alive. Why had the Rangers sent Creg into town? What mischief was he supposed to cause? Did it matter now that he had his leg cut off? Had Ōbhin accidentally stopped a plot in motion? Maybe then some good would come if Avena recovered.
If . . .
“So, no idea where they hauled him off to?” Ōbhin demanded.
“Probably the Lair.” The bruised one said.
“Ain’t no Lair,” another said, his leg in a splint. Pale vapor spilled from his mouth. His eyes were glazed. He had the look of someone smoking white dream, one of the narcotics that came out of Tethyr. He brought a pipe to his mouth and took another puff, a look of almost ecstasy crossing his face for a moment.
“It’s a myth,” another said, his teeth stained brown with Tethyrian weed, a root that was chewed to give energy and make you more alert, but it also made you antsy.
More prone to violence.
“They say the Rangers got them a hideout out in the King’s Preserve,” said the bruised one. “Called the Lair. Where they plot all their war with the Brotherhood. Not that they tell us. We’re just supposed to sell their goods ’n keep the bastard Red Lips from sellin’ here.”
“When the Red Lips find out we’re all banged up . . .” Dirk muttered.
“Well, if they took him anywhere, it’s the Lair. Good luck findin’ it. Them Rangers know those woods, they do.”
Ōbhin hoped the Rangers had to bury the rotten man in the forest to the north of the city. He’d never find them in the King’s Preserve. It galled Ōbhin that he couldn’t find the answers he needed. Now the only other member of Ust’s bandits left was Handsome Baill, and he’d vanished into the murky organization of the Brotherhood. Ōbhin itched to find him, too. He was the man who’d assassinated the last high refractor, the leader of Elohm’s Church, and started off the current plague of riots that broke out every few days.
Ōbhin would scour the city, but he was one man. Kash was the largest city on the Arngelsh Isles, one of the biggest in the world. It dwarfed anything in Ōbhin’s mountainous home of Qoth. Perhaps only the capital of the Democh Empire could rival Kash in size. The slums around it swelled with Tethyrian immigrants, poor factory workers, and farmers looking for work. The last was crushed by the new taxes, forcing them to sell off their land to men in favor with the Crown.
A rot swelled in the city, and finding one cancerous tumor would be difficult for Ōbhin.
In the days that followed, he tried. He talked to street thugs whenever he had free time from his duties at the estate. He paid Runty Ed and the rest of the Breezy Hills Boys to keep their ears listening. They were affiliated with the Rangers, so he hoped they’d hear something. It was how he’d found Creg to begin with.
And through it all, he worried about Avena. He saw her again and again with Creg’s severed sword rammed into her brain.
The third day after her accident, he was swept up in a new round of riots. Farmers from the outlying village had sparked it when the King’s Bounty, food given out to the poor, had run out in the Porcelain, a small slum between the larger Slops and the northern shore of Lake Ophavin. It had turned vicious; men struggling to feed families became violent, rushing the guards protecting the bread wagons.
More dead. More arrests. More property damaged and destroyed.
On the fifth day, the city seemed to have calmed down enough to let Ōbhin resume his pointless search for the sniveling man. Creg must have been in a shallow grave by now. That much blood loss should have killed him. However, until Ōbhin saw a body, he wasn’t convinced. After drilling his men, he headed for the estate’s main gate.
“Goin’ out again?” Dajouth asked. The young man had blond hair that spoke of Roidanese blood, the kingdom to the west across the Border Fang Mountains. He clutched at the front of his shirt, groping whatever amulet he always wore beneath. “Eager to get brained in another food riot?”
The memory of the blow he’d taken two days earlier throbbed across the back of Ōbhin’s skull. He’d staggered back with his black hair matted crimson. Someone had tried to steal his sword, but they hadn’t hit him hard enough to daze him. Just enough to make his head ring.
“Thinking about it,” Ōbhin said. “Better than waiting.”
Dajouth glanced at the house. The young man, seventeen or eighteen, shook his head. “She’s too pretty to be embroiled in this mess. If you wanna take a woman into the rough, you should find one like my ma.”
Ōbhin glanced at the young man. “You’d take your ma into a den of thieves and thugs?”
“‘Course.” Dajouth grinned. “Why, she’d grab their ears and slam their heads together. Tough woman, was my ma. Avena’s delicate.”
“You let her hear you say that, and she’ll thump you with her binder,” Bran