Chapter Two: Through the Looking Glass

A/N: What in heck am I doing…?

(should be studying or something)

Oh well…

He caught the scent of blood at the same time Ash did. He realized, distantly, that Altaïr walked up the stairs at some point but couldn't remember the moment all that well after Ash started growling. After the man had disappeared, he gave a full-body twitch and shook his head violently. He had other things to worry about than an assassin who had told him only his name.

The priest walked over to a closet next to the rear door and opened it. Piles upon piles of ancient, discarded, or otherwise useless weapons clogged the little space there was inside, except for one. Standing on a pile of shields because he was too small to reach the rack otherwise, Oceanus carefully removed a gleaming, viciously spiked mace from the wall.

His nod to Ilmater's ban of blades, this weapon was made of steel, mithral, more than a little divine magic from three different gods, and was nearly indestructible. Due to his own slight stature and dependence on speed, he didn't like using such heavy weapons, but as long as he was stationed in Calimport with the Ilmatari he supposed he needed to fit in. Now it was time to confirm his suspicions.

Whistling a three-note tune to call Ash to his side, Oceanus bade the priest at the door good-night and walked out into the deadly streets with his deadly mace bouncing on his shoulder.

He found Aril in a back alley. The man's glassy eyes stared sightlessly upward, even with his face twisted in a mask of fear that would stay with him in death. Oceanus didn't have to touch his fellow priests' skin to know he had died less than ten minutes ago. As soon as he had suspected Aril had been killed, he had known it would have had to be a guild killing.

He was never afraid of walking alone. There had been a point, once, when he would have hidden in the shadows like a little thief in the night for fear of being spotted (by whom, not even he knew). Now he didn't care.

He took a turn into the poor district, pointedly ignoring the shadows that had their eyes trained on him. With Ash at his side there was no point in hiding who he was.

There would be few real beggars along this road. Half the children in the district were in fact furry-footed halflings in disguise, while the other half worked for the same guild masters anyway. And if a traveler looked hard enough, he'd realize that many of the supposed one-legged wretches along the side of the road in fact did have both legs, but one bound tight to the thigh.

Oceanus pushed past one such guild sentry with hardly a glance. The man didn't try to grab at him, not with Ash's long, strong teeth so close to his face. He remembered where this guild's entrance was – Pasha Pook had barely hidden the damn thing while he was alive and his third successor, Pasha Bodeau, had hardly done any better – and it only took one good rap to summon the doorman.

The man winced when he saw Oceanus there – good, the man's memory was still intact. He probably remembered the last time the green-eyed priest had arrived, many years ago, on a mission to track and put down a killer that had once been employed by Pook. He had not been very subtle then – Lumina had made it very clear that the man had killed an entire family of Calishite immigrants in her valley, before being chased out of town by her lieutenants – and their fight had taken out two rooms and an antechamber before Oceanus had managed to embed a knife in the killer's throat. Lumina had not sent him on any more search-and-destroy missions since, giving him an odd look and muttering something about wounds in the head.

Of course Pasha Pook had not been happy, but he had been killed a few years later so it wasn't as if it mattered anyway.

"I seek an audience with LaValle." Oceanus said quietly, naming the guild's wizard. The man was old, and had only survived to be so through his easy way of switching allegiances to whichever pasha had the most power. If Bodeau died tomorrow, he would become the successor's right-hand-man in less than a day.

The doorman nodded nervously and stood aside. Ash gave the man a nip as they entered the guildhouse, sending the man jumping back in fear. Oceanus gave his furry companion a glare until the white beast sat down with a whine, his hooked tail flicking this way and that.

"Quickly." Oceanus ordered, in that same quiet, firm tone that would not allow the man to disobey. He watched as the footman disappeared and sighed to himself.

The footman did not reappear, but again Ash growled and he picked up the coppery scent of blood.

"What did I just do, Ash?" he asked, though he didn't expect the beast to answer in any sense of the world. "Gods…" What in the Nine Hells was in that other room? "Ash…"

The beast moved forward, snarling, as the door opened.

Until this month, the priest had not visited Calimport since the early days of his childhood. He had, in fact, made every effort to not come back at all, given how many things he hated about the city.

But even if it had been years upon years since he had last set foot in the desert city, his friend Keras went back routinely.

He knew exactly who he faced now.

All of Ash's fur stood on end as Oceanus and Artemis Entreri locked gazes.

Oceanus had been taught at a young age that the slow ones didn't last very long when the going got tough. If you were slow, you died.

He made it a point to be, if not the fast one, then at least faster than the resident meat shield who called himself a warrior. He had been on far too many missions with idiots to ever consider retreat a shameful thing.

Calimport was not a city designed for walking. It had no main lane, no paved streets, and a drainage system that was best described as "practically nonexistent." Therefore, anyone who wanted to get anywhere in the city would have to travel through the second street – the rooftops.

This was not to say that most of the roofs were suitable for climbing. Most of them were shanties anyway, and could have blown over in a strong wind if Calimport had storms, but the few stone homes were usually sturdy enough to have a footrace on. Well, provided the competitors were good jumpers, since the distance from the palace accurately predicted how fragile the structures were.

It was one of those things that made him wish he was at home again, where the only thing he had to worry about was getting sent out on a mission again.

Oceanus had never been particularly suited to city life, much preferring to get as far away as he could from large numbers of people in the mountains or on the high seas, but he had learned how to escape almost anything on two legs even in this environment.

He was still a little surprised Altaïr could keep up.

In fact… Oceanus looked back at the hooded man and felt something odd. It wasn't one of those feelings you could shake – sort of like the sense that someone was watching, and Altaïr could follow him even in perfect darkness… but then, nearly every species that had survived in Calimport for more than a generation developed some degree of night vision anyway. Still… Oceanus managed to push the thought to the back of his mind by watching the rooftops and streets as they went.

The city was alive, with little darting shadows on dozens of street corners and even more rooftop gardens and shacks. Oceanus could see all of them easily by the light of the bright silver moon. None of them were making any real effort to hide themselves – most of them probably didn't think that anyone would be watching with any sort of malicious intent.

Oceanus, at the moment, was more or less up to his eyeballs in highly-concentrated and controlled wrath. He was practically running on it.

Though he would never admit it out loud, he had spent most of his life like that and operating on a hair-trigger was business as usual for him.

Altaïr had grudgingly agreed to the plan, which was a stroke of luck. He hadn't explained everything, mostly because there hadn't been time, which meant that Altaïr was putting his faith in a priest he had only known for a few hours.

Sometimes, Oceanus wondered at the human capacity for…well, he wasn't going to say gullibility, mostly because he was going to hold up his end of the plan with knives if he had to, but he couldn't come up with another word.

Trust, that was the thing. It was something Oceanus had always had trouble with, except around people he cared about more than life itself. Altaïr hadn't made that list so far.

He and Altaïr jumped down from a stack of shipping crates nearly two stories high, landing silently in the bazaar closest to the docks. The Ilmatari would be using the sewers instead, but none of the would-be killers would know that, and if they did (like the wererats would almost immediately), Ash would have already solved the problem. They stuck to the shadows for a while, watching the alleys and roofs, before each man peeled away from the wall and headed in opposite directions.

They met up later on a rooftop, with the smaller of the two carrying a large sack of something very heavy. He gave Altaïr a glare that said very clearly that he was not allowed to ask questions and stowed the sack in the shadow of a rooftop garden. Waving him off, the priest indicated the alley across the way for the first part of their plan. Altaïr nodded and disappeared.

Then Oceanus waved a hand over the sack, causing it to glow faintly green. As it faded, he pulled out the little lengths of steel he called throwing knives and began to aim for any of the approaching killers stupid enough to move.

Everything Altaïr could remember, every kill he had ever made, had really been a game of cat-and-mouse played on rooftops rather than in cellar corners. He excelled at both roles, though it would make more literal sense if the analogy included guard dogs somewhere.

He had never been the bait before.

This is stupid, Altaïr thought. And if Malik had been there, he probably would have said the same thing, but with more biting sarcasm and considerably less patience with the whole situation.

As Oceanus had said, though, he did look more like one of the Ilmatari than the little priest did. Not by race, because there was just no compensating for that, but by clothing. All he had to do was bring his hands together as if in prayer, and then the vultures would pounce.

Now, he had done this part before, but with considerably less risk because being a member of the clergy was safe in every city he had been in until now. Also, at Oceanus's insistence, he had removed all of his weapons aside from his short sword and hidden blade, which the priest couldn't have taken off with a pry bar at the moment. There was something comforting about having a second line of defense if the enemy did turn out to be as good at fighting as Oceanus had hinted.

He heard the heard coins tinkling on the stones just before he saw a man come into view, blades drawn.

Altaïr didn't know who the man was. If he had, he might have held the charade for slightly longer than he did. By the time he had changed his posture to something that could graciously be called a pre-attack position, the man had charged.

That was about when Altaïr found himself at a lethal disadvantage.

The man was fast. It was the sort of speed you just didn't see among the heavily-armored Knights Templar or their comrades. In fact, Altaïr thought as he deflected a slash at his shoulder with difficulty, you didn't see this sort of skill among the Brotherhood, either.

He wielded one long, curved sword along with a dagger in his off hand. It would have been dazzling in any other situation, but since Altaïr had a certain fondness for being upright and breathing, he concentrated on avoiding having his lungs punctured or his hands taken off.

Two-handed fighting. Well, that was a new one, Altaïr thought, as the man's strike sent a shudder up his short sword. As a new cut opened up on his right bicep, he worked his sword arm furiously to keep off the man's long blade. He would probably have been dead a while ago if he had tried to fight the man with the same weapons. Only the short blade's lighter weight kept him from being slashed to death in a dozen interesting ways.

Altaïr noticed after a moment that the man was trying to force his blade up higher. Well, that wasn't going to happen – he didn't have the range to spare, and he knew that the stab-to-the-gut bit came right after your opponent was stupid enough to hold his weapons over his head, and therefore leave his stomach open. Or, if you didn't have any patience (like Altaïr) go for the knees.

His foot snapped forward. The thick leather deflected the glancing blow from the man's longer sword and he scored a direct on the man's leg and threw him off-balance. He didn't have a chance to act on it, though.

Even as the man jerked back, his dagger nicked Altaïr's leading leg as he shoved the man's longer sword almost back into his face, drawing a long line of blood. More than the wound itself, however, it felt like a steel file being dragged across his soul and the white-robed assassin faltered for an instant, his inner Eagle screaming. What sorcery—?

Then his opponent surged back and he wasn't allowed to think about it.

Altaïr parried the man's attacks as they came. He couldn't hear anything over the ring of steel. He wouldn't let anything else come into play. Don't let yourself think. Let yourself think after, if there is an after, because if you wonder about anything during a swordfight, you'll be able to play a Greek shepherd song with your guts in less than ten seconds.

Altaïr found himself backing away inch by inch, even with his sword arm working almost as fast as he could to deflect the man's strikes. His left arm was close to useless – the hidden blade wasn't strong enough to take a direct blow from anything and it would be too difficult to draw his longer sword from that angle, even if he had ever trained for such a thing. He couldn't fight two-handed, despite the hidden blade's surprise factor.

Altaïr's blade glanced off the man's right hand, drawing blood and a growl from him. Not enough, not enough…

As the white-robed assassin's back heel hit the stone wall, something dark and flailing furiously was heaved over the wall of a building and very nearly landed on his opponent. He heard shouting from both parties.

Altaïr seized the opportunity. With a speed he reserved for the escape after a kill, he charged and, bouncing off an empty crate to gain height, vaulted over his enemy's head and hit the ground running. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears as he skidded around the corner, and meeting Oceanus while he was coming off a roof, took off for the next section of the city.

"We are not doing that again." Altaïr told Oceanus five minutes later, in the area known mostly for guild houses rather than slums. But then, most of the city was one big slum anyway, so the point was slightly moot.

Oceanus, still panting, snapped, "Of course not. Do you even know who that was?"

"No." Altaïr said. He seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

"That was Artemis Entreri!" Oceanus growled. "The king of assassins! You are lucky to have survived meeting him at all!"

Altaïr gave him a look that had evidence of a certain smugness that Oceanus despised in people. It reminded him of the stupid young men he had once known who would brag about surviving a dragon attack or orc raid or something, when it was usually more important to remember that the only reasons anyone lived through that sort of thing was by divine favor, and it wasn't going to happen twice. And it hadn't.

Still… "Nevertheless." Oceanus honestly couldn't think of anything to yell at the man for, at the moment. He'd lived. That was enough.

"What did you drop over the roof?" Altaïr asked after a moment.

"Dog Perry, a guild enforcer for Pasha Bodeau," the priest said. "He decided to ask me where Entreri was right when you got into a fight with him. I…er…I helped him find his man."

"Convenient." Altaïr remarked.

Oceanus rolled his eyes and sighed. "Yes, that was luck. Now, can we get on with this foolishness before Entreri comes looking for the one that got away?"

Altaïr shrugged. Oceanus sighed again and led the way to the next defensible point.

Ash sat on the docks with the host of priests and Calishites who had decided to come along for the ride, waiting. After a moment he began to scratch his ear with his back leg, yawning at the same time. The escape ship was later than had been agreed, and Ash could smell the humans' nervousness spreading. Their voices began to grow louder as more and more pockets of whispering sprang up.

He scratched again at the harness setup his master had made him wear. He didn't mind carrying his master's things, not really, but the leather felt strange on top of his fur. He rolled over with a noise that sounded like "clank," from his master's mace and his armor hitting each other. The humans jumped violently at the sound before looking around at each other shamefacedly.

Ash, who was neither stupid nor a "good doggie," found this all very silly. If it weren't for the fact that he had been born with a canine mouth, he probably would have been talking, but since he hadn't, he settled for whining. Humans were so worried about things. Ash, who had been raised for absolute loyalty and unerring faith, didn't doubt that the escape ship would come. He never doubted anything when his master said it was so.

Sure enough, he smelled the heavy, flowery scent even through the sharp and salty air. Ignoring the humans for a moment, he followed his nose until he was pointed directly at a dark shape on the water. Then someone small and warm gripped the white ruff of fur around his neck, and he rubbed his big face against hers.

"Doggie," the little girl said in her thick Calishite accent. Ash licked her face. She giggled and hugged him.

Nonetheless, he was aware of the ship drifting still closer, its main sails furled to avoid detection. He whined.

He was not disappointed when the gangplank slammed down on the dock. A cloud of warm, pink scents descended and it took a while for Ash's eyes to catch up with his nose. By that point, a brown hand with four jeweled rings had already begun patting his white head.

"Good boy," she said.

The woman was not very tall, not even by Calishite standards, but she was healthy and strong. She wore expensive clothes made of silk and fine linen, all dyed red and pink and sweet-smelling to Ash's nose. She was darker than his master, but her eyes were brighter – a sort of pretty blue-green better suited for gemstones than for human faces. Her smile was hidden behind a veil weighed down by garnets that also glittered from a tiara on her head. Everything about her screamed of wealth, power, or both.

Ash whined again as the crowd behind him began to stir, apparently having gotten over their initial shock.

She stood up straight and began to shout. "All right, you lot! Everyone get on board right now!" She seemed bigger than she really was when she did that. Her eyes even seemed to glow in the moonlight.

The humans did as they were told, too scared to make a move against her. Still, the little girl who had her hand in Ash's fur spoke up anyway. "Who are you?"

The woman looked down at her as if she was surprised anyone had spoken. Then she smiled again; it was always easy to tell when she smiled, when she was happy. When she was happy, nothing burned. Ash didn't like fire much, so he liked it when she was happy.

"My name is Zahara, miss," she said gently, "the ship's sorceress and captain."

"Will you take us to some new place? A safe place?" the girl asked, stretching out one hand, which Zahara accepted. She released Ash's fur, and he sat there looking mournful while the sorceress fell into her motherly role again. He liked children, but she hadn't had any since her twins had grown up. Ash remembered hearing his master talk about them.

Zahara nodded, picking the little girl up. "Say goodbye to the doggie now, miss. He has to go home now."

Ash touched his wet nose to Zahara's hand.

"Hm? Could you possibly…" Then she understood. It always seemed to take forever for people to know what he wanted. He didn't know why – it wasn't as if he was some sort of wolf or anything. So he couldn't speak. So what? Had no one heard of body language? "Ah! I have what you need, my furry friend."

From seemingly out of nowhere, she withdrew a tightly-wrapped roll of paper. Ash could smell it – it smelled like wax. Someone had wanted this scroll to survive. She tucked the paper into the saddlebag-like pouch on his back and patted his head again.

"That," Zahara said matter-of-factly, "is my best map of inland Faerûn. Try to keep it safe until Oceanus can give it back to me, or else."

Ash bumped her hand with his head. He licked it.

"He should be here soon, huh?" Zahara leaned back a little and the little girl put her head in the curve of her neck to go to sleep. "We can wait for a while, but if he gets stuck, the ship will cast off without him."

Ash growled. He didn't like the idea of leaving his master, or of Zahara even implying that she would.

"Shush. I know he planned for this. Getting a message to me without alerting the harbormaster and his wizard, paying off the crew to keep their mouths shut, and arranging all of this foolishness at night? He probably has horses waiting, or a wizard. Go find him so he can see us off."

He licked her hand once more and playfully nipped at her metal bracers before turning and running off. There were still wererats to chase before this was all said and done.

Before he had disappeared into the alleyways leading deeper into the city, though, Ash heard Zahara's voice, "That boy still owes me for the cost of coming here, and after this he'll have to pay my other expenses as well…hah. Now, does anyone know where the Street of Gold is from here?"

Altaïr wouldn't admit it out loud, but every bit of his body ached. He had no idea how long he had been awake, but it seemed to have been at least a day or two. Between the panicked two-day ride to Masyaf after barely managing to kill Robert de Sable, the fight with al-Mualim, and then the fight just then with Entreri, he was on the brink of collapse. The entire situation was not helped by the ten or so fights the two of them had managed to get into within the hour after that.

"We can stop here." It took him a minute to realize that Oceanus was steering him into a sheltered alcove off one of the city's main streets. The priest pulled a small ceramic bottle out of his belt pouch as Altaïr leaned against the wall, watching him carefully but through a mind clouded by fatigue and pain.

"Concerned for my health, priest?" Altaïr asked, managing to keep his tone even despite the sudden flare of agony from his leg. Allah, what had that man been using? Poison?

"Amazingly, yes," Oceanus said in a sharper tone than Altaïr would have tolerated from a novice. Still, he was faintly amused when Oceanus forced the bottle into his hands with a noise that sounded like a frustrated sigh.

"What is this?" he asked. He pulled the cork out and heard something make a noise that sounded a lot like "fsssh."

"A healing potion I got from the supply room," he said. His tone changed a little, becoming softer. "I apologize for this."

"What do you have to apologize for?" Altaïr asked him, while still looking at the fizzing contents of the bottle with suspicion. Potions could do many things to a man, most of them bad.

"I did not plan for Entreri to be here." Oceanus admitted. "I knew he was in the city, but I though he would stay out of guild politics longer. If I knew he would be one of the guild enforcers, I would not have told you to fight him."

"If I recall correctly, you never told me to." Altaïr said absently as he shook the bottle gently to see if its contents would explode or something. Decisions, decisions… Would drinking this concoction kill him or allow him to regain his strength?

Oceanus sighed. "He carries weapons that most men here cannot even think of using. His dagger, in particular, is dangerous." Here there was a swish of cloth and Altaïr noticed that Oceanus was looking away. "It can destroy the souls of those it kills."

That changed things. "It devours human souls?" Altaïr asked, his voice flat only because he wasn't quite sure how to express his shock without shouting. Too many eyes and ears were still trained on the streets, even in near-total darkness.

"Yes." Oceanus snapped. "And if I had known it was him I would have just tried to kill him from afar. It would have been safer." He made a vague gesture with both hands that came across as just something to do with his excess frustration.

"I imagine so." Altaïr said dryly. Scrutinizing the bottle for the final time, he sighed and downed the contents. As he expected, it was utterly alien to anything he had ever tasted before. Though the flavor was tolerable – sort of sweet in an empty way – the prickling sensation nearly caused him to spit it out in surprise. The fizzing sensation didn't stop in his mouth, though – he looked down to where the feeling had spread to his leg and watched as the line of blood sealed itself up.

Besides even that, he felt the ache in his muscles begin to fade a little and he looked at Oceanus in surprise. The priest paused as if to stare at him and Altaïr shook his head. Of course it would be magic. Everything else was rapidly becoming so, why not this?

"Finished?" Oceanus asked him impatiently.

"Yes. What was this?"

"I told you that already. It was a healing potion." Oceanus said. "You act as if you have never seen such a thing before."

Altaïr shook his head again. "I have not."

"Liar," the priest said, but without much heat. Altaïr was apparently wearing him down. He sighed and waved vaguely. "This is not the time for that. I—oh, no." Something new had caught the priest's attention. Altaïr glanced around the wall and spotted at least four figures approaching in the gloom.

The smell of carrion and sewage drifted over to the hidden pair as the wind shifted. Altaïr heard Oceanus start to cough.

"What are they?" he asked quietly as the priest covered his mouth and nose in attempt to muffle the noise. None of the shadows were moving like men – their gait was entirely wrong, their heads were bent, and they seemed to be moving on the balls of their feet, but not. He couldn't make out any details to help him determine what to make of them.

Oceanus pulled his scarf up over his face and answered in a muffled voice, "Ratmen." He made a noise that sounded like he was clearing his throat, or "kragch." It didn't sound like a word to Altaïr, not even a curse. "I was certain that Ash had killed them all."

"It seems you were mistaken." Altaïr hissed back. "What do we do to kill them? I assume that they are not like ordinary men and will be unnaturally strong?" He thought he heard claws scrabbling on the street.

"No, they are not like ordinary men, but they die like them." Oceanus growled. It sounded almost ridiculous with the priest's naturally high, soft voice, and Altaïr would have commented on it if the situation wasn't so desperate. "Just take care to avoid being bitten by them, or I shall have to kill you."

Not sure whether to take that as a serious threat or not, Altaïr looked to where the group of ratmen were prowling. Every once in a while, one of them would bend over and seem to…sniff the ground? What were they?

"Wererats are men who have been corrupted into half-rat, half-human monsters." Oceanus explained in a whisper. "They rule the tunnels under the city because they can see in total darkness, and they turn any intruders they find into more of their own."

"Is that so…" Altaïr muttered. The ratmen all abruptly turned to face their direction. Damn. "Do they fight with weapons or fang and claw?"

"In this state? Both." Oceanus said.

He heard the little green-eyed priest draw his weapons – a pair of viciously curved daggers that glowed white and blue – and he laid his right hand on the hilt of his eagle-pommel sword. "Wonderful," he said sarcastically. Man-shaped rats, glowing weaponry, and on top of everything else, his only ally was mad. This day was just getting better and better. The hidden blade couldn't be used here, either – they'd already lost the advantage of surprise, and there was no room for error – which made Altaïr fight back a sigh again. Nothing was going smoothly. It never did.

Oceanus stepped into the street and laughed, calling out something that sounded more like a plague victim's cough than any word. It was no language Altaïr had ever heard before, but he knew a challenge when he heard one.

"You are a fool." Altaïr said as he walked out of the shadows to stand beside the priest. The wererats seemed to grow excited at this – he ignored them. "Stealth would have served us better."

"So I hear." Oceanus responded instantly. He spun one of his daggers in his hand, almost idly. "But then, who can hide from rats? The very lowest of the low, born only to drive men mad with fever and shakes."

Interesting. He would play along for the moment. "I would not be so sure, were I you." Altair said just as nonchalantly. "Are rats not the most resilient of vermin?"

The ratmen began to snarl back, but because their mouths were closer to that of their animal form, they couldn't insult their opponents. Altaïr thought he saw Oceanus smirk.

"Perhaps. But how long can even their greatest warriors, the wererat guild, stand against steel?" Oceanus replied easily. "And fang?"

That was when Altaïr heard the scrabbling of claws on stone, and a howl that rose up from the darkness beyond their opponents. There was a white shape there, moving fast and growling the whole time. It was about half a second from striking the lead wererat at full speed when Altaïr finally heard Oceanus chuckle again.

"Good boy."

The street exploded into a melee.

There were panicked squeals from the monsters at first, as their leader tumbled into a desperate, thrashing tangle of limbs and teeth to avoid being ripped apart by the white canine. A second wererat attempted to help its comrade, only to be horribly slashed open as Ash's tail blade whipped around and hooked into its flesh. Then he managed to find the wererat's face amid all the smelly black fur, and bit down hard. The real screaming started.

They grew louder as Altaïr slashed another between the shoulder blades with his sword, cleaving into its flesh until stopped by a rib. Kicking the back of its knee (Why does it have two in one leg? was his thought), he forced the beast to its knees and pulled his blade back for a moment. He had just a fraction of a second to shift his grip from normal to reversed, and he did so easily. He plunged the sword through its ribcage with both hands and forced the creature to the ground under his weight.

Oceanus charged and slashed one across the face with one of his knives, severing its jaw muscles all along one side. As it screamed and flailed wildly, the rapier slicing into his right shoulder, he gritted his teeth and rolled with the strike, lengthening the wound but not allowing the blade to go in any further. He came up again from his dive, kicking the much larger fighter in the stomach with his leading foot. It wasn't a very strong kick, and certainly wouldn't have deterred a wererat normally, but Oceanus followed that up with a half-powered stab with his weakened arm. Even if he wasn't as strong as usual, the blade sank in easily – the steel was coated in silver, and it burned all the way to the beast's spine.

They were definitely attracting attention – more wererats crowded the street, following the cries of their fellows – but oddly, no city guards approached. Apparently street fights had long gone completely unregulated in Calimport.

Altaïr stopped swinging his blade first. Every sense screamed that this was quickly going to become an impossible fight. Though he couldn't see the approaching swarm of ratmen all that well, common sense said that, much like normal rats, they rarely hunted in small groups. That, and their smell was becoming almost overpowering.

"This is ridiculous," Oceanus grumbled. Altaïr didn't turn to look as the priest stood back-to-back with him. He had more important things to worry about.

There was a tearing sound as Ash turned from his last opponent and went for the throat of the shrieking one.

As the ratmen closed in, Altaïr heard Oceanus begin to mumble to himself as they both readied their blades for the second wave. "Where is it, where is it…?"

"What in the world are you muttering about?" Altaïr demanded, as the first foe came within striking distance.

At precisely that moment, the little priest grabbed him by the belt and yanked him to one side of the street. A split second later, something splashed exactly where they had just been and everything in sight caught fire. Shrieks rose from the ranks of the wererats and some of them seemed to be trying to put out flames on their fur.

The priest spun him around with strength borne of terror and snapped, "Climb as if your life depends on it, because it does!"

So it does. Altaïr thought as he scrambled up the front of what looked like a market stall that sold some sort of meat, finding finger-holds where no one else would - so quickly that he seemed to run up the wall. He turned back only once when he had reached the top, to see Ash rise from the center of the burning mass like some sort of demon. As the big white canine shook himself and the flames were abruptly put out, Altaïr turned and followed the priest across the rooftops.

There were a lot of things he wanted to say, most of them rude, incomprehensible, or just plain gibberish. So, instead, he said nothing at all as he and Oceanus went into a dead run, Ash having disappeared somewhere far behind.

"We should be safe here."

"No, my leg! My leg!"

"Shut him up!"

Ash heard that, heard the wererats scuttle about in the darkness. At this point, though, he just didn't care. He ran hard and fast through the streets, ignoring every fascinating smell the night always brought. Even the flaming oil in his fur didn't bother him much – hardly anything short of a hammer blow to the skull ever did.

His tongue trailing from his mouth, he ran at full speed, following the faint scent of his master and his master's new companion. They were fast, but they were limited to the rooftops just as Ash was limited to the streets thanks to a lack of opposable thumbs. Every once in a while he would catch a glimpse of the white-robed man, but never of his master, who wore dark colors tonight.

The bags on Ash's back clanged against his sides but didn't slow him much. He was carrying everything his master owned in this land far south of their home, but even with the armor, chain mail, and mace taking up space inside, Ash himself was too large to be bothered by the extra weight, even if his master hadn't used a bag of holding.

The only time it bothered him was when he was too wide to enter an alleyway he could have passed normally. Thankfully, he found alternatives to every last one of them, even if it meant bowling over the beggars in the area.

Upon reaching the docks, Ash saw his master and his companion leap down from the nearest roof. His master hit the ground and rolled, but the white-robed assassin landed easily, coming down only to one knee. Ash ran to greet them both and leapt up to lick his master's face, knocking the priest back down.

His master laughed and tried to push his head off to the side to avoid more licking. It didn't work. "Good boy, Ash. Very well done. Now could you let me up?"

Ash backed off, but he pushed his nose into his master's free hand, begging to be petted. His master scratched behind his ears and asked softly, "Ash, which ship?"

From the deck of the Rusty Iron Maiden, Zahara observed her handiwork using a fellow pirate's spyglass. It had been at least five minutes and still the fireball burned. It had been a good idea to stow the fire seed in a little ball of blasting jelly, so it wouldn't go off until hitting the ground. Up in the crow's nest, someone whistled.

"That was a good shot, Lady Zahara," commented one of the crewmembers. She grinned at him.

"Thank you! I had wondered if that fireball would be able to arc from this far away." Zahara laughed. "He certainly will remember that Calishite coffee now." She was in a good mood – the spell had gone off perfectly, she hadn't heard any indignant yells from the city yet, and, best of all, the guard at the helm of the nearest Calishite warship was still asleep. There would be no reprisals so long as they managed to get out of the harbor in time.

"Over here!" someone shouted. She tore her eyes from the spyglass and looked down, spotting a pair of white shapes in the gloom. Squinting, she found that there was a third, darker silhouette, and she recognized it.

She turned to a fellow crewman and gestured for him to lower the gangplank. As he did so, the three shapes approached, finally stepping into the torchlight. She smiled brightly at all of them, even if they couldn't see it between the cover of her veil and the darkness.

She walked down to them, giggling. Yes, that was Oceanus all right – no one else had eyes like that – and Ash was safe, excellent, and… "Hm? Did you find a new companion, Oceanus?"

Oceanus glanced from her to the white-robed man. "In a way." He sighed. "Is everyone safe?"

"Hm? Well, yes, they are. Fifteen Ilmatari and any number of Calishites, yes?" Zahara replied after thinking about it for a moment. "It is fortunate that they only need to go to Memnon."

"Memnon?" Oceanus asked, and Zahara watched as he turned his head a little, much like his furry companion had been doing since the conversation had started. "Why Memnon? I thought they were going all the way back to Waterdeep!"

"They will, they will." Zahara said, making placating gestures as Oceanus's temper seemed to worsen. Funny, his parents had never been like this. "But the Waterdhavian Ilmatari are in the merchant district of Memnon right now, so it would be easier to have them rejoin their comrades there." She waved a hand vaguely. "Besides, this ship was not designed to carry so many for such a long journey."

"Did you already tell them?" Oceanus asked.

"Of course. The others are willing to wait in Memnon, and those who are with us do not mind being anywhere so long as it is not in Calimport." Zahara explained patiently.

"Ah…" There, got you. Oceanus shrugged. "If they have no objection, neither do I."

"Good." She had put this part off for long enough. "Also, where is my coffee?"

"Right here," he said with a soft laugh. She watched, fascinated, as Oceanus waved a hand and a sack appeared in a midair burst of green light. Zahara caught it, giggling.

"Thank you!" Zahara said with glee. "It is so hard to find a decent selection at this time of year…hm? What is your friend staring at?"

It hadn't been something she would have taken notice of normally, but given that the man in white hadn't said a single thing since she had stepped off the gangplank, it should have stood out to her earlier. Zahara didn't feel fear or even much annoyance, only mild curiosity. She, like most other sorceresses, was absolutely confident of her abilities and of her appearance. It almost made sense for men to stare.

"I would imagine your clothes are doing that." Oceanus said dryly. "Or, possibly, he has never seen a summoning spell before."

Zahara smiled mischievously and Oceanus groaned. Tossing the sack of coffee back to a fellow crewmember, she walked right up to the man in white. She reached up and tugged playfully on his hood, then pulled it back before he could snap at her. It took, in all, less than a half-second.

For a moment, the world seemed to freeze.

He wasn't as old as she had thought – perhaps twenty-five at most – and she didn't mind what she saw. Dark brown hair, dark skin, but not as dark as her own, marked only once by a white scar that split his lip on the right side. His eyes were very dark, almost black, and they were wide with surprise. Zahara smiled again, standing on her tiptoes so she could look him nearly in the eye. Good.

She yanked the hood back down and spun away, giggling. "I should hope that you get out of the city safely."

Oceanus shook himself. "Wait."

She gave him a quizzical look, and waved for him to continue.

"There have been a few problems," he began. "Things have come up and, er… Would it be possible…?"

"If you wanted to come aboard, you only needed to ask." Zahara said. She wrapped the smaller spellcaster in a tighter hug than should have been possible for her size, lifting him off the ground to spin him in a dizzying circle. She only stopped when he made a noise like, "…ack!"

She put him down practically on top of Ash and gave him and his still-stunned friend a mock salute. "Welcome aboard, children!"

A/N: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and stop bothering me! (I know this is like two weeks late but I can't bring myself to care all that much.)

Anyway, thanks for everyone who's favorite'd this and/or reviewed it! I really, really, appreciate it, and thanks especially to my beta, kagami714, who's been awesome. Like, seriously awesome.