Mindblind came to, feeling rain on his face and grass beneath his back. With a great deal of effort, he managed to open his eyes and sit up. His vision swam, and he could feel the knots beneath his hair when he reflexively rubbed his head. A glance up revealed the reason for his current location.
By some twist of fate, when the slaver had knocked him out, he'd fallen through the large double window upstairs. It swung open in the wind, illuminated by fitful light from the lanterns inside. From there, he must have bounced off the roof of the back room of the brothel, to the ground below. The back door stood open as well, banging against the frame.
He had no idea how long he'd been out, but he couldn't hear any sounds of struggle from within the brothel. With his senses returning, he managed to stand, feeling mud slithering down his back and buttocks. By the time he reached the back door, he was walking steadily, although he had a pounding headache.
A few groans were the only sounds he could hear as he passed through the dimly lit storage room into the brothel. The scene was much as he remembered it, with the guards lying dead. The slaver he'd knocked through the railing sprawled lifeless on a decorative table. The Madame was unconscious behind her counter, though she was moving a little and groaned as Cerebus walked past. He couldn't see any bruises or blood, and assumed that she'd fainted.
He climbed the stairs, his eyes focused on the door to Delly's room, which still stood open. It quite nearly cost him his life, because two doors down from her room, a woman popped out with a dagger in hand.
She pulled her stab, missing him as he put up his arms in a weak defense. "You're not one of them," she guessed.
Still wary, he answered, "No."
The woman had coal-dark hair, cut short, and wore only a long shirt that barely reached her upper thighs. The garment was soaked through, probably from the rain, and did little to hide her small breasts, which were still quite substantial for her petite frame.
Even as he evaluated her, her eyes took him in as well. Her eyebrows popped up for a second when she glanced between his legs, and she let out a curious little grunt.
"How long have they been gone?" He finally asked.
"A few minutes. I managed to jump out a window before they could grab me." She saw his eyes focus on Delly's door again, and shook her head.
"They took her?"
"No," she answered, her eyes already telling him what he didn't want to know.
Cerebus hurried to Delly's door, and found her lying on the floor in a pool of blood, next to an equally lifeless slaver.
The woman walked up next to him and said, "She took one of the bastard sons with her. Stabbed him in the tripes."
Even though he knew that it would probably anger the Madame, Cerebus lifted Delly to the bed, and covered her with a sheet. The woman who ran the place would just have to buy a new bed. He wasn't going to leave her lying on the floor.
"She's probably one of the lucky ones," the dark-haired woman remarked.
Anger flared in him as he spun to see the woman holding a towel. He fought down the burst of emotion, because he knew that she was right. He accepted the towel to get as much of the mud off of him as possible before dressing.
"I'm gonna go get dressed," she said, echoing his thoughts.
Mindblind avoided looking at the lifeless body of the prostitute on the bed as he dressed in his wet, clammy clothing. The other woman returned as Cerebus was pulling on his boots. Now dressed in dark clothing, stiff with leather slabs that served as protective armor, her feminine charms were mostly hidden. She walked close and whispered, "Time to go. The law just showed up."
Cerebus had to agree. He wouldn't put it past Reed to accuse him of conspiring with the slavers. He had to wonder why the woman was so keen to avoid an encounter with the law, though.
Fortunately, the position of Delly's door on the balcony meant that they were hidden from view of the lawmen talking to the awakened Madame. With the window that he'd fallen out of only a few steps away, Cerebus paused to see what his old rival planned to do.
"Why aren't you going after them?" The Madame asked. "My girls have been taken — my guards murdered. There may be more dead upstairs."
"Yeah, they're going to jump right to horse to seek justice for whores, thieves, and a half-breed," the woman standing near Mindblind said in a sarcastic whisper.
"We have no idea who perpetrated this crime, and only a vague notion of which direction..."
That was all Cerebus needed to hear. Reed wasn't going to do a damn thing.
Not that he'd really expected otherwise.
He headed for the window, the woman right behind him. None of Reed's men were behind the building — yet another sign that he never planned to pursue any course of action, other than making a show of investigating. The drop to the roof, and then the ground, proved no trouble. Mindblind's height meant that he had only a short distance to fall when his arms were fully extended. The woman proved quite agile, bouncing down to the ground near him with all the grace of a cat.
The pair crept away from the building at a quick pace. When he turned toward the town, she said, "Are you nuts, half-breed? You're the first one they're going to suspect."
"Gotta get my sword and armor from the inn."
"You going after them?"
"Yep," he growled in answer, the tightly contained, slow boil of anger at Delly's death giving him direction and conviction to do exactly that.
"Want some company?"
Mindblind paused and looked back for a moment.
"They've got my sister," she said, answering his unspoken question.
"Good chance we'll get killed."
"Better chance that they will," she hissed in response.
He grinned, liking her answer. "Yeah, we can watch each other's backs."
"Don't go to the front door of the inn. I'll take care of getting your stuff," she said as she led the way. "What's your name — unless you want me calling you half-breed the whole way."
"Mindblind."
She let out a grunt of surprise. "If you think that's better. Okay, Mindblind, you can call me Raven."
The rain slackened as the two of them neared the inn. Raven asked him what room he was in, and then led him to the back of the building. Once there, she pulled off her shoes, and ascended the wall like a spider, somehow finding finger and toe-holds between the stones of the chimney and the boards of the wall.
As remarkable as that feat was, Cerebus was even more surprised when she held on to the window sill with one hand, and popped the window latch with the other, using some tool she'd pulled from a pocket. In less than a minute, she was within the room above.
Raven tossed down his sword, shield, purse, and armor, her aim perfect. She then closed the window and climbed down with the same effortless ease that she'd ascended. "C'mon, I need to get some things from my kip. Those fucks will be heading south, so it's along the way."
"Good enough for me." Cerebus belted on his sword, and slipped his shield over his arm, but carried his armor for the moment. He decided that getting out of town was probably the prudent course at this point.
She must have known the muddy trails that passed as roads in the area, because Raven moved unerringly along her way. Mindblind could barely see, as the storm clouds still obscured most of the moonlight that might have lit the path. Eventually, a pair of large structures emerged from the gloom.
Raven led him toward the side of the dilapidated farm house, which had obviously been long abandoned. "It's going to be a bit of a tight fit for you, but I think you can make it." She then knelt down and moved a pair of boards, revealing a hole in the stones that built up a cellar entrance. In a matter of seconds, she vanished inside.
Cerebus indeed found the fit tight, and doubted that he could have made it through in his armor. In the end, he alighted on the cellar floor with only a few annoying scrapes, just as a lantern flared to life.
"We may as well rest for the night," she suggested. "They aren't going to get far with the roads turned to soup by the rain, and we aren't likely to get another chance to sleep without setting a watch."
While she went to replace the boards and a tarp that obscured the entrance, Mindblind took in his surroundings. She had a couple of wooden boxes for storage, what looked like a fairly comfortable sleeping pallet on the floor, and a curious red stone sitting in what looked like a firepit, though it was obvious that no fire had ever burned there.
"It's magic," Raven explained when she returned. "Pinched it from some wizard. He was nice enough to have left instructions with the lot of them. I've got six scattered in all my kips. Keeps the place warm, and you can cook on it without smoke."
"Surprised that nobody has found the place."
"Guy that built it went crazy one night and killed his whole family. Hacked them to bits, then dived off the roof onto a fence post. Everybody thinks the place is haunted, and I help that out whenever anybody snoops around."
With that, she pulled off her overshirt, revealing that she still wore the long shirt that he'd first seen her in. It was still soaked, and still did little to hide her charms.
Not that she made any effort to do so.
