"You killed a patrician?"

"Well-" I pause. Lynae killed him, but I don't want to look like I am passing the blame to her. Making an enemy of her might hurt my position. "Jeamo was ambushed by an egg stalker before we caught up to him. It had already shoved its eggs into him. We had to kill the bug. By the time I got to him, he was already dead."

"Were you the first one to him?"

Damn it. Jet noticed my change of pronoun. Sharp guy.

"No."

He stares at me expectantly. Fine.

"Lynae got to him first. She tried to save him; to cut the eggs out. It didn't work."

If the idea of his girlfriend digging for bug eggs in a patrician's stomach surprises Jet, he doesn't show it. He nods thoughtfully.

"All right," he announces. "Well done. Bit of a mess about the pat, but it looks like it was out of your hands. I'll do some cleanup. You two-" he nods at me and Enturi. "Get some dinner. Have a drink, on the house. Then lay low for a few days, just in case."

Well, that went better than it might have.

Jet turns to the dwarf. "Bolin, wait a moment."

I wonder what Jet wants to talk to the dwarf about. He'll regret it, whatever it is. Once Bolin starts talking, getting him to shut up is the tricky part. Maybe he is giving Bolin whatever freelance fee they agreed on. I'll never know, most likely. I've been dismissed. I turn and leave the map room abruptly, not waiting for Enturi.

As I move to the hideout's dining hall, a nagging uneasiness settles upon me like soot from the smelting furnaces. Today, we killed a patrician. In the hellhole of a human empire that is Rur, a patrician is power. And Jeamo was more powerful than most - a sorcerer with a talent for ritualistic divination. It is unlikely that his death will go unnoticed. Or unpunished. Vengeance against the humans is always a losing game in Elftown, and the red tide has flowed with less provocation.

I don't regret sawing off his head and hanging it on the wagon in the warehouse. But it is likely that all of Elftown would have been better off if Lynae and I had left him to the painful death of the hatching egg stalker larva. At least there would be no sign of elven hands in his death if his ruptured and eaten body was later discovered. I could go back and return his head to his body, down in the sewer. But if Jet had wanted that, he would have given the order. Best leave the cleanup to him. For all I know, he might already have some other enforcer on the way to do just that. 

I was just following orders. But it is clear from Jet's reaction that had he known the perpetrator was a human pat, the orders might have changed. Not that I should be expected to anticipate that. I am just a blade for hire. Well, two blades, actually. For me, it's a good day when I get to kill any human, and a doubly good day if it's a pat.

I am a little surprised Lynae didn't think it through, though. She seems intelligent and something more: educated. Except that elves aren't allowed to be educated. No magic. No knowledge. No history. No philosophy. Maybe she had been some human's plaything at some point; the mistress of a harbormaster's assistant who had deigned to teach her more of the world. Or maybe a ship's captain. That would explain her skill with her blade.

Not that I can really fault her choices after I was paralyzed. It was a close battle. If her strike had not been true, she and I might well be two more elven corpses stinking up the sewer right now. It is understandable if she was a little rattled and not thinking clearly when she tried to save Jeamo, and why she didn't stop me from beheading him.

It occurs to me that of the two dead creatures we left down there in the sewer, the egg stalker and Jeamo, the human was the worse monster. Yeah, I'm not sorry he's dead. I just hope his death doesn't result in more elven lives lost. Sometimes there are no good choices in Elftown.

The air of the hallway outside the dining and drinking hall is suffused with the savory odor of fish stew, reminding me of how hungry I am. I quicken my step. The smell of cooking food is the only thing that can push back the odor of rot and degradation that permeates this slum. Thank the goddess we at least have that.