Charge in to the rescue!

"So, where do we look first?" Teysa asked. The two of them were standing by the edge of the market square. Aliara's eyes kept flickering past Teysa's shoulder to the bustling crowds and colorful stalls. She looked back as though seeing Teysa for the first time. "What? Oh. Well, we know she deals. She was storing amberhaze at that church. We could pose as addicts looking to buy?"

Teysa pursed her lips and thought. She'd gone what Aliara called "undercover" before, though it had always made her feel vaguely ill. She had been taught to take pride in herself and her Order. "You are the emissaries of Agamor," Sister Veldt had said. "You must conduct yourself accordingly. When people see you, they are seeing His light made manifest in the world." The thought of someone seeing her in such a degraded state was disturbing. Worse, she kept remembering the golden cloud of smoke that had filled the Eel's tent in the City, and the way it had made her feel. It had been... no, not good, never good, but... confusing. Most of her never wanted to taste the stuff again. A tiny part of her craved it, and that scared her most of all.

Still, she couldn't think of a better plan, so she nodded. "But where can we find them?" she asked. "These... unfortunate souls."

"Oh, leave that to me," Aliara said grimly. "They're always there, if you know where to look."

Aliara led them on a circuitous route around the edge of the market. Teysa had never been any good at stealth, but Aliara wasn't even trying; they ambled along at a relaxed pace. "We're just two gals out for a shopping day," Aliara said. "Don't stare so much. It attracts the wrong kind of attention." More than once they passed drab tents with smoke pouring from their flaps, but Aliara waved Teysa along. "Not there. Trust me on this, alright?"

The crowd thinned out as they went and the products on display grew mean and meager. The light here was dimmer, and many of the wall sconces were empty or missing. Dull rust stains on the stone showed where they had once been. The few other shoppers hurried past with suspicious looks, but none dared come close.

Teysa heard a dull crackling somewhere ahead. The walls here were carved into massive facades, just like elsewhere, but these looked neglected if not abandoned. The windows were piled up with stone rubble and trash. The doors yawned open into dark and silent caves. Water dripped from above and formed puddles in the dirt floor. Teysa felt eyes on her from all sides, though wherever she turned her head she saw only huddled figures wrapped up in their own misery. "Hold on," Aliara said, and stooped towards one of the muddy puddles. She grabbed a double fistful and smeared it across her arms and into her hair. "You too, Tey," she said. "And tuck that holy symbol away somewhere."

Teysa did so reluctantly. She had to fight down the urge to apologize to the little golden disc as she slipped it into her tunic. She gingerly picked up a fistful of grime and gave herself a halfhearted rub. Aliara stared at her impatiently.

"Come on. You want to fit in or not? You still look like a paladin, dear."

"I am a--" Teysa buttoned her lip and grabbed another handful. She closed her eyes and rubbed it across her scalp. The feeling of grime seeping in among her hair was dreadful, and she vowed to take a long, hot bath as soon as she could. Still, when she had finished, she had to admit that nobody would mistake her for a righteous crusader. The mid dulled her armor and stained her clothes. It stank, too, a moist reek that made her gag.

The crackling turned out to be a fire burning in a steel drum at the mouth of an alley. A half-dozen people warmed themselves around it. None of them looked up as Teysa and Aliara insinuated themselves into the circle. A couple of them shivered, and one strung-out looking elf looked like she was about to fall asleep on her feet. In the corner of the alley a greasy blanket moved as though there were two people underneath it. Teysa looked away hurriedly.

Aliara sidled up to a worn-out looking drow. "Room around your fire?" she asked in a worn and creaking voice. Teysa tried not to stare. She would never have expected such a guttural croak from her partner's lips. Aliara sounded like someone ridden hard and broken on the rack of life.

The drow shrugged at her in lieu of answering. A few patches of white hair stuck up wildly between the scars that cris-crossed his scalp. He turned back to the fire, but Aliara was already pressing him for a followup.

"We're looking to score," she said in a stage-whisper. "Amberhaze, if we can get it. Who's friendly down here?"

This earned her a suspicious look. For a moment Teysa could see the wheels turning behind the drow's eyes. He looked them up and down, taking in their filthy clothing and limp, greasy hair. Finally he seemed to arrive at a decision.

"Wha'sit to yez?" he growled. Aliara's hand flickered out and there was a faint clink of silver. The drow squeezed his fist and nodded. "New boss moves weight down here. Other side a'the market, next to the Golden Pony. Sign of the snake." He traced a squiggly line in the air.

Aliara nodded. "Where's safe to sleep 'round here?" The drow looked directly at her and grinned, revealing a mouthful of rotten pegs.

"Righ' next to me'd be favorite, girlie."

Teysa could see muscles tense in Aliara's neck, but the half-elf let out a braying giggle. "May' later, handsome. If you're nice to us. Come on, Tey." She grabbed Teysa's arm and tugged her towards the alley mouth. The drow's sniggering chased them all the way out of the alley.

Once they had gotten a safe distance away, Teysa shivered. "Ok, we got what we wanted," she said. "Now can we clean up?"

Aliara shook her head. "Not yet. We still have some role-playing to do." She sniffed at herself. "Tell you what. We'll take a long bath when this is all done. Together. You like that, don't you?"

Teysa did. She grinned ruefully. The half-elf's nimble fingers were excellent at massaging the cares of the day out of her shoulders. She had other tricks with them, too.

"Come on, then," Aliara croaked. "Let's go get us'n a fine score."

They stuck to the outskirts of the market still. Every pair of dwarf guards they passed gave them a long and hostile stare. Part of their mission, it seemed, involved keeping the human detritus of the market swept out of sight. They meandered past decrepit stalls and abandoned facades until the market started to improve again. Not much, but the area they were in now was brighter lit, the stalls a bit closer together and more well-attended. Merchants stared at them with scorn that turned to pity and finally relief as they hurried along on their way.

The Golden Pony turned out to be an inn. The titular pony swung from a pair of iron hooks. It wasn't much of a carving, and most of the gold leaf was long gone, but the inn was warm and smelled of bread and stale beer. Teysa's stomach gurgled and she was forcibly reminded of how long it had been since breakfast. She took a step towards the invitingly open door, only to jump backwards as it suddenly filled with dwarf. He wore a leather apron and what little of his face could be seen between bushy eyebrows, a bristly moustache and a long red beard looked furious.

"Out!" he howled. "Out, ya dregs! Ya smoke-addled slatterns! I'll not have ye hocking yer worn-out boxes in my place!"

It took Teysa a moment to realize what he was talking about, but when she did, she flushed scarlet and drew herself up. Aliara, fast-thinking as ever, grabbed her by the arm and pulled. "Come on, Tey!" she squealed indignantly. "This shortarse doesn't know what he's missing!"

It took an effort of will on Teysa's part to let herself be pulled away without ****. She snorted through her nostrils and her fists clenched. "Come on," Aliara hissed in her ear. "Before you do something we both regret!"

Aliara dragged her a dozen yards from the door and put her hands on her hips. She cocked her head and frowned up at Teysa. The paladin avoided her gaze, but Aliara dragged her chin around with one hand until they were face to face.

"I know, Tey, I know you hate this, but you have to be a professional. Think about it this way. They're not saying these things about Teysa of the Order of the Golden Ray. They're saying them about some broken-down trollop with a monkey on her back."

"You're right," Teysa sighed. "I guess I just feel... guilty, that's all. All this underhanded stuff, I never liked it. I feel like a criminal."

"Well, you should get used to it, dear," Aliara said. "The Underneath is a cloak-and-dagger kind of place. I would have thought you'd adjusted to that by now." Her face softenened and she reached up to cup Teysa's cheek. "Oh, I'm sorry, my dear. That's what I love about you. You're so straight-arrow, Tey. You always want to do the right thing. You're a born hero."

"That's not a word I hear from you often," Teysa replied. "I'm just doing my best. I know you know what you're doing. I'll try not to mess everything up for us, ok?"

"That's my girl!" Aliara smiled. Her grimy fingers twined through Teysa's. "Come on, let's check out the 'sign of the snake.'"

The sign in question turned out to be a crude sigil-- little more than the squiggle their drow informant had traced in the air. It was carved directly into the wall of the cavern, next to an arrow pointing onward. Following it brought them to a long, low facade. Narrow windows offered them glimpses of a smoky hall lit by great blazing hearths, like a barbarian longhouse. There was an arched doorway some ways ahead, from which emanated a heavy thumping beat and the faint trilling of flutes or horns. Closer at hand was a low, square entrance, guarded by a pair of armored humans. They looked disdainfully at Teysa and Aliara but made no move to stop them as they approached.

Aliara shuffled up to one of the guards and looked up. Her stringy hair hung in her face. She smiled and, in that same cracked voice, asked "Kind sirs, kind sirs, may I have a moment of your time? I'm just a poor soul, looking for--"

"Inside, junkie," one of them said with a jerk of his thumb. "Find the thin man. Make sure your coin is good or he'll just have us drag your bony ass out again."

"Thank you, gentles!" she said, bowing obsequiously. They ignored her. Teysa tried to imitate her shambling walk as the two of them made their way through the door.

Inside, they found themselves at one end of a long, low room. Teysa could hear the music more clearly now, though she wasn't happy about that-- it was pounding, discordant, with jangling crashes of brass and the the manic flutterings of pipes. Her head started to hurt almost at once. It looked as though a party of some sort was going on at the far end of the room. She could see dancers cavorting on a raised stage, though distance and the poor light mercifully hid any details. Whatever dance they were doing was sensuous and depraved in the ****.

This end of the room was more sedate. Low stone benches lined the walls, each lined with cushions. Most of these were covered in slumped humanoid shapes. The nearest hearth was quite a ways away and most of this section was shadowed, though not enough to keep Teysa from seeing the dreamy expressions on the faces sprawled before her. There was a smell in the air, a peculiar mixture of smoke, sweetness, and the sour tang of sweat. She looked around, wondering how they would find "the thin man" in the midst of all this madness.

She needn't have worried. Bearing down on them now was a tall, skeletally thin drow. He wore multicolored scraps of many different fabrics, leather and cotton and silk, all stitched together with thick black thread and clinging tightly to his body. He was as gangly as a scarecrow; Teysa fancied she could count his ribs even through his clothes. They seemed to have been sewn to each other while he was wearing them. His cheeks were pulled back in a rictus grin, exposing teeth that had been filed to needle points. "Welcome, friends!" he hissed, and it was a hiss, a reptilian sound full of sibilant consonants. He threw his arms outward. "What is your pleasure this evening?"