by Victor Milán
Zaranda thought of asking whether he was having nightmares or was simply edgy at the prospect of entering a city. She refrained. Vague as the dreams were, there was something personal about them, something obscene, so that in a way she could not define, she was ashamed to talk about hers, and reluctant to pry into his.
For a time she had wondered if the brazen head were somehow responsible, and whether she ought to cast the thing in a millpond. But no, if the head had the power to invade her mind with suggestive visions, she suspected they would be explicit rather than vague.
She looked around. Was Father Pelletyr yawning more than usual beneath his parasol? And the men: Eogast muttering darkly into his beard-nothing unusual about that-Balmeric with bags under his eyes so heavy he looked as if he'd already received his payout and drunk it all away. The guardsmen and drovers looked cagey… Had they been dreaming too?
Shield of Innocence strode tirelessly at Zaranda's other hand, head high within its concealing cowl. He had expressed his own expectations clearly enough when he first caught sight of Zazesspur. His carriage suggested nothing of apprehension, as though he already accepted his fate, whatever it was.
Alone in their cavalcade, Farlorn rode with head and eyes clear. Seeing Zaranda swivel her head, he kneed his mare and interposed her between Stillhawk's bay and Golden Dawn, ignoring the warning way Goldie flattened her ears.
"Why so somber, Zaranda Star?" he asked with a laugh. "Let me lift your spirits on wings of song."
She gave her head an almost convulsive shake. Normally she would welcome such an offer; clearly, hers was not a happy caravan right now, and the bard's songs did wonders for morale.
"Let it go," she said. She looked at him sidelong. "How have you been sleeping?"
"Never better. Desolate though this land is, it has a charm that soothes me. It's a far cry from my native woods, but after all, 'twas I who chose to forsake them."
" 'Desolate,' " Zaranda echoed. Despite herself, she uttered a brief laugh. She had been thinking how green the coastal plains looked, after the interior.
Then she shivered. For all the cloudless day and heat, she felt a chill. Farlorn's senses are usually as keen as a hunting cat's, she thought. How can he fail to feel the menace? For all that he was able to pass effortlessly in human society, the bard had much of his mother's folk in him-and sometimes reminded.
Zaranda just how alien the elves really were.
The arroyo ran close to the foot of the ill-maintained wall. The caravan came to a section of bank conveniently collapsed near the gap Zaranda was making for. She sent Stillhawk and four of the more alert crossbow-men to make sure the entryway was clear and secure. Meanwhile she hung to the side with Father Pelletyr, who fanned himself beneath his parasol and discreetly watched Eogast chivy the heavy-laden beasts up the slumped bank. Though dwarves were not usually noted for their communion with animals, the art of mule-driving had been raised to a high degree in their mining operations; the chief drover's touch was sure, and when he wasn't being peevish he was amply supplied with the patience of his long-lived race.
The affair went smoothly, though Zaranda's heart skipped when the mule carrying the locked chest in which the head reposed slipped on the loose dun soil. She thought to hear a muffled curse and looked nervously around. None of the guards or muleteers gave any sign of having noticed anything out of the ordinary. Of course, it was well enough known that trickish things were likely to happen around Zaranda Star, so perhaps they heard it and thought nothing of it.
"Easy, Randi," Goldie muttered under cover of a lip-smacking sigh. "If you grip me any tighter, your knees will leave dents in my flanks."
"You're right," Zaranda said. She sucked in a deep breath and tried to force her tension out with it. She relaxed her legs and steered the mare up a slope littered with loose gray plates of shale to the breach in the city walls.
Eogast stood spraddle-legged just inside the hole, overseeing the mules as they came through one at a time. Though there was ample room to pass four mules abreast without rubbing flanks, he gave Zaranda a red-eyed glare as she walked Goldie through. She ignored him.
Inside the city wall she stopped and gazed about, The sun had passed the zenith, and already the block was shaded. The street was much as she remembered it. It was perhaps thirty feet broad, with greasy-looking puddles where Zazesspurians had swiped cobblestones for their own purposes. The buildings were of several stories each, displaying close-fit stonework, elaborate ornamentation around doors and windows and along rooflines, and other signs of elegance.
It was the elegance of a corpse lying in state in some wealthy tomb. The facades of certain buildings had slumped to the street, leaving the long-gutted chambers behind exposed and looking uncannily like the eye sockets of skulls. Cornices and friezes had flaked off to lie in sad piles of rubble chips along the bases of intact walls. A stone rooftop gargoyle crazy-canted on its back favored Zaranda with a cynical wink from the nearby gutter.
"An uncanny sort of place," Father Pelletyr said as he rode up on his little ass. An eerie moan rang down the street. He jumped and made the crossed-hands sign of Ilmater to ward off evil.
"Why so nervous, Father?" asked Farlorn, riding by in apparent high spirits. " 'Tis merely Sister Wind, blowing across a cavity in the masonry."
"What sort of person dwells here?" the priest asked.
"None," said Zaranda. "This was a wealthy residential district long ago, during an age when folk felt small need to dwell behind high walls topped with iron spikes or broken glass. When times became less orderly, it was the Street of the Seamstresses, and so it's called to this day."
"The only seamstresses I can envision at work here," the cleric said, "are the Norns who in legend spin, measure, and cut the fabric that is our destiny."
Zaranda laughed, alleviating a few nerves of her own. "The seamstresses left, too-at least the ones actually concerned with working cloth." The priest gave her a quizzical look. "Most recently the fine structures were houses of pleasure-not the finest of establishments, you understand, but of reasonable quality and great pretension."
"Ahh!" breathed the priest, as solemn and great-eyed as a child. "Thus the name Zazesspur the Wicked!"
"Well, Father, no. As with the term 'Empire of the Sands' for Tethyr, it's a misnomer, although I suspect one concocted deliberately by the city fathers to pump up the tourist trade from the north. Actually Zaz isn't unduly wicked as port cities go, though I grant you that leaves considerable latitude. This isn't Calimshan, after all; with slavery not tolerated here for generations, you'd be hard-pressed to find sin here that wasn't equally common in, say, Waterdeep."
The priest's face fell so far that Zaranda felt guilty for disillusioning him. "But is not prostitution legal here?"
"Indeed, and as a consequence it's a less rough and sordid business. Those who would patronize such establishments regardless can do so without consorting with the criminal element-or feeding it, either. Which is not to say it's respectable, Father; to this day, joy-girls and — boys are called notch-tooth, in honor of the days when they plied their trade in the old Thread-Biters' Lane."
The cleric brightened slightly-here at last was a lurid detail to relish. Zaranda shook her head and reflected that celibacy was a terrible thing-something she knew all too well of late.
With another round of extravagant dwarven oaths, Eogast chivied the last of the burden beasts safely through the breach in the wall. He strode forward, browbeating mules and men into line. In a chaotic city such as Zazesspur, moving in good order became essential.
"Why was the district abandoned then?" the priest asked.
"A water main burst, cutting off supply to the district. This was back during the Troubles, the rioting that followed the murder of the royal family. Folk had little energy to tend to such details then, so the joy-houses moved out. Now the neighborhood's given over to rats." She glanced around at the doorways. "Not in-frequently of the two-legged variety." Goldie had her head up
and was swiveling her impressive ears from side to side. "Ah, Zaranda," she said. "Speaking of those two-legged rats…"
At once there were uniformed men all around. They materialized in doorways, in the blind-eye windows of derelict buildings, along rooflines. A party suddenly emerged to block the road while a second group stole from the rubble to prevent escape through the hole in the city wall. The ones on street level bore halberds with bronzed heads, while those above leveled cocked crossbows at the startled muleteers and their escorts. All wore gorgeous puffed royal-blue sleeves, blue pantaloons, bronze cuirasses, and morions of the Zazesspurian civic guard.
From the phalanx of halberdiers blocking the end of the street stepped a tall man in bronzed greaves, a scarlet egret plume nodding over his morion. He had a long face with a scar that ran from his right brow to the line of his jaw, crossing a dead, staring eye. The other eye was the near-colorless pale blue of northern sky.
"You are Zaranda Star, who styles herself Countess Morninggold?" he demanded in a harsh voice. One gloved hand rested on a rapier's swept hilt.
Zaranda urged Goldie forward to meet him. She was aware of Stillhawk riding at her elbow. She could feel the heat of his embarrassment at allowing the caravan to be taken so by surprise.
Rest easy, my friend, she signed to him. Don't blame yourself. You're out of your element here.
From the clot of halberdiers came alarmed cries, and the bronzed axe blades wavered as their bearers tried to make signs against evil while keeping grasp on the weapons.
"Desist from this magic hand-waving!" the officer rapped. "We know of you. Gesture more, and my men will pierce you like Waterdhavian cheese!"
Stillhawk growled deep hi his throat.
"No magic," his employer said quietly. "I am Zaranda Star. Why do you block my way?"
"I am Cangaro, captain of the guard," the officer said, unrolling a parchment scroll. "In the name of the city council, I hereby impound this caravan and all the goods it carries!"
8
It had not been a day to improve her composure. The scar-faced guard officer's parchment declared that the caravan was being seized for unlicensed importation of magic artifacts into Zazesspur in violation of city council edict. Nothing she could say would dissuade him from executing it-and his troop of bravos had the drop on her own tiny guard force. Not that she would have fought, since she was trying to do business in an honest and aboveboard way.
The rest of the day gave her leisure to repent that choice. It had been spent in fruitless wrangling with officials in the slab-sided Palace of Governance in the city's middle, so new it was still under construction. There had been the usual block-faced indifference of officialdom: No, you'll have to wait for things to take their course, like anyone. No, I can't help you. There had also been the usual half-clever solicitations for bribes, with the odd sniggering suggestion-accompanied by a free wandering of the eye over Zaranda's wiry but very feminine form-that they need not be paid in gold.
Accustomed to dealing with bureaucrats across Faerun, Zaranda had paid such squeeze as she thought would prove useful-in gold on the desktop. The bulk of her resources, not to mention her hopes of keeping her home, were of course locked up somewhere in the city coffers by now, but she retained her private stash of coin, choice gems, and jewelry that she carried on her person and in Goldie's panniers for emergencies. Even after paying off the muleteers and escorts, she wasn't destitute. Yet.
But gold bought her nothing. Bribed or not, the council's lackeys could say nothing more than that she would have to wait for an administrative hearing. But the courts were busy. If a large enough donation to the council's grand plan to remake Zazesspur were forthcoming, the process might be expedited, and a hearing held within, say, three months.
When Zaranda left the palace in disgust, the sun was already dropping into the harbor. She became. aware of a sense of unease that had been stealing, un-noticed, upon her all the time she had spent within the palace.
She shook her head in something like annoyance. I've always dreaded dealing with bureaucrats, she re-minded herself. How could I be other than nervous, with my fortune resting in their hands? I mustn't let these cursed dreams get to me. On the spot she decided to go get drunk.
"Zaranda," the adventurer declared, leaning forward to bathe her face in the fumes of a less-famous Tethyrian wine, "your problem is that you're lowering yourself by playing at merchant."
Zaranda carefully set her own goblet of local red wine-of a somewhat more reputable vintage-care-fully down upon the knife-gouged tabletop before her. She had come to the Smiling Centaur with Stillhawk, Father Pelletyr, Shield, and Farlorn, intending to drown her troubles in wine, a course of action that did little good. Now this scabrous mercenary was interfering with the process, and she didn't know whether to be angry or grateful.
"Oh, so, Valides?" she said neutrally.
The mercenary nodded with the exaggerated emphasis of the drunken. "Certainly so. How else could it be?" He belched and wiped the back of his mouth with a hand no cleaner but drier. "Look at yourself, Zaranda. You used to be a warrior."
"I still am."
He waved a black-nailed hand, slopping wine from the leather jack over a much-spotted sleeve. "Now these merchants, you take them; they're just bloodsuckers. No better than vampires, I'm bound, even if their color's better."
He laughed uproariously, and moistly, at his own jape. After a while he noticed that his audience wasn't laughing with him. He quieted and leaned forward again.
"Merchants make nothing. They delve not, neither do they spin. But they rake off fat profits, yes they do! And for what? For nothing."
"For taking the effort and the risks in conveying goods to those who wouldn't otherwise see them," Zaranda said.
A hand wave. "Nothing, as I said. Now you take the warrior, though-there's a life that's honest and clean." "You kill monsters and you take their gold." "That's right! Yours is the right of the sword. You take what you will! By the sword!" He slammed his fist down upon the table. "That's the way for a man to live! And, uh, a woman like yourself, too, Zaranda. Not as some money-grabbing merchant."
Anger flared behind Zaranda's eyes. She felt her cheeks grow taut and hot. No, she told herself, you've always held that any being had the right to speak freely. You'd cut a poor figure if that went by the way-side whenever someone spoke against your liking..She forced her hand away from the hilt of Crackle-tongue and smiled a grim smile.
Valides had become distracted by discovery that his jack was running dry, and he turned around to bellow for a serving wench. Zaranda scanned the tavern.
The Smiling Centaur was little different from any tavern one would encounter from the Sword Coast to the Vilhon Reach: a broad common room with low smoked rafters and tables and chairs of inexpensive but solid make to resist use by customers of greater than human size or strength, and misuse during bar fights. The place was lit fitfully by candles placed on wagon wheels hung by chains from the ceiling, and by oil lamps in stout, cagelike wrought-iron sconces on the whitewashed walls. An ox-roasting hearth gaped like a monster maw in one wall, but it was cold and dark; the evening was cool to the edge of crispness, but the day's residual heat and the warmth of bodies left no room for afire.
It was crowded, but to her experienced eye, less than she might have expected on such a fine spring evening after a southern day more than amply hot to put an edge on one's thirst. The noise level was lower, too, as if the revelry were somehow subdued. Even the cleanshaven face of proprietor Berdak, the centaur who gave the place its name, seemed to be smiling less broadly than usual as he washed brass flagons behind the bar.
Now and then Zaranda caught a muttered reference to darklings, accompanied by nervous looks around, as if the night-stalking horrors might be lurking beneath tables nearby. As far as gossip informed her, the things posed small threat to those who went abroad in armed parties, which was not unusual for most of the Centaur's patrons. She thought there must be more to the alm
ost furtive mood, the hollow, sunken eyes around her.
Or perhaps it was all Zaranda's imagination, energized by her own nightmare-induced lack of sleep and the day's events. But she had not survived such a hazardous life by taking aught for granted. She made a quick, careful survey of the immediate surroundings, reassuring herself that no one was taking undue interest in her or her four companions.
A serving maid appeared at the table, a young gnome with rather prominent pointed ears and a harried but pretty face that tapered from wide cheekbones to an almost elfin pointed chin. Valides snarled his demand for more wine like a curse, and when the gnome woman's hip accidentally brushed the table as she turned, he raised a fist to strike her.
Zaranda's hand caught him by the wrist, so quickly that it simply seemed to be there. He tried to pull away and turned a red-eyed glare to her when he could not. The serving girl scampered off.
Zaranda Star was one of those rare women who gave away comparatively little to men in the density of muscles, and thus power. The mercenary could have overmatched her strength to strength, with effort. The look in her eyes, now an almost self-luminous pale blue, and the name she had carved for herself with the curve-bladed sword at her side dissuaded him from expending the effort.
"Rest easy, man," she said. "What's got into you?"
He dropped his eyes, and she let him wrest his hand free. These gnomes," he spat. They infest the city like worms in cheese. Arrogant, clannish little beasts! They've long conspired to do honest human folk out of first their wages and then their jobs. But mark my words-Earl Ravenak knows what they're about. And he has the cure for their scheming."
"Ravenak?" Zaranda spat the word out like a shred of spoiled food.
Valides nodded, looking owlish. The man with the plan; he knows what to do about all these outland scum, these refugee hordes and this inhuman vermin."
