by Victor Milán
Hardisty went to his chair and sat. "War's an expensive game, Father. And here's the cursed thing about it: You can never know who will win."
He shrugged. "Zaranda Star's a seasoned commander, too, and we wont do well to underestimate her. Oh, if s not that I doubt we'd prevail against her and her rabble. But each a victory could prove costly. If we weaken ourselves too much in crushing her, we might find others stepping forward to challenge us-Ithmong, to name one."
Armenides nodded. "Very well, my son." He smiled benignly. "Fortunate it is that we have… other assets."
"You mean you have other assets."
"Indeed."
Then pray, make use of them. Oh, and when you go, could you send for the girl who was assisting me before, Duke Hembreon's daughter? With all due respect for your All-Friends, Father, I find most of them pretty dull fish, though helpful as can be. She, on the other hand, is quite vivacious."
"An air of gravity is concomitant with a certain stage in studying the mysteries of Ao All-Father," Armenides said. "Young Tatrina has not yet attained that stage; that's all."
"Well, thank goodness for that Good afternoon, Father."
When Armenides arrived at his quarters on the palace's uppermost floor, the columnar doorposts- which were magic things, and alive, a fact quite unknown to the palace's builders-did not voice their shrill, tormented warning of intrusion. Reassured, the cleric entered.
The magically warded chambers were redolent with steamy, welcoming smells of cooking. They were simply and sparsely furnished. On a shelf sat the brazen head. Its eyes and mouth abruptly lit with yellow fire.
"Report! Report!" it demanded in a voice Zaranda Star would have recognized, though not as coming from it. It was a whisper, dry as wind over long-dead leaves.
"There's little enough to report," Armenides said. "I urged him to get tough with the council about recognizing him as lord of the city. He seems of a mind to. Beyond that, it's business as usual."
"Not enough! He is weak."
"He is weak in ways that serve us. Likewise is he mighty in rationalization."
"He must become king soon. Only then can the transformation take place."
"I assure you no one is more eager to see Baron Hardisty made king than Baron Hardisty."
"And the girl? What of the girl? Why do you not bring her to me?"
"Sweet Tatrina? She's more useful as she is, another golden cord binding him to me. He's quite infatuated with her."
"All the more reason to make sure of her."
"Come, now, we've been over this before. She can scarce beguile him if she starts acting like a zombie. And she's eager enough to do anything I ask, not that I've requested anything too controversial." He chuckled. "It's for the love of Ao, after all."
"You had best be right."
"I am. Now: attend. Trouble not the sleep of Zazesspur tonight. I have a message I need sent over some distance. It will take concentration, even for you."
"Do not command me! I command! Do not dare command me!"
"Forgive me, О mighty L'yafv-Afvonn, I beseech thee. I abase myself, I grovel, I truckle, I'm lower than dirt. Now will you please just do it?"
"What do you want?"
The cleric explained briefly. When he finished, the fire went out of the head's eyes and mouth. Both closed.
After a moment the bronze eyelids opened. "You can't imagine how vexing that is," the head said in its customary voice, "serving as mouthpiece for that thing in the cellar."
"I don't care to try," the priest said.
"Why don't you just listen to me? I can reveal unto you secrets-awful, indescribable secrets. All I ask-"
Armenides silenced it with a hand wave. "Little that is awful and indescribable," he said, "is secret from me."
So saying, he passed on into his innermost room. This was occupied by a fire pit, over which bubbled a great black iron caldron. From a hook set in the ceiling he took a large ladle and stirred the contents, infant limbs and organs aboil in spices. It was time for lunch.
In the waters of the river Ith, the stars were tiny streaming pennons. "I dream about flying a lot," Chenowyn said as they walked along the red-brick river path.
The night air was charged with the scents of lilac and honeysuckle. The river, which sprang with considerable violence out of the Snowflake Mountains, had matured considerably by the time it reached Ithmong; it was broader about the middle, but had replaced frantic force with deliberate power. It chuckled to itself, complacent over what it had become, and slapped the stones that reinforced the banks. Zaranda turned her face so the girl couldn't see her grimace. She, too, had dreamt last night, but not of flying. It was as if she heard that whisper again, the hated sibilance that had made her nights in Zazesspur so hideous.
She sought refuge in a different subject: "If you keep applying yourself as you've been-and also get lucky, since I don't know any such spells-you just might someday get to fly."
Chen shook her head. "Not like that, by magic. I feel as if I have wings. I spread them and drive myself into the sky like a bird. But I'm not a bird. I'm something different. But I'm still me, and it feels… right." She noticed that she and Zaranda had fallen out of step, skipped to synchronize herself with the older woman. Zaranda frowned. Chen wasn't the only person she knew who was obsessive about staying in step with whomever she was strolling with. Her concern went beyond that.
From an urban feral child-ragged, gaunt, and filthy-Chenowyn had grown into a healthy, lovely young woman. She had put on an amazing growth spurt in the near-year since Zaranda first found her in that Zazesspurian alley, becoming more than a hand taller. Which should be small surprise, Zaranda re-fleeted; Chen ate like a half-starved owlbear.
She now traded banter freely with Goldie, though the mare admitted privately to spotting the girl points in order to encourage her. Goldie had also taught her to ride. Otherwise, Chen was still pretty oblivious to those people who did not actively engage her interest: Still-hawk, Shield, the boys-and men-who increasingly sought to catch her dark maroon eye. However, if still not a diplomat, Chen had learned at least a modicum of manners, and while Zaranda herself had little use for altruism, she had guided the girl to a point where she was no longer self-absorbed to the point of being a men-ace to navigation.
Chen had also begun to take some trouble with herself. She kept herself scrupulously clean now without Zaranda having to remind her. And she seemed to have gotten past believing anything she could wrap or hang around her was suitable garb.
Tonight, for example, she was quite handsomely turned out, in white linen blouse with deerskin lacings up the front. Just like the one Zaranda wore. She had on form-fitting dark blue breeches and soft boots with fringed, downturned tops. Just like Zaranda's. Her heavy hair swept out behind her head like a dark red comet tail, confined by a silver fillet… just as Zaranda's straighter dark hair was.
Clearly, a problem existed.
Chen pointed heavenward, where the few lazy-drifting slate clouds weren't bothering to obscure many stars. "What's that group of stars there called? Like an hourglass, sort of, with three bright stars across the middle?"
"Kind of a lopsided hourglass-but as it happens, that's what they call it down here in the Empires of the Sands. In the north it's the Huntsman, to the Tuigan the Horse-Bowman."
Chen gave her a skeptical look. "That's about the tenth constellation you've told me the Tuigan have named after something to do with horses," she said in that very prim way she had when she thought she was being made fun of.
Zaranda laughed and hugged her. There was a time when such a suspicion would have brought on a concentration of uncontrolled dweomer to lift the hairs at Zaranda's nape. Sometimes she dared hope she might actually civilize the girl.
"Honey," she said, "to the Tuigan, everything has to do with horses. Most of their constellations are named for them, and those that aren't have names from the 'hunt or war: the Hare, the Falcon, the Yataghan. But mostly, it's horses, horses, hor
ses. Did you know that one major tribal group has an epic poem a quarter of a million lines long about a hero whose horse is smarter than he is?"
Chen's underlip jutted, most fetchingly. Zaranda felt the faint tingle of power in the air around them. "Now you're teasing me!"
"No. Really I'm not. The Tuigan have some strange and wild ways-wonderful ways, I can see now that they're out of our hair. They're very different from us." "Oh." Interest fell like a veil from the girl's face. When talk turned to people, she quickly grew bored. In-stead she pointed again to the sky. "How about that star away up there, that big red one?" Zaranda smiled. Was the girl genuinely interested, or merely trying to emulate her in yet another way? But the air was warm and sweet, the stars seductive in their brilliance. Chen could not be called a sweet child, yet she did lack malice. Her mind was quick and keen, and now that the soot had been rubbed away from the outside of her, her spirit shone clear and bright as any star. In her way she adored Zaranda, and Zaranda, in her way, loved her.
So they walked and talked beside the wide, complacent river, and left unpleasant necessities to the province of a different day.
Through lengthening shadows Zaranda walked back to the Ith-Side Inn with long-legged strides. Nothing had been decided in the day's negotiations with the town council-but, of course, nothing was intended to be. That was the way of negotiations, that they dragged on, and while that fact was little to Zaranda's taste, it was nonetheless a fact, and she could as readily draw the moon down from the sky as alter it. Striding the brick walkway that ran alongside the river and was flanked by weeping willows, she was not displeased with the talk's progress, such as it was.
The Ithmong council would come around to her way of thinking, she was confident. Right now they had trouble seeing past the short-term pain of losing the income tolls brought. However, they and all Ithmong stood to gain from increasing trade-had already profited from the new commerce Star Protective Services had helped set flowing. Cutting Ernest Gallowglass's tolls for the Ithal Bridge and river passage would serve the economy of Tethyr like a healing spell cast on a wounded warrior.
Of course, the town council would not be unique in the history of Faerun if they attempted to have it all- tariffs and expanded trade-through a little well-timed treachery. Zaranda seemed to invite such a ploy by leaving most of her retinue, including senior partners, camped outside the city.
She was not quite so ingenuous. The two hundred Star Protective employees without the walls were recruited from the very best trainees who had passed through the program-smart, brave, and idealistic, devoted to Zaranda Star and to Shield of Innocence, who served as captain in Zaranda's absence. While they were too few to storm the walls if the council got up to mischief, they were more than capable of rousing the countryside-where Gallowglass's legacy ran to abiding distrust for all who dwelt behind Ithmong's high stone walls-and shutting off trade. After all, grain and livestock didn't have to be gathered inside the city before being shipped to the rest of Tethyr.
Zaranda began to whistle. She thought the town council got the point.
Life wore a far more cheerful face than when she had fled Zazesspur. Star Protective Services had extended operations across much of Tethyr. Zaranda drew sufficient salary to meet payments on her county in the east. She was herself an employee now, having quit as lender in a dispute last fall over what direction the company should take. To get her back, the others had been compelled to offer a contract making explicit her powers and duties as chief executive. The possibility had existed that they would not so offer. But she had found attempting to be everything to everybody increasingly intolerable. Had they made no effort to win her back, she would have mounted Goldie-with Chenowyn behind her, if the girl still cared to be her apprentice-and ridden away. She loved Morninggold, but if she had to, she could put it behind.her and start again anew. She had done as much before. Of her comrades, Stillhawk remained mistrustful of Shield, though he was with him now, outside the urban confinement he so hated. After Zaranda walked and was hired back, Balmeric had quit, declaring the enterprise far too strange for him. He let Zaranda buy him out and rode to Myratma, and there, he said, he would take ship for Waterdeep, where a man could still find straightforward sword-swinging employment.
Chenowyn remained with Zaranda, of course. And Farlorn… Farlorn was where he happened to be at any given moment. He was like a cat, the beautiful half-elf bard. What she expected of him, even what she wanted of him, Zaranda could not have said.
The inn's courtyard was surrounded by an eight-foot wall topped with broken glass. Attack from the river was reckoned no major threat; Ithmong had always had a respectably sized and reasonably professional town guard, which Gallowglass's administration had only strengthened, and its riverine patrol kept careful watch for would-be marauders as a byproduct of enforcing the tolls. Thieves, however, were as intrinsic to urban Tethyrian life as houseflies, and found the river a convenient avenue, patrols notwithstanding.
Approaching the courtyard gate, Zaranda heard a familiar female voice crying, "Hah! Hah!" and the ring of steel on steel.
Frowning, she grabbed Crackletongue's scabbard to keep it from fouling her leg and broke into a run. Zazesspur's city council had issued several decrees officially deploring the activities of Star Protective Ser-vices, but had never quite mustered the presumption to try to outlaw it. Though the civic guard grew apace-with the aim, some said, of reuniting Tethyr by force-the council was currently preoccupied by a complicated gavotte preparatory to naming Baron Hardisty lord of the city. An attempt to arrest Zaranda and her lieu-tenants-or, less formally, assassinate them-was not outside possibility's realm, however.
She rounded the corner and stopped. Two figures faced each other, one slender and feminine, one scarcely less slim but taller and broader through the shoulders. Each wore quilted, heavily padded jerkins, leather gloves, and masks of wire mesh, and fought each other with capped rapiers. Stablehands lounged on the side-lines, uttering calls of encouragement.
As Zaranda appeared in the gateway, the fencers stopped and swept the masks from their heads. The master was Farlorn, his pupil, Chenowyn.
The girl's cheeks were flushed beneath her freckles. "Oh, Zaranda, it's so marvelous! He's teaching me-"
She saw Zaranda's expression. Her words faltered to a stop. "What do you think you're doing?" Zaranda asked quietly.
Chenowyn gazed down at her feet, which were kicking at a clump of matted straw. "Learning to fence."
Zaranda walked to her, touched her arm, guided her aside. The stablehands abruptly found business that wanted tending to. Farlorn stood with rapier tip grounded and protective mask under one arm, a faint supercilious smile on his face.
"Don't you understand," Zaranda asked in a quiet but pressing voice, "that you haven't time for that? If you want to be a mage, you've got to work at it full-time."
A full underlip trembled, then, "You didn't have to!
You're a mage and a warrior, both! I just want to be tike you."
"Chen, dear, you don't understand. I did have to devote myself to studying magic, body and soul. It didn't come easy for me-it doesn't come easy to anyone who really wants to be good at it. I didn't become a warrior until I had studied magic for many years-and only after I'd put that study aside for good and all." Chenowyn sniffled, dabbed at an eye with her thumb, and looked away. "But that's not the real problem," Zaranda said. "The real problem is… you've got to stop trying to be me. Because you can't be me, you cannot be more than an imitation me, and a poor one at that-however hard you try. Whereas the Chen I know is strong and vibrant and alive, an altogether ad-mirable girl-and you do a marvelous job of being her." She touched Chen's cheek. The girl pulled away. "You're just jealous because Farlorn is spending so much time with me!" she cried through tears. She ran off toward the stables.
Zaranda sighed and shook her head. And how much truth is there in that? she wondered. A commotion came from inside the stalls. Chen burst forth, clinging tike a monke
y to the back of a handsome chestnut gelding. She rode right out of the yard and away up the brick street, grooms shouting angrily after her. "I'll bring her back," Farlorn called. He loped grace-fully into the stable, plucking the cap from his rapier and sheathing it. Zaranda teetered on the edge of fol-lowing him.
The bard emerged on his dappled gray mare. He waved jauntily to Zaranda and rode in pursuit of her errant apprentice.
No, Zaranda thought. It won't help if I go. Instead she went inside the stable on feet that had turned to lead, to greet Goldie before taking herself to her chamber.
As Zaranda arrived, the serving maid was leaving, having just lit the lanterns. Zaranda smiled mechaniccally at her, went into her chamber, pulled off her boots, and sat down at a table by the window.
The shutters were open, admitting evening smells of water and spring flowers and pavement slowly giving up the day's heat. The lights were coming on all over Ithmong, and out on the river lanterns bobbed from barge prows like the lures of giant anglerfish.
The town council had sent wine, sprays of flowers, and baskets of preserved fruit-cheap enough gestures of goodwill. And indeed Zaranda appreciated them, though she wasn't about to roll over on their account. She took up a wedge of orange preserved in ginger, bit into it, and noticed something new: a purple glass flask with stout body and long, slim neck.
Zaranda picked it up and turned it over in her hands, impressed. This was no local product like the rather insipid wine-Ithmong produced several serviceable beers, but their vineyards couldn't hold a candle to Zazesspur's. This was Tintoram's Select, a blackberry brandy made by the halflings of the Purple Hills of the coast between Zazesspur and Myratma, famed throughout Faerun for its flavor and potency. A notable gift, even for a town councilor who had been fattening on tolls the last few years.
She broke the lead seal and uncorked the flask. The aroma that flowed out was sweet and heady as first love and nourishing as a meal. She poured some-just a splash-into a tumbler. It was a purple so dark it was almost black. She passed it beneath her nose, allowing its richness to permeate her being, and sipped. It burned, and soothed, and burst like a bomb within her.
