"So to business," Fayne said. "Who shall I ruin this time? Another lordling, perhaps? You'll read about the Roaringhorn girl on the morrow." She smiled at the memory.
He nodded. "Someone more important." Plucking a pink quill from nowhere-it might have come from his sleeve or from the air-he wrote three words, two short, one longer, on a scrap of parchment, without benefit of ink. This he pushed across the table to her.
"Who-?" Fayne furrowed her brow in thought. Then her eyes widened. "You don't mean it." Her hands trembled in her excitement.
He straightened his gloves. "You've prepared for this for some time, yes?"
"Decades," she said. "Suppose that doesn't mean much to you. Just a wink of an eye."
He smiled and handed her a scroll bound with a burgundy leather thong and his seal, a silver shooting star surrounded by a ring of tiny flames.
"I'll do it." She stuffed the instructions into her bodice. "Besha's tits, I'd do it for free."
He put a hand up, and she froze as though he'd smitten her with a binding spell. "Have a care upon which goddess's bosom you swear, dear one," he said. "And mind: as much as you've looked forward to this, take care." He slid his fingers along her cheek. "Do not grow careless."
She smiled. "You know me-I am the picture of care."
He didn't look convinced. "I am very familiar with hatred, my little witch," he said. "And I know well the damage it can cause. Do not let it control you."
She closed her eyes and laughed. "I haven't spent half a century sculpting myself to fail now. Don't-" She looked up, but he was gone as though he had never been there.
Fayne sniffed. His abrupt comings and leavetakings had startled her in her youth, but then she'd started to wonder how to do it herself. She hadn't quite mastered that power-yet.
She put her small belt satchel on the table and waved for ale. The serving woman nodded and held up three fingers. Fayne shrugged, took out a small mirror, a quill and ink, and a bit of parchment, and began writing.
When next Fayne looked up, the woman was standing over her, hands folded in front of her apron. "Aye, lady?"
She was a pretty thing, the serving Iass^ with hair that fell in ruby ringlets to her midback. Fayne liked her looks-had worn such herself, once upon a tenday.
"Take this"-Fayne pressed the note into the girl's fingers, along with a disk of polished platinum-"and a bottle of your best amber brandy to yon beardless gentle."
The young woman looked where Fayne pointed and blanched. "You don't mean… Arrath Vir, aye? Oh, lady… unwise, methinks."
"What?" Fayne flicked blonde hair out of her eyes. "He's not one for the ladies?"
The serving lass shook her head, then slid into the booth opposite her. " 'Tis said he's a mystic or some such, heartless and cruel. Hails from a temple of some sort of… emptiness? Void? Sommat the like. Only"-she leaned closer to speak softer-"only he tired of his brethren, killed 'em all, and now he sells his sword for coin. He'd slit your granddam's throat for a copper nib. Him, or one of the Downshadow folk what worship the ground he treads."
"Mmm," Fayne said. "Sounds perfect." She could feel her heart in her throat and a heat in her belly. "I wonder at his skill with his blade-perhaps I'll sample it myself."
The woman didn't look convinced. " 'Ware, goodlady-his in't the sort you ought toy with. And his taste-" She looked down at Fayne's clothes and bit her lip.
Fayne understood. Beneath her greatcoat, she wore the immodest working clothes-low-cut, high-slit-one might expect of a Dock Ward dancer. The shirt was frilly, the vest cheap, and the skirt revealed more than it hid: the wares of a lady of negotiable virtue at best. In truth, the crass garb did ride Fayne's rather fine curves and lines very well-at least, in the body she'd made for herself with her flesh-shaping ritual.
She'd just come from scandalizing one Sievers Stormonr in a Dock tavern, luring him into just the sort of irresponsible play that would cast a pall on his upward-bound older brother, Larr Stormont. Not that she had any idea why-she trusted her patron to keep his own counsel regarding the cut-and-thrust of the nobility (and of those who yearned to join them, like Stormont). This, of course, hadn't stopped her from spending a night in the elder Stormont's bed and acquiring evidence that led her to believe he was a Masked Lord.
Which, of course, only helped in writing her next tale for the
Minstrel-one of Waterdeep's most caustic, sarcastic, and thus widely read broadsheets. A lass has to earn a living, she thought, and if she did it by ruining the wealthy and self-important, then so be it!
The serving woman was staring at her, Fayne realized. For a reply, and yet, something more…
"I like your hair." Fayne leaned across the table and fingered the lass's red curls. Then, impulsively, she kissed the woman on the lips. Then: "Go to, go to! Enough eyes on my chest."
Blushing fiercely, stammering some kind of reply, the serving lass hurried off.
Fayne put the quill and ink away and looked in the silver mirror. She pulled from her belt a thin wand of bone and waved it across her forehead. Her blonde hair shifted into a strawberry red, then a vivid scarlet.
There. Just like the servant's. Only-there. Fayne's hair shortened until it just kissed the tips of her shoulders. Perfect.
Still looking in the mirror, she pressed the wand to her cheek. A scar crept onto her face: not causedhy the wand, but rather revealed by it. The wand peeled the magic back.
She remembered that day. A thumb to the right, and she wouldn't be sitting there at that moment.
"Oh yes, bitch," Fayne said. "I remember you-I remember you quite well."
THREE
Shadowbane ciept through a Downshadow passage, taking great care to attract no notice. He stole past natives as quietly as a ghost, leaving barely a footprint.
Huts and lean-tos crowded Undermountain's stale interior, packed into ancient chambers like the carcasses of freshly cleaned game in a butcher's window. The structures were built mostly of bones, harvested cave mushrooms, and scraps scavenged from above. The folk rarely stayed in one place long, skulking from chamber to chamber to avoid the underworld's inherent dangers. The knight in the gray cloak picked his way between the huts and barriers like a wraith.
Cook fires released greasy smoke into the air and coalesced at the ceiling. There, it escaped rhrough holes and cracks and dispersed into the night above. Visitors to Waterdeep often claimed that the streets smoked, but they did not know why.
Long ago, in the old world, heroes and monsters had struggled in death-dances in these very halls. Now life filled the place: folk too scarred or poor to live in the light above. The last century had seen an influx of warriors, sellswords, treasure seekers, and what many might deprecatingly call adventurers, all of them with more prowess than coin. Waterdeep required coin, so they lived in Downshadow, where the only requirement was survival.
Downshadow was far from healthy, and even farther from pleasant. As he slipped through a chamber the width of a dagger-toss, Shadowbane nudged against something wet and cold near the door, and he stepped quietly back. The corpse of a hobgoblin, its face and snout twisted in terror, sat at his feet, the marks of three dagger wounds livid in its naked chest. The knight stepped over the body and continued stalking through the tunnels, cowl pulled low.
Downshadow was a complex, interwoven system of warrens in passageways and chambers, only one of which held any kind of permanent encampment. The southernmost cavern of the complex, it had once been a breeding and warring ground for monsters, but the adventurers who moved in had cleared most of them out. The newcomers built shacks and shanty huts that huddled against walls or stalagmites until the place resembled a clump of city. Perhaps a thousand souls lived there-the population ever shifting as would-be heroes braved the lower halls of Undermountain, which still held hungry creatures that skittered and stalked.
Shadowbane paused to consider Downshadow "proper." The shanty town was an unpleasant reflection of what Waterdeep could become, were it sacked
and burned by a marauding army and rebuilt by bitter, impoverished survivors.
Once he gained the smoky interior of the great cavern, Shadowbane shifted his travel to the walls, rather than the floor, swinging between familiar handholds and stalactites. Downshadow was quiet this night-many of its inhabitants gone to the world above for the hours they thought their due. Climbing allowed him to survey the most dangerous part of the underground world from above-safer and largely unnoticed as he looked for trouble.
Trouble was why he had come-why he came every few nights.
The great cavern was the first area settled in Undermountain, and Downshadow s reach had expanded from there, gradually encroaching on the monsters year by year. Those who lived nearest the surface made some attempt at civilization, forming tribes built on mutual protection. Those who could make food from magic did so for the benefit of their tribes. Other food came from harvested mushrooms, slain monsters, thieves working above, or from trade with the blackhearted merchants who visited below.
The tents and lean-tos hosted exceptionally seedy taverns, dangerous food markets, and shops that traded equally in hand-crafted wares and stolen goods. These establishments sometimes disappeared at a heartbeat's notice. Some of the folk had become sufficiently organized to establish a fire patrol of spellcasters, though residents had to bribe them for protection.
As in Waterdeep above, trade ran the city, but barter in
Downshadow took the form of illicit services and stolen goods, rather than hard coin.
Most folk of Waterdeep had never seen Downshadow-they knew it mostly from hushed tales in taverns, and repeated those stories to frighten children into obedience. The Guard ventured down on occasion, but only at need and only in force. Guardsmen hated such assignments, preferring tasks like gate watch or midden duty. More than a few merchants made a killing in these halls-literally and figuratively. When surface folk spoke of "driving the thieves and swindlers underground," they weren't speaking metaphorically.
One of those thieves, Shadowbane meant to visit that night. Ellis Kolatch was his name, and in Downshadow he brought back clothes and jewels he'd sold on the surface a tenday before, then had stolen cheaply. He met with his hired thugs in an alcove not far from the lower half of the Knight 'n Shadow tavern.
"Threefold God," Shadowbane murmured, running his fingers over the hilt of his bastard sword. It bore an inscribed eye in the palm of a raised gauntlet. "Your will be done."
As though in answer, Shadowbane felt that same ancient weakness inside him-the numbness in his flesh that gave him power and stole life from him little by little.
He did not beg for strength, for he would not beg.
Never again.
"I think there's been some misunder-oof," Fayne said, then dropped to her knees in the wake of a punch to her stomach that cut off her last word.
The torchlight flickered, casting wavering shadows against the chamber wall.
"You do this to yourself," said Rath. "Simply give me the gold." He nodded, and the half-ore bruiser who'd put his knuckle prints on her stomach hit her again-with his foot.
Breath knocked out of her, Fayne went fully to the ground, curled like a babe. She cradled her midsection, struggled to breathe, and glared up at the handsome dwarf she'd come to meet, and whom-until two strangled breaths ago-she'd hoped to hire. Her mistake, she supposed, was to trust him to meet her alone in an isolated chamber of Downshadow.
He'd brought four men. One-a bowman-kept watch down the tunnel. A second, a lanky human with pasty white skin and yellow hair, stood impassively at Rath's side. The other two-a half-ore and a very ugly human who might have passed for a half-ore-had gone to work on her shortly after Rath demanded more coin than she claimed she'd promised. She called it a misunderstanding. He disagreed.
"Can we," Fayne panted, "can we talk about this… with words?"
Rath stopped them with a raised hand; Fayne could have kissed him. He stepped forward, and the grace with which he moved stunned her. He cupped her chin in two fingers, and her body went cold and rigid as though he pressed steel to her throat. Slowly, he raised her to her knees.
"Until I see the gold," Rath said, "fists and feet will have to suffice."
He stepped away, pulling his hand from her chin so fast she thought he might draw blood. The ugly man, whose arms were wider than Fayne's chest, punched her cheek and sent her into the wall. The punch disoriented her so that she didn't even feel herself hit the stone.
Beshaba, she thought, where do men learn to hit women like that?
Before she could ponder that deep and relevant question, a hand grasped her red hair and wrenched her head up, the better to slam it against the wall. The half-ore took his turn as well, kicking her stomach and sides. Stars danced across her vision, and Fayne finally felt the cold steel of a knife against her jaw.
"Getting personal, are we?" she murmured.
"Hold," Rath said, and the thugs did-as obedient as dogs. "Little girl, you must understand-I do not hurt you out of malice. This is merely business."
"Aye," she said, and she spat blood from her split lip. "I understand. And my reply is: Bane bugger you all."
Rath sighed and waved.
Crack.
Fayne didn't even know what they'd done to her. She felt staggering pain, and then she slumped against the wall again. Every part of her hurt.
"You're a pretty thing," said the thug. "Be a shame to peel your face off."
"I agree." Fayne looked right at him, as directly as she could with the dizzying stars in her eyes. "But where I'd grow a new one, I don't think you have that luxury, pimple pincher."
The thug snarled, reversed his blade, and brought the pommel down hard on top of her head. He shoved her to the floor.
Serves you right for antagonizing him, her inner monologue noted.
She made squishing sounds as she tried to rise. Dungeons were worse than gutters. Sludge-mostly dust, mud, and human waste- covered her hair and leathers.
Do business with scoundrels, her patron always said, expect to be dunked in shit.
"Big man," she murmured lazily. "Big arms, big knife… little blade, I'm guessing."
The thug's face went red. "This one's keepin' her mouth shut, boss," he said. Fayne knew that look in his eye-that of a man eager to prove a manhood sullied. Mostly by unsheathing it. "Bet I could make her squeal for you, if only-uhn!"
Fayne looked up, head swimming, and saw the ugly-faced thug slam into a puddle of filthy water three paces distant. Rath rose from where the man had been standing. The dwarf had thrown him that ht}
"Do not embarrass yourself," Rath said to him. The thug sat up, shook his head, and snarled. "You hrasting worm, I'll…"
And Rath leaped across the intervening distance and drove his fistMown across the man's face. Bone cracked, blood spattered the ground, and the thug curled into a quivering lump.
Fayne blinked. "That's… ooh."
Rath turned toward her, and his eyes gleamed in the torchlight without the slightest remorse. He might as well have stared at her with polished emeralds.
The half-ore, Fayne saw, was looking at him with fear in his eyes.
"Give me the coin you promised," Rath said. "Do not, and there will be consequences."
She couldn't help it. "Like punching me to death?"
Rath looked down at the thug, and Fayne saw his lip curl. "His crime was worse than yours and deserved greater punishment. You made a simple error of judgment. He exposed his own cowardice and weakness, which in turn dishonors me, his employer."
"So you won't just kill me," Fayne said. "No profit in that."
Rath shook his head.
"In that case…" She smiled dizzily. "Piss on the graves of your fathers, beardless dwarf."
With a sigh, Rath waved to the sickly pale man at his side, whose fingers were studded with rusty, iron claws like fingernails. Gauntlets, perhaps? The man stepped forward.
"Your wight is supposed to frighten me? I'm a grown woman,
dwarf."
"Hold," Rath said.
The sallow face glared at her.
"You've come to your senses, girl?" asked the dwarf.
"A few more blows and I just might." She coughed. "It's just working so well."
Rath waved, and the half-ore charged forward to kick her in the side.
"That was irony!" Fayne whined in vain.
The half-ore drew back his leg to do it again, but Rath held up a hand and spoke a word Fayne didn't understand. The hobnailed boot didn't meet her belly, so she decided it was her favorite word of the year.
"Rath?" said the half-ore.
"Our sentry approaches," replied the dwarf. "Silence." / "Thank the gods," said Fayne, "that more hitting would be accompanied by further cries of pain." Rath gestured to her. "Stifle it."
The half-ore kicked her in the stomach. The world blurred.
When her eyes worked again, a stick-thin man with a strung shorrbow in hand and a quiver of arrows at his hip appeared in the corridor that led to the larger cavern. His eyes flicked to his dead comrade, but wisely he held his tongue.
"Battle," he said. "Attacked a merchant, downed his guard-didn't kill 'em, though. Probably itchies in Downshadow, looking for coin to scavenge or deeds to do."
Itchie, Fayne recalled, was a term for a sellsword, and most of those brave-or stupid-enough to live in Downshadow were something of the sort. Poor, hungry, and angry. Itching for a fight.
"Who?" Rath asked.
"Kolatch," said the sentry. "Awaiting a trademeet, probably." That name swam around Fayne's head-sounded familiar. "The fat merchant hisself is coming this way, wild eyed. Babbling sommat like a shadow attacked him, or the like."
Fayne was about to speak but was spared the commensurate blow by the damnably late arrival of her common sense and the appearance of a figure in the tunnel: Kolatch. When he stumbled into their chamber, she knew him-the merchant from earlier that day. His eyes rolled and his hands shook. Even if he weren't so maddened, he wouldn't have recognized her from the shop-not with a different face and a different gender.
Not seeming to notice the corpse, Kolatch scurried toward Rath and cried, "Save me-the black knight-save me!"
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