Cold Steel and Secrets Part 1 (neverwinter)

by Rosemary Jones

  Cold Steel and Secrets Part 1

  ( Neverwinter )

  Rosemary Jones

  Rosemary Jones

  Cold Steel and Secrets Part 1

  There is nothing more necessary than good spies to frustrate a designing enemy, and nothing more difficult to obtain and to control as you wish.

  — Dhafiyand of Neverwinter

  1478 DR

  The open grave gaped at the side of the road. Rucas Sarfael drew rein and dismounted. The dirt looked recently disturbed.

  His gelding shivered and stamped, but its war training held and the bay stood steady as he cast along the road for signs of the undead.

  In the pale pre-dawn light, Sarfael saw fresh tracks leading off the road and down toward the river. He remounted. Drawing Mavreen’s sword, he set his horse to follow, all the urgency of Dhafiyand’s recent summons forgotten as he hunted along the trail.

  By the second night of his three days of hard riding from Waterdeep, he had started hearing tales about the newly awakened dead. All the stories and the storytellers came from Neverwinter. And the storytellers drank their ale quickly, bolted their food faster, and then counseled him not to make the journey to that cursed city. The advice he ignored, having business there, but he listened closely to their mutterings about the ambulatory dead and questioned them as much as he dared about what they’d seen and where.

  Sarfael found the fledgling revenant shambling along the weed-choked bank. Like all wise animals, his horse shied nervously away from the undead creature, the smell alone driving it back. But Sarfael forced it forward.

  The revenant turned and clawed at the horse and rider, a howl rising from its rotting mouth. The stench of the grave rolled off it in nauseating waves. The bay sidestepped with precision, commanded by its rider’s steady hands on the reins. Screaming undead needed to attack in packs of twenty or more to make Sarfael sweat. Even then, he only looked for a way to escape and come back another day to burn them out of their nest.

  One lone corpse did not frighten him. When he looked into its face, he saw only the face of a stranger. He had never known the man raised untimely from his grave.

  “Good night, stranger,” Sarfael said. He leaned forward in his saddle. With one slashing downward stroke of Mavreen’s sharp blade, he sent its head tumbling into the river. The body collapsed.

  Morning birds burst into song before Sarfael finished reburying the headless body in its grave. He thought briefly about abandoning it there by the side of the road. With the head well on its way to the sea, it probably would not rise again. But somebody had cared enough to level the ground over the dead man the first time, and he would not like for them to find a father, a brother, or a lover missing from his grave. He knew too well the pain that such a sight could bring, having tracked her corpse from the grave to their final confrontation in that crumbling little temple.

  So he sweated in the chill dawn air, using his bare hands to shovel piles of dirt over a stinking corpse. Finally, he pulled himself onto the gelding, which pawed and bucked at his stench.

  With a sigh, Sarfael surveyed the damage to his best cloak and boots. His grave grubbing left him muddy to the knees and probably in no fit condition for an audience with Neverwinter’s great spymaster. Still he couldn’t have left the corpse to rot in the open air.

  “Because you’re a fool,” Mavreen whispered in his head.

  Sarfael grinned at the memory of her scolding voice, just as he had once grinned and winked at her when she rode at his side, pointing out the flaws in his madcap plans. “Ah, no, my darling,” he said. “A sentimental man, that’s me.”

  Then he clapped his heels to the gelding’s sides. Dhafiyand wanted him in Neverwinter and he had tarried long enough upon the road.

  The horse cantered out of the marshy little valley. Sarfael rode with Mavreen’s sword still out, an altogether precarious position, as she would have delighted in telling him. But he would not sheathe the blade before he cleaned it. Until then, he rode with the naked sword gripped in his hand, his face set toward Neverwinter, and his thoughts, as always, entangled in the past.

  Rucas Sarfael waited patiently in the antechamber for Dhafiyand’s summons. After the long ride from Waterdeep, he welcomed a moment to stand before the fire burning in the grate and let his boots steam dry. Little clots of grave dirt dropped from his cloak onto Dhafiyand’s finely woven carpet.

  While he waited, Sarfael slid Mavreen’s sword out of his scabbard and sighted down the blade. It shone brightly in the firelight. Satisfied that the blade was immaculate after his hasty cleaning in Dhafiyand’s stables, he sheathed it again.

  One of the spymaster’s black-clad servants slithered into the room. “He will see you now.”

  Sarfael followed the man to the chamber where Dhafiyand carried out the business of secrets for Lord Neverember.

  The spymaster sat at the long wooden table littered with reports, accounts, charts, maps, and piles of books. When Sarfael entered, Dhafiyand shot one quick look at him and nodded to the servant to leave the room.

  “You’re late,” complained the old man as he shuffled through his papers. “I expected you days ago.”

  “I came by horse, not by sea,” answered Sarfael, shifting the sword on his hip so he could settle into the deep wooden chair facing Dhafiyand. “And I came as quickly as I could without killing my nag.”

  Dhafiyand looked up from his reports at that. “Why not take a ship?”

  “The ports are watched, in Waterdeep and here, by too many eyes. I thought you would want my comings and goings unremarked.”

  “Most of those eyes owe loyalty to me,” Dhafiyand replied, “and I needed you here most urgently.”

  “Forty days ago, you needed me most urgently in Waterdeep. You are lucky the business there took so little time and I did not have to leave it undone.”

  “So there is no more gold for the Sons of Alagondar?”

  “Not from that merchant. No matter his birth in Neverwinter, he values his business in Waterdeep too much these days. And some cur, or so he called me when last we met, let too many of his trade secrets slip to his rivals. It will take him a long time to recover his wealth. What he has left, he needs at home, not funding rebellions abroad.”

  “Satisfactory,” murmured Dhafiyand. “And you think he will indeed stop his meddling in others’ plans?”

  “I left a fair amount of your coin scattered around. A maid with a keen eye and good penmanship will send copies of his correspondence every tenday. For a rich man, he pays his staff poorly and they know it.”

  The faintest hint of a smile crossed the old man’s face. He loved information-the world’s gossip, as he called it. No doubt the merchant’s letters would join a hundred such in some neatly labeled box. They might never be read or they might be used to trip up another schemer or capture another pretender to Neverwinter’s throne. It mattered very little to Sarfael. He’d done the task requested. “Do you have more interesting work, such as tracking those rumors of Thayan interests in the city?” Sarfael asked. “I found more than one grave open on the ride here.”

  “Wild animals, perhaps,” Dhafiyand shrugged. “Ghost stories, to frighten children.”

  “Neither ghost stories nor wild animals cause the dead to walk. I dispatched one corpse into the river this morning,” Sarfael told him.

  The spymaster frowned. “A leftover from the unpleasantness of the past.”

  “Hardly. This body was fresh. The Red Wizards have returned. I know it.”

  Dhafiyand tapped one thin finger on the table. “Your obsession with the undead will be your ruination. Rumors of Thay and Red Wizards are sim
ply that. Rumors. Whispers on the wind.”

  Sarfael stifled his protests. Years of verbal dueling with the old man taught him that once Dhafiyand was set upon a course, it took careful prodding and poking to turn him toward Sarfael’s own interests.

  “Look to the real threat: these so-called Sons of Alagondar and their youngest adherents, the restless ones who gnash their teeth at authority and take that for their name,” Dhafiyand said. “If these Nashers go unchecked, Lord Neverember’s plans crumble and our fortunes with him. I need sharp-toothed hounds to set upon their trail and pull them down, not foolish men wanting to hunt animated corpses in back alleys.”

  “You were glad enough to find me in that alley that day,” Sarfael pointed out. The old man often acted as if he owned him, but Sarfael considered himself a free man, able to come and go as he pleased. Right now, it pleased him to be in Neverwinter and it pleased him even more that Dhafiyand was willing to pay him to be there.

  “You have your uses,” said Dhafiyand, “when you keep your mind upon the task.” He reached out one long, ink-stained hand and shuffled through a stack of papers, pulling out a small scroll and regarding it with a frown.

  From where he sat, Sarfael thought it looked like a map of Neverwinter’s defensives, the division of the city into its unsafe, but often patrolled, precincts and its truly dangerous neighborhoods. It was no Luskan, but then Luskan’s dangers were primarily living creatures, not all human but mostly so. Neverwinter’s recent cataclysms were tinged with foul magic and even, some muttered, divine meddling. Sarfael rather doubted that the gods cared much for Neverwinter, but he truly believed that the city attracted more than its fair share of undead and their creators. As long as Mavreen’s sword hung at his hip, he would use it on such creatures.

  Sarfael stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles and letting his chin slump down to his chest. Today, he might be Dhafiyand’s hunting dog, but it never paid to let the old man think that he could snap his fingers and command him upon the instant. “Do you have work for me or not?” he said.

  The spymaster merely gave a grunt and selected another scroll.

  Sarfael considered, as he had many times in the past, whether the coin he was paid was worth the aggravation of waiting upon the old man’s torturous plotting and planning, his neverending capacity for contemplation before he acted. Typical of him to fuss over Sarfael’s delay and then not speak out-it was all part of his tricks and Sarfael felt the old resentment rise up. Once he had been a masterless man, and quite content to be so. Now Neverwinter’s spymaster moved him to and fro like a piece in some elaborate game.

  Yet-and there was always that “yet” resounding in Sarfael’s mind-Dhafiyand of Neverwinter collected every whisper breathed in the streets, knew every tale tracking through the taverns, and kept stacks of secrets in the papers rustling beneath those long ink-stained fingers. If ever a man could lead Sarfael to the lair of the Red Wizards operating in Neverwinter, it would be Dhafiyand. In the end, he would come to see them as much a threat to Neverwinter’s peace as the Sons of Alagondar. And Sarfael would be ready to help him burn them out of Neverwinter and chase them all the way back to Thay if he had to. He might not have been able to save Mavreen, but he could make sure that he never again saw a friend’s body rise from a grave.

  So Sarfael waited, listening to the fire crackle in the grate. Late in the season, and Dhafiyand still had fires going in every room of his house, a small luxury in a poor city, but a telling one. Letting his gaze slide around the room, Sarfael noted the exits as he always did, but also the silver candlesticks, a painted miniature framed in silver upon the old man’s table, the fine porcelain bowl filled with dried herbs and blossoms to scent the air, and the woolen tapestries draped across the walls to block drafts.

  Dhafiyand picked up a pen, dipped the end in a crystal inkpot, and then made a brief note in the margin of one page. Only then did he look up at Sarfael.

  “What do you know of bladedancing?” he said.

  “A fancy name for those who like to fight with the tip as well as the edge of the sword while following set figures with the hands, wrists, arms, and so on,” Sarfael responded. “Although the definition varies by city and by teacher. Some believe that the flourishing of the blade and the posturing prior to the engagement leads to a fairer fight. Myself, I prefer the deft strike and the dead opponent over fine form or fairness.”

  “But you could pretend an interest and skill in the art of the duel?”

  “I thought dueling was outlawed in Neverwinter, by order of our most gracious General Sabine?”

  “On the streets and in the taverns, yes. But there is a certain gathering place, a school for the elegant arts of fighting, as its mistress calls it. There, they engage in practice bouts, seeking to dissect and study the various styles practiced by blademasters along the coast. Also, the lady in charge, one Elyne Tschavarz, assures me that dueling is not allowed. Simply the teaching of various methods to improve the stance, strength, and grace of her students.”

  Sarfael fingered the blackhorned hilt of Mavreen’s sword. “And do you not find her students graceful and gracious?”

  “I find them to be a troublesome nest of fledgling rebels, most likely Nashers,” snapped Dhafiyand with more heat than Sarfael had ever heard from the old man. “However, a great many have ties to the old nobility of Neverwinter and Elyne Tschavarz herself has family in Waterdeep as well, family known to Lord Neverember.”

  “Ah,” said Sarfael. “And our great lord has met her.”

  “In his last visit, he remarked upon her charm and called her ‘cousin’ at a dinner.”

  “Ah,” said Sarfael again. Dhafiyand would not like to act openly against one who had attracted his lord’s flirtatious attention, especially one with noble ties to other powerful families in both Neverwinter and Waterdeep.

  Dhafiyand pursed his lips and nodded at Sarfael’s unspoken assessment of the situation. So many years of plotting together often left them without the need for words. “This Elyne plays the game of fealty to Neverember well and can bend her head when she needs to. But look close and see how she is glancing all around while she does it. A pretty ruffian, I name her, and dangerous.”

  Sarfael raised his own head and looked his master straight in the eye. “And wily enough to escape your nets?”

  “A delicate approach is dictated. Every attempt to infiltrate her school has proved futile,” Dhafiyand went on. “I have had my best sent back to me on stretchers-each with a politely worded note from the lady decrying the carelessness of her students and their eagerness to try the untested with such thrusts and counterattacks as they have been studying!”

  “And you want to send me there to have my skin pricked and my blood upon their points? Very kind of you.”

  “I expect you to show more skill than the dolts now recovering upstairs,” grumbled Dhafiyand. “And cost me less in healer fees.”

  “And if I do find the lady teaches rebellion along with thrust and counterthrust, then what do I do?”

  “Learn their plans and confound them before they become troublesome. Lord Neverember returns to Neverwinter soon, and I would not have his visit disturbed by such rabble as these so-called Nashers.”

  “Last I saw the great lord, he was dancing measures in Waterdeep and seemed content enough there.”

  “He holds court where he must, and soon it must be here,” Dhafiyand said. “He means to announce new plans for the rebuilding of the city.”

  Sarfael shrugged. No matter what dreams were entertained by Lord Neverember or the rival remnants of Neverwinter’s nobility, the city could never regain its fabled past. The plagues that had decimated its population and the natural disasters that had toppled its grand houses meant it would never again command the Sword Coast as once it had.

  “Is this Elyne one of the leaders of the Nashers?” Sarfael asked.

  “Well regarded, perhaps, and trusted with certain plans, but the true leaders meet elsewhere. Still
, she could well advance within their ranks. I deem it best to nip that ambition before it blooms. Or prune it in such a way that it serves our interests and not theirs.”

  “Then I go and cross my humble sword with the lady. I trust you will have hot water and clean bandages waiting should I not succeed.”

  Dhafiyand scowled at him. “Better I should have a horse and carriage waiting for us both. Lord Neverember dislikes constant failure and the continued growth of the Nasher’s ranks must rankle.”

  Sarfael permitted himself a wide grin at the spymaster’s tirade. “The only one rankled is yourself. As you said, our Open Lord of Waterdeep finds the lady charming. Further, he would only notice a rebellion if it took place directly under his nose. That is why he pays you and the excellent general to keep order in Neverwinter: she in the open streets and you in its shadows.”

  “Go on. Flattery will not increase your fee. And, before you make your bow to Elyne Tschavarz, clean those boots. The lady will be more impressed.”

  Sarfael cocked a leg and examined his boots. Trust the old man to notice everything while pretending to pay attention only to his papers.

  “They are a trifle filthy,” he said.

  “Mud to the knee. You look as if you have been grave robbing yourself.”

  “No, just grave digging. Or reburying, if you prefer.”

  Dhafiyand snorted, a surprisingly inelegant sound from the spymaster. “I will expect your first report within three days.”

  Sarfael bowed himself out of the door with a flourish, but Dhafiyand’s head was bent over his documents and he paid him no heed.

  The school, if it could truly be called such, was located in a warehouse near the docks. A sharp yeasty smell proclaimed its past affiliation with the abandoned brewery next door.

  Vats were shoved against the walls, some painted with targets or wreathed in straw bundles, and many scarred with blows from throwing axes and broadswords. Racks of weapons, primarily swords of all sizes and types, were scattered around. Sarfael wondered that Dhafiyand would allow so many to rest in the hands of suspected rebels, but a closer glance at the blades showed them to be blunted, nicked, and, in general, of poor quality. Such swords would quickly shatter against Tarnian shields and armor, and the mercenaries certainly carried better blades for their patrols of Neverwinter.