by Ed Greenwood
“What will happen if you don’t attend?” Amarune asked softly.
“They’ll consider me a foe and treat me accordingly,” Arclath replied calmly. “See? Not much different from commoners, after all.”
Amarune shook her head and murmured, “You’ve no idea what common folk are really like, do you?”
Arclath frowned. “Lady,” he said sternly, “I have tried hard to stride through life with my eyes open, seeing past the masks most adopt to greet the wider world, and marking the details of many lives and trades and customs, the better to—”
“Oh, I did not say you have not tried to look beyond the lives and affairs of nobles, my lord,” Amarune told him earnestly. “It is one of the reasons why … why I love you. I—I—”
She threw her arms around him, drew him down into an embrace, and hissed, “What’re you going to do? If not this cabal, which one?”
“None of them,” Arclath snapped. “We have our own cabal—you, me, the Lady Storm, Mirt, and your great-grandfather. Plus the ghost of the Princess Alusair, perhaps, when we venture into the palace.”
“So, do we turn this coach and head for the inn where Lord Helderstone has taken rooms?”
“In the morning,” Arclath told her, his smile surfacing. “Tonight, Lady Rune, you are mine.”
“There’s been no sign of young Lord Stormserpent or his two flaming slayers for days now,” Elminster murmured. “I wonder who got to him?”
“You think he’s dead?” Storm asked, by way of reply.
That fair evening, he and Storm were strolling along a sweeping, lamplit street lined with noble mansions, neither of them showing Suzail their true selves.
Eccentric old Lady Darlethra Greatgaunt was known as a collector of curios, and an independent-minded walker and huntress. She was also known to always demand the protection of the wizards of war when she was in “godless, perilous, almost-as-bad-as-Westgate” Suzail. In the form of a lone mage as her constant escort. A handsome, young male wizard, of course.
Wizard of War Reldyk Applecrown was far from the most handsome mage about the palace, and was far from the most powerful. However, he was happily eager to perform the duty, which was more than most of his fellows had been.
It wasn’t that Lady Greatgaunt expected her escorts to set foot in her bedchamber—indeed, she would have been loudly appalled and offended at the slightest hint of such “disgustingly forward” behavior. It was just that she liked to walk. And walk and walk and walk. No matter how foul, crowded, dusty, or stormswept the streets of Suzail were when she started down them, she wanted to walk them all. Setting a steady pace that permitted no dawdling or shopping moments, yet never approached what might be termed “brisk.”
Wizards seldom tended to be walkers for the sake of walking, and very often discovered that the hard, hard cobbles of Suzail’s lanes and byways made their feet hurt. Soon, and a lot.
Wherefore, there was little competition for Greatgaunt escort duty, and Applecrown had spent a long, footsore day—and most of the preceding eight or nine days, too—exhaustively scouring Suzail for a cobble that Lady Greatgaunt hadn’t set elegant slipper upon, yet.
For her part, Storm had worn out three pairs of slippers, had frankly grown tired of nodding politely to each watch patrol, most of them so often that she knew every last Dragon and Crown mage by the informal, daily short versions of their names, and was quite bored enough to tear off her expensive gown, snatch the nearest merchant by the hand, and dance with him the length of whatever street they were on.
Lady Greatgaunt, of course, would not have approved of such antics.
Not that she was soon likely to know someone had borrowed much of her wardrobe and been enspelled into her exact likeness, being as she was lying abed in Mirt’s lodgings, deathly ill after some unknown noble rival—or one of several much younger Greatgaunt heirs, succumbing to an attack of inheritance impatience—had tried to poison her and almost had succeeded.
Yes, her counterfeit had walked even more energetically than the real Lady Greatgaunt, but she and El had really been spending most of the last tenday exhaustively scouring Suzail for traces of a blueflame item, by walking the streets and covertly casting little pulses of magical fire that should send back an echo if such an item was nearby.
If they’d fashioned the spell correctly, that is. Though after centuries of twisting the Weave to myriad uses, very few folk in all the realms were better suited to probing for unusual magics.
“Dead or fled,” El replied now, stumbling in weariness. “I’m about done, lass. Let’s get home. Not a trace of anything strong enough to be a blueflame item, down all these streets.”
He glanced at her eyes. Lady Greatgaunt looked as leathery and indomitable as ever, but Storm’s eyes would tell him what Storm felt like, underneath. She, after all, was the one who’d been anchoring his spells, steadying him constantly; she had to be far more tired than he was. “How are ye, lass?”
“Ready to get home,” she sighed, letting her exhaustion show for a moment. “Rub my feet, when we get back to Mirt? I hope he won’t be roaring drunk this time. His snoring drunk is bad enough.”
“Heh. Don’t ye prefer finding seven or eight warmskirts snoring along with him?”
Storm rolled her eyes. “I do not. Seeing their charms—even when they’re worn out and snoring, too—makes me feel all the older. I’ll grant that Mirt has the stamina of a fresh young stallion. I just wish he didn’t feel the need to prove it every second day or so! One of these nights he’s going to host the wrong lass, and she’ll slit his throat for him and take away everything he’s neglected to nail down.”
“Which is everything,” Elminster agreed. “Well, perhaps tonight will be different.”
It was.
Mirt was happily wrapped in the embraces of a willing playpretty when something that felt like his own weight in cold hard stone struck him on the back of his head and sent him down into darkness.
The coinlass beneath him was still drawing breath for a scream when she got a cloak tossed over her head, then received the same stone-to-head treatment.
Men in leather who were bristling with weapons suddenly flooded through Lord Helderstone’s rooms, two frowning and alertly peering hired wizards among them.
One of whom suddenly stiffened and snapped, “Someone—no, two people—climbing the stairs!”
“I’ll take care of it, Morl,” the other mage said. “Keep your scrying going. I want to make sure we get not just the two we can see, but anyone else, too.”
The blasting spell he hurled down the stairs then was far more powerful than it needed to be, but he had a fee to earn, and a surviving witness was a curse that could haunt you for the rest of your life in this city.
“You got them, Scarmar,” Morligul Downdagger announced with some satisfaction. “Smashed the man right down the stairs and back out of the building. The woman got tangled in the railings, but she’s down. Don’t see any lurkers yet.”
“Keep looking,” Scarmar snapped. Pulling out his paralyzing wand, he waved at six or seven armsmen to come with him.
From the head of the stairs he triggered the wand at the sprawled woman, then told the armsmen, “Get out there and find the man I blasted! I want him back in here fast!”
They raced past in a wild thunder of boots. Scarmar Heldeth followed more slowly with the rest of the armsmen, knowing Downdagger of Highmoon was guarding their rear; in Athkatla, where he came from, folks who rushed into unknown danger were usually soon known as “corpses.”
“Kind of old for a playpretty,” one of the armsmen lifting Storm’s frozen body commented. “Expensive gown, too.”
“Looks noble,” said another.
“They said he has a maid,” a third one put in, “so unless old noblewomen are suddenly hiring themselves out as coinlasses, this has to be her. She’s about the same age as him, right? This is Helderstone’s maid, probably dressed up for a night out.”
“They’re not fin
ding him,” Downdagger said suddenly, staring off into the distance.
“Stlarn,” Heldeth muttered. “I hate loose ends.”
Armsmen were coming back to the doors now. He could see by their faces that Downdagger was right.
He looked at his fellow mage, whose face wore the same uneasiness he was feeling.
“Let’s be gone from here,” he muttered.
Downdagger nodded, then snapped at the armsmen, “Leave the playpretty in the bed, but take Helderstone and his wench to the warehouse—and hurry!”
The armsmen hurried Mirt’s limp body down the stairs to where they’d laid the old woman in the gown, snatched her up, and rushed off into the night.
“We should be with them in case they meet with any watch patrols,” Downdagger muttered as Heldeth laid a staying hand on his arm. “Besides, the reek of yon dung wagon isn’t impressing me.”
He would have been surprised to know a scorched and angry Wizard of War Reldyk Applecrown was crouching in the fresh, wet nightsoil on the other side of the weathered boards of the dung wagon’s side, listening to their every word—and even more astonished to learn that Applecrown was really Elminster, the legendary dragonslaying and throne-toppling Chosen of Mystra.
As it happened, Elminster wasn’t interested in enlightening him. Yet.
“We have to decide what to say about the one who got away,” Heldeth snarled.
“Tell him we tarried for a moment because we knew he was hiding, found the fool, and blasted him to ashes,” Downdagger snapped. “What else?”
“You tell him,” Scarmar Heldeth snapped right back. “He only paid me for one night’s work—and now that I’ve tasted this work, I want to be well away from Suzail before he decides to rid the realms of those who could tell others too much of what he’s up to. Guard yourself accordingly.”
“Huh,” Downdagger sneered. “He dare not do that to me. If I die, half the spells that protect him from scrying and prying vanish with me—and his own swift death at the hands of the war wizards is certain.”
“Suit yourself,” Heldeth replied, rushing off. Two running steps later, he was suddenly surrounded by a winking cloud of sparks. A warding.
Downdagger smiled crookedly. Deep trust, indeed. Yon shielding could only be meant to thwart any spell he might hurl.
He hurled nothing but shook his head and murmured after Heldeth, “Idiot. You could have been rich.”
Then Downdagger glanced all around, saw no one watching, and set off in the direction the armsmen had gone. “Well, off to tell the good news.”
He looked back one last time before he turned a corner but never saw the befouled, squelching man who’d climbed quietly out of the far side of the dung wagon to skulk slimily after him.
He did smell something, but after all, a dung wagon was right there.
CHAPTER
THIRTY
MURDERING LORD HELDERSTONE
It had been years since he’d had a body that could really sprint, leap, and go like the wind for a fair while, and running hard seemed to keep some of the otherwise overpowering chamberpot stench down, so Elminster ran.
If he tried to follow Downdagger—an unscrupulous local mage-for-hire he’d seen in dockside taverns a time or two, back when he was busy being Elgorn Rhauligan—he had to admit that he’d only be able to sneak up on the man if Downdagger had almost entirely lost his sense of smell. Yet, if he ducked into a parallel alley and ran ahead of the mage, he would at least not be seen if the wizard looked back the way he’d come.
El sprinted until he was out of breath, then turned down a side street to come out ahead of Downdagger. Who was looking back, as he turned into a side street where there was a covered carriage yard.
The mage gave a low whistle, and five warriors in identical surcoats promptly melted out of the shadows amid the coaches and wagons to surround Downdagger. They all moved together, the mage strutting like a haughty noble, and the armsmen forming a ring around him and marching like any bodyguard.
They were heading for better streets, where mansions would be larger and walled, but just then were in a “high houses” neighborhood of the sort favored by wealthy merchants and nobles who weren’t rich enough to, say, buy a village upon a whim.
So, Elminster plunged into the nearest handy flowerbed—it belonged to Lord Relgadrar Loroun, as it happened—to have a good roll, and rid himself of some of the dung and cover himself with the scent of fresh-crushed flowers. At the end of the raised bed was a fountain, and he happily slid into its shallow surrounding pool to rinse himself off, then hurried after Downdagger’s procession.
Two streets later, the bodyguard dispersed at the doors of The Three Ravens, a nobles’ club Elminster knew. A small, quiet, stone drinking-house much favored for swift and private discussions, and currently the seat of power for the cabal of nobles led by Lord Dauntinghorn.
Morligul Downdagger strode inside as grandly as any highborn patriarch, and Elminster gave him two breaths to order a drink and get clear of the door before he followed.
As the door guards smoothly moved to block the path of this wet and bedraggled stranger, El murmured, “Urgent message for Lord Dauntinghorn,” and strode right on, the door guards expressionlessly stepping out of his way again.
Inside, the Ravens was quieter than usual, with many empty tables, but the closed curtains across the entrances to the private booths along the back wall told him every one of them was occupied.
Downdagger was just gliding up to one of those booth entrances—one of the few flanked by two impassive private bodyguards.
“Rorn, Brabras—well met,” the mage greeted the guards by name as he slipped between them and through the curtain.
Elminster promptly sat down at a table with his back to the booth and murmured a spell to eavesdrop.
It faded almost immediately, countered by a stronger ward, but not before El heard a man’s voice say, “Ah, Downdagger! How did matters unfold?”
An impassive flagonjack appeared above Elminster. “Saer’s pleasure?”
“Firewine, one flagon,” El murmured. “Mind that it’s aged, not last season’s vintage or”—he shuddered—“fresh.”
The server nodded and glided away, evidently taking Elminster for an eccentric lord rather than a commoner who should be ejected.
He returned almost immediately with the flagon, and El made a show of sniffing it critically before nodding and casually dropping a sapphire the size of his thumb into the flagonjack’s outstretched hand.
The server’s eyes widened, but he bowed low and glided away without a word, correctly interpreting El’s “stop” raised hand gesture as a refusal of all coins back.
El was confident that Lady Greatgaunt, the owner of forty-six almost identical sapphire-trimmed gowns, wouldn’t miss one gown—and being as three sapphires that Storm had been wearing had ended up out on the street with him after the spellblast, he still had two stones to spend.
A firewine-filled flagon makes an excellent mirror if the light is right, so El had no difficulty at all in seeing Downdagger emerge from the booth again, or of identifying the noble who emerged with him. Kindly old Lord Traevyn Illance. Well, well.
Illance and Downdagger strolled along the line of booths to the line of garderobes at the end of the room, Illance’s two bodyguards a careful three paces behind them. Carrying his drink, Elminster strolled languidly toward the same destination.
When the lord stepped into a garderobe, Downdagger hesitated, shrugged, then entered an adjacent one. Elminster worked a silent spell.
The veil of darkness he’d conjured was wide enough to wall off this end of the room from all eyes, thick enough to surround the bodyguards’ heads and blind them, and moved in accordance with his will, so he could keep it around them … if they didn’t move too far in opposite directions.
Elminster finished his firewine, set the empty flagon down on a table he was passing, and strode right up to Rorn and Brabras—whose wildly waving arms and sw
iftly drawn swords betrayed their consternation at being plunged into utter darkness. They were going to start to shout, so El raced around behind them, touched both of them on the backs of their necks to enspell them into unconsciousness, caught their swords to prevent any loud clangs, laid the blades atop their bodies, and stepped over those bodies—into the garderobe where the wizard had gone.
The staff of the Ravens had noticed something amiss, but all they heard was a brief, wordless exclamation of astonishment from behind an area of obviously conjured darkness.
The senior flagonjack rolled his eyes. These younger nobles! Couldn’t wait to rut until they got home, but didn’t want anyone seeing their faces as they rode some coinlass—or a noble lass of a rival family. So, a little conjured darkness … they’d be using magic to disguise themselves while here in the Ravens, next!
On the other side of the veil, Downdagger emerged from the garderobe, dragged Rorn into it and dumped him and his sword in on top of the unconscious Morligul Downdagger, and shut the garderobe door on them both and checked that it would stay shut. It did. The second Downdagger then sat down at an adjacent table and bent his attention in another direction … as his veil of darkness moved smoothly into the garderobe he’d just filled up with bodies.
The flagonjacks, staring down the room, saw the darkness vanish, and beheld nothing amiss except a man sprawled on the floor with a sword atop him.
The senior flagonjack started down the room to see what had happened, but he was still a good twelve hurrying strides away when a garderobe door opened and Lord Illance emerged, to find his hired wizard sitting at a table—and one of his two bodyguards sprawled senseless on the floor.
He could see the man’s own blade—clean of all gore—was lying atop his body, and there was no blood or visible wounds.
