From the road, Vidor gestured impatiently. Arna waved again, but he placed his hand on the rough bark that girdled the immense trunk of the tree, over a scar that looked as though it might have been a carved letter before age and growth had obscured it.
Briefly he bowed his head. “Guard my days, Jandi,” he breathed. The words felt strange. He hadn’t uttered them since he was a child, and he was a little embarrassed at saying them now. Jandi’s Oak had always been here, and it was a tradition for travelers to ask the protection of the nymph, or dryad, or whatever fey creature Jandi had been—if she had ever really existed.
It was also a tradition for the local folk to leave a tribute in the shape of small coins when they were about to embark on great journeys or changes of life. Girls from the local farms would leave their coppers, marked by a uniquely knotted or colored thread, to ask if they would marry their lovers, or leave their homes to find their fortunes, and were answered by the appearance of tiny works of intricate craftsmanship, designated with the same thread they had left with the coin, which were supposed to be signs from the spirits of the nearby forest.
Arna has his own theory about the coins and the figures. He imagined they were made not by spirits but by some reclusive forest dwellers, a race with clever hands and some small magic of concealment. Sometime long ago this method of barter—payment of small coins for their craft—had arisen, a way for folk who didn’t want to be found, yet who desired to sell their goods, to do trade. Somehow the idea that the small figures were a means of fortune-telling was born, and bandied about, and became for all intents and purposes the truth.
Yet he desired to make the gesture of leaving the coin, of asking Jandi’s protection. Coming events would be momentous, both for him and his House. He wouldn’t scruple to seek aid anywhere.
Returning to the road, he mounted his horse. The animal huffed indignantly at being pulled away from the sweet grass at the verge.
“When you’re quite ready, Master Arna,” said Vidor, wheeling his mount westward with an annoyed glance at his friend.
“I had to ask Jandi’s blessings on our enterprise,” replied Arna. “And with the quality of the goods in your packs, we’ll need all the help we can get.”
“You risk a beating for your insubordination,” said Vidor, raising a fist in mock rage. “And you’ll kindly remember that you’re here by my goodwill alone.”
“Forgive me, Master Druit,” said Arna, kneeing his horse until he caught up with Vidor. “I’ll make every effort to watch my tongue.”
Beneath Jandi’s Oak all was still, save for a whisper of wind along the grass that whirled and spiraled as no honest wind ought to do. And from the line of trees that over time and by human traffic had been hacked, burned, and driven farther and farther back, something patient and hungry watched the party as it disappeared into the dust of the road.
NONTHAL, TURMISH
1585 DR—YEAR OF THE BLOODIED MANACLES
Sanwar Beguine twisted a strand of long chestnut brown hair around his finger, letting it bite deep. He watched, fascinated, as his pinched skin grew red, then purple before he released the hair.
Four more hairs lay on an unmarked piece of paper on his desk. He put the one he had been playing with down and contemplated them. Each was at least the length of his forearm, from his elbow to the tip of his middle finger: thick hairs, almost coarse, that varied from the color of the very wood of his desk to pale amber. They were strong hairs, unbroken. He picked up his jeweler’s glass and examined them minutely. Under magnification, the substance of each hair looked like thick glass, with a clear core in the center. The ends of all five hairs had the tiny bulb that had rooted the hair in Kestrel’s scalp.
Vorsha had wept when she gave them to him the night before.
From a slot in his desk Sanwar pulled another length of clean, thick paper. He took three of Kestrel’s hairs, looped them neatly, and folded them securely inside the paper, making a tiny packet. He tucked this in a pocket inside his coat and returned to his contemplation of the other two.
It was his intention to make Kestrel an amulet. He’d told Vorsha the truth about that. But that required three of her hairs. He had different plans for the other two. They would help him answer a question that had lingered in his mind ever since he’d seen his niece toddle down the hallway outside the children’s wing, clutching her nurse’s hand. Now, when he saw the girl in unguarded moments, laughing with her sister or reviewing a vendor’s tally sheet, he wondered.
He yanked at a tuft of his own hair, wincing. Examining the resultant hairs between his fingers, he selected the two that were longest and placed them next to Kestrel’s, flicking the rest off his fingers and onto the floor. His hairs were coarser and curlier than the girl’s and of a more uniform brown. He looked at them through the glass. The tints were similar, but then, his hair was the same color as his brother’s.
The simple-seeming construction of his desk hid many small drawers and compartments. Sanwar tapped an inset, smooth-headed wooden screw on the right side with his middle finger, giving three discreet, forceful taps. In response, a small, spring-loaded door opened on the side, revealing a small space just big enough to hold a rounded ceramic bowl, the size of a man’s cupped hand.
He placed the bowl on the flat surface of the desk, beside the paper that held Kestrel’s hairs and his own. The glaze on it was uncrazed, the green of corroded copper. The bowl was otherwise undecorated. Sanwar pulled a clean, soft cloth from his pocket and wiped the already-clean interior until not a speck of dust could possibly remain.
Quickly he coiled all four strands of hair into the bowl. Another compartment in the desk held small glass vials filled with various powders. He removed two—one filled with a yellowish white powder. The other contained a powder so dark it looked black, but when grains of it were exposed to the light, it proved to be a deep red.
Sanwar sprinkled a goodly amount of the light powder into the bowl, and a scant smatter of the red. He paused and took a deep breath.
Arna knew that Nonthal was nowhere near the glory it had once boasted, years ago when Turmish was the center of trade of a significant portion of Faerûn, and that its central market was like as not a mere shadow of what had existed there before. How glorious must that age have been, therefore, when the remnant was so brisk, and bustling, and filled with all manner of shops and stalls hawking everything from spices to silks, amulets to baskets of many varieties of apples. Here was a farm-woman selling poultry: chickens in willow-wand cages and quail and ducks as well, all cheeping and quacking in their precariously stacked quarters. He paused to glance at a countertop piled high with used armor, some of it scored with ominous-seeming burn marks. The merchant, a dwarf with elaborate braids in her autumn red hair and arm muscles that easily surpassed Arna’s own in girth, glanced up at him from her task of hammering out the dents in a breastplate, ran her eye over him, and turned back to her work, obviously dismissing him as a likely purchaser of fighting gear.
“Stop gawking like a country cousin on his first trip to a town temple,” muttered Vidor, hitting him lightly on the shoulder. “It’s not your first venture outside that rock you call home. And you’ve seen more goods in the caravans bound for Imaskar.”
“Sespech isn’t like this,” returned Arna. “And trade goods are packed tight when they come to Jadaren Hold.”
“Nonsense,” said Vidor distractedly, pulling a roll of paper the length and thickness of his finger from an inner pocket of his stained traveling jacket. “When the caravans come in, the undercaves of Jadaren Hold are like a pasha’s treasure trove. You and I hid there between the bales as youngsters often enough, spying out the bargaining.”
He unrolled the paper partway and frowned at it.
“Nicole Beguine’s manner is as pretty and noncommittal as his handwriting,” he said. “He salutes my clan and pedigree. He pats me on the head for my clever cantrips, as if I were a deserving student. He apologizes that he cannot make the tim
e to discuss the matter with me in a timely fashion, and begs the pressures of business. He refers me to his daughter Ciari, who is empowered to act for the family in all ways.”
Arna snorted. “He’s good.”
“The Beguines are all very good at what they do. It’s a brilliant reply, really. Very kind, nothing you could claim was insulting, and yet it’s perfectly designed to put me at a disadvantage—to make me a petitioner begging for a favor.”
He nudged Arna, who was still looking about him at the panoply of merchant’s stalls and sniffing hungrily after the aroma of meat cooking over an open brazier.
“It doesn’t help that you refuse to let me meet the Beguine daughters at their quarters, and instead hunt them down in the market like some opportunist carpet seller. They’ll never take me seriously.”
Arna shrugged. “My apologies, but I can’t take the risk some member of the household won’t recognize me. It’s not the safest place for a Jadaren. There are those hell-bent on keeping the feud alive. And if Kestrel finds that I came spying after her …”
“If so, it’s only the truth,” said Vidor, tartly.
“And should you keep an appointment with Ciara at House Beguine, there’s no guarantee that Kestrel will accompany her, while all are agreed that every third and seventh day they go marketing together for the needs of the House.”
“Our innkeeper is agreed,” muttered Vidor. “That’s hardly all.”
“Look, Vidor, if this falls through, I’ll take up the issue with my uncle. Fair enough?”
“I’ll hold you to that.” Vidor peered through the increasing mass of people, while Arna looked around for the source of the delicious smell. “Say, Arna, are you sure of your source? I see no pair of sisters bargaining at stalls, and I can’t imagine a Beguine not arguing for the best price.”
“It’s early in the day yet,” replied his friend. “And neither of us knows them by sight.”
He moved three paces to the armory stall, where the dwarf still hammered diligently at a breastplate, wielding her hammer with a delicacy at odds with one so muscular. Arna made a polite bow and addressed her.
“Your pardon, goodmistress dwarf,” he said. “We have business with the sisters of House Beguine, who are to go to market this day. Would you know the ladies?”
The dwarf paused in her work and contemplated him from under bristling eyebrows, unsmiling. Something in his boyish, open face must have struck her as harmless, because she pointed over his shoulder with the head of her hammer.
“It happens that the Beguine girls are over there, at the Widow Bejuer-Vaud’s pie stall,” she said, her voice deep and surprisingly musical.
Arna turned to look, with a certain sense of foreboding. His promised bride was closer than he had thought, and he hadn’t a notion of what to expect.
Vidor had turned to look as well. “There,” he said.
Arna tilted his head to look between the milling mass of folk who had come to do business this day: respectable-looking housewives, sleek upper servants restocking their masters’ pantries, knots of travel-stained adventurers looking to renew their supplies, pickpockets looking for distracted targets.
There was the stall, with neatly wrapped stacked of pies high on the counter, and a portable stove glowing behind it—the source of the tantalizing smell. Several folk—man-size as well as a brace of halflings who mounted a wooden step set out for such as them to view the wares—clustered around the pie shop.
Without turning around, Arna leaned closer to the dwarf. “I don’t know them. Can you tell me which is Kestrel Beguine?”
The lump in his throat, which had been bothering him since the morning, seemed to double in size at that moment. He was about to see the woman he would cleave to for the rest of his life—or would if his uncle and a phalanx of interested parties from both Houses had their way. He felt hot and cold at once, and his forehead felt clammy, as if he were a small boy before his uncle’s desk, being tested in his numbering.
Everything depended on the color of the flame. A yellow flame would simply mean that a close relative of Sanwar’s had sired Kestrel. It would prove Nicol’s paternity, since Sanwar was not aware of any other brothers he might have lying about. A blue flame—well, that would be an extremely interesting situation. It would mean Vorsha was far more duplicitous than he could imagine, and had betrayed both brothers by admitting yet a third man to her bed.
But a green flame would prove the matter of his suspicions true, and Kestrel would be revealed as his daughter, and as her supposed father’s niece.
He lifted his hand and spoke a word, soft and sibilant. Heat flared at the tip of his index finger, and he held it over the green ceramic bowl in time to direct the flame that spurted out into the hairs and Powers within. There was a faint sizzle as the strands, short and long, crisped black and coiled in on themselves like maggots cast into a fire, and then there was a smell like burned meat.
A flame, small yet steady, pulsed over them—a flame green as the cracked heart of an emerald.
“Ouch!”
Kestrel’s hand flew to her head. At the cry of pain, Ciari Beguine left off looking at the stack of savory pies and turned to her sister.
“What’s the matter? Did someone pull your hair?” Ciari cast an angry eye at Widow Bejuer-Vaud’s customers clustering around the stall, as if to force a confession from the culpable party. A halfling standing near her on a convenient stepstool drew back in alarm, but no one looked guilty.
“No, I don’t think so.” Kestrel rubbed at a spot just over her right temple. “It was more of a little jab—as if something bit me.”
She glanced at her fingers and saw a tiny speck of blood.
“Look, Ciari,” she began. “Something did.… Oh!”
She clasped her head again, wincing, and the ledger book she always bore on market days thumped to the ground at her feet.
Concerned, Ciari took her sister by the shoulders and pulled her away from the crush of folk at the counter.
“What’s the matter, my love?” she said, her voice gentling. Ciari was at least a head taller than Kestrel, and built on broader lines. It was a running joke among the Beguine caravan guards that Ciari could take any of them on, male or female, in a fair fight.
“It burned!” Kestrel rubbed at her temple. “It’s much better now. It hardly itches.”
Ciari shifted the market basket on her arm. “An insect?”
Kestrel shook her head. “It felt like someone held a lit straw to my head, but now it’s gone. Sorry, Ciari. I don’t know what the matter is with me. Pay it no mind.”
She bent to retrieve her ledger book, thumbing through it to check for loosened pages, while Ciari efficiently glared away a street urchin who was contemplating an attempt on the sweetmeats she carried in her basket and turned back to her assessment of Widow Bejuer-Vaud’s pies.
The dwarf, engrossed in her work, didn’t look up this time. Without taking her eyes off the silver-chased steel over her knee, she pointed again.
“Mistress Kestrel is the one at the counter over there,” she said.
Arna swallowed hard, braced himself, and looked, holding his breath. Then, impressed, he let his air out with a swoosh. The marriage alliance between House Beguine and House Jadaren, brokered by seasoned merchants with little care for romance and its inefficiencies, wouldn’t saddle him with an unattractive wife—quite the opposite, in fact.
Kestrel Beguine was tall, straight of back and well built, with reddish brown hair braided into an elaborate bun at the nape of her elegant neck. She wore a simple dress, deep blue with a tiny repeating pattern worked in gold thread, a modified version of those the more modish women of Turmish wore. His merchant’s eye told him it was well cut and of fine fabric. A wide leather and brass belt clasped about her waist was hung with all manner of keys and small useful tools—and also served to accentuate her figure. She bore a market basket—his aunt had one similar, although Jadaren Hold had no market—hung over one arm.
She was currently speaking intently to the small wizened woman, so shrunk and wrinkled that he would make no wager that she was fully human. Kestrel gestured at a neat stack of pies before her, and the wrinkled little woman shook her head.
Vidor’s hand on his arm made him stifle a shriek.
“Easy, fairlady,” said his friend. “The lovely Beguine sisters are at hand, and it is time to do some business. Many thanks, my friend,” he added to the dwarf behind them, who grunted without looking up from the dent she was coaxing into true.
Together they wound their way between the folk streaming between the market stalls. Arna could hear Kestrel as she addressed the pie shop owner. Her voice was penetrating—not unpleasant, but he suspected it could become shrewish with time and usage.
“Why should I pay so much? Our kitchens are sufficient. I buy for convenience, nothing more, that our cook can turn her attention to more important matters. But she can make our pies at need.”
The little widow’s reply sounded amused, and not at all offended, as if they had had this conversation many times.
“The day your kitchens can turn out pies like mine, I will close my shop, young mistress,” she said. “You well know your cooks, skilled as they may be, could never do better.”
“It’s not their practice to use cats-meat as the main ingredient,” said Kestrel dismissively.
Arna and Vidor paused at the outskirts of the stall, where the fringe of the striped cloth hung to shelter customers from the sun shivered in the slight breeze. Arna turned to his friend and quirked an eyebrow. Vidor didn’t see it. He was staring at Kestrel Beguine as she bargained, his mouth slightly open, like a small creature hypnotized by a snake.
A girl stood just behind Kestrel, slighter than the Beguine girl and wearing a dress a rich brown tint. She was brushing dust off her skirt and carried a leather case or book beneath her arm. She was Kestrel’s maid, perhaps, or given the quills strapped on her wide belt beside her purse, her accounts keeper.
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