Mistress of the Night

by Don Bassingthwaite

  She swung her hips sharply as she passed.

  Keph grabbed for the goblet and pitcher on the tabletop, but the woman’s hips were faster than his hands. He rescued the half-full pitcher, but the goblet, entirely full, rocked, wobbled, then fell over. Deep red wine splashed across the wood. Keph leaped to his feet and away from the flooding wine with a curse.

  The half-elf smiled at him as her friends snickered.

  “Spilled your drink, Keph?” she teased. “That was clumsy of you.”

  At the tables around the pair, patrons glanced at each other, then grabbed their drinks and scrambled away. Keph brushed light brown hair out of his face and set the pitcher down.

  “Buy me another, Lyraene,” he hissed through clenched teeth, “and I’ll pretend this didn’t happen.”

  “Pretend what didn’t happen?” asked Lyraene. “This?” She reached down and grabbed the edge of the table, swiftly lifting it.

  Before he could snatch it up again, the pitcher toppled over, adding to the cascade of wine that came rushing toward him. He danced back, but not quickly enough. Wine poured across his boots and trousers. He drew a sharp breath and his hand darted toward the hilt of the slim rapier he wore on his hip. He stopped it just in time.

  Of all the nights for Lyraene to pick a fight, he cursed silently. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but if it was, misfortune had wrapped her ivory arms around him. He forced his hand back to his side. Under the whiskers of his goatee, his lips pressed hard together.

  Lyraene’s smile turned into a sneer. She let go of the table. It dropped back down with a solid thud.

  “Damn, Keph, you are having a bad day, aren’t you?” she said. “What’s the matter? City guard pick you up while they were looking for your big friend, Jarull? Your papa have to come bail his youngest son out of jail—again? Papa tell you this was absolutely the last time he’d do it?” She smacked her forehead. “Oh, wait. That’s exactly what happened.”

  No coincidence. Damn it. Keph glanced past Lyraene to her table of cronies. They were all watching eagerly. He groaned. They all knew, of course. And if they all knew.…

  Obey Strasus Thingoleir’s ultimatum or rescue his own dignity? There wasn’t really any choice.

  Cursing his father and Lyraene equally, Keph twisted his glower into a sneer to match the half-elf’s. “Now where could you have heard about that?” he asked her lightly. “Oh, wait.” He smacked his forehead. “Your brother’s on the city guard. Oh, wait.” He smacked his head again. “Your half-brother. Shame your mother was already married when she met your pointy-eared father.”

  Lyraene’s breath hissed out between her teeth. Keph caught an ugly murmur from her friends. Lyraene, however, ignored them.

  “At least I got something from my father,” she said.

  Without taking her eyes from Keph’s, she reached across her body and drew her sword. All around them, patrons flinched back. Keph didn’t move. Lyraene’s posture was all wrong for an attack—the half-elf had something else in mind.

  She held the rapier horizontally in front of her body and uttered a word of magic, then stroked her left hand along the blade. Where her fingers passed, light clung to the metal.

  “Son of two wizards,” she hissed. “Brother of two more. But you can’t do that, can you, Keph? You’ve got no magic.”

  Hot blood rushed to Keph’s face and roared in his ears. “Maybe I don’t, Lyraene,” he said, stepping around the table. “But being able to cast a cantrip that my eight-year-old niece has mastered isn’t especially impressive either. Now this—”

  His rapier slid from his scabbard with a pure, ringing whisper. He held it up before himself, vertically, turning it so it caught the meager light on the terrace. Lyraene took a step back. Keph followed her, staying close.

  “—this is impressive. Beautiful workmanship, isn’t she?” He glanced up the length of the thin blade. “I call her Quick. She came from the forge of a master weapon-smith, Mandel Oakhand in Iriaebor. The sapphire in the hilt was found in Amn and was cut specifically for her.” He looked Lyraene in the eye. She had her sword, still shining with feeble light, up. Her cronies were trying to get through to her, but the other patrons of the Mantle, struggling at the same time to stay back from the impending fight and get closer for a good view, were hampering them. Keph gave Lyraene a thin smile. “And in fact, my father did give me something.” He lifted the rapier close to his face and whispered, “Storm’s lash!”

  With a crisp snap, blue lightning crackled once along the blade then subsided, though deep within the metal, sparks seemed to dance. Keph cocked an eyebrow at Lyraene.

  “Do you still want to do this?” he asked.

  “More than ever,” Lyraene replied—and slashed her blade at him.

  Startled, Keph dropped Quick down. Lyraene’s attack was hard and fast, slapping against the rapier in a flare of blue sparks. Her blow hammered Quick out of Keph’s hand and sent her skittering away. Spectators stumbled back from the crackling weapon.

  Keph stared down in shock at the point of Lyraene’s sword as it hovered in front of his chest.

  “Nice sword,” she said. “I’ve heard about it before. It doesn’t do you much good when it’s lying over there, though, does it?” Her blade rose and fell, traveling between his throat and his groin. “You know, Keph, you’ve got a reputation, but without your magic sword and that big ox Jarull to back you up, you’re not that tough.”

  “Who says he doesn’t have me to back him up?” rasped a deep voice.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Keph saw a dark form bull through the crowd. As Lyraene half-turned to meet the charge, he ducked under and around her sword to come up at the half-elf’s side and twist her arm back, pulling her sword down. Before she could even cry out, Jarull was out in the open and swinging heavy fists.

  A jab snapped Lyraene’s head back. Keph let her go and a heavy hook caught her, spinning her around and leaving her sprawled out on the terrace floor. Jarull reached back and snatched up Quick, tossing her to Keph.

  “We need to go,” he growled.

  “I can’t argue with that!” Keph shot back.

  The Mantle’s hulking peacekeepers were closing on them from one direction while Lyraene’s friends were finally emerging from the crowd in the other.

  “This way!” he called to Jarull and whirled in a third direction, toward the wall that surrounded the Mantle’s terrace and hid the rooftops of the Stiltways from the view of the tavern’s patrons.

  Slamming Quick back into her scabbard, Keph jumped up on a table, then leaped to hook his arms over the top of the wall. A moment’s scrambling and he heaved himself over to drop onto the rooftop beyond.

  Jarull simply vaulted the wall with surprising lightness and grace for someone his size.

  The commotion on the terrace wasn’t going away, though. The peacekeepers might not care about them once they were off the premises, but Keph knew that Lyraene’s friends—and Lyraene herself, once she recovered—would be after them. He grabbed Jarull’s arm and dragged him on across the rooftops toward a dark gash of shadow, a rickety stair leading back down into the Stiltways. In only moments, they were out of sight and clambering down to the relative safety of the Stiltways’s lower levels.

  As soon as they were on an even walkway again, Keph pulled Jarull into a rough embrace and pounded his arm against the big man’s back.

  “Tymora’s own luck!” Keph swore. “Your timing has never been better! Damn it, where have you been for the past five days? Your mother had the city guard pick me up today—she had them convinced I’d led you off and gotten you killed.”

  “Trembling old crow! She would think something like that.” Jarull shoved Keph away from him, then threw a fist into his shoulder. “As if I’d let you get me killed!”

  Even Jarull’s playful punches had a tendency to hurt. Keph rubbed his shoulder as he looked his friend over. Jarull’s grandmother on his father’s side had been an orc and that blood granted him not
only size and strength, but coarse, heavy features and a skin tone that carried a slightly grayish cast. That night, however, his skin seemed strangely pale and his dark eyes fever-bright.

  “So where have you been, Jarull?” Keph asked. “Everyone’s been wondering. For the last few days, you’re all anyone’s been talking about.”

  Jarull wrapped his arm around Keph and said, “Sailing a tempest of ale and wine, Keph, sailing a tempest!”

  Drunk then. Jarull’s human side gave him a turn of wit.

  “If you’ve been drunk for five days,” said Keph, “I’d have heard about it. You can’t drink for a night without smashing something.”

  “I didn’t say it was in Yhaunn, did I?” Jarull poked him in the ribs. “There are half a dozen festhalls in Ravens Bluff where I’m no longer welcome.”

  “You went to Ravens Bluff without me?” Keph glanced at his friend and narrowed his eyes. “Who is she?”

  Jarull grinned and pinched his fingers together in front of his mouth. “I swore an oath not to say,” he said. “But I can tell you this.” His voice dropped. “She’s dark, beautiful, meaner than my grandmother, and she likes her men big and tough.”

  He flexed his free arm and something sparkled on his fist. Keph reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling it closer. Jarull wore a ring on his middle finger, a twisted band of age-blackened silver set with a deep purple amethyst. The big man tugged his hand free before he could get a better look. Keph glanced up and raised an eyebrow.

  “From your woman of mystery?”

  His friend roared with laughter. “And that’s not all!” He jingled a pouch at his waist and swung Keph around to face the nearest ramp descending deeper into the Stiltways. “Come on! Down to the Cutter’s Dip. I’m buying. You’ve got a head start on me tonight, but I’ll try to catch up. If we’re lucky, Lyraene will come looking for you again!” He held out his fist.

  After a moment, Keph grinned, then laughed as well. “If we’re lucky!” he said, and bashed Jarull’s fist with his own.

  It was natural that he and Jarull should have become friends, Keph thought as he staggered home in the gray half-light of pre-dawn. They had met at some party or another, dragged there by their parents. How many years had it been? Not too many. Just as they were both entering the age when rebellion began to be a real possibility, that was for certain.

  Jarull was the only son of a merchant who had seen her half-orc husband ride away to meet his death on some outrageous adventure and was determined not to let her son follow in his footsteps.

  Keph was the youngest son of Strasus “the Bold” Thingoleir—a wizard who had once stood toe-to-toe with a red dragon, meeting fire with magic until the monster had been blasted into cinders—and Dagnalla Irongard, first Strasus’s rival in the Art and later his wife.

  Brother of Malia, her proud parents’ first apprentice; brother of Roderio, their second; brother-in-law to Krin Foxrun, who had won Malia’s love in a mage duel fought over her honor; and uncle to Adrey Foxrun, already mastering cantrips at eight years of age; Keph was a tremendous disappointment to his magic-rich family.

  Keph ground his teeth together in a fierce grin. Jarull’s mother desperately wanted her son to stay by her side. Keph’s parents would have been happy if their Artless youngest son had just faded into the shadows.

  Neither was likely to happen anytime soon.

  He stumbled around a corner and across the small courtyard that lay before the Thingoleir family hall, Fourstaves House. Once it had been Twostaves House, named for the mages’ staffs carried by Strasus and Dagnalla, but when Malia and later Roderio had completed their apprenticeships, Strasus had given it a new name. Keph had heard that someone had suggested renaming it again, to Fivestaves House, once Krin had married Malia, but that his parents had refused, believing that it might offend the natural-born fifth member of their family. Keph snorted under his breath. Who had they been trying to fool?

  Three black mastiffs with hides that gleamed like onyx rose from their haunches and growled as he approached the door.

  “Bah!” he spat. “It’s just me, you stupid chunks of rock!”

  He strode up to the door guardians and stuck out his hand. Two of the dogs growled louder, but one leaned forward cautiously, touching his skin with its cold stone nose. After a heartbeat, all three dogs moved aside from the door and sat back in silence.

  “Stupid.…” Keph muttered and kicked at one in passing. He hurt his toe more than he hurt the stone beast.

  The door opened easily at his touch and he walked through into the entry hall. The corridors of Fourstaves House were still silent at such an early hour. Keph limped, cursing with every step, across the hall and up the great, polished staircase that dominated it. At its top, he started to turn toward the south wing and the family’s chambers, but paused and turned instead to look down the dark hallway of the north wing. Along that hallway, doors opened onto the laboratories and workshops of the five wizards. His hand clenched on the banister.

  The amethyst ring and a pouch full of coins weren’t the only things Jarull had brought back from Ravens Bluff. As he and Keph had sat at their table in one of the seediest of the Stiltways’s seedy taverns, the big man had winked and said, “Don’t think I forgot you, Keph.”

  His hand dipped into his belt pouch and he set a crystal vial on the table. Inside the vial, dark dust glittered like ground glass.

  “What is it?” Keph had asked.

  “It’s called magesbane. Sprinkle a little where a wizard will cast a spell and he’s in for a surprise.” Jarull had given him a fierce grin, exposing sharp teeth. “Next time any wizard you know gets on your wrong side, you’ll have something up your sleeve to turn back on them.”

  Keph stared, mesmerized, at the sparkling dust. “What does it do?”

  “Nothing permanent,” Jarull said, sliding the vial to Keph. “Give it a little try when you get home. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  Standing at the top of the stairs, Keph’s hand slipped into his own belt pouch. His fingers curled around the crystal vial. Give it a little try when you get home. I think you’ll enjoy it.

  Roderio, Keph thought. When his father brought him home the day before after arranging for his release by the city guard, Roderio had passed by and simply shaken his head in disgust.

  Keph turned and walked into the north wing of Fourstaves House. As he passed beneath the arch of the hallway, wards brushed against his skin like spiderwebs. Through the years, Strasus had woven layer upon layer of protection over his home and especially over the dangers of its north wing. No one who wasn’t supposed to be there could enter the wing. Strasus and Dagnalla had encouraged their children’s curiosity, however, and Keph, like his brother and sister, had always been able to enter freely. Even after his lack of magic had become blatantly apparent, wards throughout the house continued to permit him passage, as if his parents secretly hoped it was just some phase he could still grow out of.

  At the door to Roderio’s laboratory, he paused again.

  The door to Strasus’s study was at the end of the wing. For a moment, Keph considered changing the target of his vengeance. Part of the reason Strasus had been so angry at having to bail him out of jail was that it had pulled him away from the research that had occupied his time of late. The stone cliffs that surrounded Yhaunn were laced with old tunnels and crevices, another legacy of the city’s quarry origins. Not a month before, explorers had pulled some ancient treasure out of one of those tunnels and brought it to Strasus. Keph hadn’t been allowed so much as a glimpse of it, of course, but whatever it was, it had become an obsession to Strasus, an obsession that had spread to Dagnalla and Malia as well—and that left Strasus resenting every moment spent apart from his research.

  Sprinkling a little of the magesbane around his father’s study could be very satisfying.

  Keph wrinkled his nose. No, he thought, Roderio first. Let’s see what this dust does.

  He pushed against the door of the
laboratory and felt more wards sift over him. When the eerie sensation passed, he stepped through and closed the door.

  Cool flames sprang to life in bowls around the room. In an open-sided case of glass, a lizard striped in bright green and blue stirred at the sudden light. Roderio’s familiar. Keph hurried across to the case as the lizard lifted its head drowsily from the magically warmed rock with which Roderio pampered it. Before it could do more than look around, Keph drew a cloth of dark velvet over the case, plunging it into shadow once more. He heard a slow, reptilian sigh of contentment as the lizard sank back into sleep.

  He let out a sigh of his own and looked around the laboratory at workbenches, vessels and braziers of various kinds, books, scrolls.… His eyes fell on a rack of jars and pots, ingredients for the potions that Roderio was fond of creating. Books and vessels lay open on the workbench nearest the rack—Roderio was getting ready to brew some new concoction. Keph smiled to himself, went over to the rack and selected one of the jars at random. Setting it on the workbench, he popped off its lid and peered inside. The jar held some kind of dried, crumbled moss.

  “Perfect,” he murmured.

  He pulled the crystal vial out of his pocket and worked out the stopper, then carefully sprinkled a measure of the magesbane dust into the jar. It seemed to meld into the moss—he had to look closely to be sure it was even there. Roderio wouldn’t see a thing. He closed the jar and replaced it on the shelf. He started to replace the stopper on the vial as well, but stopped.

  What if Roderio didn’t need the contents of that jar for his potion?

  Cursing under his breath, Keph glanced over the books laid out on the workbench, but they were written in the flowing, elongated script used by elves. He couldn’t read a word. He turned back to the rack and grimaced, then pulled down another half a dozen jars.