Death Masks

by Ed Greenwood

  A sinkhole likely caused by cellar expansions—more than a month of digging, with carts rumbling up and down ramps to haul away the stones and dirt to the Cellarers’ and Plasterers’ guild yard—at a business next door, Aumur Vraskalan’s Fine Wines And Spirits.

  “All this tunneling under the city,” Heirlarpost thundered, wagging a finger like a disapproving tutor, “has to stop!”

  “All?” Laeral asked mildly.

  “Well, all without Palace permission. A special Lord’s writ, that is. Signed and issued by you, and only if you like what’s planned. Oh, and all work to be done by the Cellarers and Plasterers; we need proper guild work, and accountability! Why, this Vraskalan was using a band of half-orcs he found hiring out their swords in Scornubel! And some citizens say they’re certain some of these half-orcs were digging alongside orcs—pureblooded, and fully armed too, by the by, orcs!”

  Laeral carefully did not let her gaze stray to the sheaf of reports in front of her, and the one she’d already decided to say nothing about. Sometimes, keeping secrets was the lesser evil when spreading panic could work so much more havoc.

  People were being found dead in Downshadow. Alive and hale one day, then they just didn’t awaken to greet the next. Dead with not a mark on them, save that their tongues had shriveled and gone black. Some sort of unknown plague, or perhaps a fell gift from one of the lurking evils that wanted Skullport strong once more—and without inquisitive Waterdhavian near-neighbors.

  Bloody Waterdeep. City of vipers, above and below.

  Laeral made herself nod blandly into the teeth of Heirlarpost’s fury.

  “I find myself unopposed,” she announced. “Let us apply ourselves to wording this edict, and a sample writ, my Lords.”

  Behind masks, breaths were let out in relief all around the table. At least their new choice of Open Lord was as plain spoken as she was decisive. No more “I shall have to ponder the matter” and then doing things behind their backs, as Neverember had. Too much the tyrant, that one, and not enough the spokesperson.

  “Everyone cut their quills afresh,” Laeral ordered, reaching for the stand in front of her. Somehow, at these meetings, it always came down to that.

  CHAPTER 6

  Bad For Business

  I know not what the younger folk are thinking, these days with their defiance of elders, new ideas, and ever-louder scorn. It is all so bad for business! Do they not understand that thriving business feathers their nests, and fills their bellies? Or are they all stone-mad? And want to see the end of the world?

  —from A Seat That Draws Blood: Ten Years A Guildmaster by Jalaerho Kloskurmrundur, Guildmaster Emeritus of the Stationers’ Guild, published in the Year of the Cauldron

  “YOU’RE LATE, TASHEENE.”

  It took no genius to deduce that her two co-conspirators were troubled.

  She’d rented this upper room in North Ward for daytime get-togethers because it was handy to several eateries known for serving good highsunfeasts, so there’d be nothing suspicious about any of them being seen in the vicinity.

  The one who’d just greeted her so coldly was a slender flame-haired woman in a very expensive gown, worn with an over-gown of lace and cutouts. She’d be strikingly beautiful if it wasn’t for the permanent sneer on her face. It seemed she’d been striding back and forth restlessly, showing off the curves of her long legs to the other conspirator, who was currently filling the best chair in the room.

  He was an older man, heavy of feature, his chin and cheeks blue with stubble, and was still wheezing from his climb of the stairs. Half the city knew his unlovely face; he was Roysark Cuthbarrel, guildmaster of the Splendid Order of Armorers, Locksmiths, & Finesmiths. And his face held worry, not just irritation.

  “I didn’t think you’d butcher quite so many Hidden Lords, so quickly,” he grunted. “We don’t want to start an uproar. Bad for business.”

  Ah. This must be met head-on. “I disagree,” Tasheene told him coolly. “Thanks to my, ah, heritage, I more than both of you know how this city cleaves to tradition, to the ways things have always been done. New wares and fashions all the time, yes, but amid their passing welter we cling ever more tightly to what we know. Do you want all the cheap outland armor and locks to go on flooding into Waterdeep from every last dwarfhold across the North that’s now finding their feet and wanting coin?”

  “No,” Cuthbarrel admitted.

  “Well then, sit tight and endure a month or so of tumult and wild gossip—wherein you’ll know the truth, where all the wondering city doesn’t—and we can change things. This Laeral is new, still finding her way; she can be pushed. So long as we don’t show her the hand that’s shoving her.”

  She transferred her gaze and attention to the sneering woman, who promptly jerked her head in the direction of the connecting door Tasheene had come through, wrinkled her nose, and asked, “What’s that stink?”

  “Aromatic oils. Being heated. We three are supposed to be the first clients of Sharassa’s House, ‘Where Your Skin Is Loved,’ remember?”

  “We’re not actually going to go through with the oiling and scraping, are we?”

  “No, just rub a little of the oil on the backs of your hands before we leave. I’ll go last, and quench the brazier.”

  “Yes, we wouldn’t want another Mistshore. Especially as the word from the Palace is that they’re not rebuilding, just like Field Ward. Whatever can a lass invest in, these days?”

  “Business,” Cuthbarrel told her. “Guild business.”

  The fire-haired woman waved a dismissive hand. “That always seems to enrich the guilds, never me.”

  “If you troubled to acquaint yourself with what the guilds of this city—”

  “I have,” she cut him off, “and what I’ve learned has made me watch most of the guilds very closely. But not risk one copper on what they’re up to.” She regarded the guildmaster with some distaste. “Don’t ever make the mistake, Cuth, of thinking me an empty-head. Yes, I play with my father’s coin, but I make more than I lose—by shiploads. It’s why he lets me play.”

  Neither Tasheene or Cuthbarrel was given to superlatives—in a city of shopkeepers interested in selling you everything, one heard so many of them, tossed about so freely and emptily—but the wealth of the Raelantavers had rightly been described in the broadsheets a time or sixty as “glitteringly stupendous,” and as Zaraela was the only daughter of Andramburt and Melautha Raelantaver, she had been wealthier than the Melshimbers or any six guilds since birth, and had probably spent, scores of times over, more than Tasheene and Cuthbarrel put together would be able to spend in their entire lives. The only thing the Raelantaver wealth hadn’t been able to do—yet—was buy a noble title, as Open Lord Neverember had very firmly closed that door. And if this old-and-now-new-again Laeral wanted to keep her throne and her head, it would not soon be opened again.

  The city would not be served well by letting more willful, spoiled rich brats into the nobility, and all the privileges thereof. That was a very large part of the depths it had sunk into in these latter days. That and magic going wild and the gods spurring wars over half of Faerûn—but in Waterdeep as elsewhere, the battles at hand should be faced and fought first.

  Tasheene said nothing of such thoughts. Lowborn never liked to be reminded they weren’t good enough to be noble. Instead, she said crisply, “Waterdeep must be cleansed. We are mired in old ways, old thinking, and the same old corruption, everywhere. We are still agreed on this, yes?”

  “We are,” Cuthbarrel growled, and shot a look at Zaraela that was a clear challenge.

  “Of course we are,” the sneering heiress agreed. “The nobles and the guilds must provide strong leadership and be seen to do so, and things must change. Too long have we drifted, with citizens busy at shortsighted self-enrichments and trusting that someone else will lead the city. And Neverember showed us what happens when the Open Lord believes himself emperor, and wants to weld Waterdeep to other places—and leach it of its
wealth to build himself his empire. Hired navies, indeed; how can a port defend itself when a foe can outbid us for control of our own navy—because it’s not ours?”

  “So we continue with the plan?” Tasheene pressed.

  “We continue with the plan,” the guildmaster agreed. “Can the murders be done in a way that points fingers at the other Hidden Lords as behind it all? So it seems like internal housekeeping, and the populace won’t be pleased if the Watch are sent out to harass us all?”

  “Leave a Masked Lord’s mask at the murder scenes?” Tasheene replied. “Seems less than subtle.”

  Cuthbarrel and Zaraela shrugged in perfect unison.

  “When dealing with the shopkeepers and laborers, ‘subtle’ is not far from useless,” Zaraela commented.

  “We’ve taken the masks of two of our victims thus far,” Tasheene said dubiously, “but I wonder if they bear enchantments that might show who last handled them.”

  “So tie them into sacks and hire half a dozen street beggars to pass them around a room to each other,” Cuthbarrel suggested.

  Zaraela was regarding Tasheene narrowly. “ ‘We’?”

  “We.”

  “You killed those men yourself?”

  “Wise nobles trust no underlings,” Tasheene replied flatly, “and involve as few of them as possible in anything they do. It’s why we have so many servants—so none become indispensible, or begin to think they have the right to do something about their ambitions.”

  “One must keep a lid on sedition at all costs,” Zaraela murmured, her tone just mocking enough for Tasheene to give her a sharp glare.

  That evoked a shrug, and the only daughter of the Raelantavers rising and asking, “So, where is this oil I need to put on my hands?”

  Tasheene led them through the door, and then after a brief lave in oils, on through another door, so they would both depart the upper floor by another way than they’d come up. The door securely bolted in their wake, she hooded the small brazier to quench it, got out the heavy leather gauntlets, and lidded the hot oil to let it cool slowly.

  It was poisoned, of course. A weak and slow-acting lizardfolk poison that caused human internal organs to slow until lassitude becomes a sleep from which there was no awakening.

  She didn’t want Cuthbarrel or Zaraela dead yet.

  Not while they were still useful.

  Eventually, the Watch would close in on whoever was murdering so many Masked Lords of Waterdeep—and there would have to be scapegoats.

  Guilty suicides, found with their confessional notes.

  She was looking forward to writing Zaraela’s. In the woman’s own sneering blood.

  • • •

  JALESTER WAS EXCITED, despite himself. He’d been quivering inwardly since the moment he’d stepped over the white marble threshold out of the deepening dusk, and the doorjack had saluted him, turned smartly, and grandly introduced him to the room: “Jalester Silvermane, Gentlesaer Adventurer.”

  It did sound grand, put like that.

  And everyone at the Castlegate had said nobles were busily hiring adventurers right now, so this could be his road to riches. Or enough steady coin to keep his guts filled, at least.

  And even if it wasn’t, tonight was free food, free drink, and an evening’s entertainment. House Nandar was hosting a revel (their fourth or fifth of the season, apparently) and adventurers—good-looking female ones in droves, by the looks of things—had been invited as entertainment for the attending nobles.

  Nandartowers was huge, filling an entire city block of North Ward. Its ground floor seemed to lack passages, just huge chamber after huge chamber, all of them tall and echoing cold soaring marble, but up here, on the upper floors, it was pleasant enough. Everywhere there were ferns in hanging baskets, and thick carpets, and paintings of splendid scenes rather than gloomy old staring ancestors; Jalester had overheard one jutting-spikes-mustachioed noble chuckle to another that the elder Nandars looked so frightful their portraits were kept hidden in the loftiest undereaves rooms for the servants to shudder at.

  He’d overheard a lot of chuckling so far this evening, and a lot of rather ardent flowery verbiage, too; some of the lady adventurers were stunning, not to mention barely dressed, and had certainly attracted their shares of persistent aging nobles.

  He’d just slipped hastily away from being too close an audience for the clumsy seductions of one wart-studded and ginger-whiskered old bore, and was threading his way through an elegant maze of pillars and statuettes on plinths, when he overheard voices ahead that brought him to a hasty halt. Followed by a swift sidestep into the shadowy lee of a handy life-sized marble statue of a stern and no doubt long-dead Nandar warrior.

  There was a tapestry beside it, and he took refuge behind it, discovering in so doing that he could now see the two speakers, framed between pillars.

  “They’re saying Elminster’s been seen in the Deep these last few days!” It was a scraggle-bearded young lordling—Lord Relavarr Agundar—whose name Jalester happened to know because he’d been right behind Jalester arriving at the revel.

  The noblewoman Lord Agundar was talking to turned half away from him to wave one hand airily, and Jalester recognized her in an instant by her shoulder. It had to be Lady Brandeleira Talmost—unless, that is, there was more than one wrinkled old noblewoman at this revel wearing a gown of open weave mauve silk studded with eyeball-sized cabochon amethysts at every cross-junction of silken strands.

  “But that can’t be!” Agundar persisted. “Unless he’s thousands of years old!”

  “He just might be,” the noblewoman purred, “but he doesn’t act it. Oh, no.”

  Agundar stared at her in clear astonishment. “Do you mean to say—? Have you?” His face changed. “That’s disgusting!”

  “Is it really? Have a care with those judgments, Lord Agundar. A few of us noble ladies possess just enough wits to make judgments, too.”

  The young nobleman flushed. “I didn’t mean … Ah, that is, what I meant was, he must have been with hundreds of women! Unless he’s not one man, but a succession of them using the same name and disguise!”

  “Now that’s an … arousing notion. But no, I’ve met him on various occasions all my life; ’tis the same man, or at least he remembers me and takes up conversations just where we left off. Decades earlier, in some cases.”

  “But why—? Forgive me, Lady Talmost, I mean no impertinence, but just why is this Elminster so popular with women? I understand the danger, the allure of a powerful wizard, but …”

  Lady Talmost turned to look straight into the young nobleman’s eyes. “Because he’s so honest with us. And kind, and comforting.”

  She backed a few steps away, and then turned and departed, striding past the alcove where Jalester stood frozen like a statue behind the tapestry—then paused to add over her shoulder, “You might want to try being those things, sometime.”

  Lord Agundar sputtered inarticulate rage, and Lady Talmost started walking again, adding, “He’s also so lonely that we feel it. It’s nice to be wanted.”

  Fascinated, Jalester watched Agundar’s face. As he frowned after Lady Talmost, then shook his head and hurried off in the other direction, snarling, “I need another drink.”

  Jalester discovered he’d been holding his breath, and let it all out in a long, gusty sigh—only to freeze again, on the brink of stepping out from behind the tapestry, when he heard not only a familiar voice but familiar words.

  They came from an old nobleman he’d encountered several times earlier in the mansion; the man seemed to be everywhere. Not Gingerwhiskers, but someone larger and louder. A lord, of course—who was now swaggering this way, along the same route Jalester had used to reach this alcove, with a shapely young woman on his arm.

  Lord Dresdark Kormallis, in full spate, trying out the very same conversational gambits Jalester had overheard him using on other attractive women before. A shambling, squat round bear of a man in magnificent dark silks. Balding,
monocle and huge waxed mustache—and a crashing bore whose salient feature was a jutting jaw bigger than all the rest of him.

  “By the harbor mists, lass, but outlanders come to the Deep with some odd notions! Did you know some wild-heads are actually trying to found a temple of Eilistraee here? They want to buy up buildings, level them, and plant trees—sculpting some little hills and all—just to have a little clearing they can dance in, mother-buck-bare! Did you ever hear the like? They’ll be wanting conjured rivers and little waterfalls and duck ponds to fish in, next!”

  Thankfully, Kormallis and his companion of the moment strode on by. That was what they’d be wanting, hey? For his part, Jalester just wanted to sip some badly needed wine in some dim corner or other of Nandartowers.

  He stepped out from behind the tapestry cautiously—and then fled back behind it again with his heart suddenly pounding as a much quieter male voice, very close by, said almost into his ear, “In here. This should be private enough.”

  A moment later, Jalester was holding his breath behind the tapestry and staring around its edge at two younger and more handsome men than Kormallis. Both were expensively dressed and bearing large goblets of wine and little hand wheels of some golden-hued cheese that was pungent enough that he could smell it from here. The slightly shorter man took his first bite as he backed almost into Jalester, but luckily his elbow grazed the tapestry and he felt it and instinctively stepped away as he murmured, “Good stuff! I’ve never tasted such before, but good, good.”

  “Genuine Highmoon Smokerind,” the other man—someone called Landarmyn Voskur, who’d been introduced behind Jalester, right after Lord Agundar—replied. “Doesn’t stint, Elegal Nandar, I’ll say that for him. Fancy spending good coin feeding outlander adventurers, just to bend our ears with tales of monster-slaying and fighting all over Faerûn.”