Death Masks

by Ed Greenwood

  Successful business owners, all. Vigorous personalities.

  Laeral quelled a shrug. Well, ’twas inevitable that electors of that mold would seek similar candidates. Perhaps only a tyrant could end up with a voting Lord who was a beggar, and another who was a youth living by wits on the streets, and still another who was an impoverished widow trying to stretch her coins into an increasingly feeble and unpleasant future …

  Silence fell.

  Heirlarpost broke it by rounding on Laeral to ask coldly, “And do you, Lady Silverhand, albeit very recently arrived in our fair city, have anyone to nominate?”

  Laeral was genuinely surprised. “Me? No. However, a noble lord of this city came to me today to present me with a list that he and several other lords—who have affixed their names to the list—made of five guildmasters of this city they believe should be Lords at this table.”

  She took the single sheet of parchment from the array of writings in front of her, and held it up.

  “What? Guildmasters?” Interestingly, it was Voskur who was most volubly aghast.

  “Surely that’s a conflict of interest!” Heirlarpost snapped.

  “So is being noble,” Laeral pointed out, “or wealthy through investment or shipping or trade, and being at this table and in a position to make and alter laws that affect those investments or matters of shipping and trade. However, I promised the noble lord merely that I would place the list before you, not champion it. Consider it a roster of suggested candidates from several citizens, no more.”

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing!” Gruthgar Hrimmrel burst out. “Nobles having the naked gall to tell us who to vote for? Whatever next?” He glared at Laeral. “And you didn’t throw him out of the Palace?”

  “I didn’t have to,” Laeral said calmly. “He left of his own accord. After speaking his piece. And I happen to believe, my Lords, that it is the right of every citizen to be heard.”

  “All right, we’ve heard him,” Voskur snarled, “and now we’re going to go right ahead and do what we were going to do anyway!”

  “Vote in lords,” said Ieirmeera Stravandar, in her distinctive low, smoky voice. “Yet let us at least see the names.”

  Heirlarpost promptly leaned forward, planting a fist on the table so he could reach out imperiously for the list, but Laeral turned smoothly as if not seeing him and handed it not to him nor to Cazondur, closest on her left, but to the female Lord seated at hand to her right, Sarathlue Serendragon.

  Who read the parchment, grimaced, and passed it to Arhond next to her.

  She in turn perused it and passed it on. As it made its way around the table, Serendragon’s reaction proved typical.

  “Pigs,” one Lord said.

  “Grasping gluttons,” muttered another.

  “What was Lord Husteem thinking?” snapped a third. “Gralhund’s a dolt, but Husteem has a brain!”

  “He’s making mock of us!” said another.

  “He’s manipulating us by getting us angry,” Haelhand grunted, tapping the table for emphasis. “So fall for it not. There’s nothing to say we have to even vote on these names. Let this list be burned.”

  “No,” Laeral said firmly. “Disregard it, by all means, but there may come a time, years hence when memories of this have dimmed, when some of you may want to remember that all of these names were once connected.”

  Cazondur’s eyes narrowed, and then, slowly, he nodded. “Wise counsel,” he said, in his deep and plodding voice. “Wise counsel. Let the list be ignored—but retained by the Open Lord in the Palace records.”

  “We need a vote on that, yes?” Heirlarpost asked eagerly, but Laeral smiled. “Not if I agree to do so, but vote by all means if you’d prefer to do so.”

  “Eh?” The loud importer frowned in puzzlement, and looked to Cazondur. Who shook his head, leaving Heirlarpost to sit down again, flushing red with displeasure.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Laeral saw Serendragon hide a smile. Pretending to see none of the reactions around the table, she said smoothly, “So we have seven empty seats to fill by voting here and now, and eleven candidates. Let us proceed, by show of hands: Querreth for the Mask?”

  If Cazondur’s camp voted as a block, they only needed one of the other seven to vote with them, to carry any choice. In roster matters, the Open Lord shouldn’t vote except to break ties—which would be highly unlikely, with an uneven number of voting Lords at the table. Laeral had little doubt that the six candidates Cazondur wanted as Lords were all under his thumb, so electing just one of those six would deliver the Council of Lords into his hands henceforth. Which made the recent deaths handy indeed, for him …

  Yet what had he awakened? Who else might think that murder was a satisfyingly definite way of winning power over the Deep?

  If I was Braethan Cazondur, I’d raise my wards and watch my back, not spend any time gloating.

  Cazondur did have the grace—and self-control—to keep from openly gloating, but all six of his slate—Querreth, Qeldur, Tarncrown, Haulhenarr, Keltaerond, and Yuskalaunt were voted in, leaving the five candidates from the floor to be voted on for the one remaining position.

  Laeral was utterly unsurprised, when she called the first of those names—Vaelra Kallo—to see Cazondur’s five sycophants all look to Cazondur, to see if his hand went up.

  It did, so all of theirs shot up, too. And being as Kallo had been proposed by a neutral lord who also voted for her, that was enough to give her a Mask.

  Laeral suspected that Cazondur judged the dressmaker the easiest dominated of the five proposed Lords still in play. Well, he had his victory, now, and to spare—which meant that some of the five voting with him were now expendable, if they crossed him in any way. Laeral wondered if any of them had realized that.

  “Well, that’s all settled,” Voskur said with a loud sigh of satisfaction, getting to his feet, “so I’m for home!” He shot a glare Laeral’s way. “Where I have wine.”

  “Of course you may leave, my Lord,” Laeral said quickly, “and I’ll end this meeting now if it’s the general desire of all that our night’s business is done. However, I must point out that what we’ve voted on just now is not settled.”

  “What?” Lords glared at her from all around the table.

  “Are you trying to turn tyrant on us, Lady Silverhand?” Hrimmrel asked icily.

  Laeral shook her head. “I’m merely reminding you all that—if we can believe the Lords who attested as much, here tonight—none of these candidates knows they were being put forward, let alone have been voted to a lordship. They can all say no, Lords. Every one of them.”

  “Are you suggesting we should vote in a second slate of seven?”

  “No,” Laeral replied. “Just pointing out that we may have to assemble again if, say, more than half of the seven successful candidates refuse.”

  Heirlarpost gaped at her. “No one ever refuses a Lordship!”

  “Not so, Lord. Many have. I was one of them, once.”

  “Well, no one has refused a lordship in this century, Lady Silverhand,” Voskur said sharply.

  “True,” Laeral replied, “but then, no one in this century has been offered a lordship a bare handful of days after no less than seven Lords of this city were murdered.”

  Silence fell.

  “As I said,” she added quietly, “our work on this particular matter may not be done.”

  “More to the point, nor may the murderer’s,” Serendragon muttered.

  Another silence fell—and then ended abruptly in a general rush to rise and get gone. Home, every one of them, as they said loudly, hastening.

  Not a Lord staying in the Palace overnight—or for that matter, tarrying to confer with Laeral or each other. They all wanted to be home.

  With, as the doors closed behind all but one Masked-again Lord, one exception: Braethan Cazondur, of course.

  “A word in private, Lady Silverhand? I’ll be brief.”

  “By all means, Lord Cazondur. I
am most interested in what you have to say.”

  Cazondur looked slightly taken aback at that, but after a frowning moment put a smile on his face and asked, “So Lady, tell me: in your view, what are the foremost duties of the Open Lord of Waterdeep?”

  Laeral didn’t need any time to think about her answer. “Give the citizens hope, and reassure them that their city is being ruled diligently—the water flowing clean, the sewers working, the streets policed, and shortages and overcharging prevented.”

  “And after that?”

  “Don’t make needless enemies, and don’t start foolish wars.”

  Cazondur’s eyebrows rose. “Very civic-minded of you. Nothing self-serving has left your lips yet.”

  Laeral gave him a wintry smile. “The Open Lord has no need to be self serving,” she said softly, “when the Hidden Lords of the City do such a good job of that.”

  Cazondur regarded her in calm silence for a long time before he said gently, “I believe you just made a needless enemy, Laeral Silverhand.”

  “Oh, no,” Laeral told him, her voice even softer and gentler than his, “I just told one of my enemies that I know he is my foe—and has been since I arrived in the Deep. He was hoping for a willing dupe, or a dunderhead, and instead got me. Such an inconvenience. I’ve made you so much extra work, haven’t I? And I fully intend to go on doing so, Braethan Cazondur.”

  “That attitude makes you, I’m afraid, ‘business to be disposed of’ to me.”

  Laeral smiled. “Thank you. I’ve been ‘business to be disposed of’ often enough, down the centuries, to get good at being so. Shall we dance, my Lord?”

  Cazondur smiled again, and raised his hands so she could see the rings on them. Trying to impress her with his magical arsenal, no doubt.

  “I look forward to it,” he replied, caught up his Mask, and went out.

  Leaving Laeral alone at last. She surveyed the room out of long habit, seeking not-so-accidentally-left-behind baubles that might bear an enchantment, or poison. Seeing none, she retreated from the table, the spurned list of guildmasters in hand, and let out a long and weary sigh.

  The older you got, the more tiring fencing verbally with serpents got to be …

  “Well, sisters?” she asked the empty air.

  Dove didn’t bother to whisper. “I think you’re going to have to do what you said you wouldn’t do. Turn tyrant.”

  “That’s not a term I’d choose to use,” Laeral admonished her, “so … pray elucidate.”

  “You,” Dove replied promptly, “were going to be like Storm refereeing Harper disputes. You were going to keep all of the Deep’s squabbling nobles and guilds and aspiring-to-nobility wealthy personages and Masked Lords talking to each other, no matter how messy and clumsy the results, because that’s governance without tyranny, which is what you’re striving for. However …”

  “However,” Syluné took over smoothly, not bothering to whisper either, “you can’t afford to cleave to that road any longer. This Cazondur is trying to forge a tyranny, and it seems he somehow knows he needn’t fear your Art. You can either depart the Deep and leave them all to it, or you’ll have to do whatever’s necessary to stop Cazondur or prevent the civil war that’ll erupt in this city when he shoves too hard and others push back and he deals with them violently. And being as none of us can spell blast the likes of Cazondur into dust any more—not without weakening the Weave too much to avoid ruining Waterdeep, and enraging Mystra besides—you’re going to have to play Cazondur’s game.”

  “Which of his games?” Laeral asked quietly.

  “You’re going to have to become the strongwoman in this Palace, too mighty to ignore or thrust aside. Which means you’ll need to forge an alliance to be your strength and your shield, and do it without owing too much to anyone—and without alienating everyone.”

  “Just most of them,” Dove joked. “And you’ve made a good start at that, with the dolts and poltroons among the current Lords.”

  “So, Laer,” Syluné asked sharply, “do you agree?”

  Laeral smiled. “You’ve put into words what I’d already decided I’d have to do. Now, I just have to decide how best to go about it.”

  “Talk to Mirt to find out what not to do, and to El to learn the underhandedly sly but preferable way,” Dove said.

  “I heard that,” said a familiar voice, from under the great table.

  Laeral stepped back to where she could see under it. Not that the draped tablecloths let her see anything at all. “I should have known!”

  A moment later her sigh of amused exasperation became a frown, as two unfamiliar young men whose garb and bristling weaponry proclaimed them ‘adventurers’ emerged from under the table-draperies to smile and nod nervously at her—followed by Elminster.

  “I thought these Lords of the Deep would never be done trying to belittle ye, Laer,” he said, clambering to his feet. “Yet it seems we weren’t needed to prevent actual bloodshed, after all.”

  “Praise Mystra for small mercies,” Laeral replied. “And who are your two friends?”

  “Open Lord Laeral Silverhand of Waterdeep,” El said solemnly, “I present to ye Jalester Silvermane and Faerrel Dunblade, both formerly of Shadowdale, but now agone adventuring. They’ve fetched up here in the City of Splendors seeking their fortunes, as so many bright young jacks and lasses do.”

  Laeral smiled. “Well met, gentlesaers. And what, having heard them now wielding their power, do you think of the great lords of Waterdeep?”

  “They certainly break wind a lot,” Jalester told her. “Whatever did you feed them?”

  • • •

  “HOLD, IN THE name of the Watch!”

  Mirt swallowed a sigh, and reached an arm around Ravva to clamp down on Drella’s nearest shoulder just in time. She’d have probably made it, fleeing from the Watch even here in Castle Ward, but that would have meant long hours in custody for the rest of them, giving answers that wouldn’t have been believed to questions he’d rather not listen to in the first place.

  The nearest of this full strength and alert-looking Watch patrol looked to be veterans, and as they came forward, spreading out and keeping hands on hilts, they wore the confident half-smiles of men and women who’d seen it all and trusted that they could deal—rather wearily—with just about anything, bolstered by the aid of their duty mage.

  “Holding,” Mirt replied pleasantly. “And how goes the patrol, this fair night?”

  “Passable, citizen, so far,” came the reply. “So, now … three young ladies and one man of formidable build, hastening from a direction in which there’s been recent trouble, in the direction of Dock Ward. One might even say, Saer, that you were hurrying these ladies along.”

  The lantern was being brought up, soon to be unhooded full in Mirt’s face, and he could feel Drella trembling under his fingertips. Ravva was already playing to her strength, by reaching for the lacings of what she was wearing. And if he knew Waratra as well as he thought he did, she’d be very stealthily getting something sharp and pointed to where she could throw it …

  He’d managed to collect his three lasses and get well clear of the milling melee in the plaza, after anyone who looked like a Lord had made it inside more or less unscathed, but now it seemed he was going to be encumbered for most of the rest of the night, unless—

  “Lords of Waterdeep,” he replied grandly, “often find it necessary to hurry other citizens along. Even Watch guards, swordcaptain.”

  The Watch guards froze, just for a moment, but then the swordcaptain asked Mirt in tones heavy with disbelief, “Do they, now, Saer? Do they now?”

  “I certainly do,” Mirt replied, lifting his chin and sounding as confident as he knew how, “and—”

  Then it was his turn to stiffen. “ ’Ware!” he barked sharply, and pointed. The swordcaptain sneered—it was, after all, a ploy old enough to have achieved lichdom centuries before either he or Mirt were born—but some of the Watch guards looked up at where Mirt was
pointing, and exclaimed aloud. Perhaps because they’d thought it a tired ploy, too, and were genuinely astonished.

  Two men—well, man-shaped figures, though both were lithe and graceful, and the more he watched, the more womanly one of them seemed—had just leaped from one nearby tallhouse roof to another. The better to loop a drop-line around its handy chimney, so they could drop down over the edge of the roof, as they were busily doing right now, to reach an upper window.

  The Watch guards started to move, heading for that house in a rush. All except the mage, who followed more cautiously, a Watchwoman who’d obviously been detailed to stay with the Watchful Order wizard, a young and obviously uncertain novice Watchguard who was more untidy-haired boy than man—and the swordcaptain the novice had just as obviously been ordered to stay with. The swordcaptain who’d glanced back to see what was going on, but returned his stern attention to Mirt as swiftly as any lightning bolt ever stabbed anywhere.

  “Citizen,” that Watch officer snapped at Mirt, “stay here.” He pointed down at the cobbles. “Right here. These cobbles.” He gave each of the three girls a glare, and added a frown for Ravva in response to her impishly smiling display of her uppermost charms, and added curtly, “You, too. All of you.”

  Then the swordcaptain spun around and ordered the novice, “You stay here with them. Blow your horn if there’s any trouble.”

  And then he turned on his heel and was gone, pounding down the street to join his fellows, who’d rushed the house with the thieves on the roof and were now pounding on the front door and bellowing that they were the Watch.

  “Awww,” Ravva called mockingly after the man, “Ooo wouldn’t want to miss out on the fun of banging and shouting now, would Ooo?”