Death Masks

by Ed Greenwood

  Ilvastarr blinked, then shrugged. “Very well.”

  “Last night,” Mirt muttered, jerking a thumb back down the passage, “yer bodyguards were seen killing a man by the name of Daerrask Querreth. Why? And you have my promise that yer answer will not be given to the Watch or made public.”

  Lord Ilvastarr looked distinctly unhappy. “If this ever gets out …”

  “Felhaer, this is nothing compared to what some of yer fellow lords and ladies have been getting up to. Believe me. So just tell me; I’ll not be sharing it from the rooftops.”

  The nobleman sighed, then blurted out, “I’m in debt, heavily in debt, and I’ll have to spend a lot more that I don’t have before winter. The roof of the oldest part of my home is leaking. Badly.”

  “Southeasternmost?” Mirt murmured.

  “I—yes. Yes, that one. How did you—? Well, ah, one of the most substantial sums I owe is to Voskur—the investor Landarmyn Voskur—and he offered to secretly forgive my debt to him entirely, and just as discreetly to pay all costs of a new roof, and give me sixty thousand dragons-worth of gems as an upfront, if my trusted hands would silence Querreth forever.”

  Mirt nodded. “Right, then. Yer words reassure me, actually. So, now, to your gold. Count with me. Twenty flagstones underfoot, away from the skeleton’s toes.”

  Back down the passage they went together, and at the twentieth stone Mirt turned to the wall on his left, jammed his fingers into a seam between two stones, and left them there as he turned to the other wall, chose another seam, and thrust a finger into it.

  A column of stone blocks in the wall to his left promptly retreated, pivoting into the wall with a brief grating sound to reveal a dark and narrow opening. When Mirt put his shoulder to those blocks, they swung open more easily than many normal doors, to reveal a small stone closet whose walls were a series of stone shelves crammed with decaying sacks of gold coins, and with coffers of—

  “Gems,” Mirt confirmed, opening one and showing Lord Ilvastarr a sparkling line of emeralds lying on satin, within.

  “This—all this—”

  “Is yers, aye,” Mirt reassured the astonished nobleman. “And judging by what I saw of yer roofs as I arrived, yer sorely needing it about now.” He clapped the coffer into Ilvastarr’s hand, and said briskly, “It’s been a pleasure visiting you this fine morning. I hope you found it the same?”

  “Yes, yes,” the impressed and grateful lord replied.

  “My thanks for this, Vasty. Enjoy your new roof.” Mirt clapped the nobleman on the arm, spun around, and set off briskly back down the passage, leaving Ilvastarr staring after him.

  A very short while later, he emerged in the marble-clad entry hall, and shouldered through the adventurers and their suspicious looks with a sunny grin and a hearty, “Adventures never cease, do they, lads?”

  A few hastily wheezing moments thereafter, he was out in the streets again and hurrying to get out of sight of the front steps of Ilvastarrgates before the expected flood of Vasty’s bodyguards came after him.

  He managed it, too, which hopefully meant they’d have to split up looking for him, so he’d only to have to face one or two of them at a time and not the whole ravening lot of them.

  “Hoy! You! Mirt of Waterdeep!”

  He’d made it three streets away before that breathless hail. Mirt turned beside a stern and unbroken stone wall that denied him any handy exit or cover—ah, but the gods all seemed to share the same vicious sense of humor at times, truly they did—to greet the man calling him. He put a wide smile on his face to do it, a smile that widened still farther when he saw that it was one—just one—of the adventurers, and the man was panting from his haste.

  He lurched toward the adventurer, reaching out a hand as if in greeting. “Aye? Lord Ilvastarr sent you?”

  “Yes,” the man replied, striding to meet him and holding out his own hand. “And he wants you to—”

  His other hand came out from behind his back with a wicked shortsword in it, that swept up to gut Mirt like a—well, like nothing at all, because Mirt hadn’t been born yestereve nor the day before that, and when his other hand came out from behind his back, it was full of sand from his handy belt-pouch of blinding.

  Which promptly went into the man’s eyes as Mirt sidestepped with a bob and weave that belied his ample bulk, hand going to another pouch and hooking fingers into it with deft haste to cast … marbles underfoot.

  The adventurer trod, slipped, swayed wildly—and Mirt caught hold of the man’s nearest shoulder and enthusiastically helped the off-balance man to a violent face-first meeting with the wall. Teeth flew, blood spurted, and the man left a dark red trail down the stones as he silently descended them.

  Mirt did not stay to watch. The other adventurers would be peering and hastening down adjacent streets, and he suspected he would run out of sand and marbles long before he ran out of Lord Ilvastarr’s roster of bodyguards.

  The roasting-meat and hot spiced gravy smells of a hot pie shop met his nose before he’d made it to the end of the block, and he peered up at its sign, grinned at a now-handy memory of long ago, and ducked inside.

  The kitchens were busy, but not so busy that the oldest cook didn’t have time to overcharge him egregiously for use of the old secret passage that linked a back closet in the pie shop with a festhall in the next street.

  The festhall hadn’t changed much, either, though he was momentarily startled to emerge not in the costume cupboard he remembered but in the same room repurposed into a dressing room.

  All around Mirt were slender ladies clad only in false pointed ears and skin-paint—black skin paint. A dozen or more, some of them making faces at him and pointing at a door they obviously preferred he make use of without delay, and others grinning unconcernedly as they smeared and rubbed at every bared inch of themselves, turning themselves into crude likenesses of drow.

  “What’s this?” he asked, genuinely interested. “New tastes in the forbidden?”

  “Giving pleasure to worshippers of Eilistraee,” said a pert-fronted lass who was busily pinning a wig of long white hair to her own short and deep red tresses. “We’ve had dozens in here this last tenday—ever since the Dark Dancer was seen dancing in the moonlight, barely beyond bowshot of the city walls, up the road to Amphail!”

  “My, my,” Mirt responded, heading for the door. “When’s the next show?”

  “The one you’re getting for free now, or did you want to pay for something more … personal?”

  Mirt chuckled. “Not now, terrible hurry, would love to, consider me an admirer, in fact, have this gift!” And he tossed the actor’s mask to her and plunged out the door. And so past the startled duty proprietress in the front parlor of the establishment and out into the street.

  Heading not south to the Palace but back in the direction of Ilvastarrgates. Which had liveried servants standing on its front steps but offered Waterdeep no sign of Lord Ilvastarr himself or any of his well-armed bodyguards.

  Good, good, because that meant no one would raise a hue or cry or get in his way to hamper his patronage of a certain carriage-rental establishment on Immer Street.

  Where Mirt offered good coin to be conveyed by closed coach back to the Palace.

  It was accepted eagerly, and in a trice he was lounging on cushions, with his feet up, peering through shutters at bodyguards hastening along peering here, there, and everywhere for a lurching and wheezing old man Lord Ilvastarr wanted silenced.

  That was the problem with silencing people. It was so effective that it all too easily became a habit.

  CHAPTER 19

  Having Second Thoughts

  First thoughts may be bold and swift and carry the day

  Or they may plunge over the precipice of dark disaster

  If second thoughts come not too late to sway

  They may if followed prove the wiser master

  Yet second thinking always involves a price to pay

  If blade comes seeking, yo
u must run faster.

  —An old and anonymous trail ballad of the Heartlands, first collected in Alzur Thaeren’s chapbook Fireside Songs, published in the Year of the Maidens

  “YOU HAVE MY DEEPEST THANKS,” ZARAELA RAELANTAVER TOLD THE underpriest of Tymora leading her through the halls of the temple—and meant it. “But you mentioned escorting me home through the streets, as an example of the healing power of the goddess; isn’t this the, ah, back door?”

  If the temple mirrors could be believed, there was no longer a mark on her; the ravages of the fire that had burned her so disfiguringly deeply were entirely gone. And so was the pain—which meant the long hours on her knees before Lady Luck’s altar as the priests “prayered” her to ensure her proper humility and thankfulness had all been worth it.

  She now wore the simple robes of a Tymoran temple novice, with nothing at all underneath, but she was quite willing to endure far more humiliation than that, and they had fed her very well and restored her prized enchanted rings to her fingers—the Ironguard ring and the one that neutralized poisons. They tingled slightly as they slid on, so she knew they were the real thing and not clever but nonmagical duplicates.

  Yet nothing and no one had ever curbed Zaraela’s tongue, and she was genuinely surprised. They’d been so eager to escort her home as a public demonstration of the care Tymora shows to mortal supplicants, but now …

  “Your coach has come for you,” the priest murmured, eyes downcast.

  “My coach?” Zaraela asked suspiciously, very well aware that she owned no conveyance of any sort.

  “It may belong to the Lord of the City who awaits you within it. He says he’s here to personally escort you home.”

  “Masked, I presume?”

  “Of course.” The priest sounded slightly shocked that she should think a Masked Lord of Waterdeep could be anything but masked.

  This should be interesting, Zaraela thought, checking her rings again. The priest led her out through a narrow rear door; two steps outside, other priests flanked an open coach door with a mounting stepstool.

  She gave them all a smile and nod of farewell, and stepped up into the dark interior of the coach.

  It was furnished with two facing benches of well-padded high-back seats. Sitting in the far corner of the one on her left was someone clad in the helmed mask of a Hidden Lord of Waterdeep and all the vestments. Sitting just inside the door she’d come through, on both benches, were two guards. Two thugs in expensive leather armor, that is, who both held wicked little dart guns, loaded and trained on her. They wore gauntlets that sported unsheathed dagger-blades jutting from the middle knuckles of their left hands.

  “Well met,” the Lord said silkily. “Zaraela Raelantaver, it is my distinct pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  “And it may well be mine, too, once I know who you are,” Zaraela replied politely—as the door was closed from outside, and the coach started to move.

  “Someone who cares very much for the future of our great city,” the man said—Zaraela was sure it was a male voice, even through the magical distortions of the Mask-helm; it came out very deep, and with a plodding measure—“and has become increasingly concerned about the activities of a certain Tash known to both of us, without any need of her full name.”

  “Oh, yes?” Zaraela replied cautiously.

  “I need her watched—and, if necessary, thwarted. Perhaps even permanently. This scrutiny would best be done by someone within her confidences. Would you be willing? Without betraying my confidence?”

  “Very willing,” Zaraela said softly. “Though I would not be so eager to cease our current activities related to … forcible and precipitous changes behind Masks.”

  “We are in accord on this; I also would not want those current activities to cease,” the Masked Lord told her. “Or be hampered in any way—unless or until the removal of this known-to-both-of-us person or her, ah, capable manservant becomes necessary, and I communicate this necessity to you.”

  “And what becomes of me then?” Zaraela asked coolly. “My death would seem to buy my silence more surely and cheaply than any payment. I’ve always avoided overly risky investments, unless I can see a profitable way out.”

  “A blood bond between us, perhaps? Enforced by a wizard of your choosing and hiring? I shall compensate you for that hiring-price, afterward—and the bond shall compel me to speedily make a substantial monetary payment to you, swear not to harm you nor to hire or coerce anyone to do you harm, and to also tender you the eventual reward of a Hidden Lordship of Waterdeep, with promises that you shall be foretold of matters to be voted upon in such timely manner that you should be able to arrange investments so as to enrich yourself greatly and often?”

  “You are generous,” Zaraela said warily.

  “I can afford to be,” the Masked Lord replied. “And in time to come, you shall be able to afford even more generosity than you can command right now.”

  “And if I accept, when do we enter into this blood bond?”

  “Tell me the wizard to direct this conveyance to, and it can be right now.”

  • • •

  LAERAL LOOKED up from the ever-growing pile of reports to be signed off on and agreements to be signed. “Yes?”

  “Lady Silver—” the servant began, only to be snatched aside with a startled “Eeeep!” by an all-too-familiar fat and hairy hand.

  “Lass,” Mirt wheezed, lurching into the room and slamming its door in the servant’s face, “Daerrask Querreth was murdered at the behest of Masked Lord Landarmyn Voskur.”

  Laeral frowned. “How did you know Voskur was a Lord?”

  Mirt gave her a sour look. “I may be a wheezing old man, Lady-lass, but I’m not yet a dullard. I was under the table, aye? I have an ear for voices, even if they bothered to guard their tongues when closeted with you—and they don’t.”

  Laeral nodded, a ghost of a smile rising to her lips despite herself. “Have my apologies.” Then her frown returned. “But why? A personal matter? I thought Voskur was a staunch member of Cazondur’s little cabal.”

  “Perhaps he’s having second thoughts,” Mirt suggested, lurching across the room and back again in search of handy decanters that weren’t there to find. “And disapproves of Cazondur’s stacking the slate of new Lords. He couldn’t prevent it or stop the vote, but he could eliminate some of the new lords beholden to Cazondur, and therefore slow the attempt to dominate all Lords’ voting. Or he could just be getting rid of a personal rival he didn’t want sitting in the Lords with him. Needing to do it in a hurry, or perhaps not be seen to have a hand in it and knowing Cazondur has set spies on all of his loyal cabal, he called in a favor owed to him by Lord Ilvastarr, and had the noble’s slayers do the deed.”

  Laeral lifted an eyebrow. “Ilvastarr? Well, he’s financially desperate enough.”

  “Not any more,” Mirt told her. “I helped him discover some long-hidden family wealth.”

  “A lot?”

  “Even by the standards of the spendthrift nobles of this city.” Mirt lurched to a stop beside Laeral’s heaped desk, and looked down at her. “You sure yer reading this a-right? That Cazondur heads the cabal? What if Voskur is the leader, rather than splitting off on his own? Or has been given different orders than Cazondur, by someone they both serve.”

  Laeral shrugged. “Perhaps. I’ve misread people and intrigues before. Yet in this case, I don’t think so.”

  “I believe,” Mirt growled, “I’ll go and pay Masked Lord Landarmyn Voskur a friendly and discreet social visit.”

  “You’ll get yourself dead one of these days, paying friendly and discreet social visits,” Laeral warned.

  “No doubt. Yet not this time, I think. I’ll be asking Elminster if he wants to go with me.”

  Laeral winced. “And if he refuses?”

  “I’ll ask a certain Lady Silverhand, instead.”

  Laeral winced again. “I’ll help you persuade El. If we can find him; he comes and goes as he p
leases.”

  “Yet he always comes when trouble arrives, I’ve noticed,” Mirt pointed out. “So, if I start a little trouble …”

  Laeral winced a third time—and then sighed and quelled the gesture. She was getting too good at it.

  • • •

  HAVING FAILED TO snatch Lord Khaliira Arhond’s daughter, Naelvala, this beyond-risky venture was now their lot.

  Hot and hard work on a rooftop overlooking the Trades Ward tallhouse that was the home of Masked Lord Ieirmeera Stravandar. Her daughters Dalarrla and Ildathe were presumably inside.

  The stink of the pitch was strong enough that Tasheene couldn’t smell anything else, not even the sea air that was blowing gently but steadily past them off the harbor. “Them” as in her and Drake, as they pretended to be painting the roof they were on with pitch, to seal the leaks in its aging, shrinking shakes. Cracks everywhere; this was why metal plating was smarter, and tiles smartest of all.

  Not that either of them really cared about the quality of this roof, so long as it didn’t start to shift and slip underfoot. They were really watching the Stravandar house, waiting for either of their quarries to depart it, or—gods forefend!—dusk to fall this coming evening, or Masked Lord Ieirmeera Stravandar to go out on business or shopping or for a meal. If she departed, they could break in and seize the daughters, hooding them one at a time and hopefully getting their obedience by saying their mother was a captive who’d be killed if they didn’t obey—so they could get the daughters to just walk out of the house with them and into a coach they’d rented, that was standing nearby. If not, they’d be knocked cold, rolled into whatever large rugs or tapestries or bedding could be found to have their true nature hidden, and lugged to the conveyance.

  It was a bold and chancy plan, but Drake thought he was fast and agile enough to take out servants before they could flee or raise a public alarm—and she and Drake really had no choice but to be overly bold, in the circumstances.

  “I wonder where Antler’s spies are,” Tasheene muttered, carefully not raising her head for a look at the rooftops all around. “I know there’ll be some watching us.”