Ivy looked at her own hands, the wounds easily vanished by that handsome cleric in Procampur’s hospice tent. Every bruise, every ache, even that odd little kink in her left big toe, dismissed by the strong magic held by Procampur’s healers. She knew that even better healers would have been tending the Thultyrl throughout the summer. But the best of them probably could not combat the magic of a woman who had ruled the wizards of Procampur for three generations. Especially if they did not suspect what she was doing. “You kept his wound from healing so he could not take to the field. You changed his destiny.”
“I spun his fate as I could,” said the Pearl. “I also gave you what luck I could.”
Remembering the Pearl’s tap on her harper’s token when the Pearl handed back her glove, Ivy glanced at the gauntlet tucked so carelessly into her belt. Had the Pearl changed the little silver leaf? Enhanced it with a little more luck than it usually carried? While she had been wearing it, a certain floating corpse had drifted into her grasp, and a sword thrown in desperation had lodged in a monster’s throat, among other lucky coincidences.
“I should thank you then?” asked Ivy. “For all my luck?”
“Luck only goes so far,” replied the Pearl. “It takes courage and it takes skill to use luck wisely.”
Ivy bowed, a sincere acknowledgment of gratitude to a woman whose powers she barely comprehended. As far as she knew, very few could dice with destiny and win. “It takes a great deal of audacity to challenge the gods, even gods like Gruumsh,” said Ivy, with real admiration in her voice.
“Oh, I am a red-roof girl,” sang the Pearl very softly in her funny deep voice and winked at Ivy with a wicked smile.
“And we red-roof girls do have a soft spot for men from Procampur,” said Ivy, startled into a moment of enlightenment that was less than polite.
“It’s the armor,” admitted the Pearl. “But it is more than that. It is their belief that they should be doing the right thing whenever they can. Their absolute belief in the value of law.”
“Of honor.”
“Of good,” the Pearl concluded. “That is important. To have rulers who believe that good is the natural order of the world. That is what Procampur needs. And I am pledged to Procampur as truly as the Thultyrl.”
“Even if good is not the natural order.”
“How do you know that?”
Ivy remembered an argument about the Thieves Guilds with Sanval, and she concluded that every citizen of Procampur was just a little bit crazy when it came to topics like law, honor, and general good. It was an insanity that might just be catching. She rather hoped it would, or that at least it caught in places where she wasn’t trying to run some scheme or other. If sieges went out of style, she would need to find a new line of work. “I wish him well, your Thultyrl. A long and a happy life writing laws and building his library.”
“He will have it,” promised the Pearl with the same placid tone that she used to describe how she would boil Fottergrim’s head. “Even if I have to twist fate every day into a new pattern.”
Sanval was waiting for Ivy when she reached her tent. All of their gear was right where they had left it. No thieves had dared disturb the pack of panting dogs that had distributed themselves on top of their bags and boxes. The whole pack greeted her return with thumping tails. Everyone but Sanval was rummaging through their stuff, gathering up tools and looking for food. The Thultyrl’s people had fed them, but everyone was packing extra snacks into their clothing. After all, you never knew when you might drop down a hole and feel a little hungry.
Ivy started into her tent to look for a tin of sweetmeats that she thought she had left there. Sanval caught her arm as she passed and hastily let go when she stopped. The tips of his ears were slightly pink, but he also had that determined air about him. He was going to ask a question even if the answer was guaranteed to embarrass him. She was beginning to feel quite comfortable with those almost expressions of his.
“Why did you speak for me in front of the Thultyrl? Why rescue me so many times below ground? Why trade away that spellbook?”
She could have told him the truth. About how she could no more leave him behind than she could let Wiggles be eaten by a snake. Except, of course, her feelings for Sanval were even more complicated than that, and she needed some time to unravel them in her own mind. Once, when she was fifteen and setting out to be the most terrible and fearsome fighter in the Realms, she swore that she would never become too fond of anyone—she wasn’t going to have some tragic love story turn her into a tree like her father. Except somewhere along the way, she had picked up all these odd attachments—more attachments than the Pearl had pearls. Furthermore, Ivy had a suspicion that her fondness for a certain noble character who owned an unbelievable amount of clean linen would be more troublesome than all those other attachments combined. It might even be the kind of feeling that made you put down roots in one way or another.
Still, Sanval had saved her life more than once, and she did owe him an answer. After all, running away had never got her anything but being stuck under a dead horse, as Mumchance pointed out all too often.
“Friends are important,” she finally said.
He had a new expression on his face, one she hadn’t seen before. Sort of pleased, sort of disappointed.
“It was the right and proper thing to do. You should appreciate that, being from Procampur.” Ivy noticed that everyone had stopped hunting through their bags, and they were listening very casually to their conversation. “Anyway, Gunderal could not translate Toram’s spellbook—even Kid could not puzzle out what language it was in. Some type of code, we think. Basically worthless to us, except for the maps, and we tore those out before we gave it away.” Sanval’s expression was shifting further toward the disappointed side. Ivy hurried on, wondering why the others were all rolling their eyes at her. “The Moaning Diamond, on the other hand, would be very useful to us. Certainly it would lower the risk of our trade, seal the deal as Siegebreakers, if you know what I mean. Mumchance is sure that he knows where to dig to recover it. Want to help?”
Of course, she knew that he would refuse. He was too proper a gentleman to go treasure hunting underground.
He startled her by nodding. “Well, why not?”
Zuzzara and Gunderal laughed at Ivy’s expression.
“Pay up, pay up,” said Zuzzara to Mumchance and Kid. “Told you that he was going to stick around.”
“Just remember the rules, Ivy,” said Gunderal.
“You brought him back, my dear,” said Kid.
“You’re responsible for him,” added Mumchance.
“If he makes a mess,” concluded Zuzzara.
“Him?” said Ivy staring at Sanval. All of his bright shining armor might be missing, and he might be wearing his second-best pair of boots, but he still appeared cleaner and neater than any fighter she had ever met. Procampur men!
Sanval stared back at her, looking carefully at the free-floating ponytail of golden hair waving on the top of her head and her generally well-groomed appearance. “How about I keep her cleaned up and looking like that?” Sanval asked the others.
“Could you?” asked Zuzzara.
“Would you?” asked Gunderal.
“It seems like a very fair trade, my dears,” said Kid with his pointed little smile.
“I have to agree,” said Mumchance.
“Hey!” said Ivy, because she was their captain, and she occasionally did deserve just a bit more respect (not that she ever got it). Still, she couldn’t stop grinning.
Zuzzara, Gunderal, Mumchance, and Kid bent their heads together. There was a buzz of whispers.
“We would appreciate your help in keeping Ivy scrubbed,” said Mumchance finally. “There’s a spare room at the farm if you want to visit.”
“I might,” Sanval said directly to Ivy. “If you come to Procampur.”
“I might,” said Ivy with just the same emphasis. She cocked her head forward, got almost nose to nose, b
ut he did not back down. He just narrowed his eyes and gave her that typical Sanval look of noble composure. It was, she had to admit, a very impressive and rather attractive expression. One of these days, she was going to figure out how to do it herself. After all, she was the daughter of a couple of heroes—a bard and a druid who rattled the world in their own way—and in some places that made her just as much a lady as Sanval was a gentleman. Still, she wondered how stuck he was on Procampur’s views about people like herself. “What color are your roof tiles today?”
“I think,” said Sanval with a faint but distinct smile, “I think that they should be red.”
“Humans! This flirting back and forth is going to take forever. Come on,” said Mumchance to the others. The dwarf whistled for Wiggles and the rest of his dogs. “Let’s go for a run, puppies! We have some digging to do.”
About the Author
Rosemary Jones works for an opera company (writing, not singing) and has been a writer for several different types of community newspapers and trade magazines, including a stint on a Chinese-language newspaper and writing for a maritime magazine. Her nonfiction books include a series on book collecting published by Schroeder and her short stories have appeared in anthologies published by Phobos and Wizards of the Coast. This is her first novel.
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