The City of Splendors

by Ed Greenwood

  Some of the fire seemed to go out of Naoni’s voice, and she sank down a little in his arms. “Servants drew her out into the back gardens and threatened her with the law if she so much as touched or spoke to the lord’s daughter—ever. Then she was marched to another corner of the gardens, where her Lord Faithful’s wife was waiting with a threat of her own. She told the lass that the gods had bestowed a blessing: she was now pregnant with her lord’s child. If the lass did or said anything to make the merest hint of scandal touch her husband, her little girl would disappear. Forever.”

  Korvaun winced. This was not the tale he’d expected. It was far worse. “You’re telling me dark truth. How’d you learn it?”

  “I found … love letters, and a journal, with a portrait—a miniature, something my … no tradesman’s family could have afforded. All hidden in a coffer. Some of the letters were pleading. Desperate.” Naoni shivered.

  “I believe it. I believe it all,” Korvaun told her. “Many take anything they can grasp, caring nothing for others, yet not all nobles are like that. I am not like that.”

  “I know,” Naoni whispered, “yet you can’t undo what was done. No one can. It’s marked me forever.”

  “A smith hammers and hammers a blade, then quenches it in oil and reheats it to hammer it more,” Korvaun said gently, “and not all blades break in such forging. Some emerge strong and true. You’ve no reason to be ashamed by what happened.”

  “I am not ashamed! I have done nothing to be ashamed of!”

  “Yet you’ve never told anyone your mother’s story until now, have you?”

  Naoni was silent for a long time before she sobbed, “No. My mother said nothing, and I didn’t—and don’t—want to hurt Father. My mother’s family were successful merchants, with a good house and coins to spare, the sort of folk who fear scandal more than anything else. They married her off to the first man who asked. An ambitious day laborer. Father.”

  “I doubt he was as deaf and blind at the time as that telling suggests,” Korvaun said gently. And waited.

  “You’re … perceptive, Lord Helmfast. No doubt Father knows all. I most fear Faendra learning of this and preening to all that she’s almost nobility, or should be. No good can come of that, only heartbreak for her and unpleasantness for us all.”

  Korvaun nodded grimly. Some nobles would sport with such a lass with glee …

  He laid his dagger in her hand and closed her fingers over it. “Take this. If you feel the need to protect your honor and your good name—even from me—use it with my blessing.”

  She stared at his calm face through fresh tears. “You make it hard for me to despise you.”

  Korvaun’s mouth traced the wry beginnings of a smile. “I suppose that’s a beginning.”

  “A beginning?” she asked suspiciously. “A beginning of what?”

  “Friendship, at first. In due time, love and marriage—if you’ll have me. And after marriage, gods willing, children.”

  Naoni stared at him, mouth agape. He added quickly, “I know things can only happily befall if they’re also your desire, and we come to know each other well and trust each other fully. Don’t fear that I’ll take the one without offering the other. Nobles are good at vows, and I make one to you here and now: if I get you with child, it will only be as my Lady Helmfast.”

  She shook her head incredulously, tearstained face bone-pale. “Marriage … children … Lady Helmfast! You’re crazed!”

  “Quite possibly. Nevertheless … the words are said and I mean them.”

  Naoni stared into his eyes, breathing fast. “I believe you’ll stand by your vow, Lord Helmfast, and I give you one of my own: I’ll no longer be ridden by the ghost of my mother’s pain. I’ll not judge you by he who wronged her. And I’ll no longer pretend I don’t love you.”

  Her lips found his, and they were warm and sweet and willing.

  When at last they broke apart, breathless, Naoni murmured, “Now, that, my lord, is a beginning!”

  Korvaun chuckled and stroked her cheek. “Nay, love, let it be an ending—for this night. Let the priests chant their prayers first, so you never have reason to fear dishonor or scandal.”

  “Haven’t I vowed an end to such fears?” she replied. “Morning’s not far off, and the ghosts fade. There are none to see the promises we make, or judge how we seal our vows to each other.”

  Korvaun shook his head. “You need prove nothing to me.”

  “Have I reason to fear dishonor or scandal?”

  “No. Not while I live.” As this was simple truth, and because she gazed at him with such shining trust, Korvaun took a ring from the smallest finger of his right hand and slid it onto her finger.

  “You have my pledge and my heart—and I’ll give you my name as soon as the ceremony can be arranged.”

  Naoni’s smile was dazzling. “Give me your love, and I’ll be content.”

  Echoing sighs faded at the back of the tomb as the last wan ghostlight winked out—and there were indeed no witnesses to the promises made in the last hours of that night.

  Yet when bright morning came, neither lord nor lass doubted that the whispered promises between them would be well kept.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  For the first time in his life, Taeros Hawkwinter held vigil for dawn. All night he’d paced the moon-cast shadows outside the City of the Dead, praying to every god he knew to hasten the coming of morning, and dreading what dawn might reveal. The stern line of Guardsmen had been unmoved by his pleadings and use of the Hawkwinter name. Scores of times he’d cursed himself for noticing Varandros Dyre striding out of that inn. If they hadn’t found Faendra to ask her where her sister had gone, Korvaun would never have gone sprinting off to find his Naoni, and—

  Enough. ’Twas done, as surely as Malark’s entombment, the gods save us all.

  Taeros wasn’t alone in his fearful restlessness. A throng had gathered outside every gate of the cemetery, anxious to learn the fates of friends and loved ones locked within—or to reclaim the dead and dying who were only too visible through the high iron gates. A veritable army of Guardsmen, Watchmen, and Watchful Order magists grimly barred passage, unmoved by threats, brandished blades, and sobbing pleadings alike.

  Throughout the night several frantic folk had tried to scale the walls, only to be hurled off by warding magics. Others had wept helplessly as they recognized a familiar voice, inside the walls, raised in terror or pain. The cries soon died away, leaving only ominous silence, and still the citizens waited, shivering in the chill grey damp of the night-mists.

  At last the darkness started to lighten, and men started to call, “In! In!”

  Others took up the cry, and it quickly rose into a chant. Taeros stood nose to nose with the Guardsman who’d firmly denied him several times and saw the man’s eyes change as someone spoke inside his head.

  The officer turned and said curtly, “Open the gates.”

  Binding spells wavered and sighed away, locks were undone and great bars hurled aside, and the great iron gates swept silently open. With a collective sigh, the waiting throng streamed inside.

  Taeros jostled with dozens of robed priests and heard the rattling progress of many haulcarts behind him. The carters would convey the known dead to their grieving families and haul the unclaimed to The Last Bath in South Ward, the grim house where unknown dead were laid out in hopes someone would miss them and come looking. Taeros prayed silently that this day wouldn’t include a trip there to seek Korvaun Helmfast among those ever-quiet faces.

  He pushed his way through the growing thunder-rumble of carts, looking this way and that for some sign of his friend. Heartsick, he saw nothing, nothing … no gleam of blue gemweave amid the sprawled bodies.

  And then, in the far tree- and tomb-studded distance, above the heads of the milling crowd of searchers, he caught sight of disheveled fair hair. Korvaun was taller than most—it could be …

  Taeros broke into a run, dodging and darting.

&nb
sp; Yes! Korvaun alive, by all the Watching Gods! And beside him, both clinging to and supporting the rather bedraggled Lord Helmfast, was a slender, flame-haired lass who could only be Naoni Dyre.

  Relief flooded the Hawkwinter. Laughter welling out of him, he raced forward and threw his arms around them, and the three clung together, laughing and crying, as carts rumbled by and others wept.

  Finally, starving for air, Taeros pulled away. “Thanks be to Torm for friends too bloody stubborn to die!”

  A shadow passed over Korvaun’s face, and Taeros winced. For what were the ghosts that so swarmingly haunted the Deadrest, but folk too stubborn to die?

  “Do you count me among your friends, then, Lord Taeros?” Naoni Dyre asked quietly. “On such short acquaintance, and me a common-born lass?”

  Her stare told the Hawkwinter that his answer really mattered to her. Glib phrases rose readily to his tongue—and there stopped. Taeros blinked, realizing that what he was about to say was simple truth.

  “Strangely enough, I do,” he marveled.

  Before he could chastise himself for that slip of the tongue, both of his friends, the old and the new, burst into laughter.

  Taeros heard the high, wild edge to Naoni’s mirth and told her quickly, “Let’s begone from here. I saw not your father nor sister outside the gates, but in all candor, I wasn’t looking for them.”

  “Nor would you have found them. Father told us not to expect him in at all last night—New Day work, I’ve no doubt—and I took his room, so I could sleep while Faen slipped out to a revel. She’s probably not back even yet, and neither of them knows I came here. But they’ll soon find me missing, and worry.”

  “I’ve a coach waiting, if you can walk four streets west.”

  Relief and gratitude shone on Naoni’s face, making her look like a lamp lit from within, and Taeros wondered why he’d ever thought her plain.

  The three lost no time in departing the City of the Dead. Handcarts laden with corpses were already rumbling past. Naoni winced as an arm slid off its chest to sway and dangle, but Taeros gazed at smeared lip-paint on the dead man’s face and said softly, “I’ll wager that one never thought, hurrying to an afternoon tryst, that he was rushing to his grave.”

  “Few think of their own deaths until they lie dying,” Korvaun replied. He looked down at Naoni with the future in his eyes and added, “Much less what comes after. I’d never had reason to do so myself, ere last night.”

  Taeros stiffened in enlightenment. First Roldo, now Korvaun! With Malark gone and Beldar so troublingly preoccupied, he’d soon be reduced to drinking and wenching with just Starragar. And Lord Starragar Jardeth was certain to wed young, for what better way to maintain his customary ill spirits?

  Leaving him alone, with his books and inkpots.

  Another handcart rumbled past, bearing a lone dead man. It was followed by a sobbing, staggering woman. Taeros winced. Well, there was alone and then there was alone.

  “Nao! Naoni!” The frantic whisper resumed, and so did the rattling of the heavy bolt.

  Striding through cheering merchants to take his place at the gleaming table where citizens could confer publicly with the Lords of Waterdeep—all of them unmasked and rising to applaud his entrance—Varandros Dyre frowned. That sounded like Faendra, and what would she be doing here, whispering for her sister in all this tumult?

  “Naoni Dyre, wake up! If you don’t get up and out of here soon, Father’ll be back, and then what—”

  Varandros Dyre was suddenly receiving applause from no one, and the glossy carved chair under his hands was … the smooth-worn lip of the inn bed, and he was blinking at the door as its bolt rattled again.

  “Naoni!”

  Not bothering with his breeches—the knee-length inn nightshirt would do—Dyre rolled out of bed, shot the bolt, and pawed the bolt open.

  Faendra staggered back, wide-eyed. “Father!”

  “What, lass?”

  His youngest daughter peered past him frantically. “She’s not here!”

  “Naoni? Why would she be here? Out with it! Where is she?”

  “I … I don’t know!” Faendra looked ready to cry. “I thought she was in here! S-she—”

  Fear closed iron fingers around Dyre’s throat. There’d been some sort of brawl in the City of the Dead last night, with the Watch and half the Guard called out! What if Naoni’d been there? She went betimes to put flowers on …

  Gods, what if she’d somehow still been inside when they closed the gates at nightfall?

  “No!” he growled fiercely, “She’s a stubborn lass, and house-proud to a fault. Most likely she went back to the house for some of her spinning and stayed to work, trusting she could keep it standing if the Lords came a-calling by … well, by sheer pride.”

  The trembling beginnings of a smile touched Faendra’s worried face. “Yes, that sounds like Naoni. We must go and make sure!”

  “Aye.” Varandros Dyre looked at his younger daughter, so pale, dark hollows hooding her eyes. Her mother had looked just so, when the fever’d begun … “I’ll hire a carriage.”

  She winced. “If it’s all the same to you, Father, I’d rather walk.”

  It was past full dawn as Lark hurried down the street. She was late for work two days running, and Master Dyre wasn’t one to dismiss that.

  Her misadventure with Beldar Roaringhorn had kept her from her duties for too long, yesterday; by the time she’d reached the Dyres’ it was locked and empty. Her employers must have been making their worksite rounds, and with the fire out and no food ready to hand, they’d likely take their evening meal out, perhaps even at the Notch.

  So she’d gone to serve there at her appointed time, planning to arrive at the Dyres’ very early the next morn, but her cheek was so bruised from Lord Roaringhorn’s blow that she looked frightful. She’d lingered too long at her mirror trying to cover the damage with tinted unguent lent by a sympathetic highcoin lass at the rooming house.

  Her face felt stiff and strange under the unfamiliar paint, but she strode through the Dyres’ kitchen garden with her usual swift step. To her surprise, the buttery door was still locked. The kitchen door, the front entrance: locked tight, all. No smoke rose from the chimney, and no sounds came from within.

  A strong hand descended on her shoulder and spun her around to face—

  Her grim-faced master, with tearful Faendra at his side, her gaze fixed on the chimney.

  Lark’s heart sank. Every morning, Naoni rose before dawn to stoke the kitchen fire. By now she’d have a pot of broth or spiced cider simmering, and morningfeast would be bubbling and sizzling. The cold chimney proclaimed all too loudly that the mistress of hearth was absent.

  Master Dyre’s eyes were flint-hard. “Where’s Naoni?”

  Lark shook her head, swallowing. “I know not. The house’s locked up tighter than a Calishite harem.”

  The rattle of an approaching coach rose behind them, and the hooves of its horses were slowing. Everyone turned.

  They were in time to see Lord Korvaun Helmfast leap out, even before the coach had quite stopped.

  Varandros Dyre stared in disbelief. The noble’s blue gemcloak was gone, and his fine clothes were stiff with dried blood. As the horses snorted and pawed, Korvaun reached up to help someone alight from the coach—and Naoni Dyre’s slender form and bright head suddenly filled its door.

  Varandros Dyre growled something wordless and took a step forward, but by then Faendra had flung herself past him with a cry and thrown her arms around her sister, bursting into tears.

  Naoni soothed her, murmuring reassurances and stroking her sister’s hair as they rocked together in Faendra’s tight embrace.

  As Lord Taeros Hawkwinter emerged from the coach, Korvaun bowed to the glowering guildmaster. “Your daughter’s unharmed, Master Dyre. I apologize for my rough appearance. We shared the misfortune of being locked inside the City of the Dead at nightfall, along with scores of others.”

  Varandros Dyr
e swallowed, swayed, went pale, and then blazed crimson again, all in a single breath. “She was locked in the Deadrest all night? With the likes of you?”

  Korvaun’s lips thinned, but his voice stayed calm, even respectful. “Something turned the usual crowd of mourners into a slaying mob; so fierce was the fighting that it threatened to spill out into the streets. Even the Guard and Watch together lacked time and swords enough to quell the fray before nightfall and … were forced into a hard decision. Many folk didn’t survive; we’re among the fortunate few.”

  Naoni gently slipped out of Faendra’s arms and went to her father, who was now staring at her as if she were one of the Deadrest ghosts.

  “Lord Helmfast came to my rescue,” she told him, “saving me first from a man who tried to …” Her voice failed, but she drew in a deep breath and went on. “Then he fought for me against a band of armed men who attacked us in their madness. We … took refuge in one of the tombs. Korv—Lord Helmfast had a blessed talisman that kept the roaming spirits safely from us throughout the night. And he gave me this.”

  She pulled a fine dagger from her belt and held it up. Its sharp, clean blade glinted in the morning light.

  “Lord Helmfast bade me use it if I felt he in any way threatened my honor. As you can see, I had no cause.”

  Varandros Dyre looked at Naoni’s fierce face, at the bright-bladed dagger, and then back at the young noble. “It would seem,” he said slowly, “I must again thank you for protecting my daughter.”

  Korvaun bowed again. “It was my pleasure as well as my duty, goodsir,” he said quietly. “If it please you, might your daughters and I have a few private words with your maidservant? We’re concerned about a friend of mine and believe she may know something helpful.”