by Ed Greenwood
Hefting Piergeiron's war-helm, Mrelder halted in mid-stride. They would know, yes, but if he crafted a light sorcery of false half-memories of masked Lords meeting and Palace passages by night in the mind of the nearest carter or dungsweeper and presented the result to his father as the next Open Lord, how would a certain overconfident Golskyn know?
He resumed his swift walk to the Palace. The sooner this helm was out of his hands and the risk of being traced through it gone, save as the maker of its little copper badge-something Piergeiron's pet wizard knew already-the better.
The Palace guards knew Mrelder by sight this time and recognized the helm too. He thrust it at them. "Here. I trust my good friend the Lord Piergeiron is well enough to be needing this? I managed to keep him alive after he was struck down in the fighting, but departed when the Watch ordered me to; 'twould seem they left this behind when they carried him away. He took a fearsome blow; how fares he?"
The guards traded glances and drew back in frowning uncertainty, one clutching the helm. Behind them, a tall, unfamiliar woman in the full gleaming armor of the City Guard hastened down the Palace steps.
"We thank you for this," she told Mrelder crisply. "The Lord Piergeiron's well but in private conference." Her nod was both thanks and dismissal.
Mrelder nodded back, very slowly, and was rewarded for his tarrying by what happened next.
One of the many doors at the head of the stairs opened, and two Guard commanders hastened out, helms under their arms, with a trio of grim, grandly garbed Palace officials behind them.
"Get word to him right away," one official was ordering the Guard officers. "Mirt's Mansion."
The tall Guard commander watched Mrelder turn away, her face thoughtful. Then she hurried back up the steps, yanked open another door, and snapped, "See that man?"
She pointed at Mrelder's back, dwindling into the usual crowds of people striding importantly to and fro across the great open cobbled expanse in front of the Palace. "I want him followed. See where he goes and what he gets up to. Don't let him spot you, and report back soon. Two of you, so one can return and the other keep watch."
The door opened wider and two men strode out. They looked like dusty, none-too-well-paid merchants' carters, or veteran dock-hands, and carried a large, heavy crate between them.
Or at least they walked as if it was heavy. In truth, it held only cloaks and hats they could use as disguises, but they saw no need to let all watching Waterdeep know that.
Did Mirt's lady always wear dark, skintight leathers? Roldo Thongolir was swallowing and staring openly, and Korvaun knew just how his friend felt. Asper drew the eye with every lithe movement, that mare's-tail of ash-blonde hair dancing behind her, and a slender sword bouncing at her hip. When she was in the room, it was difficult to look elsewhere…
Knowing eyes met his, and Lord Korvaun Helmfast felt himself blushing.
"Lords," Asper said firmly, "stare all you want, and help yourselves to yon decanters, but pay attention. Waterdeep has need of you."
Korvaun and Roldo found themselves nodding and mumbling in hasty unison. They traded glances, and with one accord, reached for decanters.
Asper grinned, rolled her eyes, and waited for glass stoppers to rattle back into place. Nobles. They seemed to need oiling even more often than dockworkers…
When they were both staring at her again, Asper handed a small silver device to Roldo.
"Don't lose or drop those, or all our strivings are wasted."
The two nobles looked down at their slipshields. The device Mirt had given Korvaun was a tiny shield of dull metal, but Roldo's was a fanciful pendant of a hawk soaring across a large and intricate snowflake.
"Winterhawk," Roldo murmured, recalling a tale he'd read in an old and rare book his bride had acquired in Silverymoon. For resale, of course.
Asper nodded. "An old tale, not often told," she said quietly, eyeing Roldo with something that might have been respect in her eyes.
Then she went on as briskly as before, "Now at the Gentle, you'll follow Laneetha-dark purple robe, eyes gray as a harbor mist-to her curtained chamber, where you can make the switch unseen. She'll identify herself. I'm telling you this in case anything happens to me in the tunnel. Come."
"Tunnel?" Roldo asked, face tightening.
"It'll get us behind Laneetha's curtain rather more quickly than the carriage could take us there, through underways neither of you will ever remember and have never seen nor heard of-and if you don't follow my instructions precisely as we proceed, will never be able to forget."
Roldo frowned. "Is that a threat?"
The smile fell from Asper's face so suddenly that Roldo half expected to hear it shatter on the floor. "No, it's a promise, on the part of the traps awaiting there. They're very good at keeping promises, believe me. Now, Lords, answer me this: do you swear to serve Waterdeep in utter secrecy, upon pain of death?"
"Lady," Roldo told her a little stiffly, "we are nobles."
"That's why I'm asking," she said quietly, as their eyes locked.
After a long moment, Roldo sighed and shrugged. "I swear. Of course." Korvaun echoed him, without the shrug.
"Good. Thank you." Turning to the nearest wall, Asper thrust aside a curtain.
Both Roldo and Korvaun knew the battered figure standing in the dimly lit room beyond leaning on a crutch-wherefore they both swallowed hard and rose to their feet in hasty unison.
This earned them a smile and the dry words, uttered in a strangely slow and thickened voice: "Well met, loyal lords."
Mrelder had never before seen so many people just lounging around an alley in bustling Dock Ward. Laborers were casually draped over barrels, fishmongers tallied catch-crates with chalk on a handy wall instead of inside whatever warehouse held those catches, and three burly men were fixing the axle-pins of a wagon even a sorcerer could see wasn't really broken.
Even if he stood boldly in the center of the cobbles like a man awaiting a duel, there wasn't much space left. Wherefore Mrelder went into a handy net mender's shop, pointed up its stairs, and offered the toothless old man behind the counter two gold dragons for "the use of yon upper window."
The old man grinned. "Three dragons. Chair's extra."
Mrelder rolled his eyes, dropped a third coin into the man's palm, and ascended. He was only half-surprised to discover a dusky-skinned, scowling titan of a sailor and a pale, thin girl who seemed to be clad entirely in scabbarded daggers there already, seated in chairs at the lone open window. It seemed there was a deep daily local interest in the comings and goings at Mirt's Mansion.
Either that or half the city already knew Lord Piergeiron was inside the stylish fortress. Mrelder settled himself in the last chair-a crack-seated, wobbly wreck, of course-just in time to see a very drunken young man in splendid but disheveled garb carried down the mansion steps by Mirt's doorguards and loaded into the moneylender's carriage. The glittering blue cloak marked the drunk as one of those who'd sworded sailors in a recent brawl.
"Lord Korvaun Helmfast," the dagger-lass chuckled. "My, he must drink fast?"
The sailor's dirty laugh broke off in a grunt as the guards went inside and a sudden singing shimmering sprang from rune-pillar to rune-pillar. "They've set the night-wards," he growled in surprise. "That's it, then. No one'll be leaving 'til morn."
The girl spat thoughtfully out the window as Mirt's carriage rumbled past, and Mrelder sat frowning and thinking.
Then he sprang to his feet and hurried down and out, following the carriage. About half the watchers who'd been loitering in Tarnished Silver Alley had suddenly found good cause to be elsewhere; Mrelder saw only two others oh-so-casually strolling from shop to shop along the route he was taking.
"This window's the best," a hoarse voice came down to him, as he passed under the open windows above one ramshackle shop, "and a good arrow's a small price to pay for a new Open Lord who's not quite so firm and upstanding, if ye take my meaning."
Mrelder hurrie
d on. Best to pretend he'd heard nothing and keep in close under awnings and downspouts, where no arrow might find him. Of course there'd be folk in Dock Ward who'd want Piergeiron dead and welcome all the accompanying tumult. Why He stopped. Ahead, Mirt's carriage had halted outside a large, new-looking building. Mrelder vaguely recalled that an old rooming-house, its roof sagging into collapse, had stood there as sahuagin had raged down the streets. Newly rebuilt, it now sported steps up to elegant double doors flanked by formidable-looking doorguards, beneath a truly splendid signboard.
"The Gentle Moment," he read, then deciphered the more fanciful script below: "Skilled hands to tend all your hurts and needs."
The horses, their heads tossing, were already unhitched and being led around to the near end of Mirt's carriage, to draw it right back down the street to the moneylender's stables.
Mrelder frowned. His purse was now slender enough to make the prospect of following some drunken noble blade-whose connection to the Lords of Waterdeep was probably nonexistent-into a brand-new and surely overpriced house of healing and pleasure rather less than appealing.
A woman who wore little more than a collar adorned with long strips of glittering cut-glass "gems" suddenly burst out of the doors, planted herself on the steps in a pose that showed Mrelder and everyone else on the street all the charms the gods had given her, and blew a horn.
A Watch horn.
Before Mrelder's jaw could even drop, she'd vanished back up the steps in a flashing of false gems and a bouncing of trim flesh, and voices could be heard shouting inside the Gentle Moment-angry male voices.
A brawl must be brewing. Mrelder strolled away from the house of healing to somewhere he could lean casually against on the far side of the street. Mirt's carriage rumbled away, and from the east came the hasty jingling of scabbard-chains and the bobbing of torches.
The doorguards stood motionless, staring coldly at Mrelder and several other curious Dock Warders who'd heard the horn and come to see the trouble-or being as this was Dock Ward-the fun.
They stared back and forth, the guards on the steps and Mrelder and the others across the street, both casually ignoring the Watch patrol who rushed up the steps into the Gentle Moment, then sent out two Watchmen to blow another horn-call.
The Watch wagon that responded to that summons was rather less elegant than Mirt's carriage and sported enough window-bars and firequench-glowing metal plates to seem part of a fortress rather than a conveyance.
The doors of the Gentle Moment opened again and another unconscious young noble-this one wearing a gem-bright cloak of a soft rose hue-was carried out, unconscious, and stuffed through a hastily slammed hatch into the armored wagon.
"Where's he off to, I wonder?" Mrelder murmured aloud.
An old salt standing near threw him a sharp look, spat on the cobbles while deciding to humor a visiting outlander, and growled, "Palace dungeons, o' course. Watch wagons go nowhere else-unless they're carrying deaders to be burned at the Castle."
"Ah," Mrelder said, nodding his thanks. Then he froze, staring. Lord Korvaun Helmfast, smiling and nodding to the Watch officers in a manner that could only be described as stone cold sober, was descending the steps of the Gentle Moment, and thanking one of them for letting him "borrow" some men to see him "safely closer to home."
Mrelder frowned. An instant sobriety spell? Well, that just might account for the amount of revelry the nobles of Waterdeep were famous for, and where better to acquire one than a house of healing?
Or was it all part of something more sinister?
Roldo Thongolir batted aside a veil of cobwebs and wondered why the tunnel didn't seem quite so terrifying on this return trip.
The underground walk from Mirt's Mansion to the Gentle Moment had been a nightmare. The traps Asper had warned about were plentiful and dangerously imaginative, but far worse were the close walls, low ceiling, and suffocating knowledge that crushing tons of rock and soil loomed just overhead.
On this trip the ceiling was even lower, thanks to his borrowed form, but somehow it bothered him less that his hair frequently swept the ceiling-stones. Perchance something of Lord Piergeiron's famed courage came with the tall, broad, hard-muscled frame.
It was strangely exhilarating, striding about in the shape of Waterdeep's greatest living hero. Roldo was still not entirely certain why he, Korvaun, and Piergeiron had just traded shapes. Answers would surely be his soon; wasn't that glow ahead the end of the tunnel? And wasn't his lovely guide turning to him, stepping so close that she could Kiss him, full on the mouth.
She had to stand on tiptoe to do it, thanks to his new height. Only the grace of Lathander-and perhaps Piergeiron's armor-kept Roldo from staggering back in stunned surprise. 'Twasn't every day fair ladies expressed their thanks so delightfully to him. His own new Lady Thongolir, alas, was… reticent in such matters.
"Now, can you feel this?" Asper asked softly.
"This" was a small, cold, and very sharp blade held at Roldo's throat. He started to nod, swiftly thought better, and murmured, "Y-yes."
Asper stepped back. "Good. 'Twill set to work on you-very slowly-if you ever reveal what you've done and seen this night, until I give you permission to speak of such things."
"Lady," Roldo replied stiffly, "there's no need for your blade. My honor binds my tongue. This I swear!"
Asper stepped back, eyes steady on his. "Then please accept my apologies," she said softly, "and come and take wine. You'll have to stay in Piergeiron's shape until we hear the signal."
Roldo frowned. They were back in Mirt's Mansion, and he was thoroughly confused by what he'd just taken part in. "Certainly and gladly, Lady, if you'll please explain what we just did."
Asper nodded and led him up a curving stair to a room with a high northeast window, where lamps glimmered and warm covered platters waited. Waving at him to help himself, she said, "The Lord Piergeiron's badly wounded. Due to his age and the longevity magics that sustain him, he isn't… healing well. Half the city knows it, including many who see gain in slaying the Open Lord."
"So Sunderstone and Piergeiron's pet wizard want him somewhere secure. The Castle."
Asper smiled. "You grasp the basics. Problem: Piergeiron can't be teleported safely through the Castle or Palace wards because he can't speak the trigger words properly just now."
Roldo nodded. "His mouth was hurt. Swollen."
"Yes. Moreover, his wounds make it unlikely he'd avoid the tunnel's traps. Korvaun swore an oath to serve Waterdeep, so we called on him. A slipshield let him trade his likeness with the Lord. As drunken Korvaun Helmfast, Piergeiron could be taken to the Gentle in our carriage."
"While you took us through the tunnel, and when was that dug?"
"Centuries ago. It's why my Mirt had the Gentle Moment built."
"So you gave me this slipshield so Korvaun could take his own form and be seen leaving, and Lord Piergeiron could be taken away in yet another man's likeness. That whole brawl was staged, wasn't it?"
Asper grinned. "We can't hope to fool true brawlers such as yourselves."
Roldo reddened. "Lady, do you hate nobles so much?"
"No, Lord Thongolir. My tongue makes sport of everyone. Please forgive me."
Roldo swallowed. Women didn't stir him much, but when Asper looked at him like that… "So in my shape and feigning drunk, Lord Piergeiron was arrested."
Asper nodded. "And conveyed safely to the Castle in a prison-wagon."
"All this just to fool watching eyes?"
She nodded again. "I saw scores of them, just glancing out the windows here."
Roldo caught sight of himself, still in the Open Lord's form, in the light-reflecting window. He grimaced at the unseemly disarray and peeled another cobweb from his hair. It was uncanny, seeing Piergeiron's hands obeying his thoughts!
"We'll arrange for the payment of your fine. I apologize for any blot this might leave on your good name."
"A night in the Castle for drunken brawling in a house
of healing and pleasure? That can only enhance my reputation," Roldo said dryly.
"With your noble friends, but there remains your wife. I can explain matters to her, if you will-not everything, but enough to ease her mind."
Roldo managed a smile. "Your offer's both kind and appreciated, but I suspect the sight of you would more unsettle my lady wife than thoughts of an entire festhall of hired beauties."
"Gallantly said, milord! If you didn't resemble Piergeiron so closely, I'd suspect you of flirtation!"
They shared a chuckle as a high horn-call rang out, echoing off Mount Waterdeep in a triumphant ascending flourish.
Asper smiled. "He's safe inside," she announced, drawing him away from the windows into another room, where she reached for the hawk-and-snowflake pendant resting on the breastplate of Piergeiron's armor.
As she lifted the charm, a strange tingling swept through Roldo, and the armor felt suddenly heavy and cumbersome. Looking down, he saw that his hands were his own once more.
Asper helped him out of the too-large armor, and handed the slipshield back. "A small reward. In case you ever need it."
Roldo regarded the device with unease. Magic was something he preferred to regard from a distance… and there was something deeper and disturbing about the slipshield, something personal. To one who hides from the world behind a mask, this little thing was ultimate power… and temptation.
"I'll not deny the worth of this gift or the honor you do me in giving it," he said slowly, "but I'm not the man to carry it. Pretending to be someone you're not is a great burden."
Mirt's lady eyed him shrewdly. "One you know something about."
He raised his eyes to hers. "I've never pretended to be other than I am. But I have responsibilities, obligations…"
"And the slipshield might tempt you from those?"
"Lady, you may think me a coward, but that's something I'd rather not learn about myself."
Asper kissed his cheek. "Courage comes in many forms, as do those who possess it. You came without question when your friend called."