by Ed Greenwood
“Well, lass, if you’d been Waterdhavian born and bred, I’d’ve assumed the spice of danger would have had you roused for a good romp, but … every lady is different, and deserves the treatment she needs. I want a lady to lead the romp, not be deceived or forced into anything.”
“Good,” Rensharra Ironstave said firmly, “because tonight, I think I’d like that romp. Will you come home with me?”
A twinkle appeared in Mirt’s eye. “Well, now,” he rumbled. “Well, now …”
Aye, ’tis me. Kindly gasp or otherwise react not. The two war wizards are watching.
Rune smiled wryly before she could stop herself, but kept her eyes closed and said nothing.
Except in her mind, where she didn’t try to hide-couldn’t have hidden-her delight at learning the beautiful dark elf bending over her was really Elminster.
You found a body, I see, Rune thought.
I did. Like it? ’Tis wonderful, to be inhabiting someone young and supple again, without all the aches and pains.
What happened to her? Did you …, Rune thought.
Nay, lass, I did nothing but come along after a nasty worm from elsewhere had devoured her mind, and claim the empty body left behind. I watched the war wizard I’m pretending to be die, though. I need ye and thy gallant Arclath here to keep my secret about this, though. Or matters may very swiftly get very messy.
That much, I can see well for myself, Old Mage. El, it’s good to have you here with us.
Ye may not think so, soon. Trouble has a way of skulking after me like a hungry beast.
That, I also know, Rune thought. Yet I’m starting to expect it-and to enjoy watching the wildness unfold.
“This one seems fine,” El said aloud then, and Amarune felt new hands on her wrist, then neck, then forehead.
“She’s awake, or nearly so,” Gulkanun agreed, his voice coming from just above her. “I’d rather let her surface on her own than slap or shout at her, though.”
“Her companion is rousing,” El-no, Lucksar, she must think of him only as Lucksar now, or she’d make a slip-added.
Indeed. I’d appreciate no slips for the next tenday or so. Longer, if ye can manage it.
So it was that Rune came awake nodding and chuckling.
Across the room, a rather scorched-looking Imbrult Longclaws gave her a stare. “Never seen that sort of awakening after a battle blast,” he commented.
Farland winced. “Better’n my knee.”
“You still have both your legs-and you can even walk,” Longclaws replied. “Beyond my bruises and a little burned hair, everyone seems fine. After an explosion like that? The gods must love us!”
“Really?” Farland grunted, getting up, putting weight on his bandaged leg, and wincing again. “They’ve a hrasted funny way of showing it.”
“I thought trying it in such an open, popular, fashionable place like Thessarelle’s was a bad idea from the start,” old Lord Haeldown grunted.
Lord Loroun shrugged. “And so you wagered against success and made some coin. Stop complaining! I lost a fair purse.”
“Pah! That’s not the point, youngblood! If you have to count your coins, you shouldn’t be wagering at all. Keeping score in wealth is all too common a practice in the first place. I meant that intending to do something and then not elegantly carrying it out at our first attempt bespeaks clumsiness on our part, and tells the rest of Cormyr-titled Cormyr, anyhail, and that’s the Cormyr that matters-that our reach is neither strong nor sure.”
Lord Loroun flushed and said coldly, “I seldom need lectures on how to be noble from older men. I seldom listen to them twice. After the first one, I draw my sword and duel-removing anyone’s need to listen to that particular source of advice ever again. Be warned, lord.”
“Ah, the young are so subtle, too,” Haeldown told his tallglass, raising it to the light to enjoy the play of color in the wine. “And patient. Straight to the threat, without any wit beforehand. Perhaps it’s because you can muster none, hmm?”
“I’ve no need to listen to this-” Loroun retorted angrily, planting both hands on the table as if to rise, but Lord Taseldon slid a long and elegantly tailored arm across Loroun’s chest with a sigh.
“Loroun, this elder lord dug a pit before you, and you leaped right into it. Learn, master your temper and stretch your patience, and learn some more. It’s how youngbloods last long enough to become sly old dogs like Haeldown, here. Now let’s get back to discussing the failure of our initial attempt to murder the lady clerk of the rolls, and more importantly, how things will be different this time.”
“Tonight,” Loroun snapped, “you didn’t even try for a slaying at a dining lounge! I want it to be public, dramatic, so all Suzail sees and talks about it! How does it strike fear in anyone, if we poison her alone in her bed, and the palace can pass it off as fever?”
“He took her to Razreldron’s,” Taseldon replied, “and with all those private booths-”
“Huh,” Lord Haeldown grunted, “and all those lowcoats Purple Dragon officers, who just love to run their swords through people!”
“-quite so, lord; and with all those lowcoats officers, we’ve little chance of success. However, later, when they seek a bed to dally in …”
Loroun smiled slowly. It was a fox’s satisfied smile.
Lord Haeldown frowned. “Sword them while they’re rutting? Seems unsporting to me! Still, there are worse ways to go …”
He held out his tallglass, Taseldon and Loroun clinked theirs against it, and they all chortled together.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE SWEETEST SIGHT
I never thought the sweetest sight I’d see this tenday would be a drow handing me a goblet of my own wine,” the lord constable of Irlingstar grunted. “Yet I thank you.”
The way his eyes roved up and down the shapely dark elf bending over him made it clear he was regarding drow in a whole new way.
“Inside this,” she replied in dry tones, “I’m Brannon Lucksar, wizard of war, remember?”
“Oh, er. Ah. Of course,” Farland grunted, flushing.
They were all back in his office. New guards were in place on the door the two hireswords had fled through, and none of the doubled guard detail had keys to the locked and closed door they were standing watch over.
Aside from bruises-Farland’s knee was so stiff he lurched along rather than strode-and a slight, recurring ringing in Arclath’s and Gulkanun’s ears, they seemed to have recovered from the explosion unscathed. Gulkanun and Longclaws even seemed to be starting to trust the dark elf.
“I … I’m sorry we were so stern with you,” Longclaws said to her. “I … well, I still find it hard not to be alarmed when I find myself staring at a drow.”
Lucksar shrugged and smiled. “I feel somewhat alarmed when I see the hands assisting me turn into tentacles, or”-she gestured at his hands-“vinelike sucking things. Yet I step past that and move on, for the Dragon Throne.”
“Indeed,” Gulkanun said politely. “You seem … preoccupied.”
“I am,” the dark elf replied, taking care not to look directly at Arclath and Amarune. She’d mind-touched both while reviving them, so they knew she was Elminster. They’d been rather quiet since then; best not to make it harder for them by looking their way or talking to them overmuch. It would be all too easy for an “El” to pass their lips, and all war wizards would have been warned about Elminster skulking around the kingdom, by now …
“Well?”
El shook her head. “Turning over all I’ve seen and heard since arriving in my head, to see if anything occurs to me.” She looked at Farland. “You’re sure those two who escaped hadn’t managed to get into the castle before the blast, when you discovered them?”
Farland frowned then shook his head. “They couldn’t have. No. Absolutely not. Nor did they strike me as the sort of killers who’d pounce and then get clear so swiftly. Twice.”
Gulkanun nodded. “I judge them as you do. Not skill
ed enough.”
El nodded. Good, he’d successfully turned aside Gulkanun’s query. He was preoccupied, but not by anything to do with uncovering murderers or hurlers-of-bombs. Yet. Rather, he was trying to think of a good place to remove and hide the team ring he was wearing, in case Vangerdahast or Ganrahast or anyone else could trace him-or launch hostile magic, like the mind-touch from afar he’d felt, just before the blast had flung it away from him-through it. He had to remove it without Gulkanun or Longclaws or anyone else noticing, and stash it somewhere it wouldn’t be found but that he could readily retrieve it from …
Hmm … Every jakes in Irlingstar was thoroughly inspected before and after each use to prevent them being used as ways of transferring items from prisoner to prisoner. There was very little extraneous furniture-Hells, very little furniture at all-to offer places of concealment for anything …
“I’m tired, if none of the rest of you are,” Farland announced. “We need a battle plan. The six of us against everyone else in Irlingstar.”
Arclath nodded. “Until we know who’s been killing and causing the blasts-and they may not be the same persons-we have to treat the guards, the prisoners, and the passages and stairs where some unknown intruder might be lurking, all as foes.”
“Exactly,” Farland agreed. “So how do we get through the night ahead of us, and wind up alive come morn?”
“Work on the wards,” Lucksar suggested. “Use them to make new walls, and doors that can’t be forced. After we securely confine all the remaining prisoners in separate rooms for the night, we work a ward around all of them, wrapping them in one big box. Then we work on the wards to securely seal all exterior doors. Then confine all the guards and staff except the six of us together in a cluster of rooms that include the kitchens but are away from all doors-so any kitchen back doors must be excluded-and ward them into their own box. And then we barricade ourselves separately in rooms we can lock from within, and get some sleep. All save for Wizard of War Gulkanun and myself; we’ll stand watch.”
“Over each other,” Gulkanun said wryly.
Farland nodded wearily. “I like the sound of that. The rest of you?”
He saw nothing but nods. “Good. Let’s do it,” he said, draining his goblet and heaving himself to his feet with a grunt of pain. “I’m not getting any younger.”
“Or prettier,” Lord Delcastle muttered, but Farland had been expecting some such comment, and managed a grin. Before the inevitable yawn.
Rensharra, it appeared, had a private passion for sky blue silk and gilt. Lots of gilt. Carved, curlicued ornamentations everywhere, all heavily gilded.
Mirt tried hard to keep his eyebrows from climbing to the top of his scalp and staying there.
The rest of her small tallhouse was tastefully luxurious, a long, narrow haven simply and sparsely furnished in creams, rich crimsons, and new but deep-stained, polished wood. The bedchamber, however, was dominated by a tentlike bed in Old Tashlutan style, with streams of blue silk descending from a central crown to its corners, and from there flaring in pinned-down pleats to the floor. Gilded flourishes were everywhere: the sheets, the pillows, even the hrasted carved, upswept corners were gold …
“So, Lord of Waterdeep,” the owner of the grandiose tent teased, eyeing Mirt from its far side. “Care to … catch me?”
“Well, now,” Mirt growled, “if it comes to pouncing, are you a kitten-or a tigress?”
“Come and see,” Rensharra purred.
With a roar Mirt lurched around one end of the bed-only to receive her gown in the face as his intended prey tossed it at him in the wake of her cartwheel away, across the bed.
She came up smiling. “I find it warm in here-do you?” Her eyes pointedly raked him from head to flopping old seaboots, ere she kicked off her own fashionable anklestar boots and fled from the room.
Mirt pursued her, obediently unhooking his jerkin as he went.
The attic door stood open, its glowstone unhooded to light the way, so he followed.
The light proved to be coming from the far end of the attic, where a clattering noise announced that Rensharra Ironstave was the owner of a box hoist, and had just ridden it down out of sight, probably into her cellar.
Mirt grinned and started working the winch. All good fun, this …
He was wheezing in earnest by the time the box appeared up out of the depths-containing her underslip, of course-and he was able to step into it and thankfully let go of the crank.
His plunge down the shaft was as noisy as it was swift, so it wasn’t until it ended with a dull, meaty thud that he noticed something was amiss.
Of course, the black-gloved arms sprawled out from under the box, and the thin ribbon of blood sliding out to join them, were the sorts of sights he’d seen all too often before.
He could tell at a glance that the arms were far too brawny to belong to Rensharra, so he spared them no more attention than to snatch up the needle-pointed dagger they’d let go of-covered in sticky orange-green Calishite poison, of course. In his experience, hired slayers sent to silence targets of lower rank than nobility and rulership seldom traveled alone.
The only light coming into the cellar spilled down an ascending stair at the far end of what looked to be the typical labyrinth of apple baskets, crocks of preserves, and shelves of oddments, so Mirt headed toward it.
He was halfway there when Rensharra screamed, and something made of crockery shattered loudly. Mirt went up the stairs like a bellowing bull, trying to sound frightening enough that anyone who’d cornered the lady clerk of the rolls would be distracted from making an actual kill by the volume and apparent formidability of an impending attack.
What he saw in the room above-her dining hall, by the looks of it-was Rensharra at the top of an ornamental pillar, clad only in net leggings, a clout, and a decorative black lace belt, kicking frantically at the hands of a masked and gloved man in black leathers who was half up atop her sideboard, trying to catch hold of her ankles to haul her back down. She’d just pulled off her dethma and was flailing him across the face with it, its metal-tipped breast cups clanging with every blow, as high and shrill as metal windchimes.
A second man in black leathers lay sprawled motionless on his back across the dining table, his jaw gaping and the shards of what must recently have been a large crockery flower flute scattered around his head-water, flowers, and all.
Mirt laughed aloud at what he saw, shouted, “Never fear, lass! I’ll save you!” and charged down the room, snatching up a chair as he went.
The man trying to snare Rensharra turned and dropped to the floor, clawing out and hurling a belt knife at his large and loud new foe.
Mirt batted it aside with the chair and threw his own newfound knife. It struck the man’s neck, stuck there for a moment, then continued on its way to quiver in the wall above the sideboard.
The man cursed, sounding more frightened than furious, and grabbed another knife from his belt.
Mirt threw the chair.
The man howled in pain as the hurtling furniture smashed some of his fingers, drove his arm back around behind him, and sent his second knife clanging and clattering into a corner. Then the chair hit the sideboard and rebounded off it, one leg askew, to strike the man from behind. It slid onward a little way with the somewhat dazed man draped atop it-but when it stopped, its rider tried to turn to face Mirt and haul out a short sword.
He’d half-managed it, starting to sway and shout something desperate that came out strangely slurred-so the knife bore strong Calishite poison-when Mirt reached him. And planted a firm, hairy fist in his face.
A nose shattered, blood spurted, and the owner of both went down, toppling to the floor like one of those proverbial felled trees.
As Rensharra screamed again, Mirt was already looking up at her to give her his best reassuring grin, so he saw where she was looking and knew instantly that the source of her fresh fear was back down the room behind him. He ducked, grabbed the chair he’d just th
rown, and threw it again, back down the room.
Peering after it, he watched a furious man in the latest expensive and stylish lords’ evening garb dance aside with a flourish of his rapier and snarl, “I’m not losing this wager! How many hired sword swingers does it take to butcher one silly bitch of a palace scribe, anyhail?”
“More than you brought,” Mirt informed him, lurching to meet the noble and plucking up chairs as he went.
The noble sneered at the first one, was staggering after the second, and was swordless, dazed, and bleeding from a scalp graze after the third and last chair. It happened to be the last seat on Mirt’s side of the long dining table, so the Lord of Waterdeep planted one boot in an available crotch-taking care to angle up and under, so as not to break any toes on the inevitable armored codpiece-and as the stricken noble doubled over, put his best roundhouse right into the man’s throat.
The noble went down with a dying sob as Mirt grinned in ruthless satisfaction. Aye, it’s hard to go on breathing through a shattered and flattened throat. Their master’s fall left four armed retainers he’d brought along still to deal with-but one look at their master jerking and strangling on the floor had them whirling around to flee headlong.
Mirt decided to snatch up the noble’s rapier and pursue them, to at least ventilate a few backsides. If witnesses telling tales to the Watch could be whittled down to one man, or several wounded men, the Watch might have fewer lies to wade through-or mistakenly swallow.
So it was that he returned to Rensharra drenched in blood, none of it his own, to find her barricaded in her bedchamber. The rest of her garments seemed to have vanished.