Vrengarl also knew where everyone in the camp slept.
She stood and started running in a single motion. Passing through one shadow after another, she went directly to the side of the man’s tent, stopping within arm’s reach of the dull gray canvas. She put her right hand on the sword but still didn’t draw it.
Phyrea had killed men before. It was a part of being a thief. There were guards, or witnesses, and had she let them live, they would have killed her or destroyed her in other ways, but to go out at night for the sole purpose of ending a man’s life for personal reasons was something else entirely.
She crouched and felt along the bottom edge of the tent. She could slip her fingers under it, but when she lifted gently there was only an inch or so of play. She wouldn’t be able to crawl under it. Cutting it, even with the exceptional sharpness of the enchanted sword, would be too loud. The front of the tent faced the tent across from it, and she would have to be in the light of the torches for at least long enough to slip inside.
They’re all asleep, she thought.
Phyrea waited a long moment, listening carefully, but there was no indication that anyone was moving around the camp. She stood again and stepped to the edge of the tent. She peeked out along the row of tents and didn’t see anyone. The precise moment she stepped out from the side a man came out of one of the tents.
Phyrea jumped back and her shoulder brushed the canvas. Her face was the last part of her to cross back behind the corner and she saw the man look up and toward her. Back in the shadow behind the tent, she held her breath and stood perfectly still.
It was quiet. The man wasn’t moving either.
She rested a hand on her sword again, but still didn’t draw it. Bending her knees a little, she made herself ready to move-to attack, run, kick, jump … whatever she needed to do.
The man started walking. His footsteps were heavy in the dry grass and scattered gravel of the campsite. She listened to them recede then edged her face around the corner of the tent-just barely enough to see the tent the man had stepped out of. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear his footsteps stomping off. Then he stopped and there was a brief silence before she heard the unmistakable sound of water trickling on the dry ground.
Phyrea wanted to sigh but didn’t. Silently, she cursed her luck and started to think.
She knew she could slip into the tent without the man seeing her. He’d walked a ways out of the tent rows, for obvious reasons, and since she could hear what he was doing she’d have ample warning before he came back. If she did slip into the tent, what if the man inside wasn’t asleep? If there was any sort of a struggle at all, the other man would hear and would certainly wake others. It would all go wrong.
He was finishing up, so Phyrea had to make a quick decision. She slipped around the corner and into the tent before the man started back to his own shelter.
Inside, she stepped to one side and disappeared into a deep shadow in the corner. The sound of the tent’s occupant’s breathing told her he was asleep, so she took a moment to close her eyes and let them adjust to the deeper darkness inside the tent. She listened to the other man return to his tent and go back to sleep. Her hand was on her sword the whole time, but she didn’t draw it.
Phyrea had to rely on what she thought of as a thief’s sense of timing. How long would it take the man to go back to sleep? How long could she stand in the cramped space of the tent with the man she’d come to kill before he woke up? She didn’t know how long that would take but trusted herself to simply feel it.
Her eyes began to adjust finally and shapes, if not details, revealed themselves. She could see the man lying on his side on a little folding cot, a blanket in a heap around his legs. There was a little trunk in the opposite corner from where Phyrea stood. The cot was against the back wall of the tent.
She knew she could slit the man’s throat quickly. In a single motion she could draw the sword, step forward, bring the blade down on the man’s neck, slice back, then reverse the blade and sheathe it. She could step back and spin out of the tent and ditch back around behind it before anyone could make it out of the nearby tents to see her, even if she made a sound loud enough to wake someone.
The problem was she wanted to say something to him before she did it. If the man died quietly in his sleep, it wouldn’t really even be murder, would it? For a peasant who worked all day in the blazing sun for a couple of silver pieces, that kind of death would be merciful, and she hadn’t gone there in the dead of night out of mercy.
There were ways to keep people from screaming, and she’d learned more than one of them in her time stripping the Second Quarter of its riches, but in the dark, it would be hard.
Phyrea smiled. It would be a challenge. She hadn’t been challenged in a long time-the disastrous seduction of Ivar Devorast aside.
She stopped smiling.
It had been a tenday since he’d come to her at Berrywilde. She saw him a few times when she’d spied on the camp from afar. She’d brought up his name with Vrengarl, who had told her that Devorast had-
The man rolled over. She couldn’t wait anymore.
She drew the sword so fast that even though it screeched a little coming out of the gilded scabbard it was so brief a sound that it might just have been a cricket. At the same time she stepped forward then fell to one knee next to the bed. It hurt her shoulder a little to make the angle work-the blade was somewhat longer than the short swords she’d grown accustomed to-but she jabbed down fast and hard. The tip of the blade sank an inch and a half into the front of the man’s throat. She twisted the blade just a little, as if scooping out a dollop of pudding.
The man’s eyes popped open, and he drew in a breath, which gurgled in his throat.
Phyrea stood, brought her knee up faster than the man could bring his hands to his throat, and she stamped down hard on his lower abdomen. The man doubled up on the cot, his hands stopping, torn between clutching his ruined vocal chords and his throbbing belly.
Hopping up and twisting in the air, Phyrea came down straddling him, trapping his wrists under her knees. The man’s eyes bulged in his head. His breath hissed out the hole in his throat when he tried to scream. Phyrea grinned at him and his eyes bulged even more. He looked at her with such terror, she felt an almost orgasmic thrill run through her.
She put the enchanted blade close to her face so he could see her in its glow.
When he could see her face better, some of the fear went away-had he thought she was someone else? He might have thought she was some kind of demon or devil come to steal his voice, then his soul in the dead of night.
Close.
“You are a petty little tyrant,” she whispered. “You aren’t worthy to look at him, let alone bark orders at him. You shamed me worse than he did.”
The foreman shook his head. He tried to speak, and blood bubbled out of his throat. Phyrea stuck the tip of her sword under his chin and punctured his skin. He stopped shaking his head and lifted his chin as if there was some way he could get away from her sword.
“You stink,” she whispered.
A tear rolled out of his eye and down the side of his face.
She pushed her sword in and his body spasmed when the blade came up into the bottom of his mouth, punctured his tongue, and nailed it to the roof of his mouth. She stopped there, letting him suffer for the count of four heartbeats, then she drove the sword home. It was so sharp she barely had to push at all. Like a hot knife through butter the sword went all the way through the middle of his head and there was only the slightest hint of resistance when it passed out through his skull. She held the sword in his head until his body stopped shaking, then she stood, pulling the blade out.
As she waited, listening to make sure it was safe to leave the tent and go back home, she wiped the blade on the foreman’s blanket.
She silently thanked Vrengarl for telling her where to find the foreman’s tent and for letting her know that Ivar Devorast had returned to Innarlith.
Her own time in the country had come to an end as well.
69
1 Marpenoth, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)
SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH
It had been almost a month since the first transformation, and Marek had barely spent a few hours outside the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen. He’d transformed enough of the black firedrakes to get a few dozen of them started building a permanent structure there, and he and Insithryllax began spending a bit more time in Innarlith, gathering supplies, and the gold necessary to buy materials for the construction. The firedrakes learned fast-faster than Marek had expected-and the Red Wizard was delighted.
As they walked the streets of the Second Quarter, Insithryllax in his human form of course, Marek enjoyed the late summer sunshine and the feeling of a full purse.
“I would like to stay here longer this time,” the disguised black dragon said, “perhaps leave the city and fly. It’s been a long time since I’ve really taken wing and just flown miles and miles for days on end. I used to do that when I was younger over the Endless Wastes east of Thay.”
“I can’t see why you wouldn’t be able to do that,” Marek said, his attention half on the dragon and half on the shoes lined up in the window of a shop they passed, “though the firedrakes still need guidance. You are their master, you know, and if you don’t mind me saying so, I think you should start acting like it.”
Insithryllax looked at him out of the corners of his eyes. Marek knew he should be intimidated, but he wasn’t.
“You’ve spent too much time on these black firedrakes of yours,” the dragon said.
Insithryllax stopped to look into the shop of a weapon-smith. The weapons on display were largely ornamental, generally useless.
“I’ve sold this man a dozen magic blades in the past tenday,” Marek said to the dragon. “He’s sold them all and pesters me for more.”
“So? I thought you were getting regular deliveries from your masters in Bezantur. Sell him more.”
Marek chuckled and began walking again. He spotted a familiar face-a young senator’s wife he’d heard was hiding a love child from a previous dalliance-and nodded politely to her as she passed.
“Supply and demand, my friend,” Marek said.
The dragon shrugged, uninterested in further explanation.
“You may be right, though,” Marek admitted, talking as much to himself then as to the dragon. “The black firedrakes have demanded much of my attention of late, and yes, I was sent here to establish a trade in magic items imported, secretly, from Thay. I was charged with establishing buyers, developing a market, eliminating competitors, and so on, but the firedrakes … The firedrakes were my own. My idea, my creation. I don’t know; I suppose I let the idea of them get the better of me.”
Insithryllax smiled and Marek grimaced.
“Don’t be smug, my friend,” the Red Wizard said. “It’s unbecoming of a great wyrm.”
A woman passing by on the street paused and cocked an eye at them. She’d heard Marek call his companion a “great wyrm” but couldn’t possibly have taken him seriously. She scoffed at them and moved on down the street. The exchange made Insithryllax smile anew.
“And the eels?” the dragon prodded.
Marek sighed and said, “One day, Insithryllax, I could find myself annoyed with you.”
He ignored the baleful gaze from the disguised dragon. Though he would never admit it, he relied on Insithryllax for so much, not the least of which was some grounding in reality, a check of his ambitions. The black dragon could be tempestuous, disrespectful, and impatient, but his wisdom was undeniable.
“Are you without mistakes, my friend?” Marek asked. Seeing the look Insithryllax gave him, Marek said, “Never mind.”
“I didn’t think of you as the type to let someone walk away like that.”
Marek shrugged and said, “It was my fault. The eels were powerful creatures possessed of great fierceness and a wonderful natural weapon with that lovely lightning of theirs, but they were inexperienced. They were used to picking off those bloated grubs or whatever fish swim that lake with them. The Cormyrean and his friends fought back, and with some intelligence, I might add. In the end, I suppose, all that business was more a test for the eels than it was an attempt to eliminate the competition.”
Insithryllax shook his head.
Marek clapped him on the shoulder and said, “The woman went back to Shou Lung, and the Cormyrean was ruined in any case. Why kill him when he can be left to suffer? He revealed the weaknesses of the eels, too. I’m still working on that one.”
“What will you do?” asked the dragon. “Make them intelligent like the firedrakes?”
“Actually, I-”
The dragon silenced him with a warning hand on his wrist. The words to an utterly inappropriate offensive spell came to Marek’s mind. He looked at Insithryllax and followed his eyes to the street corner ahead and to their right.
“What is it?” Marek whispered, looking down at the cobblestones in front of him. He’d seen a man on the corner looking at them. “The man?”
“The beggar,” Insithryllax said under his breath.
The man on the corner, the man who was staring at them, could have been described as a beggar. His blond hair-unusual in Innarlith, where more people were of swarthy Chondathan descent-was a mess, and his clothes were torn and dirty. The fine citizens of the Second Quarter gave the man a wide berth as they passed him, no few of them looking down their noses with open contempt for the beggar.
“He’s been following us,” the dragon said out of the side of his mouth so only Marek could hear. “He’s been keeping ahead of us but stopping from time to time to make sure we’re still behind him.”
“Who is he?”
“You don’t know?”
Marek started to consider which of the defensive spells in his repertoire to cast first.
Insithryllax said, “We’ll turn at the next alley.”
Marek sneaked a glance at the man, who smiled at them as if about to call out a friendly hello. Then the beggar spun and dived for the corner of a building.
“Insith-” was all Marek got out before the force of the explosion took all the air from his lungs.
He snapped his eyes shut, but still the light was so bright it burned arcs of violet smears across his vision. His feet came up off the ground and he could feel Insithryllax embrace him roughly. The two of them flew through the air-Marek couldn’t tell how high or how far. What felt like glass and nails rained all around him, hitting him from all sides at once. They hit the rough cobblestones and Marek’s head bounced on the pavement. Insithryllax fell on top of him, and if Marek had had a breath left in his lungs the impact would have knocked it out. All around them was a stifling heat that Marek knew should have roasted him.
The fire around them burned itself out in the space of a heartbeat and despite the sound of glass falling all around them, Marek opened his eyes.
The dragon stepped back away from him. Marek saw scales shining like black patent leather in the smoke-diffused sunlight.
“Insithryllax, no-” Marek coughed out.
“Die Thayan!” a wild voice shrieked amid the coughs and sobs of people who’d been caught on the edge of the blast. “Die Red-”
Insithryllax growled, and it was a great wyrm’s voice. Marek grabbed his bulging, expanding arm, and squeezed.
“Insithryllax,” he said, his voice stern and commanding, despite the fact that he was struggling to stand. He was scorched and literally smoking. Broken glass and splinters adorned his torn robe. He looked a fright. “Insithryllax. Do not reveal yourself, my friend.”
“Hold!” a gruff voice shouted from somewhere down the street.
Insithryllax’s arm shrank back to its human size and he ran after the blond man.
Marek rubbed the dust from his eyes with the back of his hand and finally got a view of the street corner. The building they’d been passing was vacant, and Marek tho
ught he should remember what used to be there, but he couldn’t just then. The blond man ran down the cross street, three city watchmen following close on his heels. The strange beggar ran with a bit of a limp-he might even just then have caught a piece of glass in the leg-so the watchmen easily ran him to ground.
“Death to foreign-” the blond beggar screamed before he was punched into reeling silence by one of the watchmen.
Insithryllax approached more slowly while the watchmen subdued then shackled the delirious beggar.
Marek caught up to the dragon with some difficulty and told him, “You’d best be on your way, old friend. People might have seen you.”
They both looked around, but no one seemed to be too interested in Insithryllax. Those who weren’t concerned with their own minor injuries-surprisingly enough Marek saw only the odd scrape and bruise-watched as the beggar was dragged to his feet, his wrists and ankles in chains.
“Don’t be long,” Insithryllax said, then he slipped into an alley and was gone.
The watchmen dragged the weakly struggling man with them.
“Guards,” Marek said, then had to stop to cough.
“Master Rymut,” one of the watchmen said.
Marek met the blond man’s gaze. Blood oozed from his nose and he appeared on the verge of passing out, but he looked Marek in the eye.
“Thayan …” the man moaned. The way he said it, the word sounded like an accusation.
“Do you know this man?” the watchman asked Marek.
“No,” Marek replied, but there was something vaguely familiar about the beggar’s face. He looked at the would-be assassin and asked, “Who are you? What is your name, boy?”
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