by Ed Greenwood
It seemed a very long time since she’d been the Silent Shadow, peril of the night. Some time in the last few days-had they really only been that few? — she’d drifted into being the ornament of a dashing young noble. A spirited lass, but only a lass, coin-poor and bearing a family name that mattered to no one…
The guard that Tress had hired to watch over the back door of the club and the street outside, to make sure no one was lurking to endanger her dancers, gave Rune a smile and a nod.
“Safe as it gets,” that meant. Stifling another yawn, Rune smiled back, waved farewell, and slipped out through the door.
The street was not empty. A gleaming white coach stood where she would have blundered right into it if she’d come out with her head down, its horses pawing contentedly as they munched at their feedbags. A familiar face grinned at her out of its nearest window.
“Lord Arclath Delcastle,” she greeted him with a tired grin. “I hope you’re not expecting anything from me. Like staying awake, for instance.”
Arclath swung the door open and sprang out of the coach to assist her into it with a courtly flourish.
“Nothing of the sort, I assure you. Ravaging your snoring body will bring me all the delight I need at the moment-or to be more serious, Rune, why not spend a night under my roof in Delcastle Manor? Alone, in a guest bedchamber, with the servants knowing you need to sleep just as long as your snoring takes you, and a splendid repast waiting when you do rise? Mother won’t mind, being as she suggested it. What do you say?”
“I say, ‘Yes, please, and thank you very much, gallant lord, and wake me when we get there,’ ” Amarune replied happily, settling herself into the cushioned back seat of the coach.
A breath later, they were rumbling through the streets, and she was nestled against Arclath, talking uncontrollably. “Spilling all your secrets,” as Tress would put it.
“I feel utterly mind-mazed, to tell truth,” she gabbled. “Settling back into my old ways, as if none of it, the beholder and being in chains in the palace and-and everything — was real. Then when I’m alone, it rushes back to me, the bad things, I mean. I’m still afraid Talane will appear when I’m least ready for her, and really afraid whenever I return to my rooms that a deadly trap will be waiting for me-or a brutally welcoming thick-neck bullyblade. Then, when I’m out in the sunlit streets again, it’s all different, with El and Storm just gone, and all the exciting and important doings they brought with them, too!”
Arclath was nodding, so she rushed on.
“I–I don’t feel as if I’d ever dare approach the palace, now, by myself and on my own behalf… and I still don’t feel as if I belong to the grand, expensive world of you nobles-or ever will.”
Arclath smiled. “Nobles aren’t much different from commoners,” he told her quietly. “We’re just more spoiled and pompous and better fed-and have more coins to waste, and better clothes to waste them in, that’s all.”
“That’s all,” she echoed in amusement.
Yet, his words held truth, for she and Arclath’s mother were cautiously becoming friends, and few could match Marantine Delcastle for cold, lofty arrogance when she cared to play the noble matriarch to the hilt.
This strange calm that had settled over Suzail had come after a rather large handful of nobles had been wounded in duels and skirmishes, causing some of the highborn to bolt out of the city for the comparative security of their various country seats.
Yet, intrigues were still going on, with nobles hiring sellswords as fast as they could-some of them in more numbers than any impartial observer could possibly deem necessary for bodyguard purposes, or for that matter were allowed under the laws of the land-but it was all happening out of sight, behind closed doors or high mansion or estate walls.
The war wizards were back in control, aggressively leading highly visible Dragon patrols to keep order in the city, clear out undesirables, and maintain an alert garrison against the oft-rumored imminent invasion. All independent mages in Suzail were under close watch, and it seemed as if most commoners-after an initial rush to secure transportation for swift flight, and ready coins for spending in exile-were holding their breaths and just waiting for whatever befell next.
“Which,” Arclath gloomily observed, as the coach turned a corner, “is usually some nastiness from Sembia, or something particularly cruel, stupid, and high-handed from one of the senior Houses. My mother would hotly dispute that, but it’s true. Everyone who bothers to think on such things can see it.” He sighed. “So, who will be the next stone-headed idiot to endanger the kingdom, I wonder?”
“Arclath Delcastle!” someone yelled, as if on cue-and men came rushing up to the slowing coach, out of the night.
Arclath snatched out his sword, and Rune, her heart suddenly pounding, raised one of her knives beside her ear, ready for throwing.
Yet, the man who stepped up onto the coach to rap on the closed window wore a bright smile, and Arclath knew him.
“Well met, lord!” were his first words, as Arclath thrust the sliding window down. “I-we-serve Lord Elbert Oldbridle, who bids us invite you to evening-feast on the morrow, at the home of Lord Arkanon Nalander.”
“Is this an open invitation, Clarn?” Arlcath asked mildly.
“No,” was the reply.
“Don’t bother to bring your doxy,” Clarn added coldly, glancing at Amarune.
Arclath nodded, the Oldbridle bullyblade sprang down off the step, and the coach started to move again.
“What was that about?” Amarune asked.
“An invitation to join Lord Nalander’s scheme to put someone or other-possibly himself or his son Arkeld, or possibly someone chosen by his Sembian backers-on the Dragon Throne, after young fools like me risk our necks exterminating the House of Obarskyr,” Arclath replied grimly. “I’m beginning to think fleeing deep into the forest with Storm and Elminster, and staying there a good long time, is a very good idea.”
“What will happen if you don’t attend?” Amarune asked softly.
“They’ll consider me a foe and treat me accordingly,” Arclath replied calmly. “See? Not much different from commoners, after all.”
Amarune shook her head and murmured, “You’ve no idea what common folk are really like, do you?”
Arclath frowned. “Lady,” he said sternly, “I have tried hard to stride through life with my eyes open, seeing past the masks most adopt to greet the wider world, and marking the details of many lives and trades and customs, the better to-”
“Oh, I did not say you have not tried to look beyond the lives and affairs of nobles, my lord,” Amarune told him earnestly. “It is one of the reasons why… why I love you. I–I-”
She threw her arms around him, drew him down into an embrace, and hissed, “What’re you going to do? If not this cabal, which one?”
“None of them,” Arclath snapped. “We have our own cabal-you, me, the Lady Storm, Mirt, and your great-grandfather. Plus the ghost of the Princess Alusair, perhaps, when we venture into the palace.”
“So, do we turn this coach and head for the inn where Lord Helderstone has taken rooms?”
“In the morning,” Arclath told her, his smile surfacing. “Tonight, Lady Rune, you are mine.”
“There’s been no sign of young Lord Stormserpent or his two flaming slayers for days now,” Elminster murmured. “I wonder who got to him?”
“You think he’s dead?” Storm asked, by way of reply.
That fair evening, he and Storm were strolling along a sweeping, lamplit street lined with noble mansions, neither of them showing Suzail their true selves.
Eccentric old Lady Darlethra Greatgaunt was known as a collector of curios, and an independent-minded walker and huntress. She was also known to always demand the protection of the wizards of war when she was in “godless, perilous, almost — as-bad-as-Westgate” Suzail. In the form of a lone mage as her constant escort. A handsome, young male wizard, of course.
Wizard of War Reldyk Applecrown
was far from the most handsome mage about the palace, and was far from the most powerful. However, he was happily eager to perform the duty, which was more than most of his fellows had been.
It wasn’t that Lady Greatgaunt expected her escorts to set foot in her bedchamber-indeed, she would have been loudly appalled and offended at the slightest hint of such “disgustingly forward” behavior. It was just that she liked to walk. And walk and walk and walk. No matter how foul, crowded, dusty, or stormswept the streets of Suzail were when she started down them, she wanted to walk them all. Setting a steady pace that permitted no dawdling or shopping moments, yet never approached what might be termed “brisk.”
Wizards seldom tended to be walkers for the sake of walking, and very often discovered that the hard, hard cobbles of Suzail’s lanes and byways made their feet hurt. Soon, and a lot.
Wherefore, there was little competition for Greatgaunt escort duty, and Applecrown had spent a long, footsore day-and most of the preceding eight or nine days, too-exhaustively scouring Suzail for a cobble that Lady Greatgaunt hadn’t set elegant slipper upon, yet.
For her part, Storm had worn out three pairs of slippers, had frankly grown tired of nodding politely to each watch patrol, most of them so often that she knew every last Dragon and Crown mage by the informal, daily short versions of their names, and was quite bored enough to tear off her expensive gown, snatch the nearest merchant by the hand, and dance with him the length of whatever street they were on.
Lady Greatgaunt, of course, would not have approved of such antics.
Not that she was soon likely to know someone had borrowed much of her wardrobe and been enspelled into her exact likeness, being as she was lying abed in Mirt’s lodgings, deathly ill after some unknown noble rival-or one of several much younger Greatgaunt heirs, succumbing to an attack of inheritance impatience-had tried to poison her and almost had succeeded.
Yes, her counterfeit had walked even more energetically than the real Lady Greatgaunt, but she and El had really been spending most of the last tenday exhaustively scouring Suzail for traces of a blueflame item, by walking the streets and covertly casting little pulses of magical fire that should send back an echo if such an item was nearby.
If they’d fashioned the spell correctly, that is. Though after centuries of twisting the Weave to myriad uses, very few folk in all the realms were better suited to probing for unusual magics.
“Dead or fled,” El replied now, stumbling in weariness. “I’m about done, lass. Let’s get home. Not a trace of anything strong enough to be a blueflame item, down all these streets.”
He glanced at her eyes. Lady Greatgaunt looked as leathery and indomitable as ever, but Storm’s eyes would tell him what Storm felt like, underneath. She, after all, was the one who’d been anchoring his spells, steadying him constantly; she had to be far more tired than he was. “How are ye, lass?”
“Ready to get home,” she sighed, letting her exhaustion show for a moment. “Rub my feet, when we get back to Mirt? I hope he won’t be roaring drunk this time. His snoring drunk is bad enough.”
“Heh. Don’t ye prefer finding seven or eight warmskirts snoring along with him?”
Storm rolled her eyes. “I do not. Seeing their charms-even when they’re worn out and snoring, too-makes me feel all the older. I’ll grant that Mirt has the stamina of a fresh young stallion. I just wish he didn’t feel the need to prove it every second day or so! One of these nights he’s going to host the wrong lass, and she’ll slit his throat for him and take away everything he’s neglected to nail down.”
“Which is everything,” Elminster agreed. “Well, perhaps tonight will be different.”
It was.
Mirt was happily wrapped in the embraces of a willing playpretty when something that felt like his own weight in cold hard stone struck him on the back of his head and sent him down into darkness.
The coinlass beneath him was still drawing breath for a scream when she got a cloak tossed over her head, then received the same stone-to-head treatment.
Men in leather who were bristling with weapons suddenly flooded through Lord Helderstone’s rooms, two frowning and alertly peering hired wizards among them.
One of whom suddenly stiffened and snapped, “Someone-no, two people-climbing the stairs!”
“I’ll take care of it, Morl,” the other mage said. “Keep your scrying going. I want to make sure we get not just the two we can see, but anyone else, too.”
The blasting spell he hurled down the stairs then was far more powerful than it needed to be, but he had a fee to earn, and a surviving witness was a curse that could haunt you for the rest of your life in this city.
“You got them, Scarmar,” Morligul Downdagger announced with some satisfaction. “Smashed the man right down the stairs and back out of the building. The woman got tangled in the railings, but she’s down. Don’t see any lurkers yet.”
“Keep looking,” Scarmar snapped. Pulling out his paralyzing wand, he waved at six or seven armsmen to come with him.
From the head of the stairs he triggered the wand at the sprawled woman, then told the armsmen, “Get out there and find the man I blasted! I want him back in here fast!”
They raced past in a wild thunder of boots. Scarmar Heldeth followed more slowly with the rest of the armsmen, knowing Downdagger of Highmoon was guarding their rear; in Athkatla, where he came from, folks who rushed into unknown danger were usually soon known as “corpses.”
“Kind of old for a playpretty,” one of the armsmen lifting Storm’s frozen body commented. “Expensive gown, too.”
“Looks noble,” said another.
“They said he has a maid,” a third one put in, “so unless old noblewomen are suddenly hiring themselves out as coinlasses, this has to be her. She’s about the same age as him, right? This is Helderstone’s maid, probably dressed up for a night out.”
“They’re not finding him,” Downdagger said suddenly, staring off into the distance.
“Stlarn,” Heldeth muttered. “I hate loose ends.”
Armsmen were coming back to the doors now. He could see by their faces that Downdagger was right.
He looked at his fellow mage, whose face wore the same uneasiness he was feeling.
“Let’s be gone from here,” he muttered.
Downdagger nodded, then snapped at the armsmen, “Leave the playpretty in the bed, but take Helderstone and his wench to the warehouse-and hurry!”
The armsmen hurried Mirt’s limp body down the stairs to where they’d laid the old woman in the gown, snatched her up, and rushed off into the night.
“We should be with them in case they meet with any watch patrols,” Downdagger muttered as Heldeth laid a staying hand on his arm. “Besides, the reek of yon dung wagon isn’t impressing me.”
He would have been surprised to know a scorched and angry Wizard of War Reldyk Applecrown was crouching in the fresh, wet nightsoil on the other side of the weathered boards of the dung wagon’s side, listening to their every word-and even more astonished to learn that Applecrown was really Elminster, the legendary dragonslaying and throne-toppling Chosen of Mystra.
As it happened, Elminster wasn’t interested in enlightening him. Yet.
“We have to decide what to say about the one who got away,” Heldeth snarled.
“Tell him we tarried for a moment because we knew he was hiding, found the fool, and blasted him to ashes,” Downdagger snapped. “What else?”
“You tell him,” Scarmar Heldeth snapped right back. “He only paid me for one night’s work-and now that I’ve tasted this work, I want to be well away from Suzail before he decides to rid the realms of those who could tell others too much of what he’s up to. Guard yourself accordingly.”
“Huh,” Downdagger sneered. “He dare not do that to me. If I die, half the spells that protect him from scrying and prying vanish with me-and his own swift death at the hands of the war wizards is certain.”
“Suit yourself,” Heldeth r
eplied, rushing off. Two running steps later, he was suddenly surrounded by a winking cloud of sparks. A warding.
Downdagger smiled crookedly. Deep trust, indeed. Yon shielding could only be meant to thwart any spell he might hurl.
He hurled nothing but shook his head and murmured after Heldeth, “Idiot. You could have been rich.”
Then Downdagger glanced all around, saw no one watching, and set off in the direction the armsmen had gone. “Well, off to tell the good news.”
He looked back one last time before he turned a corner but never saw the befouled, squelching man who’d climbed quietly out of the far side of the dung wagon to skulk slimily after him.
He did smell something, but after all, a dung wagon was right there.
CHAPTER THIRTY
MURDERING LORD HELDERSTONE
It had been years since he’d had a body that could really sprint, leap, and go like the wind for a fair while, and running hard seemed to keep some of the otherwise overpowering chamberpot stench down, so Elminster ran.
If he tried to follow Downdagger-an unscrupulous local mage-for-hire he’d seen in dockside taverns a time or two, back when he was busy being Elgorn Rhauligan-he had to admit that he’d only be able to sneak up on the man if Downdagger had almost entirely lost his sense of smell. Yet, if he ducked into a parallel alley and ran ahead of the mage, he would at least not be seen if the wizard looked back the way he’d come.
El sprinted until he was out of breath, then turned down a side street to come out ahead of Downdagger. Who was looking back, as he turned into a side street where there was a covered carriage yard.
The mage gave a low whistle, and five warriors in identical surcoats promptly melted out of the shadows amid the coaches and wagons to surround Downdagger. They all moved together, the mage strutting like a haughty noble, and the armsmen forming a ring around him and marching like any bodyguard.
They were heading for better streets, where mansions would be larger and walled, but just then were in a “high houses” neighborhood of the sort favored by wealthy merchants and nobles who weren’t rich enough to, say, buy a village upon a whim.