Elminster Must Die sos-1

by Ed Greenwood

  They might have been concealing yawns, but their smiles were genuine; the sooner they were done, the sooner their time was theirs, and once Lord Delcastle left his chair, their days were ordered for them, their tasks clear.

  As he spoke, the factors bowed and bustled out, one by one; trade agents get about early, or inevitably find themselves picking over leavings spurned by others.

  Soon enough, Arclath followed them, spiking his quill and deeming his day’s work done.

  Catching up his favorite gem-handled cane, he gave the clerks an airy wave and swaggered out into the streets, twirling his spike-ended stick like a carefree child.

  These days, success meant departing Delcastle Manor before his mother, exhausted by her parade of hired lovers, awakened and began her daily tyranny. And today, if the gods smiled, would be a string of successes.

  With deft skill, Arclath speared a warm bun from a baker’s tray being rushed past, and before the runner could even start to snarl a curse, tossed the man a lion-enough to pay for four such trays, buns and all.

  The bun was hot and greasy, the spiced meat inside it splendid on his tongue but threatening to leave his chin glistening.

  “Ravenous, Lord?” a hot-nuts vendor called.

  “Not at all!” Arclath replied heartily, not slowing. “Merely keeping in training! And how is the trade in roasted jawcrackers this fine morn?”

  “Hot, Lord-hot! Get them hot while I have ‘em!”

  “Words my mother lives by!” He sauntered on, already hailing the next vendor to indulge in more silly repartee as he tossed a coin to a dirty barefoot child, danced a little flounce-and-flair with her as if she’d been a highborn lady, then with a wave left her and went on, very much the noble dandy at play.

  He was heading for The Eel Revealed, an eatery specializing in cheese-and-eel pies, fiery fortified wines, and oiled young lasses who served them both. A welcoming refuge for the famished stomach in the dear dawn hours …

  She was the sleekest and swiftest of the serving maids, and his favorite. Wherefore she added a wink to her most ardent smile and twirled in front of him to make her skirt swirl fetchnignly to reveal her thigh-garter as she set down his platter in front of him.

  “Ah, thank you, Emsra!” Lord Arclath Delcastle was at his whimsical airiest. “You know how to make a man’s insides roil in delicious pleasure! Just as I-a time or two, when at my most heroic-can claim to know how to do the same to the right maid!”

  Emsra tittered as she removed the dome from the steaming platter with a deft flourish, revealing a heap of succulent eels and morels in sardragon sauce. Or so the menu claimed.

  She’d heard all of his lordship’s favorite lines before, but it was the playful-as-a-child way he delivered them that still smote her into mirth. There were nobles she hid in the kitchens from and nobles she served with stiff, silent care-but if there’d been more nobles like him, she’d have rushed eagerly forward to greet all nobles and cheerfully would have seen to their every little want.

  Around them, The Eel Revealed was growing quiet. The rush of early diners who were departing the city on business or had to get to their shops or to market or to meet and make deals at the docks or in various offices was done, and those who struck work early for highsunfeast hadn’t yet done so.

  Wherefore all the serving maids lounged around Lord Delcastle’s table, sharing in the laughter. Not out of greedy desire to get a coin or two for their troubles-for they knew from experience they’d get those, regardless-but because this man had a way about him that lifted hearts and set folk to laughter and made the day brighter.

  “Sausages,” Varimbra purred in Arclath’s ear then, setting a small side platter down at his elbow. “Compliments of Laethla, who desires your opinion of this new spicing she’s trying.”

  He looked up with a smile to find the women ringing his table all beaming at him, resplendent in their glow-painted suns and high-heeled boots as they struck poses-out of sheer habit.

  “Would any of you care to join me?” he asked, and he meant it. “Surely you’ve worked up hunger? I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble, but-”

  But the smiles fell right off their faces, leaving only concern behind, and it had nothing to do with his offer. All of the maids stared over his shoulder at the same cause.

  A cause that approached him rapidly.

  Arclath could move swiftly when he had to, and sprang from his chair, snatching up a hot sausage just in case, even before he turned.

  To behold, striding toward his table with their eyes fixed on him, a frightened palace messenger and a suspicious-faced veteran lady war wizard he’d seen about the palace once or twice.

  “Sausage?” he offered politely, holding it out to her with a bow-and receiving only silence in return.

  From the messenger it was the silence of open-mouthed bafflement; from the war wizard it looked more like cold scorn.

  Arclath shrugged, put the end of the spurned sausage into his own mouth, bit down, and started to chew.

  He had plenty of time to study the stocky, aging war wizard as she bore down on him, and did not fail to notice she had a wand out and ready. She also had a cold-eyed, thin-lipped face like a horse, and a body that seemed to bulge with more muscles than one of your larger palace guards.

  “Lord Arclath Delcastle, I will have words with you,” she announced.

  Hmm. A cold voice, too, and probably very keen wits.

  Arclath sensed the serving maids melting away from around him and turned in smooth haste to tell Varimbra, “Please convey my compliments to Laethla. Peppery, and therefore should result in many drinks being bought and downed. I like it and would be pleased to pay her for this platter and the same again at my next visit.”

  When he turned back to face the wizard of war, she was standing right in front of him. And contriving somehow, though she was a head shorter than he was, to seem to loom over him.

  He sketched the briefest of bows. “Well met, Lady-?”

  She snorted. “Glathra by name. No lady. Spare me your honey-tongued flatteries.”

  She turned her head and gave the messenger beside her a stern look-and he silently stretched out his hand and proffered a parchment note, holding it up and open for Arclath to read but drawing it back and away when, out of sheer habit, he reached to take it.

  Arclath demonstrated that not just lady war wizards could dispense dirty looks, and the messenger blanched, swallowed, and advanced the note again. Arclath didn’t reach for it this time, but merely applied himself to silently reading it.

  “Tell Arclath Delcastle, Belnar murdered. Also, the dancer in the Dragonriders’ was listening to all we said.” Halance’s handwriting. Freshly written, and smudged in one corner, as if handled before dry.

  Belnar murdered?

  He raised his eyes questioningly to Glathra, who snapped, “Just what was ‘all we said,’ and why were you to be so swiftly and urgently told of this killing, Lord Delcastle?”

  “If ‘Belnar’ is Belnar Buckmantle, Lady,” Arclath said stiffly, “he was my friend. Halance can tell you that.”

  “Halance Tarandar’s headless body has just been found in an alley.” Her voice was grim. “He was carrying this note. The Crown desires to know just who ‘we’ are or were and what was said. I’m not accustomed to repeating myself, Lord Delcastle.”

  Arclath stared at her, too shocked to give her the sort of stinging rebuke that most nobles would have greeted such words with. Belnar and Halance-? But only last night, we were …

  The war wizard was watching him like a hawk.

  Arclath bent to take up another sausage. As its greasy magnificence flooded his mouth, he thought back over what had been said across his table at the club.

  His eyes narrowed, and he nodded slowly. Glathra took a step forward but said not a word. She knew control as well as bluster.

  “The ‘we’ were Halance, Belnar, and me,” he told her. “We’re friends. Not conspirators, Lady Glathra, not schemers aft
er profit. Just friends.”

  The sausage, somehow, was gone. He plucked up another and bit into it. Gods, they were good.

  “They were both,” he added, chewing, “consumed with the tumult of preparing for the coming council, and I was being sympathetic … merely that, not rat-hunting details of security. So, yes, there was much talk of the unfolding arrangements, and more about the probable troubles there’d be with this noble and that, various opportunistic visitors likely to come to town because of the gathering … spies of Sembia, of course …”

  “And did Tarandar or Buckmantle seem particularly interested in anything? Some matter they shared an interest in, perhaps?”

  Arclath grinned weakly. “The charms of the mask dancer who was performing practically in our laps. I don’t think either of them have had much time recently for, ah, dalliance.”

  Glathra nodded. “You,” she told the messenger beside her, as she almost snatched Halance’s note from his hands, “will accompany Lord Delcastle in finding this dancer, identifying her, and bringing her to me. I shall be back at the palace, watching you both from afar.”

  Without pause she turned back to Delcastle and added crisply, “And you shall find her before you do anything else in your life, and bring her safely to me. Not dallying with lasses or over drinks, and not taking time to exchange witticisms with your idle friends. Nothing is more important than this, in your life from now on. Nothing.”

  Delcastle sketched a florid bow. “Though I must observe that I’ve been given commands more politely in my time, I cannot find it in myself to disagree with so charming and fiercely Crown-loyal a lady. I shall obey and strive to-”

  “Save it. You don’t want my old and unlovely bones in your bed anyhail,” the war wizard interrupted curtly and turned away.

  Delcastle gave the messenger an almost comical look of injured innocence, shrugged, and announced grandly, “Come! We have a kingdom to save!”

  He scooped a handful of gold coins from his purse and flung them on the table, turned with a swirl of his cloak, and strode for the door, the messenger on his heels.

  Glathra watched them go. When they were quite gone, she allowed herself a loud sigh.

  “Nobles,” she snorted. “Unruly children, every last one of them.”

  She eyed the gold coins on the table. Surely he’d left enough to pay handsomely for a dozen such meals, or more.

  And this one would all go to waste …

  Her eyes fell on the nearest platter, just as a delicious smell of spicy, juicy, hot sausages wafted up to her.

  Her stomach rumbled.

  Slowly, hesitantly, she reached out.

  That sausage proved to be every bit as good as it smelled, and in two ravenous bites was gone.

  There were more.

  Gods above, when had she last eaten?

  As the serving maids drifted back into view, eyeing her doubtfully, the war wizard firmly sat down in Arclath’s still-warm chair and helped herself to the main platter.

  Those sausages still beckoned, but she hadn’t had eels done properly for an age. They disdained sardragon sauce as “Marsembian glop” in the palace kitchens.

  Uhmmm. They didn’t in the Eel’s kitchen.

  The messenger’s name was Delnor, and he looked guilty as they sat down at Arclath’s usual table in the Dragonriders’, hesitantly darting uncertain glances this way and that.

  The stages were empty, and there was no sign of even one alluring dancer, masked or otherwise. Nor anyone leering, cheering, or tossing coins. Of early morning hours, the Dragonriders’ Club offered members and their guests only tankards of strong broth and baths in scented water.

  Aside from Delnor and the noble lord across from him, who was smilingly signaling that tankards be brought to them, the only patrons were a handful of drunkards and the wealthy and truly lazy, relaxing as servants-some their own and some provided by the club, but looking nothing like the sort of beautiful lasses who might at some other hour preen and pose unclad on a stage for anyone-bathed and shaved them. Delnor also saw washing, styling, and cutting of hair, and even some cleaning and mending of clothing and boots.

  “So,” Arclath asked airily, “is the Lady Glathra always that much of a dragon? Or was she fond of Belnar? Or Halance?”

  Delnor flinched as if he’d been slapped, flushed, then mumbled, “N-no. I think not, anyway. No. There were other … violent deaths in the palace last night. Uh, rumors abound that, ah, nobles were involved. And the ghosts that haunt the palace. Oh, and they’re saying the Silent Shadow is going to steal things, and old dead wizards-like Vangerdahast-may have been roused to walk the palace and make trouble by someone with an old grudge against Cormyr.”

  “ ‘Someone’?”

  “Uh, Elminster the Doomed, some are saying. Or crazy old Sembian lords on their deathbeds. You know … someone.” Delnor waved a hand dismissively then dared to really look for the first time into the eyes of the noble lord sitting with him. “Just talk. You … you care about any of this?”

  “I know not what your general opinion of the nobility is, friend Delnor,” Arclath Delcastle replied, “but I assure you I am indeed interested in who killed my friends.”

  One of his hands went to the hilt of his sword. “Very interested.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SOMETHING OF AN UPROAR

  The broth was good. Not to mention hot enough to burn tongues.

  As the two men sipped cautiously from their tankards, Arclath’s firm demands of the serving maids were reluctantly obeyed; the owner of the club was summoned from her bed somewhere in the labyrinthine loft overhead.

  Eyes hooded from the clinging edge of sleep, barefoot and clad in a very old and well-worn robe that looked as if it had once been someone’s rather magnificent carpet, Tress looked somewhat different than the vision in dark and clinging leather Arclath was used to.

  She gave him a rather unfriendly look, yawned, and asked pointedly, “You required my servile presence, Lord?”

  Delnor buried his face behind his tankard, trying to look as if he weren’t there. Arclath gravely tendered his apologies for rousing Tress at such an hour and asked her the name of the dancer who’d performed for him the previous evening, and if it would be possible to speak with her. Immediately.

  “No,” Tress said simply. “She’s not here.”

  “And her name would be-?”

  “The Mysterious Dancer You Seek,” Tress announced flatly. “She’ll be performing on yon stage again at dusk tonight and thereafter until near dawn, unless trade’s too paltry to make it worth her pay.” She yawned again.

  Arclath dipped into another purse-Delnor blinked; just how many did the man have, anyway? — scooped out a heaping handful of gold coins, and held it up. “Her real name?” he asked quietly.

  Tress frowned and shook her head. “I won’t give, Lord Delcastle. I’m sorry, but unless you have a Crown warrant or someone I know to be a senior war wizard asking that for you, you won’t learn it from me. I must protect my girls.”

  “So must we,” Arclath murmured, waving a hand to indicate he and Delnor were a team.

  Tress snorted. “Against getting cold from being all alone when they’re bare in their beds?”

  She turned away, adding over her shoulder, “Come back at dusk and ask her yourself. You’ll need all those coins and more, if I know her. Her company can be had at competitive rates, but her name she guards-and why shouldn’t she?”

  Arclath and Delnor exchanged glances, shook their heads at each other soberly, then looked up at Tress and tendered their thanks.

  She merely nodded, looking as if she was sliding right back into sleep again, while still on her feet. They rose, bowed to her, took a last swig of broth each, and made for the door.

  Tress roused herself. “Your coins, Lord!” she said sharply, pointing at the pile on the table.

  Arclath gave her a smile and a wave. “Consider them a donation for your hospitality, and some fumbling reparati
on for so clumsily attempting to bribe you,” he said lightly, and he departed the club, Delnor smiling apologetically in his wake.

  Tress watched the door close behind them and shook her head. “Now just what was all that about?” she asked softly. “Stlarn it.”

  “Nobles are crazy,” the maid who’d awakened her offered helpfully.

  Tress sighed. “So they are, Leece. So they are.” She padded back toward the loft stairs. “Yet they always have been-and they don’t all come to my club with callow young palace messengers every morn, asking after my best dancer.” She sighed again. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  The magic faded at last, leaving the long-bearded wizard and the curvaceous silver-haired woman free to curse heartily.

  They did so with enthusiasm, though Elminster spat out his words at a trot.

  “We’ve lost the night and some of the morning,” Storm added, lengthening her stride to keep up with him.

  “I know that, stormy one,” El snarled. “I also know just how careless I was to fall afoul of a dolt-simple war wizards’ trap, so ye can refrain from commenting on that, too!”

  “Hmm. Someone’s very touchy this morning,” Storm told the ceiling.

  Elminster made a rude sound popular with small boys, turned a corner, and started along the corridor even faster.

  “What if she turns willful and impatient?” Elminster asked suddenly, as they rushed along the damp and dark passage together. He shook his head. “She could do so much damage …”

  Storm snorted. “And we, down the years, have not?”

  “Ye know what I mean, lass. Goes wrong, like Sammaster and-well, too many others. The Realms could be in real trouble.”

  Storm put a hand on Elminster’s shoulder. His muscles were as tight as drawn bowstrings. “Then we’ll have to destroy her,” she said softly. “As we’ve had to destroy bright weapons we forged before. The needs of the Realms demand, and we must meet those needs.”