Death Masks

by Ed Greenwood

  “Could be,” Mirt replied calmly, sliding another one to Drella. Who pounced on it, bit it, peered hard at it, and made it vanish inside her bodice—into a slit in the leather inner lapel of her gape-front top, no doubt—in a trice.

  Unhurriedly, Mirt slid Ravva the same sort of coin, and followed it, as the housemaster set it down with superb timing, with the second bottle of wine.

  “You’re trying to get us drunk,” Waratra said accusingly, but with a smile.

  Mirt spread up-flung hands in mock dismay. “Ah, but yer too clever for me! I should have known!”

  Ravva stared hard at him for a moment, then giggled.

  And as the venison pie arrived and he offered them that, too, the three girls ate and drank and started to talk, and Mirt slid coin after coin across the tabletop as the converse unfolded, and kept a stream of questions coming.

  “So, have you heard anything about the Xanathar?”

  Ravva frowned. “You mean the new Xanathar? Far quieter than the old one.”

  “Doesn’t mean he’s up to less,” pock-marked Drella put in quickly, eyeing the coins Mirt was now putting on the table and pinning down under his fingertips. “Just means he’s eliminated the most talkative of his spies and bullyblades.”

  “I’ve been alive through at least three Xanathars,” Waratra said proudly. “And we don’t even know it’s a ‘he,’ mark you. We just always talk about beholders as if they’re male, somehow. They’re horrid monsters, not people.”

  Ravva frowned thoughtfully. “I wonder if they think of us the same way.”

  “Huh!” Waratra said dismissively. “Don’t be getting yourself all deep and sagely over that. If you ever got that close to one, you’d not be wondering about their troubles and world-view—you’d be screaming and running, believe me! Trouble isn’t their tentacles nor even the maws that can swallow you whole or the magic that can kill you six-seven ways in the blink of an eye. Real trouble is that they’re smarter than your nastiest wizard. But, yeah, this new Xanathar lurks deeper, or makes his dirty workers lurk more. They’re letting the Zhentarim move in again.”

  “Oh?” Mirt raised his bushy eyebrows. “The Zhentarim, eh?”

  “Aye. Red Sally, over on Wharf Street, she’s one of their watchers,” Drella put in.

  “They’ve a lot of eyes in Dock Ward an’ South Ward,” Ravva agreed. “Red Sally and Uljak Thorn and Presdryn the Pickleman.”

  “Ah, aye,” Mirt agreed, nodding. He’d noticed that ugly-as-several-rotting-squid pickle vendor at the foot of Cedar Street some days back. Some city cant hadn’t changed in more than a century; so far as he knew, “watchers” and “eyes” had always meant passive spies; locals on the take to just watch and report when those who paid them drifted by to ask what they’d seen. It would have been odd if the Zhents hadn’t had their watchers here, nigh the busiest docks up and down the Sword Coast. But there’d be bigger fish, too; enforcers with knives who took care of double-dealers and too-loose tongues and folk who came around prying too much.

  Right now, that included the likes of him.

  He slid some silver shards their way, and their eyes brightened and they told him about more Zhent agents, more Zhent smuggling, and the making of many little deals with shopkeepers to let the Zhents store contraband in their cellars in return for cut prices on roasts and sacks of potatoes. “The Zhents are taking over some of the alley gangs.”

  “And the Watch and the Harpers haven’t noticed?” Mirt was genuinely surprised. The ever-present vigilance intended to prevent the rise of any thieves’ guild in the City of Splendors was very good at keeping alley gangs small and weak and unsponsored by any central authority.

  “Them?” Drella sneered. “They’re too busy worrying about the nobles all starting their own gangs!”

  “The what?” Mirt feigned more astonishment than he really felt. Well, of course overly rich and bored nobles who chafed at laws and scrutiny that let them throw their weight around would dabble in hiring their own “dark hands” to do dirty deeds, and then throw said operatives to the wolves if they were ever caught at it; they always had. But what was this about “nobles all”?

  Now that Drella had seen the color of his silver, she was more than prepared to talk. “Oh, there’s always been highnoses as likes the danger and daring, to watch brawls their hired lads start and to lash out at anyone who displeases them with a little vandalism and servant-beating, but this last season, and even more this one, high house after high house is getting into it. There’re even sons sponsoring different gangs than fathers—the Margasters, for one—and—”

  “An’ the nobles’ gangs are making all the noise an’ keeping the Watch busy,” Ravva burst in, her eyes on more coins, too. “The old noble lords send them to bloody the noses of their rivals’ gangs, y’see, so it’s brawl after brawl an’ bad blood building on all sides, an’ the Watch busy every night with all the knifings. Slashed faces an’ missing noses a’plenty in those crowds!”

  Waratra wasn’t to be left out of any coins on offer, and could play the eldest and wisest, and did so now. “But I see worse, much worse, in a year or two—maybe less. While these nobles’ playthings make all the noise, the Zhents and the Xanathar and maybe others will have time to build real gangs, that skulk and menace shopkeepers and do real dirty deeds night in and night out, and of course the time will come when they’ll make war on each other, real war. And the guilds and all will arm up to protect themselves, and we’ll have night armies in the streets and buildings burned down and all …”

  “If it gets that bad, won’t the Hidden Lords stop all that?” Mirt asked innocently, sliding coins across the table to all three of them.

  “Huh, them.” Drella was dismissive. “What do they do?”

  CHAPTER 10

  Storm Clouds Gather and Grow Dark

  But when the storm clouds gather and grow dark

  And the wind rises high and starts to scream

  Find snug harbor in haste and take cover, for in the end

  Heavy weather topples even the mightiest keeps.

  —Old Sailors’ Chant of the Sword Coast set down in Ballads of the People by Hamlaer Dunther, Way-Minstrel, published in the Year of the Bent Blade

  “WELL, NOW,” MIRT ASKED MILDLY, “THESE MASKED LORDS; DON’T they rule the city?”

  “Hah! They hide their faces—those so-called masks they wear are revel-masks worn under magicked helms that even change their voices, so they can really hide—an’ make little laws that help the high an’ mighty stay high an’ mighty, and the rest of us down in the dirt. They’re all lords an’ guildmasters an’ rich landlords an’ moneylenders, not citizens as has to work for a living.” Ravva sounded indignant, and Mirt almost chuckled until the thought struck him that lying on your back and spreading your legs and getting half-crushed and pretending you enjoyed it all was work.

  “Yes!” Waratra agreed, with real heat. “It’d be different if they had to show their faces and everybody knew where they lived, y’know? Then it wouldn’t be ‘rut the lot of you, I spit on your worries and futures, so long as my nest is warm and my larder full.’ Not for long, anyways.”

  Mirt hid a grin behind his battered tankard. “But haven’t there been lords everyone knew were lords?”

  “Not for years and years,” Waratra told him, as authoritatively as any wise old sage. “Oh, I’ve heard tell there was that dashing Thann fop that everybody was pretty sure was a lord, and then there was a big old fat fart of a lecher named Mirt—looked sort of like you, Saer, only a bit more handsome; I’ve seen a painting of him, up on the wall in The Hammered Dwarf—as owned half of Dock Ward and flat-out told everyone he was a lord, but it’s always those as talks the loudest as you can trust the least, and I think he said he was a Lord just to get into the beds of haughty noble ladies, I do. He just vanished one day, and the whole city said some husband caught up with him.”

  Mirt fought down some beer that threatened to choke him and managed to get out
, “I thought that was Elminster.”

  “Oh, him,” Drella said, in quite a different voice. “We still see him, though only once or twice a year, these last few. Throws us coins and buys us ale and soup and never wants more than a kiss. We likes Elminster.”

  “He remembers my name,” the dirtiest, Ravva, said with a sort of fierce pride. “My real name, I mean. No one else bothers.”

  Waratra nodded, sounding suddenly on the husky verge of tears. “He came walking out of the sleet three winters ago, the night of the big blizzard, saw us shivering together in Keel Alley, and bought us all a room at the Lion’s Head for the night! Then stood over them there, until they’d served us a big roast bustard, steaming on a platter! The Lion’s Head!”

  “The sheets were like warm silk,” Ravva recalled dreamily. “Sure you can’t manage us a room at the Head, Saer? We’ll make it worth your while!” She leered halfheartedly.

  “I don’t doubt you would, Lady Fair, but I can offer you all something less decadent but probably worth more to you.”

  Mirt let that sentence fall across the table and then just waited, not saying a word more until they couldn’t resist asking. It took them about half a breath.

  “What, exactly?” Waratra snapped. “You want to brand us, or have us service a dozen of your friends at a revel up in your rooms? Or pretend to be your daughters so you can work some swindle stealing gowns from a shop, or some such?”

  “No. I was thinking more along these lines: five shards for each of you—just you three, no friends—if you show up here, and talk to me as freely as you have now, a tenday from now. Five shards every tenday after. Food and drink laid on, each time. I may ask you to watch certain people and places, and tell me what you’ve seen. No more. The rest of your time is yer own, and you don’t even know me.”

  The three girls stared at him as if he’d just grown three heads, and clapped a shining crown on each one.

  “Just … talk?”

  “We don’t have to go to bed with you?”

  “Just talk,” Mirt growled, starting to wish they were older and a mite cleaner and he was younger. There’d been a time when he’d have lowered his standards and his britches both, and …

  Ravva was the fastest. “Lord Saer, you an’ I have a pact,” she said formally, spitting on her hand and reaching out to clasp his forearm as solemnly as any veteran merchant.

  Mirt did the same, and they shook, as equals.

  “Show you my bite-bolds for a copper extra,” she teased, and just as solemnly he dug out a nib and flicked it in her direction.

  She caught it between her teeth, grinned at him around it—displaying a smile full of gaps—and pulled down her bodice.

  “Sure those are worth a nib?” Drella drawled. “Saer, I think you just got taken.”

  And she spat on her own hand and reached out for him, Waratra only a shade behind her.

  But the oldest of the three pulled down her bodice as she did so, and announced with dignity, “I’ll show you mine for free. Just so you know how much you’re missing.”

  Mirt chuckled, despite himself. “Nice, indeed.” He raised his tankard in salute. “We, ladies, are going to get along just fine.”

  And in return, they gave him three genuine—gap-toothed, but genuine—smiles.

  • • •

  LAERAL SIGHED AND for one wild-mad instant contemplated crumpling the parchment she’d just signed into a ball and hurling it across the room. Bombard inspection rotas? Really?

  Then she smiled ruefully, shook her head, and got up from her desk, took the three steps necessary so she could just reach the right stack of signed contracts on the sideboard, and slid the parchment onto the heap where it belonged.

  She was beginning to really detest contracts and treaties.

  They were necessary and all, but … well, it would be time for tea soon enough, and then she could—

  The door of her study slid open, and two unfamiliar Palace servants came in; unsmiling men in full formal evening-feast livery, bearing large ewers.

  Ewers? There wasn’t a single plant in this room, and—

  Laeral was already clapping one hand to her ring of the ram, just in case, when the foremost servant dashed the contents of his ewer at her face.

  Laeral ducked away, hoping it was just water and not acid or worse, and watched the second man hurl ewer and all at her—and have it fall short and drench her desk instead. He was getting rid of it so as to drag a long knife out of a down-sleeve inner forearm sheath, but Laeral had no more time to watch him. The foremost servant was around the end of the desk and almost upon her, his wicked long knife stabbing out.

  The translucent ram’s head formed in the air between them as Laeral backed swiftly away, dodging aside and raising her right arm so she could try to bat aside the second false servant’s knife if he hurled it.

  Then the ram’s head struck, smashing the first man back against the corner of her desk. He barked out a startled curse of pain as his tailbone met unyielding furniture, and lost his grip on his knife—but as if his snarl had been a signal, a side door of the study burst open, and more men with unfamiliar and unfriendly faces, all in palace livery, charged into the room.

  Laeral risked a spell, walling off the room from her desktop to the ceiling and filling all of the small room beyond with spell-spun webs. Various loud and profane complaints promptly made clear how little her assailants appreciated the clinging impediments. Swords were out and being busily swung—and her foremost assailant, the one she’d already smitten with the ring, was on her side of the wall and coming for her again, his knife back in his hand and murder on his face.

  Laeral promptly turned to the sideboard and flung an entire heap of freshly signed parchments into his face. Hah! This was a better use for them all, anyway! She charged at him through their whirling chaos as he staggered back, both arms up to intercept the wild slash of his dagger she was sure he’d make.

  She wasn’t wrong.

  He was strong and fast, but her arms deflected his own arm upward just enough to give her a magnificent opening for a full-bodied kick up between the man’s legs. She took it, with gusto.

  The false servant emitted a loud and heartfelt “Eeeeep!” and toppled face-first to the floor with a room-shaking crash.

  Laeral winced; the man’s nose had broken with a distinctive sharp snapping sound.

  “Someone,” she panted aloud, “is employing expendables to try to eliminate me, or at least see how well I’m defended, and what doom I can still hurl.”

  Not much, was the unspoken answer to that, she thought grimly, as flame flared up somewhere amid the webs and they started to burn. One of her attackers had brought or made fire, somehow.

  So she’d have only a breath or two to flee, before—

  Her desk erupted from the floor, lifted by three of her attackers, flinging it at her in a wild heave—and of course it crashed short, spewing a cloud of papers and quills and inkstands, landing on its side.

  Enough. Time to use the door behind her and get gone, before—

  She had only half turned when someone crashed into her through that last door and slammed her to the ground, winding her good and proper.

  “Well met, Laer!” Elminster greeted her cheerfully, from atop her, his nose a bare inch from hers. “Now stay down!”

  Then he kissed her, she felt the tingling of the risen Weave around them swirling eagerly to work—and an instant later, she was staring at herself. A Laeral who gave her Elminster’s familiar wink and grin ere springing up off her, to spin and face her foes.

  So, false servants fighting a false Laeral. The thought came to Laeral as she struggled for air. The webs were shrinking back in all directions as they burned, the room was filling with acrid smoke, and through it leaped her persistent attackers, swords and daggers in their hands.

  One of them bounded over the desk with a roar, and Elminster let fly with a Weave magic Laeral had never seen before.

  One that in
an instant, with the would-be assassin in midair, blasted flesh from bones—so only a bloody skeleton crashed to the floor in front of Laeral, collapsing into a welter of wet bones, sword and dagger clattering away.

  Elminster waved a hand, and the desk rose up ponderously, swinging around like a great battering ram to slam into another attacker, and then another, smashing them to the floor.

  And then there were fresh shouts and the thunder of heavy-booted feet and a man shouting, “The Watch is upon you! Surrender! Surrender, I say!”

  “Open all doors! Get rid of this smoke!”

  “Halt, you! Down blades, down blades! I—errrahhh!” That bellowing orsar parried a sword heading for his throat with a mighty swing, bearing the attacking blade to the floor, and kicked brutally at the planted leg of his off-balance attacker.

  The room where the last of the tattered webs were becoming ash was now full of mortified servants and hard-eyed Watch guards in gleaming armor, and as Laeral mastered breath enough to clamber to her feet, Elminster melted back into himself and ordered crisply, “Take them alive for questioning, if ye can, and don’t get any blood on any of these documents underfoot; they’re all precious. The Lady Silverhand and I will repair to the adjoining room now. We’re late for tea.”

  Swordcaptains, rordens, and orsars alike all gaped at the old and long-bearded man as he offered Laeral his arm with a courtier’s flourish—and they swept out together.

  The last thing Laeral saw was the astonished look on Talen Telfeather’s ashen face, and she had to fight down a guffaw of glee. To see that, well … it almost made all the rest of it, the nearly getting killed, worth it.

  The room they entered wasn’t to Elminster’s liking, nor the next, so he kept right on towing Laeral along, heading now for older, smaller rooms at the back of the Palace that were probably more familiar to him.

  A little shaken by how dangerous so relatively feeble an attack was to her lessened self, Laeral didn’t protest or try to go to the stones that held her sisters but kept hold of El’s hand and allowed herself to be bustled down passages and through rooms, until they reached a small antechamber that looked suspiciously as if Elminster had been making himself at home there. Four old and rather shabby armchairs were drawn up around tables strewn with some lurid chapbooks and a well-worn map of the city … and there was tea, with a smiling maid just retreating from the trivet she’d set it on.