Death Masks

by Ed Greenwood

  Now what could bring such a mismatched group to her doors?

  Wiping her face again, Vajra let them in, took the Blackstaff from its hovering into her hand, and strode to meet them.

  “Uh, Lady Blackstaff?” Thaerendral began, uncertainly.

  “Lady Safahr,” the noblewoman interrupted crisply, “you’ll be wondering at the reason for our unanticipated interruption of your day. Let us unfold our business with you, before we waste more of your time.”

  Vajra smiled. “I am not unentertained. Please do.”

  She appreciated Lady Zulpair’s brisk style, and replied in kind. In brief, swift speeches, queries, and replies it unfolded: these four wanted her support of their newly hatched proposal to have the guilds and the noble houses collectively house and protect—by providing bodyguards and secure accommodations, with the financial support or the loans of suitable city properties by interested sponsor nobles—the Hidden Lords of the city, without trying to pry into their identities, until the slayer of lords was found and dealt with.

  Vajra found their proposal well-meant and even touching, but wasn’t sure any of the Hidden Lords would trust it. Moreover, she could see it stood open to those involved trying to influence or even imprison and coerce Lords—or at least the rest of the city thinking they’d be doing so, and therefore that the rule of the city was co-opted by what would probably be deemed “jailors.”

  She said as much, and forestalled their stern protestations by adding, “Nevertheless, I promise to take the proposal to the Open Lord, without delay.”

  Her four visitors looked troubled.

  “You cast about for the right words to voice your disapproval,” Vajra observed bluntly. “Why?”

  It was Lady Zulpair who said, “We are reluctant to involve the Open Lord in this, one way or another—for she may be part of this, ah, problem.”

  “Involved in the killings?”

  Both of the men nodded grimly.

  Vajra gave them all a shrug. “Whether she is or she isn’t, you’ll have to deal with her one way or another, soon enough. The Lords are not hermits, and the Watch is not mute; she’ll know what you’re attempting—and if you do it without informing her beforehand, she’ll assume the worst, and react accordingly. If she is part of it, you’ll be handing her the pretext she needs for sending in armed guardians, arranging protective custody of the Lords, wherein ‘accidents’ can so easily happen.”

  She let the Blackstaff wink and glow with power to impress them, and added, “If I champion your cause, it shall at least get a fair hearing. And if spurned out of hand, we shall all learn something.”

  Her four guests eyed each other, and then reluctantly agreed.

  Well, well. So you could teach Waterdhavians prudence, after all.

  CHAPTER 26

  We Don’t Get Many of Those

  At first I thought you were just one more adventurer

  Out to steal and slay and threaten folk out of their gold

  But now I perceive you have higher ambitions

  And wish to seize thrones and behead emperors

  To make yourself a new world-tyrant—yet aren’t raving

  And actually have a plan. Well, then, be welcome! A

  Sane world-conqueror! We don’t get many of those!

  —Immulglair the Impressive, in Act I, Scene I, of the play Snow in Neverwinter by Rulvaerlon Dethmureon of Silverymoon, first performed in the Year of the Saddle

  “THE SHUTTERS ARE OPEN,” WARATRA MUTTERED, “AND LOOK AT THE flies!”

  “Someone’s dead up there, sure,” Drella agreed, “but six men, remember, and their doxies, and those who come to have dealings with them—could be anyone!”

  “Laranna said Shrikegulk went up and hasn’t come down again,” Ravva murmured, as they climbed the narrow and evil-smelling stairs.

  “Laranna’ll say anything if she’s paid to,” Waratra hissed back scornfully, as they flitted down the dark upper corridor like three racing shadows. “Hand me your knives.”

  “What’s wrong with your own?”

  “There’s not enough of them, that’s what’s wrong.”

  Ravva sighed, slipped her hand in under her clothing, and when it emerged again she was holding two slender, dark-daubed, wickedly sharp daggers.

  She slapped them into Waratra’s waiting hand, and was rewarded by seeing her friend’s mouth pucker at the taste as Waratra stuffed Ravva’s blades and Drella’s all into her mouth pommel-first, so her distended jaw bristled with an out-flung array of blades. Waratra didn’t try to say a word around them, but merely waved at Oskulk’s door.

  Drella gave her a grin and glided forward, combing a lockpick out of the hair above her right ear.

  Yeldrin Oskulk rented the small and leaking-ceilinged room next door to the larger chamber shared by the six men. Oskulk was a carpet merchant and a drunkard; he was probably sleeping off his latest guzzle—because that was how he spent most of his time, it seemed. Drella cheerfully picked his lock in three swift moments, then pushed the door in with her fingertips as far as Oskulk’s loose floor-bolt permitted, and held out her hand just as Waratra had, earlier.

  Ravva knew what was expected. She had her rope belt off already, and handed it over.

  Drella took it, reached her arm in through the gap and around the other side of the door, swung a loop of Ravva’s belt with deft accuracy to snag the bolt, and yanked it up; Ravva got her belt back in her face even before the door swung open.

  They strode right past the huddled and gently snoring Oskulk, and Waratra undid his shutters, thrust them open with the expected and unavoidable squeal, and swung herself onto the sill while the carpet merchant was still rumbling himself awake and reaching under his pillow for his trusty cleaver.

  He came wide awake with a start as he discovered it was missing, but his instinctive roar of oaths was forestalled by something abruptly thrust into his mouth.

  Something soft, curvaceous, and feminine. Oskulk managed only a murrumph as he stared blearily up at a smiling Ravva, whose hands were now at work lower down on his person, and then he relaxed and stopped trying to bellow anything. He merely smiled and lay still; Ravva didn’t even see the need to brain him with the back of his own cleaver.

  Outside, there came a solid thluckk in the wall as Waratra drove her first dagger deep into the weathered and decaying wood of Tarstroun’s sagging upper level, followed by another. Thud, thud, thud, knife by knife, she made her way to the open adjoining window, twisting and swaying as she hung from one knife and reclaimed the previous one, then and tossed it back to Drella at the window she’d come from.

  Then she was up and into the room next door.

  Ravva planted a kiss on Oskulk’s forehead and was up off him and gone, Drella a step ahead of her, and both of them made it back out into the passage in time to see its door swing open. “Well?”

  “Murdered,” Waratra whispered, emerging to join them. “I’m sure it’s Shrikegulk, but someone sliced his head off and took it away. Flies everywhere—and greskur, too! Smeared on everything, to harm the Watch and anyone else trying to search the place.”

  “Greskur!”

  Greskur was the most potent contact poison that could be easily had in Dock Ward, if you could pay enough, stay discreet, and ask the right folk for it, but—

  Doors opened up and down the corridor, and hard-faced men stepped out with cocked crossbows in their hands.

  Ravva, Drella, and Waratra barely had time to curse and fling themselves headlong at the still-open door Waratra had come through.

  It was Drella who got hit, snatched down the passage by the two bolts that transfixed her.

  Before any of the girls could even scream.

  • • •

  “YE’RE THE OPEN LORD,” Elminster was saying. “The decisions must be yours, so—”

  And then his face changed.

  “Mordenkainen?” Laeral asked.

  El nodded, sighed, and waved a farewell. He was still waving wh
en he was suddenly—not there.

  She was alone again. Laeral shook her head, turned and—

  The door opened, and she found herself staring into the eyes of the Blackstaff. Vajra looked apologetic.

  “I know there’s no such thing as a ‘good time,’ Lady Sil—”

  “Vajra, call me Laer, please. I—”

  “We’re not alone,” Vajra said quickly. “I have Lady Zulpair—Lady Hamaleiya Zulpair—with me, and three guildmasters. They have a proposal for you that seems to me to have enough merit that you should hear it. I do not think they intend ill.”

  “And I think,” Laeral replied with the beginnings of a smile, “you should usher them in, and I should hear this.”

  So it was that the masters of the Surveyors’, Map & Chart-makers,’ the Coopers, and the Council of Farmer-Grocers were ushered in, Vajra smoothly introduced their idea and let them stumblingly unfold their whys and wherefores to the Open Lord. They were in the midst of it when more nobles, and more guildmasters—in pairs or alone, not in cabals—arrived, demanding audience.

  Laeral waved to the courtiers to admit them, and in the uneasy silence that followed, she smiled and said, “Lords and ladies and saers, you all want to inform me of, or ask my permission for, or need me to … what?”

  It took much gentle questioning on her part to nudge her array of visitors into admitting they wanted to preserve and protect the system of Hidden Lords, and keep their identities secret, not replace them with a council of guilds or a ruling circle of nobles.

  “Your position is clear, and I happen to agree with it,” Laeral told them, “yet we share a problem: I am in fact not the Tyrant of Waterdeep, and can’t decide this or any matter of governance over the Hidden Lords, for the Hidden Lords, without the voted consent of, yes, the Hidden Lords.”

  She gave them all a wry smile and added, “Those same Lords will have to be assembled to hear any ideas and motions—and right now, assembling is just what they’re refusing to do.”

  The doors behind the last arrivals among the nobles were still ajar, and from the passages beyond arose a sudden din. The sounds of running feet, someone in plate-armor crashing against a stone wall and then falling and rolling.

  And then the doors crashed wide open.

  Nobles scattered with concerned shouts, and Vajra and Laeral both raised their hands to hurl magic.

  They found themselves facing a lone intruder, her chest heaving and her hair wild. Who went to her knees and gasped, “Lady Silverhand, your life is in peril! I was hired to murder Masked Lords, and the man who hired me and who’s behind it all wants you dead, too! He’s hired wizards to kill you!”

  Many in the room knew the woman on her knees by sight. It was the Lady Tasheene Melshimber.

  Behind her, a lithe man was calmly fending off three Watch guards with sword and dagger, even as more came charging along the passage.

  “Watch guards, stand down!” Laeral bellowed.

  Amid the echoes of her shout, the startled men stopped fighting.

  In the silence that fell then, Laeral asked, “Lady Melshimber, who is this man who hired you to kill Lords of this city?”

  “HIS NAME,” TASHEENE gasped, “is Braethan Cazondur.”

  • • •

  RAVVA AND WARATRA furiously snatched up the daggers that had fallen from Drella’s grasp and hurled them down the passage at the thugs—but they’d already taken to their heels, not one of them tarrying to reload.

  “Drella!” Ravva cried, whirling.

  “This was a trap for Watch guards!” Waratra snarled. “Since when do we look like Watch guards?”

  The bolts were right through Drella, and she was drooling dark red blood, her eyes all unseeing whites.

  “Drel—Drel!” Ravva snarled. “Hang on!” Then she hissed to Waratra, “Help me carry her!”

  “Where?”

  “To healing! That new Wavehall of Valkur, on Net Street! It’s closest!”

  They half-carried, half-dragged the limp Drella down the narrow stairs and out of Tarstroun’s—right into the midst of a passing Watch patrol.

  “Now, what’s all this?”

  “Stand away from her, you two! What happened to her?”

  “Get out of the way!” Ravva roared, producing her last hidden blade and brandishing it in fury.

  “Ho, now!” Watch guards stepped back, faces hardening, and went for their own weapons.

  Which gave Ravva time to fumble out something she’d almost forgotten she was carrying, having won it from Waratra at cards: that Watch badge they’d liberated.

  She held it out as if it was a sword, thrusting it at the Watch guards. “We’re with the Watch! Now help us! Carry her to the Wavehall on Net Street!”

  “Lass,” one of the Watch officers said gently, “there’s no need for shouting or haste. She’s dead.”

  Ravva and Waratra looked down at Drella, lying on the street between them. Her face was white and lifeless, her eyes staring sightlessly at the sky.

  Ravva and Waratra looked at each other, and exploded into tears.

  • • •

  THE MANY MASKS—where every patron attended in disguise, retaining a mask when they doffed all else—was a converted mansion, not a purpose-built brothel, and its elegant wood-paneled entrance hall and passageways had a few bottlenecks. At the first of which, just inside the front door, the house door guard was stationed. The duty guard just now was a tanned and muscled blond giant with a chin as elegant as many a beautiful maiden’s.

  He blinked at Suthool’s approach, but managed to maintain his broad and welcoming smile. His teeth were pearly white and flawless.

  “Ooooh, a mind flayer! We don’t get many of those! And such a good disguise, too; you almost had me fooled that you were for real. I can’t see any stitching at all!”

  “I’ll convey your compliments to the next elder brain I have dealings with,” Suthool replied in very dry tones, and swept past. Belvarra knew he was moving quickly to keep the simpering brothel door guard from noticing the mind flayer’s peculiar voice was coming from the ovoid stone at Suthool’s throat.

  “Are you seeking someone in particular?” the door guard called after him.

  Belvarra hastily tendered the mind flayer a solemn wink, in case her disguise as an over-painted caricature of Lady Laeral Silverhand foiled him as she undulated toward him.

  Suthool collected that wink, and turned and told the man, “Not seeking. I’ve found her.”

  “Very clever disguise,” a honey-voiced woman with a figure of truly spectacular proportions said admiringly, as she swept past with leather reins and a whip in her hand, setting a brisk pace that forced the bridled and saddled hooded men in her wake to crawl at almost a canter.

  Belvarra had not thought it was possible for an illithid to nod a polite reply in utter silence yet clearly make the gesture sardonic, but Suthool managed it.

  She chuckled. “Our rented bower is right this way.”

  The mind flayer deepened his nod into a bow, waving his arms in a courtly flourish that indicated she should lead the way.

  The Many Masks was crowded just now; a woman whose most prominent frontal features were adorned with chiming bells reached out a teasingly caressing hand to trace the line of Suthool’s nearest tentacle as she passed. He made the adjacent tentacle caress her back, and the chiming lady had time to look startled before her patron—an aging noblewoman whose blue-and-white jester’s cap and attached whiteface mask did little to hide her true identity—tugged on her throat-leash and dragged her inside a lovemaking bower very like the one Belvarra was leading the way to.

  Once they were through the door and had dropped down the privacy bar, Belvarra turned to face Suthool and said mockingly, “Oh, yes, Lord! Such a clever disguise!”

  “Ah, but I can hide nothing from the Open Lord of Waterdeep,” the voice from the mind flayer’s speaking stone came right back at her, in identical tones of mockery.

  She bowed, then proffered
a locket with its lid up to reveal the enchanted gemstone glimmering within, halting so he could see it clearly.

  When he nodded, the agent of Asmodeus activated it with a kiss and whispered word, then teasingly undid her bodice.

  “Artistic verisimilitude?” Suthool asked. Belvarra put an admonishing finger to her lips, he nodded again, and they stood facing each other like statues as the shifting dark shadows of her gem’s privacy rose and swirled around them.

  Only when those shadows entirely hid the walls, ceiling, and floor around them, did she speak.

  “He’s gone to ground,” she said, without preamble. “One of his bolt holes in North Ward. The one he just finished having renovated. Which means he expects troubles to begin. Soon.”

  “And no wonder. He’s taken several strides too far.” The voice emerging from Suthool’s speaking stone was sharply bitter. “Hiring wizards to slay for him, and then wizards to kill those wizards—that will bring real chaos to the city, whether he succeeds or not. And once others get wind of that tactic, and get, shall we say, inspired by it …”

  “Then we must bring him down, swiftly and brutally,” Belvarra concluded, “so they learn that it’s a strategy that ends in doom for those who try it, not any measure of success.”

  “Ah, but where to begin?”

  • • •

  AT LAERAL’S COMMAND, the Watch had taken Drake, Tasheene, and the rest of the nobles and the guildmasters to the Lordsmoot, to talk things over all together; Dove and Syluné had privately assured Laeral they’d listen in and relay anything the Watch guards learned, that they might decide not to share with the Open Lord.

  That mass exodus left Laeral alone with Vajra.

  “I think I can help you trace Cazondur’s whereabouts,” the Blackstaff promptly offered.