The City of Splendors

by Ed Greenwood

  “I don’t believe you’ve ever met the third Lone Lady Ammakyl,” someone gushed nearby, and Lark rolled her eyes and moved away. Three maiden aunts at once? That would be a delightful household to work for!

  “Ohhh, yes, ahahahaha!” a man brayed, loudly and falsely enough to make Lark wince.

  And wince again at her own stupidity. Gods above, had she lost her wits along with her own clothes? As a servant, she had the sense to keep her thoughts from her face. She twisted her lips into a vapid smile and lowered her bared shoulders into a more relaxed posture.

  The great vaulted hall was filling up rapidly, which meant that some of the early arrivals, who wanted to avoid rivals or cut dead those with whom they were feuding, would soon start to leave. This didn’t have the feel of a relaxed revel, where debauchery might soon break out. The grand folk of Waterdeep were uneasy because their not-yet-seen host was Elaith Craulnober, the notorious Serpent.

  Right now might be her best chance to slip away. She was to leave her report in the study that overlooked the grand hall from the seaward side—and this had to be the grand hall.

  She caught up to the servant, left her emptied tallglass on his platter and deftly procured a tallglass of something she could at least see through, and tilted her head back to idly survey the hall as she sipped.

  Quite used to such self-absorbed behavior, the servant slipped around her and moved on, with neither of them having so much as glanced at each other’s faces, which was a good thing, because the man’s dwindling form looked familiar. She’d probably worked alongside him, cleaning up after some other revel elsewhere.

  Lark raised her glance and her glass again—and spotted what she was looking for. The hall sported a promenade or continuous balcony, overlooking the crowded floor from all sides, and a second level above that of separately jutting balconies. One of them, on the seaward side, was larger than most and was glassed in. All was in darkness on both of those upper levels; the Serpent obviously wanted his guests to crowd and mingle beneath the glowflames and the chandeliers, to make it clear to all just how many of Waterdeep’s best and brightest his invitation could bring.

  “Eltorchul! Eltorchul! Hoy, Bunny-Ears! Over here!”

  Lark winced at the deafening bellow and swiftly turned her back. If people looked this way, she would just as soon have them look at her bared back than her face. There were none in this city who’d recognize it, as she wasn’t in the habit of baring her spine in noble mansions or anywhere else.

  “Why, I was talking to Lady Hiilgauntlet just the other day, ahaha, and she told me—”

  Lark began drifting toward the seaward wall. Now if I was an ascending staircase, where would I be? Close enough to a garderobe to serve as an excuse, it was to be hoped …

  “What a sly little snake you are, Bedeira. How many hang-tongued men have you demolished as thoroughly as you did poor Laeburl, I wonder?”

  “Forty-six, my lord,” came the gloating reply. “Care to be my forty-seventh?”

  Lark’s progress thankfully took her out of hearing whatever reply Bedeira was offered—and even more thankfully, showed her broad stone steps, flanked by suits of armor far too ancient to have living men inside them, within the third archway in the wall before her. The light was dimmer here, and inevitably the gossip was more whispered and vicious—and some hands were wandering.

  Lark stepped around a couple so lost in rapture that the feminine half of it was using her chin to hold up her own gathered gown. Beyond them was the arch that opened onto the stairway.

  Glass in hand and affecting the frown of a well-bred lady who was beginning to feel some urgency in a search for the nearest garderobe, she stepped through the arch, glanced up the stair, and discovered something else.

  There was not a guard to be seen, and over a landing far above her hung the paired blue and red lanterns that proclaimed: Garderobe Here.

  Gasping a relief she didn’t quite feel, Lark started up the stairs.

  “You look as bored as I feel,” Taeros murmured to Beldar, deftly avoiding a drunken Brokengulf maiden aunt. The aging beldame seemed bent on changing that status before the evening was out; she reeled past, twittering and clutching at all and sundry.

  Beldar inspected the dregs in his latest goblet and told them, “I am hideously bored. One thinks of the notorious Serpent with the spice of danger, not-so-veiled elven insults, a whiff of things illicit—and a lot more elverquisst than I’ve seen yet.” He waved a hand to indicate the room all around and added, “But this … this is our parents, chattering about their petty politics and intrigues. As harbor-filling usual.”

  To underscore his judgment, Beldar nodded his head toward old Laranthavurr Irlingstar just as the craggy-faced old bore’s monocle made another of its inevitable plunges from its cheek-top perch into the grotesquely large snifter in the eldest Irlingstar uncle’s hand. Droplets of luminous green liquid arced up in all directions in the wake of its loud “plop,” and Aeramacrista Gauntyl, whom he’d been lecturing about proper precedence when dealing with “those new-coin think-far-too-well-of-themselves visitors from Amn,” drew hastily back from the shower with a little crow of alarm that she clumsily transformed into a titter.

  Her retreat caused her to jostle Mornarra Cassalantar. Exaggerated exception was taken. Cutting words erupted.

  Taeros rolled his eyes.

  Beldar was rather gloomily regarding a glistening emerald droplet that had just landed on the back of his hand. “Calishite aumbruril. How three decades back!”

  Taeros chuckled rueful agreement. “Shall we flit elsewhere, then? ”

  “Decidedly. There’s a dance on at the Slow Cheese. Find Malark, will you?”

  “Consider him found. Behold our royal blade—besieged, as usual.”

  Taeros pointed with his fresh goblet at a solid ring of noble matrons, all waving ring-laden hands expressively and spouting nonsense as fast as they could draw breath. The two Gemcloaks could just see Malark’s rather weary smile over the fantastic coiffures of the shortest noblewomen. It seemed silver galleons were fashionable at the moment, for no less than three such vessels were sailing through cranial waves of artfully dyed, pinned, and stiffened hair.

  As they watched, Malark’s smile slid just a trifle more. Taeros made a sympathetic sound, tossed his goblet in the general direction of the nearest servant, and strode into the press of loud laughter, overwhelming perfumes, and glittering, gleaming “my taste is even worse and more expensive than thine” garments. Trills of alarm erupted and flower-bedecked fans swatted at him, but he forged on.

  “Come, Lord Kothont,” Taeros announced firmly, arriving at his destination, “ ’tis past time we attended to your prize pegasus. You know the poor thing goes mad if you don’t dose it by four bells past dusk!”

  “Goes mad?” one matron crowed delightedly. “How so, young sir?”

  “Dose it?” another shrilled, her plump face gleaming with the avid fascination of one whose own ills were legion, endlessly fascinating, and entirely imaginary. “What sort of medicine?”

  Malark was already grinning helplessly at the fancy Taeros was so glibly spinning and continued to do so as the youngest Lord Hawkwinter laid hands on his shoulder and started steering him out of his twittering prison.

  “A secret distillation,” Taeros confided grimly.

  “Secrets, my lord? Come now! You dare keep no secrets from us, your elders and betters!”

  “Very well,” Taeros said sweetly, turning to survey the bright-eyed host of over painted faces as Beldar, not quite wearing a smirk, took Malark’s other arm. “ ’Tis a distillation of … the blood of noblewomen.”

  They departed amid a noisy chaos of scandalized exclamations, delighted laughter, and uncertain mirth. Taeros suspected Malark would have slightly more breathing room at the next revel he attended.

  By the lopsided grin on his face, Malark evidently thought so too. “Couldn’t you have said the blood of old noblewomen?”

  By the
giggles issuing from within, the garderobe was being used for other than its usual form of relief. Good, that gave her a handy excuse. Lark strolled idly on into the darkness to look over the promenade rail and noticed the three Gemcloaks making their way to the doors. Good and better.

  She faded back from the rail with the air of someone killing time in casual boredom toward the flight of steps up to the second level. She was almost underneath the study now, if she was right about which room it was. Ribbed vaulting soared from spindles to carved bosses and supporting statues. Lark spared their shadowed beauties no more than a passing glance, because no bored young noblewoman would have done any differently.

  She strolled along the promenade and oh-so-casually ascended the second stair. The reign of darkness and silence continued.

  Fur rugs covered the landing at the top of the stair, and their whiteness glowed slightly in a faint blue radiance issuing from the open door of the study, immediately to her right.

  Lark swallowed. Could things be this easy? Surely not.

  It was hard to maintain her casual air, and harder still to stroll on thick furs, but she thought she managed it, passing the door and glancing in as she did so.

  The glow was coming from a large map or chart spread out on a desk, and was strong enough to show her a chair and a crammed bookshelf beyond. There was overstuffed seating on the far side of the desk, some sort of large but tidy potted plant, and so far as she could tell in the gloom, no one in the room.

  Raising her eyebrows in what she hoped was a look of languid interest, Lark went to the doorway. If that desk had a carved ship-under-sail medallion on its far side, it was the place Texter wanted the report left. She smoothed her gown and felt beneath it the reassuring stiffness of the message written in Naoni’s neat, careful hand.

  Lark slipped through the door and walked boldly across the soft, deep rugs. As she neared the desk, she noted that the parchment on the table was creased with many rectangular folds—too creased to be parchment, come to think of it, because it hadn’t cracked. It showed a finely drawn labyrinth of chambers and passages—more of the latter than the former—like some vast dungeon. Fascinating, but she dare not spend the time to look at it properly. Maps were valuable, dangerous things. She’d seen sailors and treasure-seekers alike kill each other over the possession of an ink-scrawled canvas scrap. If she were caught here studying a map, no explanation would suffice.

  She strolled past the desk to the window overlooking the grand hall. “Well,” she announced idly, “this is quite a view. Not that it makes those tail feathers on Lady Eirontalar’s hat any more attractive, seen from above.”

  She turned back to face the desk. Yes! There was the ship medallion. A quick glance assured her she was alone.

  Lark went to her knees in a flash, touched the sail of the ship, felt the medallion drop open like a flap, and ran her hand up under her gown and snatched out the report. Slipping it behind the medallion, she closed the little panel again and straightened up—

  To stare straight into the coldly amused eyes of a slender moon elf in a dark, jeweled doublet and hose, who was leaning against the doorframe with one hand resting comfortably on the hilt of a long, slender sword. His other hand toyed with a drawn dagger whose blade was little more than a needle.

  A needle as long and glittering as Lark’s forearm.

  “Lady Eirontalar’s headwear is indeed quite gaudy,” Elaith Craulnober said in singularly rich, musical tones, “but her presumption is more than matched by other ladies here in my house this night. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  The Slow Cheese was neither the grandest festhall in Waterdeep nor the largest, and even a blind and none too choosy man would not have deemed its dancers as anywhere near the best, but it was all the rage at the moment for the very novelty of its newness and for its hanging balconies.

  The Gemcloaks were crowded into one of them now, overlooking the oval stage where dancers were disrobing in a succession of little mime-plays of true love, roguery, and elopement, to the accompaniment of some pleasant but rather wandering airs performed on lute, harp, and string-of-bells.

  Not that anyone could hear much of it through the lusty roars of inebriated patrons shouting bawdy suggestions down at the stage, the rumble of converse, and the groaning of overloaded balconies. The Cheese was packed this night.

  Malark helped himself to another generous slice of peppered Tharsultan cheese from the little “castle” of cheeses on the table in their midst. Exotic cheeses were the house gimmick, all of them strongly seasoned enough to make even iron-throated patrons order more drink.

  “Thirsty?” Beldar inquired mockingly, watching Malark’s eyes fasten in amazement on a particular display of bulbous flesh below.

  Their own prized perch was one of dozens of small, elaborately filigreed and obscenely carved balconies that jutted so far out over the stage that they were barely a man’s height above the heads of the dancers. All around the Gemcloaks, it was raining, a constant flashing fall of coins being dropped from balconies, aimed with greater or lesser degrees of lubricated skill to plunge down bosoms below. Wise dancers at the Cheese kept their mouths shut when on stage; one could choke on a freshly minted silver shard.

  Malark delightedly watched some of those coins find their plunging destinations and others just miss and bounce, ricocheting most amusingly. One of them stuck, just for a moment, half-up a dancer’s nose—and the roar of laughter that swept through the Cheese was deafening.

  The balconies shook and quivered under the Gemcloaks—and under everyone else, by the feel of it, as drunken patrons started to clap rhythmically. The dancers obliged by hiking what little skirts they wore to kick in time, and the very stage swayed.

  “Magic?” Beldar muttered. “ ’Tis like being on a ship fighting high seas in the harbor!”

  “Hoy!” Taeros exclaimed suddenly, slapping his friend’s arm. “Look! Isn’t that Jessra Belabranta?”

  He was pointing at the next balcony, barely the stretch of two long arms away. His gesture was noticed by its occupants, who waved and grinned back.

  Beldar and Malark looked, and momentarily forgot the balcony-shaking dancers below.

  Jessra Belabranta was widely held to be the silliest and most slow-witted of the Belabranta sisters—as well as the fattest. Her natural endowments were ample in all directions, and she was proudly displaying a pair of them to everyone in the festhall at the moment.

  Jessra had evidently just acquired a mer-scale bustier—a garment simply dripping with thumb-sized, teardrop-shaped deep sea pearls of the sort reputed to be the exclusive “catch” of certain pirates of the Nelanther. She obviously wanted all Waterdeep to see those pearls, and the designer of her new garment understood that teardrop sea pearls are best displayed dangling from something and so designed the bustier to reveal to all the watching world the magnificent frontage of the wearer.

  Jessra’s frontage was … expansive, and the gems she’d glued all over them in a random array did nothing to detract from this.

  She was also obviously of the school of taste that believes too much is better and had just tossed a pinch of glow-dust over her bosom. The effect was very much as if a lantern had been lit atop two … two …

  Taeros whirled around to face Beldar, swept a flurry of cheeses off the little table, and with a finger wrote in the revealed dust beneath: Two blind whales trying to out-leap each other!

  Beldar stared down at the symbols—a code they’d not used since they were young boys together, bored beyond yawns at the same revels. Then it all came back to him. He looked up again at Jessra Belabranta and whooped with helpless laughter.

  Taeros promptly joined in, almost choking with mirth, as Malark sat there grinning at them and rolling his eyes.

  Jessra cast them a slightly annoyed look through the trembling din of the sort that asks, “And just what do you find so amusing?”

  That, of course, only made Beldar laugh all the harder, slapping the table hard.

/>   As if that had been the proverbial last stroke of a woodsman’s axe, the table fell through the balcony floor. The slowly building groan of wood that followed was almost deafening, and a startled Taeros stood and spun around in time to see …

  All the balconies swaying, sliding, their support-pillars leaning …

  Boards popped free, folk screamed, and patrons toppled helplessly over the low balcony rails.

  Then everything was falling, with an enthusiastic roar.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Elaith Craulnober lounged against the doorpost, watching the fear that had leaped into the young woman’s eyes. Apparently she wasn’t a complete fool. He had yet to ascertain, however, exactly what she was.

  He watched as she gathered herself with admirable speed. Her panic faded, and her softly curving smile of invitation was more subtle than most he’d received this night from fine Waterdhavian ladies. The dock whores of Luskan evidently bred a finer class of trollop.

  “In truth, Lord Craulnober,” she breathed, “I was hoping you’d follow me here.”

  The elf smiled. “You’re pretty enough, by human standards, to add temptation to that offer,” he said dryly, “but I can hardly leave my guests long enough to make a tryst worth my while or yours.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Strange words from one who’s not yet appeared among his guests.”

  “Oh? Who can say with assurance that I have not?”

  The girl calmly made no answer. Some of Elaith’s guests had responded to similar suggestions with barely disguised panic. Their eyes had grown wide and wild as they took hasty inventory of what they’d said, and to whom, and in whose hearing. This girl knew she’d committed no indiscretion. She’d said or done nothing, save intruding here, to offend her notorious host. That alone made her a rarity among his guests.

  He regarded the girl with something approaching interest. “You must have been wandering about alone for quite some time to not have heard the whispers in the great hall.”