by Ed Greenwood
“I did, and—”
She raised one hand and her voice with it, firmly interrupting whatever sly lewdness he was uttering. “I’d like to hear all about it. Over a bottle of whatever wine you recommend, if your offer to get me drunk on your coin is real, and not mere lust-hungry-lad babbling?”
Mirt recoiled. “Lady, lady, do not think for a moment that my offers are anything less than real! I stand by my utterances, I do, and—”
“Lord Mirt, you less than surprise me,” the lady clerk of the rolls informed him, and she turned to tell the server who’d just glided up to her table, “I’ll have whatever the gentlesir here feels moved to feed me.”
The server’s half-lidded, bored eyes opened wide, and he cast a swift glance at Mirt, who dispensed another of his exaggerated winks, leaving the server to struggle to control his customary mask of facial impassivity. He blurted out, “Very good, Goodwoman Ironstave,” spun around, and rushed away.
“I do believe you’ve scared the man,” Rensharra said reprovingly, discovering that she was genuinely enjoying herself—and her company—for the first time in, well, years …
“I, lady?” Mirt protested in mock horror. “I said nothing to him, nothing at all!”
“You, lord, don’t need to!” Rensharra replied, lifting her hand to him in the court manner.
A moment later, her always-cold fingers were clasped in a warm, hairy, yet gentle paw that did not tug at her, but conveyed her fingertips to lips ringed with a long, sweeping mustache that … tickled.
She giggled helplessly, whereupon Mirt released her, proffered his fourth bottle—the only one that wasn’t already empty—and inquired, “Will you begin getting drunk, lady? Just for me?”
Rensharra burst into a guffaw. The man was outrageous! Like a playful boar, or a gruff old minstrel lampooning a flamboyant noble a-wooing—and, by all the gods, she loved these coarse flirtations. She was, after all, in Thessarelle’s, where the staff knew her rank and position; one scream from her could have this man hustled away in a trice, so she was quite safe. Moreover, she’d spent too many lonely, melancholy evenings here toying with food that was superb, yet … wasted, somehow, when one dined alone. Bah! Let this be a night of adventure, where she would give as good as she got.
“I believe I will, Lord of Waterdeep,” she announced. “Providing you answer me truly, gallant Mirt. Is it true, what they say about men of Waterdeep?”
“Which saying, lady?”
“The one about driving hard until the tide turns?”
Mirt coughed briefly, startled—by such a query from so demure a source—into taking some wine up his nose. Recovering, he grinned.
“Yes, lady. It is. I believe in candor, between friends.”
Rensharra looked at him over the rim of the just-filled tallglass he’d handed her. It had been clean, because he’d been drinking directly from the bottles.
“I accept you as my friend of the table, Lord Mirt, and quite likely my friend, period. Were you hoping for something … closer?”
“You do believe in candor, lass! Well, now, I do believe I am. Do yer hopes run along similar trails?”
“If you drink me under the table,” Goodwoman Ironstave told her tablecloth demurely, “you may have me under the table.” She set down her glass and looked up. “Or more sensibly, being as this is Thessarelle’s, under another table, elsewhere, of your choosing. Or, perhaps, wherever else we may both devise. After we eat and drink sufficiently for you to prove that saying true, of course.”
“Of course,” Mirt agreed, sketching a deep bow. Being as he was still seated, his dipping gesture merely planted his nose in the platter in front of him.
He straightened up, dripping, wearing an expression of long-suffering martyrdom, and snorted most marvelously like a boar backing away from a trough. Rensharra burst out laughing again as he reached for what little was left in his fourth bottle.
Only to hurl it hard and accurately past Rensharra’s shoulder, into something that squealed in wet and wordless pain.
“Down, lass!” he roared. “Under yer table, and keep going!”
The lady clerk of the rolls ducked in her chair, but turned to look at what was behind her as she slid out of it—so she was in time to see the elegantly dressed man with not much left of his face but blood and bottle shards collapsing back against the drapery-bedecked wall. His hand—which held a knife in it—fell away from a rope it had failed to slice.
The rope led up—she was under the table, but still peering—to a pulley lost in the shadows of the lofty ceiling, from which dangled a wicker basket about the size of a coffin.
Something flashed, out of an upper gallery, right at that rope.
Mirt gave a growl and came up out of his seat in a lumbering rush that sent his table over on top of Rensharra’s table, toppling it.
The heavy, metallic crash that slammed into those improvised shields a moment later splintered one tabletop before the basket spewed its deadly contents all over the vicinity: scores of cleavers, carving knives, cooking spits, and skewers, accompanied by broken glass and a glistening sea of lamp oil. Followed by racing flames, as the lit lamp that had been balanced atop it all met that flowing oil.
Rensharra was too startled to scream, but she managed a strangled peep as Mirt snatched her out from under the tables, tore the flaming half of her gown right off her and flung it into the growing conflagration. He took the instant necessary to comment, “Nice!” … then spun and towed her across the room.
“But—but—” she gasped, seeing other diners gawking, “this isn’t the way out!”
“Nay,” Mirt growled, bounding up the stairs and dragging her along like a child’s toy, “but ’tis the way to the gallery!”
Halfway up that stair, they met a man hurrying down. A man armed with a murderous snarl and a knife. He slashed at Mirt, who flung up his arm to take the blow—and sprang upward to turn that fending movement into a hard punch just above the man’s knee.
The man hopped, howling in pain, and Mirt’s slashed and bleeding arm crashed home, landing a hard punch in the man’s crotch. The knife clanged somewhere down the stair, the man shrieked and collapsed, and Mirt let go of Rensharra long enough to take the man by the throat and one knee, turn, and heave.
This was not a man meant to fly. Instead, he plunged and struck the knife-studded, blazing basket and tables with a crash even louder and heavier than the one that had ended the deadly basket’s fall. He struck, spasmed once, then lay still, his arms and legs dangling, his body impaled and starting to drip. Rensharra winced.
Mirt turned and offered her his arm. It was bleeding copiously, but she took it as if nothing were amiss. Mirt grandly led her back down the stair to where servers and a cook and Thessarelle herself were scurrying. Diners were fleeing or craning to see, buckets of potato water from the kitchens were being flung onto the flames, and the man sprawled in the heart of that fire, with several knives through him, looked very dead.
“I do hope,” Mirt said politely to Thessarelle, as that pillar of hauteur started to scream and sob, “you won’t be charging for the floor show.”
Pressing a small but bulging purse into the nearest hand of the dumbfounded proprietress, he led Rensharra toward the kitchens.
“The entrance is—”
“Never use a front entrance after a slaying’s gone awry,” Mirt growled. “That basket was meant for you, lass. Someone with coin enough to hire others … you haven’t angered any nobles lately, have you?”
Rensharra managed a weak smile as he hustled her through kitchens where pots neglected too long were starting to steam, and sauces to scorch, out into an alleyway.
“I—I’m the head tax collector of the kingdom,” she told him, as they hastened through its noisome gloom together, Mirt peering this way and that. “I anger nobles daily. And when I tire of it, I irk them some more.”
“Good lass,” he replied fondly. “You look much better with half yer gown gone, by the way.
”
“My reputation—”
“Lass, lass, if yer head tax collector, yer reputation can only be helped by a little bouncing bared flesh! Yer precious reputation only has one way to go!”
They turned a corner at the end of the alley, out into a lamplit street, and Mirt added, “That’s a little better! The farther we get—”
A Watch patrol came out of the next alley, and promptly rushed to surround them, unhooding lanterns.
“What’s this, then?” the patrol leader barked.
Mirt grinned, bowed, and indicated his bedraggled partner. “As you can see, lads,” he crowed, “the lady likes it rough!”
Her face flaming, Rensharra struggled to manage a wink and a smile, then struck a pose she hoped was, well, provocative.
Silence stretched … then ended abruptly. On all sides, upstanding members of the Watch hooted, chuckled, or roared approval.
“Lucky bastard,” one added, clapping Mirt on the shoulder, as the patrol started to move on.
“Wait,” another said suddenly, turning back and shining his lantern full on Rensharra’s face. “Aren’t you—?”
“Yes,” she purred, taking a step toward him. “I am.”
The Watchman’s face split in a delighted grin, he gave her a salute, then bellowed, “Onwaaard!” and hurried after his fellows.
“You see?” Mirt said affably. “Yer reputation—”
Rensharra Ironstave found herself trembling, on the verge of tears, suddenly cold and afraid, as weary as if she’d worked a long day, and ravenously hungry.
“Mirt,” she said firmly, “take me home. Your home.”
“Of course, lass,” he rumbled, patting her arm. His hand left bloody marks on her sleeve—her only surviving sleeve. “I’ve a warm bed. And cold chicken.”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
BLOODSHED INEVITABLY ERUPTS
The prisoners of Irlingstar, nobles all, had been gleeful about the first two deaths, but the explosions and the killing of Lord Quensyn Rhangobrar had, it seemed, abruptly changed their collective mood.
“Do something, constable!”
“Aye! Our hides are at risk, now! ’Tis your duty, no less!”
The shouts were loud, angry, and fearful, the demands that Farland do something many and shrill.
“Kill this drow here, for a start!”
That indicated dark elf gave the furious and tentatively advancing noblemen a wry smile, and murmured the last words of a spell.
And the very air around them flickered, flowed, and … every last noble facing the lord constable and the five standing with him staggered, sagged—and crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
In the silence that followed, Wizard of War Imbrult Longclaws spun around to fix the she-drow with a suspicious glare, his wand ready in his hand. “The wards are … gone, in this room at least,” he challenged her. “How did you do that?”
“Magic,” the dark elf told him serenely.
Gulkanun moved to face her, his wands in hands and taking care to keep well away from Longclaws. The drow had slipped aside when they’d come out into the room, to keep her back to a wall so she couldn’t be attacked from two sides. She was watching him realize this, and smiling. Gulkanun’s frown of suspicion grew darker.
“Duth Gulkanun,” she said to him, “I don’t like being in this body any more than you like having a drow telling you she—he—is a wizard of war. Yet if I’m going to have to constantly guard against you and Longclaws waiting for a good chance to blast me, I’ll not be able to obey my orders—the commands that come from Lord Lothan Durncaskyn, but that my oath to the Crown tells me I must regard as if they came from King Foril himself—with any speed or effectiveness. So what can I do to convince you I’m Brannon Lucksar? Do you want to hear watchwords? Some of the little secrets only we wizards of war know? Royal Magician Ganrahast’s favorite color?”
Longclaws snorted. “As if we’d know that.”
Gulkanun shot him a quelling glare, then turned and asked the drow challengingly, “What does Lord Durncaskyn most mourn the loss of?”
“Publicly? Knees that serve him well. Privately? Esmra Winterwood, who kept a gowns and lace shop in Immerford, and died of heartstop two winters back. He hoped they’d be wed, and was busily wooing her when she fell ill.”
Gulkanun and Longclaws looked at each other and shrugged. The drow was right about the knees, and probably about the woman, too. There’d been rumors …
Longclaws lifted his chin and fired his own query. “Just how did you come to meet Manshoon?”
“The first time? On a still-secret Crown task that took me to Westgate, years back. He ruled it as Orbakh, you know.”
“We do know,” Gulkanun said coldly.
The drow merely smiled. “My second time was in the Stonelands, after a spell duel I saw from afar while investigating something else, that brought a dragon down dead out of the sky. I was fortunate to escape with my life, that time.”
“Investigating what, exactly?”
“Let’s just say it had to do with shades seen trading in a … locale strategic to Cormyr. You’ll appreciate that certain orders prevent me from being more specific. I saw Manshoon again last winter, in an alley in Suzail, when he let his guard slip for a moment. He’s acquired a habit of talking aloud to himself. By now we’ve learned to watch for him, and heed reports of his being seen. After he visits a place, bloodshed inevitably erupts.”
“You’re not telling us all of your dealings with Manshoon,” Gulkanun said accusingly.
“No,” the drow said calmly, “I’m not.”
“How long are these nobles going to sleep?” Farland broke in. “I’m more than a little suspicious of this dark elf, myself, but it seems to me that a little reluctant trust is in order about now.”
“Well said, lord constable,” Arclath agreed quickly. “Crown mages, I’m no wizard of war nor palace insider, but I’ve sat around tables recently with Ganrahast and Vainrence and Glathra—more recently than any of you, I’ll wager—and it seems to me this, ah, lady is either Lucksar or knows enough of things only he would know that you’ll not catch him—her—out as a false Lucksar. I say trust her for now, and let her get investigating.”
“Investigating is our task,” Gulkanun said flatly.
“Mine, too,” the drow told him. “If you’d prefer we walk shoulder to shoulder in this, never parting, I’ve no objection—so long as you don’t use that agreement to restrict where I go and with whom I speak.”
Gulkanun and Longclaws traded glances again, then slowly nodded to each other, and sheathed their wands.
“Investigate,” Gulkanun told the drow. “We’ll stay with you, much of the time, and hear what you hear, see what you see, and heed what you do.”
The dark elf sketched a bow with liquid grace, then turned to the lord constable and said briskly, “In the interests of uncovering who’s blowing towers up and murdering folk in Irlingstar, I’m going to ask you many questions. Please take no offense; I seek information, not to insinuate anything.” She spun to regard the two war wizards and Arclath and Amarune and added, “By all means interrupt with queries of your own, as they occur to you. I am by no means ‘in charge’ here.” She turned smoothly back to Farland. “What do the wards of Irlingstar normally allow in the way of magic?”
The lord constable winced. “Beyond that they block translocation, sendings, and mind-to-mind contact in and out of the castle, I don’t know all that much about them. They hurl back most destructive magics cast from outside, and prevent quite a few from working at all inside Irlingstar, but as to the details … those were known to the Crown mages stationed here.”
He cleared his throat. “You may have heard that some of my predecessors betrayed their office—took bribes from prisoners, and the like. That may have had much to do with how little I was told about the wards. I’ve heard that both seneschals and lord constables in the past have known much more than I do, and I’ve seen—brie
fly, not to peruse and learn details—some written records of what the wards do. Avathnar had them sent back to Suzail soon after taking office. He told me they were just weapons against us if they ever fell into the wrong hands.”
The drow nodded. “So before any of these recent killings and explosions, just how many folk were in Irlingstar? Everyone, not just incarcerated noble guests.”
Farland frowned. “Two and twenty guards, who report to me. Me. Sixteen castle staff—masons, smiths, hostlers, and the like—who reported to Seneschal Avathnar. Avathnar. Eight who worked in the kitchens—all women from Immerford, some old, some young. And two message riders—Crown messengers in training—stationed here. Not counting the lord and lass, here”—he nodded at Arclath and Amarune—“we had twoscore-and-six prisoners. The castle can hold four times that, with every guest in his own cell. Er, could, that is, before the … south tower went down, and all.”
“Name me the most dangerous of those prisoners. Not the most annoying—I’m sure they all compete for that ranking—but those you judge truly perilous.”
Farland frowned. “Now that Rhangobrar’s dead—he was a real instigator and manipulator, who could stir many of them into any mischief he wanted, and usually avoid direct involvement himself—I’d say Cygland Morauntar, Bleys Indimber, and Raldrick Ammaeth. Young lords, all. The first two are heirs of their houses, and Ammaeth’s a second son who twice tried to arrange the killing of his older brother before he was brought here. Convicted murderers, all three; no morals whatsoever, no inhibitions. We’ve others who can be ruthless, cruel, and even savage in their bloodletting … but those three …”
“No compunctions at all?”
“None. They understand rules and customs and etiquette well enough, as constraints on others they can make use of—but not as anything that should bind them. Most of my efforts have been to keep their holds over others as weak as possible, and prevent any of them from getting together.”
“So those three we chain to the walls of separate locked cells, far from each other and the rest,” the dark elf suggested, “and the others we round up and temporarily confine in one place, disarmed of anything sharp or magical, and give them as much wine as they want to down.”