Elminster Must Die

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Amarune came awake quickly, her mind singing with alarm. There it was again, and definitely not in her dreams. Another stealthy sound. Nearby.

She’d fallen asleep at her scribbling, head down on the litter of papers on her desk. No ink all over her cheek this time; that was one good thing. All was dark. Her little candle lamp-only a stub to begin with-had guttered out.

So where-?

Ah, there it was yet again. That time, despite the pitch darkness all around, she knew where it was coming from and what it was.

Someone was using the blade of a knife to try to force open her shutters.

Very quietly.

“That won’t work,” she announced calmly, moving as soundlessly as she could from where she’d spoken to stand at one side of the closed shutters, the spear from under her bed ready in her hand.

“Got you awake, didn’t it?” a rough and familiar voice replied calmly from the night outside the window. “I’ve work for you, Rune. It’s Ruthgul, if you haven’t marked my dulcet tones yet. I’m alone.”

“What sort of work?”

Thieves in the city who weren’t careful didn’t live long enough to accumulate hard-bitten pasts.

Not that thievery didn’t run in her blood, if skill at thievery could run in the blood. Most tales insisted she’d been the daughter of the legendary Old Mage of Shadowdale, Elminster.

“Need a false contract signed,” Ruthgul growled, breaking into her thoughts-and just why had she been thinking about that, anyway? Ye gods, what nex-

“Copy a signing I’ve brought, onto it,” he added. “Match the ink close, if you can.”

Amarune made a sound that was half a sigh and half a chuckle, undid the catches on her shutters, and unhooded the faint, cracked glowstone fragment that lived on the table beside the window. Its light was barely brighter than the darkness, and no wonder; it had been broken when she’d stolen it, and that had been long, long before.

In the days when she’d had far more coins than she did at the moment, but cared nothing for how many days more she might live to spend them in.

She shook that thought aside and lifted the iron bars that held the shutters closed.

“In,” she commanded, the pull cords of her two ready crossbows in her hand. Ruthgul had always been honest with her, but his first lie might well be her last surprise, as the saying went.

The scarred and grizzled old man outside handed her his knife, hilt first, then held out empty hands for her inspection. She caught hold of one and hauled him half into the room, then stopped, pinning him across the sill, to make sure he was alone and not readying some hidden weapon.

The knotted cord he’d climbed swung freely in the night air outside; she could see there was no other weight on it. Nor, so far as she could see, was anyone lurking above-and Ruthgul always worked alone. Nearby rooftops seemed empty of lurking figures, and every window she could see was dark and tightly shuttered, as was both prudent and usual.

Under her firm hand, Ruthgul kept still. There was a satchel covered with short planks strapped to his back, to protect the documents he’d told her about, and though he almost certainly had a blade in either boot and probably a strangling cord somewhere, she could see nothing ready to menace her.

“In,” she commanded tersely, and plucked up one shutter bar, holding it ready to brain him with. Ruthgul landed on the floor, grunted, then got up and took hold of the other shutter bar, moving slowly to reassure her.

He turned, drew her shutters closed, put the bar in its place, and did up the catches. Then he held out his hand for the other bar.

Amarune gave it to him, holding the spear steady at his throat. He sighed, mumbled something about trust being rarer and rarer these days, and finished bolting her shutters.

Then he kneeled down, spreading his hands again to show he wasn’t reaching for any weapon. Slowly worming his way out of the satchel straps, he slid his burden off his back.

“The contract,” he muttered, “is an agreement-”

“I don’t want to know.”

Their usual phrases. Ruthgul uncovered just the signature of one document and let her look at it long and hard. An ordinary ink, as far as she could tell. She lit her last precious candle to check its hue closely.

“Four lions,” she decreed flatly.

Ruthgul knew better than to haggle. He fished out a purse from somewhere amid his filthy rags and leathers-it wasn’t the one riding his belt-and slowly set forth four gold coins in an arc around her candle lamp, each one sticking to his middle finger until he set it down soundlessly and twisted firmly.

Then he used the purse and her glowstone to hold open the document bearing the signature, and uncovered the contract for her to sign.

Or rather, to peer closely at the rush paper it was written on. Then again at the signature.

Amarune fetched several bottles of ink, the right quills, and some scraps of paper, to practice a few swashes. Ruthgul waited in patient silence. His hands had once been young and strong and unsmashed enough to do such work himself; he knew what was necessary, and he knew the true measure of her skill, too.

She caught up the edge of her robe and wiped her forehead. She’d be sweating before she was done.

Then she sat back to breathe slowly, as if falling asleep in her chair, and let her hand mimic the signature again and again, until it flowed.

Ruthgul nodded approvingly and waited.

She signed it with a smooth, swift flourish, then sat back to mop away sweat again.

Perfect, or so it seemed to her eye-and she judged such things as critically as any miser of a coinlender.

The grizzled old man sat still as stone, waiting for the ink to dry. He let Amarune decide when the contract was ready to be covered again, and let her restore both documents to the wrappings he’d brought them in, too, and return them to the satchel.

“Thanks, lass,” he said, sitting back and away from her.

“You are welcome,” she said firmly.

“Better I go,” Ruthgul said. “I’ll be needing the rest of my falcons …”

The blade that thrust into the room through the shutters at that moment was much longer than Ruthgul’s knife, and gleamed very brightly.

“Not this night, thank you,” Amarune said firmly in its direction, raising her voice a trifle. “I have business unfolding in here already.”

“Will it have unfolded completely and be done, if I return in two hours?” The speaker was female, sharp-tongued, and unfamiliar.

Amarune rolled her eyes. “What price my slumber, this night?”

“I’ll pay double. Just a little copying.”

“Two hours,” Amarune agreed and heard the voice outside echo those words in confirmation, already sounding fainter and more distant.

Only then did she notice that Ruthgul was cowering on the floor, both hands over his mouth.

She joined him down there, close enough to whisper in his ear, “What?”

“ ’Tis her!” he said fiercely, eyes wide with fear.

“Which her? She and I aren’t the only females in Suzail this night, look you.”

“She whose name you just …” Ruthgul gestured frantically at the satchel then looked wildly around what little he could see of her dimly lit room. “I’ve got to get out and away-!”

“Oh, Ruthgul,” Amarune sighed into his ear, her exasperation as quiet as she could make it. “Let me get some boots on and lead you out through the cellars. It links up behind the cobbler’s, with Tathlin’s-the message runner’s-two doors down. He’ll probably charge you a lion, though, to wear one of his caps and capes and go out with one of his lads. So you will be needing the rest of your falcons.”

“Farruk,” he snarled.

“No, you haven’t brought enough for that,” she replied brightly, crawling quickly out of his reach.

He glared at her. Then, slowly, face twisting as wry humor won out over angry fear, he managed a grin.

A grin that wavered into confused disbelief as Amarune calmly took off the cloth belt of her robe and let the garment fall open.

“I’m going to blindfold you,” she murmured, stepping past him, and did so, tying her worn and raveled belt securely over his eyes. He offered no resistance as she gently guided him up to his knees.

“Try to remove that, and die,” she added, as softly as any lover.

The grizzled old man nodded carefully.

“Crawl forward,” Amarune murmured into his ear then. “Straight as an arrow and slowly, so as not to blunder into me. Without my guidance, there are several places ahead on our journey where you could easily meet your death. Very easily.”

“Understood,” he muttered. Then, satchel carefully clutched close, he started crawling cautiously after her.

Amarune swallowed again. Fear was making her throat very dry.

She hoped her face was as impassive as she was trying to keep it. Her rooms had never seemed smaller or more tawdry.

She hated and feared her newest client and suspected the woman knew that-and was amused.

Only two lions gleamed on her desk between them.

On the other side of it stood the woman who’d put them there. Someone Amarune knew she’d never seen before; someone lean, lithe, and clad in black leathers that covered her from head to the pointed tips of her boots, hooding her face in a mask that left only her mouth and large, lion-bright yellow eyes visible. Someone who’d given her name as Talane and held a drawn sword in her hand.

It was a blade that drank all light, reflecting back not the slightest gleam, and emanated a silent something that made Amarune feel ill even from across the desk.

Its bearer was every bit as agile as Amarune and probably far deadlier in any fight. If she happened to want the Dragonriders’ best mask dancer dead, Amarune was doomed.

“I’ve offered you fair coin,” Talane purred, “and really don’t believe you’re in any position to bargain with me, Silent Shadow. Or do you prefer to be called Amarune Lyone Amalra Whitewave? Only daughter of Beltar, last of your blood, whom the Helhondreths and the Ilmbrights would dearly love to find. They want their gems back, little Rune.”

Amarune stared at her visitor, not knowing what to say, fighting to keep her face as calm as stone.

She knows. She knows all about me. But how?

“Oh, I know you don’t have that chest of waterstars,” Talane added. “I do. Pity they blamed Beltar for that little theft; he was more useful to me alive. Almost as useful as you’re now going to be, little Rune.”

Her voice became softer, yet somehow more vicious. “One word from me and Cormyr’s proud wizards of war will be turning your mind inside out, learning all your little secrets and leaving you a drooling idiot as the price of their schooling. Which means you accept that fate-or you’ll be doing my bidding at prices I set henceforth, doing little tasks all over fair Suzail. I’ve amassed quite a list of little tasks, some of them too dirty for my hands to be seen anywhere near them. Quite a list; I hope you can flourish on mere scraps of sleep.”

She backed away. “I’ll come with the first of such tasks four nights from now. Feel honored, little Rune; you are my new ‘dirtyhands,’ and I don’t choose such agents lightly.”

“Honored,” Amarune repeated flatly.

Talane’s mouth twisted in something that was more sneer than smile. “Four nights,” she murmured, and she backed right out the window-and was gone, falling from view in eerie silence.

Something made Amarune hang back from rushing to where her shutters were swinging gently in the first gray hints of coming dawn.

She knew, somehow, that her unwanted new client would be nowhere to be seen. Certainly not as a sprawled, crumpled corpse on the cobbles below.

If Talane was flying, wriggling, or sheer-wall-climbing away right now in her real shape, and was in truth some sort of horrid monster, Amarune knew she should learn that as swiftly as possible … but in truth, didn’t want to know anything about it at all.

So she stood where she was, panting as if she’d run miles. Panting in fear that wouldn’t go away.

Why did life have to get darker and darker and more and more complicated? Why couldn’t it be like all heartsong chapbooks, where every last mask dancer had a dashingly handsome noble lord fall in love with her, whisk her away to his castle to lavish countless riches on her, marry her, and dwell with her there happily ever after?

“Farruk,” she whispered into the familiar darkness around her. It made, as usual, no reply.

No matter how much she tossed and turned, her bedclothes drenched and twisted around her as she fought with them and conjured up scene after scene of discovery and doom in her mind, sleep was nowhere to be found.

Which meant she’d be wan-eyed and weary indeed when next she took to the Dragonriders’ stage. Which in turn meant she’d be earning disapproving frowns from Tress, and far fewer coins than usual.

“Farruk farruk farruk farruk farruk,” Amarune hissed at her ceiling, more despairing than angry, rolling onto her back and flinging her damp linens aside. “What am I going to do?”

Something swam promptly back into her mind. The grinning face of Arclath Delcastle, that airy, idle, free-from-all-troubles nobleman. Heir of his House, which meant he hadn’t a care in the world and would never have to work a moment in his life or spend an instant thinking about where any coins he’d need might come from.

She should hate him for that-did hate his ruder moments of jesting and smirking coin-flicking at her most intimate spots, and his everpresent carefree jauntiness-but somehow …

Angrily she thrust him aside, tried to think of this Talane and who she might be, how to discover who she was and somehow use that to get free of her-only to have young Lord Delcastle pop right back up to grin at her, nose to nose, winking and smirking as he always did. As if he could be of any use in …

She stiffened and then whistled in astonishment, long and low. Perhaps he could be of use, at that. Clearly he fancied her, if only as a night’s conquest; that should give her some sort of reins to lead him by.

As the old nobles’ saying went, “Dancers are meant to be used.” Well, so are young noblemen who can be led around by their manhoods.

But how, precisely?

Well …

Wouldn’t Lord Arclath Argustagus Delcastle himself know that best?

She’d have to interest him, have to become one of his enthusiastic little whims … a whim he clung to for long enough to deal with Talane.

Which meant she must not seduce him-at least, not right away-but lead him in a merry little dance. A rather long merry little dance …