Elminster's Daughter

The harbor water was no cleaner the second time around. Narnra was thankful she couldn't see all the slimy things she was disturbing as she plunged to the depths amid much evil bubbling of rotting things rolling all around her. Kicking against the bottom to start herself upward again, she drew her knees up, struggled to pass her bound arms down under her boots and up in front of her, and came gasping to the surface, just as a magnificent nearby splash announced the arrival of her pursuer.

Of course. She'd almost miss him, if ever she was out and about in Marsember by night without her doggedly pursuing Rhauligan. Almost. Why, every Waterdhavian thieving lass should have one.

With a sour smile on her lips from that thought, Narnra doubled up like a wriggling eel and swam for the other side of the canal. Even with her wrists bound together, Narnra found she could cleave the water quite quickly-and for all their stink, these oily canals were calmer and less crowded than where she'd learned to swim: the just-as-filthy waters around the docks of Waterdeep.

Still, she was used to clawing at the water when she wanted to hurry and using porpoise-wriggles only when trying to keep very, very quiet. . . and she was growing tired already.

Rhauligan would be up and quiet again to listen for her in another breath or two, and her most likely destination couldn't help but be rather obvious.

In one direction-through Rhauligan-the canal joined the wider tangle of fingerlike canals and slips that made up this end of Marsember's harbor. In the other, just ahead, it ended in a turn-basin choked with rotting nets, a scum of dead fish, and oily refuse. A lone barge, waterlogged and awash, was moored to a dock there. It looked as if only its mooring-chains were keeping it from sinking and that they-brown and crumbling with rust-might soon sigh and give up their task. The barge seemed to belong to a once-grand stone warehouse that looked every bit its rival in the race to become forgotten, abandoned, and utterly decrepit.

Narnra made for the lowest point of the barge rail where it was a good foot or so under water and rolled herself up onto the ancient vessel, scattering chittering rats and startling sleeping seabirds into complaining flight.

Rhauligan could hardly fail to miss that, but 'twasn't as if the kindly gods had left her any choice, now, had they?

Even if he was charging through the water at her now, her first task was to bide right where she was, sitting on something painful and unseen in the stinking, crab-scuttling water of this barge, and try to saw through Rhauligan's bindings with her boot-knife.

Easing her blade out without dropping and losing it was slow work. Wedging it in the rotting barge-planks took but a moment- but cutting her bindings took far too gods-bedamned long and involved a cut finger and some more cursing.

Shaking away drops of blood with a snarl, Narnra stood up and fumbled in her back pouch for the spare draw-string bag she carried-a mere scrap of leather with pierced ends gathered by a single thong-in case she ever found loot enough to need something extra to carry it away in (something that had happened exactly twice in her life thus far). Thong drawn tight, the bag made a clumsy bandage for her finger. She ran hastily along the barge toward its basin-end, where the dock looked more solid and less trash-strewn.

Behind her, blood sank like smoke into the inky water- which boiled up into a long, slender tentacle that burst forth, dripping, to stab hungrily out across the now-deserted barge . . . right in front of the furiously swimming Glarasteer Rhauligan. He glared at it and plunged right over it, snatching at the nearest mooring-chain.

His fingers closed around it at about the same time three more tentacles lanced out of the water, and his other hand closed on the hilt of one of his daggers.

One of the trio of tentacles undulated through the air over the barge, for all the world as if it could sniff and see, following the first tentacle in the direction Narnra had fled. The other two curled around to stab at Rhauligan, who decided-particularly in view of the fact that a habitual glance back over his shoulder had just shown him no less than three suspicious-looking bulges moving purposefully through the waters of the canal, straight toward the barge-that getting every inch of his well-used hide clear of the water right yesterday would be the wisest thing to accomplish in his life right now.

He let go of his dagger without drawing it and clawed his way up onto the barge, rotten planking crumbling like wet bread under his fingers. Tentacles were sliding boldly up along his legs as he heaved, kicked, and rolled for all he was worth, not caring if he ploughed through most of what little was left of the barge with his face if it got the rest of him out of the water.

Which was when he discovered that some of the tentacles were rising from the water-filled depths of the barge itself … a bare breath before Narnra at the far end of the ramshackle wreck screamed enthusiastically.

Rhauligan saw her struggling like a suddenly animated figurehead, body wavering back and forth on the prow of the barge with tentacles spiraling around her in a small forest-then a smaller but no less energetic forest of tentacles was slapping across bis face and body, dragging him down toward the water his right cheek was already coldly kissing. . . .

With a snarl of fury he plunged his hand into the open front of his plastered-to-his-hide silk shirt, found the tiny trinket riding on its thong there-and tugged.

It took three wrenches before the gods-be-blasted thong broke. By then his arm was hauling the weight of six or more finger-thin tentacles along with it. Rhauligan fought to raise his hand high, his eyes on the struggling thief he was hunting. She had a knife out now and was using it with frenzied viciousness-but there seemed to be no end to these tentacles.

There were more rising up around him now, too, some of them festooned with weed-clocked human bones . . . and some bearing partial skeletons. Small wonder the warehouse and barge were so deserted!

Rhauligan muttered the word Alusair herself had taught him.

He hated to lose this magic, one of the few things the Crown Princess had ever given him-and with a lovely, avid kiss, too!-but on the other hand, he'd hate to lose his life, too, so …

He threw the trinket down the barge, snapping his wrist to spin it farther even as the clinging tentacles dragged at his arm. It bounced once and skittered into some refuse. He closed his eyes hastily.

Sudden heat warmed his face an instant later, even before the flash and the roar that sent the barge heaving upward under him . . . and the tentacles spasming into a wild and frantic dance of their own. A chaos of wriggling, flailing, shivering tentacles tumbled him over and erupted past him, desperately seeking . . .

Some impossible escape from the fire that was now raging along the barge, burning even underwater thanks to the magic, cooking the unseen heart of the tentacles. Rhauligan scrambled to his knees as the wet, ropelike things fell away from him by the dozens and saw Narnra half-flung off the far end of the barge.

She landed with a splash in the filth of the basin but churned the water in her haste to swim up and out of it, and in less time than it took Rhauligan to catch his breath and bound toward the dock she was ashore at the street end of the basin, running hard, if unsteadily, into the mists of approaching dawn.

Hurling hearty mental curses at the dying tentacled thing, the Harper hound raced past the burning barge after her, bursting out onto the street almost under the wheels of a handcart being trundled by a half-asleep fishmonger.

The cart promptly crashed over onto him-but thankfully was empty at this time of the morning. The man who'd been pushing it erupted in startled rage, clawing aside his ramshackle boxes in his haste to get at Rhauligan and do damage.

The Harper greeted him with a charge up from the ground that brought one balled fist in under the fishmonger's chin and thrust him off his feet to bounce halfway across the street-bowling over a Watch patrolman who with his fellows had just formed a ring of drawn swords around a dripping and furious Narnra.

The Watchman's fall allowed her to bolt through the space he'd been standing in-which meant she came sprinting out of the mists right into Rhauligan's arms.

Ducking and twisting at the last moment, she slid under his grasp-though his fingers raked a bruising trail along Narnra's slick, slimy-wet flank-and ran down the street, dodging twice as she heard his boots thundering on the cobbles right behind her.

The Watchmen were running too, blades and cudgels waving in all directions, so the first canal Narnra saw, safely on the other side of the street from the one that had erupted in tentacles, she sprang into. Rhauligan's splash fountained in the roiling aftermath of hers.

The Watchmen skidded to a stop at the edge of the churning, dock-slapping water, shook their heads, and turned away. "Report 'em as drowned-lovers' dispute gone ugly, both fell in with the fishes. Unidentified outlanders, the both of them, so retrieval not our duty. Write it down, Therry," Rhauligan heard one of them growl, as he followed Narnra's dark, wet head around a corner into a narrow side-canal. He was recalling, with ever-increasing verve, just how much he'd never liked Marsember.

Steam was curling out of various windows and hatches in the stone buildings that rose on both sides of the canal-straight up out of its waters, most of them, without jetties or perch-porches, though crumbling scars of stone here and there marked where such features had once been ere barge collisions, gnawing waves, and the claws of winter ice removed them. Rusting crane-arms festooned with the decaying remnants of ropes, pulleys, and wooden block-and-tackles jutted from some of the building walls, but to reach them from the water even the most nimble of Waterdhavian thieves would have had to fly-or had a boat much taller than any barge to clamber up.

Much of the steam roiling and eddying its way into the thickening pre-dawn mist was coming from lighted windows, for the hours of darkness are work-time to many in cities all over Faerun who craft things or prepare things fresh. The smells borne on much of the steam told Rhauligan-whose alerted stomach rumbled enthusiastically more than once, as he swam grimly on-that many of these buildings were cookshops and bakeries preparing for the flood of hungry morning workers who'd descend at dawn to snatch something more or less edible before hurrying to where they worked. Eel pie, Rhauligan recalled sourly, was the dish of choice for working Marsembans. Almost made one want to become an adventurer or a Purple Dragon assigned to the Stonelands, where eels were no more than a disgusting word used in bad jests.

A flood of refuse suddenly hurtled out of one lighted window, pelting down into the water around him. Rhauligan ducked his head under the filthy water just in time. Eel pie, indeed-and as such dishes used every last possible part of the slimeworms, the only trimmed parts to be discarded would be bits too diseased or rotten to be hidden by a thick, hot-spiced gravy, or devoured without immediate convulsions and collapse of diners. The same bits that were now sharing the waters under his very nose.

Gods, but I hate Marsember!

There was a splash ahead, and Rhauligan had a brief glimpse of Narnra's hand closing on a doorsill that hung over emptiness, the work of either a particularly stone-skulled builder or the remnant of a way down onto some now-vanished dock.

A moment later, the dark and dripping figure of Narnra surged out of the water like some man-sized eel, wriggling momentarily in midair as she snatched for a handhold that wasn't where she needed it to be, clinging to the outside of the back door that belonged to the sill. It sported a well-lit, steam-spewing open upper half, and by the sounds of sizzling and chopping and snatches of brief conversation coming out of that large opening, it belonged to a cookshop.

A moment later, a bucket of eel waste-trimmings took Narnra full in the face. Rhauligan didn't even have time to shape a grin before she plunged through the window. Gods spit, but she'd grabbed hold of the bucket in mid-fling and been pulled into the room with it! In with the cooks-and their cleavers!

He set his teeth, ducked his head down, and charged through the water, hoping he'd be there in time.

Eyes smarting from eel-guts and guck better not thought about, Narnra slithered belly- down through the door hatch, catching a glimpse of a startled, yelling cook's face on the other side of the bucket, as well as a lot of swaying candle-on-chain lanterns. Hitting the floor and sliding wetly along it, she found herself passing along a row of ovens, each sporting the behind of a stoking-lad beneath it who was shoving in kindling for all he was worth.

One stoker put a boot into her face backing up, so she plucked a scrap of wood from his pile and rammed it into his behind. He howled, halting in alarm, and she was past and rolling frantically away from the ovens to avoid the boots of the bellowing cook with the bucket as he kicked and stomped at her head and hands, his shouts turning startled heads all over the kitchen.

The nearest of those heads stared down at Narnra over a tray of fresh-made, raw eel pies. Narnra rammed one arm against an ankle and shoved at the other ankle with her other hand-and the tray and its holder toppled over her like a over-tall tree severed by a woodsman's axe, crashing into the kicking cook.

He stumbled back, almost falling, and flung his empty scraps-bucket at Narnra's head. It whanged off one waving boot of the man who'd been holding the tray-then Narnra was on her feet and sprinting hard into the midst of three fat, shrieking women and their small host of half-finished eel pies.

They lurched and scuttled in all directions, and she darted this way and that through them, hip-slamming the last woman headfirst into a cart of dirty pots, ladles, and pans.

The crash was both deafening and spectacular, as the Silken Shadow left it behind, charging around a cutting-table toward the door out of this place, within sight at last.

Ahead, there was a serving-counter in the way. It came equipped with a grizzled, startled-looking cookshop owner frozen in the act of wiping it with a bit of dirty rag to gape at her. Narnra ran right at him, intending to veer away at the last moment.

Across the busy kitchen, on the far side of other cutting-tables, cooks were cursing. The racing thief had ignored them as being safely out of her way, but she'd reckoned without the swift-tempered and forearmed nature of most Marsembans. Cleaver after cleaver was snatched and thrown at her racing figure. Now in swift succession they crashed into bowls, other howling cooks, oven doors, and the faces of startled stoking-lads who'd just straightened up to catch sight of whatever was causing all the excitement.

One whirling blade caught Narnra on the arm, bruising rather than cutting her, and sent her reeling into the grizzled counter-cleaner, who embraced her with an incoherently wordless gabble of amazement and swiftly mounting fear.

Narnra pumped three swift punches into the stained and reeking apron covering the man's bulging belly. He spewed whatever he'd just finished eating over her racing body into the face of the first cook, who-lightened by the lack of his scraps-bucket-had managed to mount a clumsy pursuit of this destructive intruder.

Blinded and snarling in disgust, the cook reeled and elbow-skidded along a counter, spilling and scattering eel pies by the dozens … as the green-faced owner of the cookshop folded aside with a groan, and Narnra vaulted the counter with grace enough to freeze one of the young stokers where he stood, staring in awed lust-which got him smashed flat to the floor by a snarling Glarasteer Rhauligan.

The Harper and Highknight had already weathered almost a dozen flung pots on his own charge through the cookshop kitchen, cleavers being in suddenly short supply-but someone found one last black-bladed monster somewhere and sent it whirling with shrewd aim as Rhauligan rounded the cutting-table for his run toward the counter.

The Harper saw its deadly flicker out of the corner of his eye and flung up his arm to ward it away from his face. It bit deep into his shoulder and banged harmlessly away off his scalp rather than laying open his face or cleaving his skull in twain.

Rhauligan roared out his pain, not daring to slow, and the vomit-covered cook sagging on the counter took one look at his furious face and the streaming blood and fled, sobbing a frantic way aside.

Bleeding-again. Oh, this little hunt just gets better and better.

The Harper burst out of the cookshop door into the wet mists in time to see Narnra halfway up the wall of the building, clinging to a drainpipe. She was slipping often in the wet and going slowly as she tried to work her way past a balcony jutting out from the floor above the cookshop-but she was already well out of his reach, and he couldn't climb any faster than she could. To say nothing of whether or not any drainpipe would prove sturdy enough for the weight of two, all the way to the roof. . . .

Just inside the cookshop door, in the open space in front of the serving-counter, was a side door. It would be the way up some cramped, dark stairs to the loftier levels of this building.

Rhauligan turned and raced back inside, frightening a fresh howl of alarm from the kitchen. The side door proved to be locked, but Rhauligan carried a prybar-good as a cudgel, stouter than a sword and boasting some saw-teeth besides-sheathed to one leg, and he took out the frustrations Narnra was building in him on that door.

The defenseless wood offered little resistance, and the Harper boiled up the stairs like a storm wind and put his shoulder to the door on the first landing.

It cracked like a thunderstroke, broke in half, and gave way inward, spilling him onto a half-asleep man and his only-slightly-more-awake wife who lay on a straw mattress on the floor. Their sons were already awake and peering out the lone, filthy window at the gloomy mists of slowly brightening dawn. They whirled, wide-eyed, as Rhauligan's stumbling boot came down on their father's stomach. The winded man sobbed for breath, flinging out his arms convulsively-one of them across his wife's throat, silencing her in the first meeping moment of an emerging scream.

"Morning!" the Harper rapped grimly, never slowing in his charge across the room. "Balcony door! 'Way in the name of the King!"

One boy gawked mutely, and the other, eyes shining, shot a bolt and flung wide the balcony door. Rhauligan thanked him with a fierce grin and plunged out into the mists, whirling to face the drainpipe in time to see Narnra's boot lifting just out of reach.

He grabbed for it anyway, knowing as he did that he was going to be about a fingerlength short. He was.

Well, he'd almost laid a hand on her. He slapped it onto the pipe instead and swarmed up it after her, grunting at the pain each pull stabbed into his cloven shoulder. He had to get close enough that she wouldn't have the time to turn on the rooftop and dagger his face or hands-aye, he had to be that close to her, or …

Narnra glanced down, hissed out a curse-he was close enough to almost feel her breath, as he clawed his way hastily upward-and wasted no time on trying to kick at him or deal him any wounds. Instead, she fled up the pipe like a little girl running from all the nightmares life could muster, panting and clawing with almost frenzied speed, and raced across a roof of loose and shifting tiles to spring out and down onto the roof of the next building.

She landed hard, knocking her breath from herself, and spun around on one knee to keep an eye on her pursuer as she panted to get her wind back.

Rhauligan was hauling himself up onto the roof she'd just left. Narnra snarled 'wordlessly, fought her way to her feet as he straightened-then thought of something and bent to her other boot to snatch another knife to hurl at him. Its sheath was empty.

Either she'd lost it during this chase, or he'd taken it while healing her. Hissing a curse at him instead, she spun around, ran, and leaped onto the next roof through the thickly rising, scented steam of someone's laundry, coming up from a skylight.

Beyond, the roof was flat, all of metal sheets sealed and patched with thick pitch, ankle-deep in slippery, bird-dung-dotted water- and . . . and Narnra found herself with nowhere she could safely leap to, on a building with wide streets on two sides, Rhauligan grimly approaching on the third, and a barge heaped high with spear-like, jagged salvage-wood on the last side that it would be sheer suicide to jump onto. She glared around at treacherous Marsember for a moment in the lightening dawn, then spun around and raced back to the open skylight.

Rhauligan was just launching himself at her over its billowing murk. Narnra sat down in her run and skidded over the edge moments before his boots crashed down through where she'd just been.

Her fall was a short one, onto stout metal poles draped with someone's damp tapestries. They gave way like a sling, dropping her down through a roaring stream of air. Chains were clanking all around her as racks of clothes hanging from them were rocked forward and back, forward and back, by levers that vanished down through the floor. By the loud, rhythmic hissing, the Silken Shadow guessed that there was a gigantic bellows in the room below, presumably being worked by the same grunting, sweating coin-slaves who were tugging on the levers and feeding the fire that was warming all this rushing air. My, but the world of laundry was an exciting place. . . .

Or certainly would be, if she didn't get out from under where Rhauligan was sure to land in the next few moments. She debated drawing her belt-dagger and plunging it through the tapestry when he landed in it … but no, she wasn't here to slay Harpers, just to get away from them. Yonder was a row of trap-doors that must offer access to the levels below-probably through shafts nearly dry clothes would be pushed down.

Someone shouted at her as she raced between the swinging racks of garments, and she had a glimpse of a startled old man whose bare arms were a riot of varicolored tattoos waving angrily at her. She gave him a nod and a smile and kept right on running to the trap-door at the . . . right end.

Flinging it back, she smelled hot fabric and saw light far below-and in it, neat stacks of what looked like folded cloaks or blankets. It was the work of but a moment to launch herself feetfirst down to join them.

Behind her, she heard another shout followed by a grunt and a thud. That would be Rhauligan paying his respects to old Many-brands. It seemed she'd been right: the world of laundry was an exciting place.

Narnra plunged past a room full of all the noisy, sweating activity she'd envisaged and landed gently in a large, brightly lit room below that, toppling and scattering hot, fluffy cloaks in all directions. No one was near, and Narnra rolled enthusiastically, trying to get herself mostly dry ere she waded out to find footing and run on.

Along the way, she snatched up a cloak, shook it open in her hands-and when Rhauligan crashed down into view, she flung it over his head, managed to tug him over into a cascading fall of piled laundry to where she could get a hard knee into his blinded and muffled head, then sprang away, not daring to stay and try to smother him because enraged launderers were approaching at a run from various directions now, all shouting furious curses she couldn't tarry to hear properly. She left them closing in on the thoroughly entangled Rhauligan, sprang over some sort of sorting table where women cowered away from her behind wicker baskets . . . and found another handy, waiting door. This one was even open.

Still, she was losing count of doors she was having to blindly rush through and had long since lost her patience with being hunted all over this strange city. It was waking up now, and soon she'd be dodging frequent Watch patrols and carters in the streets and watching eyes, watching eyes everywhere. She doubted there even was such a thing as a dry rooftop to try to sleep on in Marsember, even if she knew this grim, tireless Harper was safely taken away from his hunt. Narnra was beginning to think the only way to do that was to make sure he was dead.

Well, she certainly wasn't wading back into the land of enraged launderers to see to that. Perhaps they'd take care of it for her, though she was beginning to doubt an army could stop Glarasteer Rhauligan, let alone a few angry Marsembans.

She fled down a short stair, through another door-smashing flat an unsuspecting man passing by as she crashed it open-and out into the streets, wondering when it would be prudent to slow down and walk as if she belonged here-in black leathers, aye-rather than running like a thief and catching every interested eye.

When Rhauligan was . . . yes, yes, yes! With a growl of anger Narnra saw two Watch patrols coming together at a street-moot ahead and dodged aside. She had to get aloft again before he saw where she went and-

Then she saw it. A street over, behind a wall of old buildings that sprouted balconies and rickety outer stairs above their shopfronts, beyond their lines of dripping clothing-imagine hanging clothes out to dry, in night-mists like this!-and water-cisterns . . . water-cisterns? Well, rainwater would almost have to be cleaner than canal-water, and a little less salty. . . .

There was a high stone wall in superb condition with trees rising behind it. Some sort of noble's walled garden, if Marsember was anything like Waterdeep. Yes, there was the row of spikes most nobles seemed to think a wall needed, atop a stretch of buttressed stone that must overtop a two-story building and run longer than six or seven of the shops nearer to her.

Narnra stopped looking at the wall and hurried to get closer to it, looking now for some way to get up onto it.

* * * * *

Durexter Dagohnlar drew himself upright with as much dignity as a naked, bound, and overly fat man can muster whilst sitting on his own bedchamber floor and fixed the Watchcaptain with a coldly disapproving gaze.

"There was no need to push past my wife and invade our home, sir," he said stiffly, as his steward hastened to cut his bonds, "no matter how many overexcited servants came running to summon you. No need at all. I-that is to say we " he amended hastily, catching sight of the dagger-laden look his wife was favoring him with, from behind the Watchmen, "Starmara and myself, ahem, vanquished a very old foe here this night-a foe who came to slay us with magic but was forced to flee. I'll not reveal his name even to War Wizards, because uttering it will awaken some very dangerous spells he left behind. So let's just forget th-"

"You can write it down for me, then, Lord Master Dagohnlar," the Watchcaptain said calmly, the mouth under his grizzled mustache carefully expressionless but his eyes every bit as wintry as the merchant's. "To save the strongest War Wizards in the city the time 'twill take to come and empty your mind of everything of interest to the security of the city . . . and adherence to all of our laws."

Durexter opened and closed his mouth in trapped bafflement for a few moments then said triumphantly, "I'm sorry, Watchman, but I can't write. I never learned how."

The Watchcaptain didn't bother to order his men to step forward and forcibly take Durexter Dagohnlar into custody. He was too busy rolling his eyes. His men moved forward anyway, their snorts of derision almost as loud as those from various gawking servants.

Starmara Dagohnlar, whose sidle toward the door had already ended in the firm grip of a Watchman, sighed and said loudly, "My apologies, Watchcaptain. Our enemy's spells must have affected my husband's wits."

"Indeed, Lady Dagohnlar," the officer agreed politely as Durex-ter was gagged with his wife's discarded nightrobe and hustled to the door. "How many decades ago did they take effect?"

* * * * *

Glarasteer Rhauligan was no longer in anything remotely resembling a good mood. He'd lost a lot of blood, was in great pain, and thanks to the needs of the Mage Royal and this little fool of a thief now lacked any swift means of quelling that. The hasty violence he'd just been forced to do to a small but enthusiastic band of launderers had done nothing to help matters, but at least he was now largely dry-thanks to a lot of formerly clean clothing that was now, unfortunately, smeared and stained with his blood-and was now sporting a bandage of sorts: a very large someone's freshly laundered bloomers tied around the wound in his shoulder.

It had all taken far too long, and if that little bitch had managed to give him the slip whilst. . .

Rhauligan reached the street, where a man lay groaning and twisting outside the laundry door, ignored him as being in no condition to have seen where Narnra Shalace had gone, and glared around in all directions. Twas bad enough having to hunt anyone in wet, hostile-to-the-Crown Marsember, bu-there!

Gods, give the girl a wall to run along, and she's happy! The taller the better, it seemed . . . and she'd obviously managed to leap from another building onto a corner turret of the wall, because she was hurrying away from that turret now as fast as she could. Rhauligan sprinted across the street to get out of view before she looked back to see if he'd seen her.

Well, now. That was quite a wall she'd chosen. If Narnra ran all the way around it, she'd trot for nigh on a mile. Rhauligan happened to know that it kept the prying world out of an estate known as Haelithtorntowers, the abode of one Lady Joysil Ambrur.

That same wider, prying world knew the Lady Ambrur to be a wealthy Sembian merchant noble, a tall, demure, sophisticated patron of bards and singers, who was-correctly-said to pay handsomely for dancers to be enspelled to fly, so they could engage in her particular pleasure: elaborate aerial ballet dances performed as they sang for her, in her parlor.

"We Harpers, however, know rather more about Lady Joysil," Rhauligan murmured aloud, recalling Laspeera's crisp words at a certain private meeting in a tiny, little-used upper room of the palace.

"She's not from Sembia at all. Unearthing her true origins will be another of your little idle-time tasks, gentlesirs."

"That'd be task four thousand and seven, Lady," Harl had murmured, like a bored steward announcing the date and time.

"Indeed, Harl? Then you've missed three," Laspeera had replied with a smile, "or neglected to tell me of their accomplishment, more likely. Now, Lady Ambrur secretly employs her favorite visiting bards as information-gatherers. She then discreetly resells the lore they bring to traitorous nobles, local merchants, and anyone else willing to pay for it."

This practice was what had led local Harpers-including, from time to time, one Glarasteer Rhauligan-to keep watch over who visited Joysil Ambrur and to try to discover just what learning their coins to her bought them.

It was doubtful this Narnra of Waterdeep knew about Lady Ambrur. She'd probably just gone looking for a place aloft to hide and sleep and spotted the tallest wall around that wasn't bristling with vigilant Purple Dragon posts.

Rhauligan knew yon wall was quite wide enough to comfortably walk along, between its street-edge spikes and its inner plant-trough, which housed flourishing clumps of sarthe. Unless it'd been trimmed recently, the edible trailing plant spilled down clear to the grounds far below.

Narnra was running along inside the spikes, merrily trampling sarthe-stalks with each step, and Rhauligan knew he had no choice but to follow or lose track of her.

With a sigh, he chose a building he'd scaled to reach that same corner turret once or twice before and started to climb.

Caladnei and Narnra, know this: You both owe me!