The Alabaster Staff

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Kehrsyn was unsure whether someone might still be guarding the building, watching for any stragglers who might return, so she spent the rest of the night inside. She was, at least, comfortable with the assumption that no one else would enter, there being truly nothing left of interest in the building, so she rearranged the pillows on the floor, scrounged several blankets from downstairs, and settled into a light sleep, fitful with dreams of the dead. Throughout the night, she listened to the rain, which gradually increased from a drizzle to a steady drumming, broken only occasionally by the faint grumble of thunder.

A brisk triple rap at the door roused her from her slumber. She sat up, blinking. A tinge of light told her that morning had finally come. The door rattled with another three raps, and Kehrsyn stood up a little too quickly, lurching to the side as the blood struggled to keep her brain functioning. She staggered over to the door and opened it, to see a stranger wrapped in an oiled overcoat, shifting from one foot to the other, his breath condensing in the air.

Great, thought Kehrsyn. Another cold, wet day. I don't want to face this. Not yet.

"Olare," said the stranger with forced cheerfulness. "Hope I didn't wake you."

"Wh-what do you want?" asked Kehrsyn.

"Delivery from the wizard Eileph, miss," he replied. "With his compliments."

He fumbled with his coat, eventually producing a small bundle carefully wrapped in waxed paper and bound with twine.

"Oh," said Kehrsyn as she took the bundle. "Thanks. Thanks a lot."

She moved to close the door.

"Miserable weather, eh miss?" he asked, just a bit too loudly, bouncing on his heels and blowing on his hands.

"Hmm? Yeah… miserable."

"That's right, a right miserable day," he echoed, forcing a smile.

Understanding wedged its unwelcome way into Kehrsyn's mind. She said something unintelligible (and, truth be told, probably incoherent) as she fished around in her coin pouch. She pulled forth a copper and was about to give it to the messenger, when she reconsidered and gave him a silver instead.

"Thank you, miss," he said with honest cheer, touched one finger to his eyebrow, and made his hunch-shouldered way down the ladder again.

Kehrsyn stared at the rain falling in the streets, her view intermittently obscured by the steam of her breath. At least, she thought, the rain has washed away the last of the grimy snow.

She closed the door, blinked, and stretched out the tightness in her back. Noticing that the inside of the building was no warmer than the outside, Kehrsyn wrapped herself up in her cloak and investigated the kitchen. She found a few cold, half-eaten sausages and some stale bread to break her fast, while thinking morosely about the wonderful meal she'd had at Wing's Reach. There was nothing to drink except various alcohol, the very thought of which turned her stomach. Instead, she found a large, clean bowl and placed it on the front stoop to catch some rainwater.

While she waited for it to fill, she unwrapped the bundle to look at the reconstructed wand. It was a beautiful piece and a remarkable forgery. It felt good and solid. The only mark was a crack running around its middle, slightly rough around the edges. It reminded Kehrsyn of a cracked paving stone. She rewrapped the false staff and placed it in her bag, secreting her bag behind some other gear in the front room.

She opened the door, picked up the bowl, and drank her fill of the chill, clean water, then looked at the dark stains of dried blood on the floor. The midnight body snatchers had taken all but three of the residents. Two were the most grotesquely hacked outlaw corpses. The third was the old dog. The others, including all of the Tiamatans who had died during the fight, were gone. The intruders had left behind weapons, gear, and all the rest-everything but what the people had been wearing.

She thought better of leaving the false staff there. She pulled it out and thrust it through her sash at the small of her back, giving her sash an extra twist and using the tension to lock the staff in place. She left her bag. It would be a hindrance where she intended to go, and it wouldn't get wet inside the house.

Her stomach growling as it wrestled with the mean breakfast, Kehrsyn decided to exercise some practicality. While she could no longer get vengeance on the Furifaxians for using her, branding her, and stealing a magic item from the cultured and rather dashing Massedar, at least she could extract some payment for services rendered.

She performed a cursory search for coins and valuables through the building, checking the shelves and occasional footlocker in the bedrooms on the bottom floor. She tried to ignore the personal effects she encountered as they reminded her of the lives that had ended and gave her the uncomfortable feeling that she might, technically, be robbing the grave.

In the end, she found a small collection of silvers and coppers, and one gold piece. She left the building, huddled beneath her cloak against the rain. The small trove weighed heavily in one white-knuckled fist. She could almost feel the blood dripping from her fingers.

She ended up giving it all away to destitute refugees before she'd walked twenty blocks.

Tiglath sat in her study, her quill pen held unheeded in her fingers, the ink long since dry. She'd put the last words down around dawn and hadn't moved much since. She stared blankly out her window at the unending rain. The downpour seemed a gray and misty veil drawn between her cult and the rest of the world, a barrier of mistrust, misunderstanding, and misinformation. The walls of her study were also barriers, which seemed as the walls of a prison cell, dividing her from the rest of her flock.

She had never felt so isolated, so alone. Even when she'd been suffering in the harem of the vain and cruel god-king Gilgeam, the others of the harem had borne the horrors alongside her, and that shared torment had forged them into a self-supporting sorority of suffering.

She had broken those bonds, escaped, and found not only her freedom but a position of power serving a deity of strength and purpose. She had sworn vengeance upon Gilgeam for the pain he had caused her (and others), and Tiamat had given her the ability to see that vengeance through.

In the fifteen years since Gilgeam's death, the gap between what she had set out to do and what she was doing had grown, until it seemed that her people were on one side of the gap and she was on the other.

She felt as if she were captaining a ship and someone belowdecks had cut the connection between the ship's wheel and its rudder. Were these thoughts simply a reflection of her own self-doubt, or were her survival instincts giving her fair warning? And if she was right, how much longer before the crew mutinied?

She'd spent the night attempting to make some sense of it, to find an underlying order that proved that shadows moved behind her. She'd made a list of all the abnormalities, all the strange little events and unusual reactions that had piqued her curiosity throughout the past few years. The result was maddeningly incomplete. Anomalies, yes-even some events that could be construed as evidence of insubordination-but not enough.

In fairness and hope, she'd also made a list of things that had gone better than expected. Neither did that list provide her with an answer. All it left her with, in fact, was a study table even more cluttered with papers of incomplete stories.

The thief-Kehrsyn, she reminded herself, looking at the heading on one of her papers-had said that members of the cult of Tiamat had attacked Furifax's rebels in their base. Was she right? Had the Tiamatans deliberately slaughtered the rebels or merely defended themselves when the rebels attacked them? The rebels were groomed in underhanded methods of war, and could have invited her followers to a council and deliberately left her out of it. Perhaps the Furifaxians even suggested to the others the possibility of overthrowing Tiglath. They could then have ambushed the Tiamatans and killed many of her followers without having to confront her, the high priestess.

Being double-crossed in a treasonous meeting with the Furifaxians-that would explain why her followers had withheld all mention of the incident. But for a chance observation by her dragonet familiar, Tiglath herself might not know of it at all.

Yet even that theory had several problems. It assumed the Tiamatans were ready to plot an overthrow, and it did not explain why Furifax's people were slaughtered utterly.

No, it was clear that the little thief was right. Her story had the unwelcome ring of truth. Certainly Kehrsyn's narration of events did not paint herself in a good light. She admitted that she had hidden in fear and thus escaped all notice.

Tiglath frowned. So her people had attacked their allies-her allies, truth be told, for the others looked upon them merely as convenient tools-without her knowledge, let alone consent. They did so to seize an item that had just been stolen. Therefore they knew beforehand that the item existed, they knew the item had been stolen, and they knew who had stolen it. Therefore her congregation had already had plans that centered on that item. Plans about which she, the high priestess, knew nothing.

She had to find out, so she would find out straightaway. She would take a roll call, see who was missing, and see who covered for their absence. Once they'd exposed themselves, she would find out what they had intended to take and how they'd known it had been stolen.

She arose and left her study, descending into the main area of the temple. Her followers-no, she corrected herself, Tiamat's worshipers, and there was a difference-rose to their feet as she entered. She noticed that two of them tried to conceal pain and stiffness as they got up. Those two had obviously suffered injuries during the fight. Tiamat only rarely granted her pious servants the ability to heal. In her cruel eyes the strong could bear pain and injury while the weak deserved no mercy. Indeed, Tiamat was far more concerned with her people furthering her goals than with shepherding her flock.

Tiglath paused in inner surprise. The Dragon Queen was much akin to Gilgeam in that manner, using followers like tools. Why had it taken her so long to realize how very alike the two deities were? She was a priestess, privy to every secret! Why had she always persisted in believing that there was a difference between Gilgeam's abuse of power and Tiamat's lust for power?

It all came to Tiglath in that moment, as she looked at the veiled hostility with which some of her people stared back at her. Her need for justice-no, to be honest: revenge-had blinded her to the deal she'd made. Tiamat demanded power. The Dragon Queen wished not only to slay the gods-a goal that had fit nicely with Tiglath's own dreams of retribution upon Gilgeam-but also to rule. And indeed, Tiglath first broke with her goddess years before, when she refused to seize control of Unther. Her dreams of a council-led meritocracy would not satiate the Dragon Queen, and all those there knew it. She had declined the reins of control in Unther, and Tiamat's followers were moving to take those reins themselves.

She looked around the room again, measuring the determination on the faces of those present. She saw arrogance, cockiness, sullen anger, scorn, deference… but no loyally and no defeat. She thought that strange. They had suffered a defeat, launched a raid and seen the item they sought broken before their very eyes. Comrades had fallen. Yet they were not chastised in the least. If she were to push them at once with a personal inquisition, she would force their hand early, and they would rise up against her.

It was not the time.

Instead, she had to decide what to do: uncover the conspiracy and eliminate its leaders, or step in front of the new action and pretend she had been leading in that direction all along?

She had to think. She nodded to her people, if indeed she could still call them her people, and stepped to the cloakroom to grab her cloak. It was raining, but that made it easier to take a long walk by herself and pray to Tiamat for guidance… if she dared.

She stepped outside and was adjusting her rain cloak when someone, walking fast yet blinded by a hood pulled too low, stumbled into her, dousing her under one of the miniature waterfalls that streamed from the gargoyles on the building's roof.

It was an inauspicious start to an inauspicious walk, she thought, as she set out, chilled without and within.

What luck, thought Kehrsyn, fingering the keys in her hand. She'd seen the priestess leave her room and hoped it would mean she'd leave the building. Just as she started wondering if Tiglath would make an appearance on the street, the priestess stepped outside and stood on the stoop, her arms raised as she pulled her heavy cloak over her rather large body. One brisk move, one mock stumble over the stone steps, and one mumbled apology later, Kehrsyn had the priestess's keys.

And, since she had the keys, she could discover whether or not Tiglath was truly innocent of the theft of the staff.

As Kehrsyn had suspected, the priestess lodged at a corner of the top floor along the main thoroughfare, where she had a view of something other than the choked alleys that bordered the other three sides of the building. Kehrsyn had watched the priestess staring out the window of her room for a time. She was seated, Kehrsyn assumed, at a desk by the window.

That solved the problem of locating Tiglath's room. The only problem left was getting in. Climbing into an upper room in the rain posed difficulties in terms of traction, but it did mean there would be fewer people on the streets, and those who were around were unlikely to look up. Otherwise she'd never even make such a daring attempt.

Well, Kehrsyn thought as she glanced around the largely empty street, no time like the present.

She retied her rapier to hang over one shoulder, then gathered the hem of her cloak, wadding the lower half into a sort of thick rope. That she tied around her waist so the cloak wouldn't hang from her shoulders or snag on anything as she climbed. She scaled the building's face on the alley side of the corner, which was concealed from most points on the main street.

Her climb was annoying by any measure. The hood of her cloak blocked her view up, yet if she pulled the hood back, the rain in her eyes had the same effect and cold water dripped down her neck, too. The tied-off cloak was a heavy belt around her middle and hampered her ability to lift her thighs. Halfway up, she realized that her grip through her thin gloves was not adequate in the rain, and she had to pull them off with her teeth, one finger at a time, while hanging. The wet leather tried its best to adhere to her chilled skin, and the procedure took longer than she'd hoped. She ended up holding the gloves in her teeth for the rest of the climb, and the taste of worn leather in her mouth did nothing to improve her mood. With her mouth all but closed, she was forced to breathe through her nose, which started running in the cold air.

In all, by the time she'd reached the top floor and worked open the window to the priestess's room, she was certain that Tiglath was the blackguard behind all her troubles. She no longer felt like she was betraying an acquaintance with the intrusion. She felt she was digging up the evil truth behind a villain. Kehrsyn dropped onto the luxurious rug spread by the window. She glared from beneath a sodden brow bedecked with strands of hair.

Kehrsyn scanned the room. It was a simple affair, almost ascetic in style, yet lavish in appointments. There was a bed, a desk, a chair, a wardrobe, and a small brazier. Each was small and cut with simple lines, but well polished and inlaid with delicate patterns of contrasting woods and metals. The bed looked barely large enough to contain one of Tiglath's girth, and it had no headboard or footboard, but the thick mattress was a far cry from the bags of compressed cotton that Kehrsyn had occasionally used when times had been better, and the sheets looked to be of very fine fabric. There was no pillow.

There was a small rug by the window and a large one beneath the bed. Each was only one solid color-one red and the other black-but plush. There was no art on the walls, and the desk had a single quill of red held in a gold inkwell. In short, it seemed that the priestess allowed herself few amenities, but with those few she indulged herself to the hilt. Somehow the mixture of ascetic and feminine gave Kehrsyn a privileged view into Tiglath's personal life and quenched the displaced anger that she had built up.

Kehrsyn took off her rapier, undid her cloak, and placed them on the chair. The added weight made the chair creak.

The bed rustled, and Kehrsyn froze in place. The cover on the mattress shifted, then the dragonet's head popped out and stared at Kehrsyn. She saw nictitating membranes glide over the emerald eyes, then retract again. Kehrsyn held one hand out defensively.

"I have sufferance," she said to the tiny beast. "Tiglath said so. Don't forget that."

The dragonet growled and emerged fully from beneath the covers. Its whiplike tail lashed back and forth.

Fearing she might have to flee, Kehrsyn held up both hands, showing them to be empty.

"I know what you're thinking," she said, "but I'm not here to steal. I'm here… well, I guess I'm here because I hope I'm wrong. But I have to know. You can watch if you want, to make sure I leave everything where I found it, but I'm not going to harm Tiglath, so you'd better not harm me."

The dragonet growled again, then lay down at the edge of the bed, resting its head on its forepaws. Its tail still lashed, but it made no further move to interfere.

Kehrsyn checked the wardrobe first, her soft steps all but noiseless on the wooden floor. Using the keys she'd picked from Tiglath's pocket, she opened the wardrobe with no problem. It held only a few robes, each of identical cut, and one nightgown, which, in Kehrsyn's opinion, was mercifully modest. She sounded the wardrobe for false panels and found one in the base, though the compartment contained only a diary, which Kehrsyn declined to open. After all, she was investigating; she wasn't there to pry. If she found nothing else, she could look it over later.

She replaced everything exactly as she had found it-an old habit from her thieving days, and one that had always served her well-and turned to the bed.

Her search of the bed turned up nothing. The desk, like the wardrobe, contained a few items-a strongbox with some coins and gems, a collection of what appeared to be personal memorabilia-but nothing resembling a long wand of white bone. She skimmed the papers on top of the desk, since they were clearly new. Kehrsyn was not well lettered, and it was difficult to read the priestess's crabbed handwriting, but the bold titles were unmistakable. One, labeled "Temple," looked to have a roster written on it, with question marks, Ys, or Ns next to each name. Another sheet was labeled "Furifax," and yet others had names that Kehrsyn did not recognize. The sheet that earned the most attention was one labeled "Kairsin." She half-smiled at the misspelling, and she glanced over the unfamiliar writing, but her eyes kept returning to the single word circled at the bottom of the page: "TRUTH."

Satisfied, she then sounded the walls of the room carefully, tapping only with the pads of her fingertips to avoid attracting any outside attention. She repeated the same process across the floorboards, moving back and forth until her wrists, knees, and ankles ached. The entire time, the dragonet stared at her with its unblinking reptilian eyes, rotating its slender, sinewy neck to stare straight at its young guest wherever she searched.

With a sigh that was half exhaustion, half relief, Kehrsyn abandoned the search.

"There, you see?" she said to the dragonet. "I'm done. And not a thing out of place."

She dragged herself up into the chair, her joints protesting the sudden change. She stretched her arms up over her head and leaned back, popping her spine to loosen it up. Just as she folded her hands into her lap again, someone knocked at the door.

Kehrsyn froze. Her eyes darted over to the dragonet, who still stared at her, unconcerned.

"Kehrsyn?" Tiglath's unmistakable voice sounded muffled through the door. "Open up."

Bewildered, Kehrsyn moved to the door, and, planting one foot firmly to prevent the door from opening too far, unlocked the deadbolt and cracked it open. She peered through the gap and saw the high priestess looming in the hallway.

"Ordinarily, one does not have to request admission to one's own room," observed Tiglath.

Kehrsyn backed away from the door, letting it swing open as she retired to a spot near the window.

"I had rather expected you'd be more, you know, surprised to see me here," Kehrsyn said.

"I was," said Tiglath. "I got over it."

"What do you mean?" asked Kehrsyn, confused.

Tiglath held out her arm, and the dragonet leaped from the bed, buzzing its wings, and alighted nimbly.

Tiglath kissed its muzzle and stroked its scaly little body, then, as an aside while she petted her creature, said, "Tremor's eyes are my eyes. I see whatever he sees. So while I was surprised to see you enter, I got over it while watching you. Why did you feel compelled to search my room?"

"I had to make sure you weren't behind the attack and the staff and all," said Kehrsyn.

"You don't trust me?" asked Tiglath.

"You yourself said no one is what they seem," parried Kehrsyn. "So because I trust you, by your words I shouldn't. So why did you let me search your room?"

"I wanted to make sure you weren't going to steal anything," said Tiglath as she doted on her pet.

"You don't trust me?" echoed Kehrsyn with a teasing smile.

Tiglath glanced over at her, then turned her attention back to Tremor and said, "I wanted to make sure you weren't going to steal anything."

Kehrsyn's face paled, and her smile vanished in the space between her heartbeats.

"Uh, right," she said as she fished through her sash. "I–I was going to give them back…"

Kehrsyn held Tiglath's keys out to her. Tiglath nodded, seemingly to her pet.

"I know," the priestess said.

"You do?"

"You took nothing," replied Tiglath, crossing over to sit at her desk. "You even left me my secrets." She drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "If you'd opened that diary, however," she added, "things would be very different right now."

"Right," said Kehrsyn, who didn't know what else to say, yet felt an acknowledgment was necessary.

"So did you find out what you came to discover?" asked Tiglath.

Kehrsyn sucked in her lips and nodded.

"You don't have the staff," she said.

"Of course not," said the priestess. "It's broken."

Kehrsyn hesitated, wondering how much to divulge. She gritted her teeth, hoping she wasn't about to make a big mistake.

"No," Kehrsyn said, "it's not. What we saw was a decoy. The real one-"

"That was a forgery?" gasped Tiglath.

"Uh, yeah," she said, pulling Eileph's forgery from her sash and showing it to the priestess.

"Now, that is truly remarkable," said Tiglath in wonder, reaching for it.

Kehrsyn didn't let her touch the staff, but showed her the crack running around the center.

"See?" she said. "I had it repaired."

"That's a fine job," said Tiglath, squinting at the workmanship.

"So that means that the real staff was really stolen," said Kehrsyn. "I had to make sure it wasn't you."

"I already knew that," said Tiglath, once she had recovered her aplomb. "What convinced you?"

"I saw the way your people acted around you and the way they acted when you weren't around. And I saw the way you are, and how you reacted to the, uh, stuff at… on Wheelwright's Street. And here," she added, gesturing vaguely around, "there's the fact that you lock your door and keep your little dragon in your room while you're out, and everything in your room is meticulously arranged, down to the angle of the strongbox so that it lines up against the crack in the bottom of your drawer. All these things show that you don't trust anyone but yourself. And that means that if you arranged for your people to steal the staff, you'd have led them yourself, or else you'd take control of the staff as soon as they got it. And it's not in this room, and, frankly, I don't think you'd keep it anywhere else."

Tiglath considered that and slowly nodded.

"Yes," the priestess said, "I think you're right."

"Plus, you know, your reaction right now, well, that looked pretty genuine," added Kehrsyn, by way of a joke.

Tiglath did not respond. She rose from her chair and crossed to the door, stroking Tremor's tiny serpentine head. She opened the door a crack, and Tremor leaped out, bouncing along like a ferret before launching himself into the air with a buzz. Tiglath nodded once to Kehrsyn as she crossed back over to the chair.

"Give us a moment, will you?" the priestess asked. "I need to know if this staff is under my roof."

She sat in her chair and stared at the desktop for many long minutes, moving nothing but her lips, which framed voiceless words that Kehrsyn did not recognize.

Kehrsyn eventually took a seat on the rug by the window and passed the time by twiddling with a lock of her damp hair.

Finally Tiglath leaned back in her chair and looked in the general direction of the ceiling.

"It is not here," she said with finality. "Tremor found nothing, and I trust his senses. I have him hiding in the main hall, where he will sniff at anyone who enters or leaves. He will not find anything, though. I train my people well."

She grumbled deep within her throat and crossed her arms in frustration.

"That means that whoever here arranged the attack and took the wand has another place to keep it," the priestess continued. "Either they have a hideout, which I doubt, given the lack of living space these days, or else they're working with another group or faction seeking power. That is likely the case. The lure of ruling Unther could create some dubious alliances. The question remains whether this is the work of an ambitious soul seeking to advance within Tiamat's order or a turncoat serving a new master."

"Do you think it might be the Zhentarim?" asked Kehrsyn. "I've been hearing them mentioned a lot lately."

"Those bastards?" spat Tiglath. "The only thing I'd hate to see more than them getting into power is the return of Gilgeam himself! Oh, if one of my people is working with them, they will rue the day they were born."

Tiglath set her chin in her hands, a scowl darkening her features.

Kehrsyn sat for a while longer, then broke the silence. "I should be going," she said as she stood, her voice barely above a whisper. She gestured vaguely with one hand. "I'll just let myself out the, uh, way I came in."

"That," said Tiglath, "would probably be best."