The Alabaster Staff

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Once Massedar and the healers had left, Kehrsyn sagged against a wall and slumped to the floor with a heavy sigh. She ran her fingers through her hair and tried to figure out what had happened to the simple life she had once led. So much had changed, she could hardly remember it.

Kehrsyn didn't know what to do in her newfound home. That Massedar had decreed her presence did not change the fact that she was unused to such treatment and felt out of place. She had gone from being an intruder, to being an agent, to being thoroughly searched, to being embraced and healed, all in the space of two days.

She put her shirt back on, tossing her towel on the bed. She pulled her cloak out from under the bed and saw that Demok had placed it there in almost exactly the same position as she had placed it on the floor of the reception room. Such meticulous care struck her as odd, but she was thankful that the false staff was still safely tucked away in its shroud. She pulled it out and ran her finger around the crack in the handle, feeling the slight roughness of the finish. She couldn't help but admire Eileph's craftwork. It must have taken some fine magic to reassemble it so solidly. She tucked it away in her cloak and slid it back under the bed.

Shy and nervous, she left her room and timidly walked to the kitchen and dining area. She asked about meals and ended up with bread and cold, spicy gravy to tide her over until supper. Though the others were polite enough, they looked askance at her when they thought she wasn't looking. Her sharp ears picked up their whispers, many of which insinuated less than honorable activities between her, Massedar, Ahegi, and others. Her ears burning in shame, she retired to her room to stare out the window at the cold rain and sort out her thoughts.

The city guard swept the streets of the excess refugees, breaking her reverie. They moved sullenly about their task in the numbing downpour, rousting the refugees, who were loath to yield up whatever mean shelter they had found under overhanging eaves.

A while later, Kehrsyn heard the jangle of the bell that announced dinner. She got up and went downstairs. That time, however, her footsteps were more confident, for she had a plan. She would prove her value to Massedar that very evening.

She ate dinner by herself, alone at one end of a long table. She watched the exits of the dining room carefully, keeping an eye peeled for Massedar's baldheaded advisor. He did make an appearance, bullying his way into the room, demanding a meal to be delivered to his suite, then shoving his way back out again.

As he left, Kehrsyn rose to follow. She saw that he had turned right, toward the foyer at the main entrance, and guessed that he was heading for one of the corner stairwells. She moved to the opposite exit of the dining room and glided to the foyer herself. Listening carefully, she heard Ahegi's labored breathing as he climbed the stairs. It seemed that his lifestyle had taken its toll on him over the years.

Quiet as a ring-tailed cat, Kehrsyn sauntered across the foyer and ascended the stairwell, keeping a full revolution of the stairs between her and Ahegi. She heard him puff his way up to the third floor, then, immediately afterward, she heard the rattle of keys.

That meant his suite was right off the stairwell, but she had to know which door was his. She quickly ascended the last revolution of stairs, reaching the third floor just as he entered his rooms. His eyes caught the motion behind him, and he glared at her sudden arrival. She waved with a nervous smile and proceeded to walk down the hall.

"Your room," he growled behind her, "is one floor below."

Kehrsyn stopped short.

"Oops," she said, with what she hoped was a convincing giggle. "I guess I've just been up here more often than in the-er, my room. Sorry," she added with a cheesy grin and scooted back down the stairs.

When she heard the door close, she padded back upstairs and paced off the distance from the door Ahegi used to the adjacent doors to either side. Keeping her ears peeled for any approaching footsteps, she peered under each of the doors. She saw lantern light coming from beneath the door Ahegi had entered but not from either of the adjacent ones.

She slipped back downstairs, went to her room, and retrieved her cloak, concealing the false staff in her sash just in case they searched her room while she was out. She wasn't ready to trust anyone yet, especially after the way Ahegi had had her frisked.

She stepped outside and walked around to Ahegi's side of the building. Finding a doorway where she could remain relatively dry, she watched his windows for a long time. She saw the glimmer of light spread from the one window to the window farther down the long side of the building, then back again. She smiled. She knew which direction Ahegi's suite went, at least in part. She walked back inside, returned her cloak to her room, and concealed her staff within it as before.

Wandering affably around the interior of Wing's Reach and asking a few questions, she found the mercantile office, where, using her legerdemain, she helped herself to a few pieces of paper, a pen, and some ink. She took them upstairs, and, lying on the floor to avoid leaving telltale marks on the nightstand, she prepared to write a note.

What sort of note would the Zhentarim write? she asked herself. She thought about what she knew of them. Little, she admitted to herself, almost nothing. In fact, all she really knew was that they had a reputation for power that engendered fear and an aura of fear that created power. In that sense, she supposed, they were much like the priesthood of Gilgeam during his reign as god-king of Unther. Gilgeam had set vicious high priests to rule over the various cities, each according to his power, ability, and vice. She'd grown up under such a yoke and knew firsthand how the priests spoke. Such thoughts brought dark clouds of hate and depression-pained memories of her mother, empty longing for her father, and the hated desperation of her childhood-but Kehrsyn willed them away and focused on her idea.

She settled on something brief and demanding, thinking that fewer words would help her avoid sounding out of character, whatever that character might be, and help impart greater urgency. She chose but three words. She had to take several tries before she had a note that looked hastily scrawled yet was still entirely legible. It didn't help that she was not well practiced in letters.

She stood up, regarded her handiwork skeptically, and mentally committed herself to her task.

Kicking off her boots and grabbing her dagger, she glided to her door and cracked it open. No one was in the hall-her room being on the interior side of the short hallway toward the front of the building-so she slid out and shut the door behind her.

The halls were dark but for the guards' lanterns and the light spilling from the odd open door. Silent as a shadow, she ascended the stairs to the third floor. As she reached the top, she heard no footsteps, so she lay low and peered just over the top stair, trusting her dark hair to conceal her. It was early in the shift, and the guard in the hallway was having an amiable conversation with his partner across the middle hall. Glancing to the doors, she saw that the near door, the one that Ahegi had entered earlier, had light pouring out from under it, while the next one down looked dark. She rose and moved carefully to the second door, and, though her steps were inaudible, she kept her posture nonchalant in case the guard caught sight of her.

She tried the latch carefully. It moved, but the door was barred shut. She hoped Ahegi's suite had the same drop-bar door lock that her room did. Pulling her dagger, she slid it between the door and the jamb, thankful for such a thin blade. Her heart pounded with fear and excitement, so hard that it made her hand tremble. She winced in fear that Ahegi might have some more sinister lock on the door, one that would bring down great noise or fearsome magic. When she lifted the latch, it felt too heavy for a throw bar the size of the one in her room.

Committed to her task and afraid of her ability to restore the door to its former position blindly, she persevered. Once the bar had cleared its mooring, she swung the door open slowly, holding her dagger in place to keep the bar elevated. The hinge creaked ever so slightly, so she stopped. She had just enough room to squeeze through.

Sticking her head through, she saw that her instinct had been right. There was an additional trap: a pair of magically inscribed glass spheres dangled from a piece of twine tossed over the loose end of the throw bar. She wriggled her dagger down the bar, keeping it elevated, until she was able to slip the blade between the strands of twine. Then, in one fluid motion, she thrust the dagger forward until the hilt of her weapon caught the string and pulled the stones off the latch. The twine dropped a few inches and landed safely on the unsharpened base of her blade, just above the hand guard.

She slid into the room and inspected the latch. Unlike the throw bar in her room, that one had been modified to revolve freely around a single bolt. If she had let the bar drop once it had cleared its mooring, it would have swung down and dropped the two rune-inscribed orbs on the floor, and, in all likelihood, Ahegi alone knew what that would have done to her.

Holding the glass balls aloft with her dagger-for she feared that any contact with the floor might activate their magic-she scanned the room. Faint trickles of reflected light from the guard's lantern shone from the door behind her, and light also spilled from beneath the door leading to the other portion of Ahegi's suite. It wasn't much, but it was enough to see the furniture in the room.

She took the note she'd prepared and tossed it on his bed, then undid the latch that held the window secure. She withdrew from the room, replacing the spheres on the bar and using her dagger to lift the bar back into place as she shut the door. She could hardly breathe for fear of jinxing herself, but she was almost finished. She stepped backward to the stairwell, wide eyes glued to the hall guard as he joked coarsely with his compatriot.

Once safely behind the curve of the stairwell, she drew a deep breath of release. Her thudding heart made her diaphragm tremble, and she feared she might cry, but from fear or elation or relief, she couldn't exactly tell.

Kehrsyn spent the next few hours waiting in the stairwell at the far end of the short hallway from Ahegi's suite. After returning to her room, she had availed herself of her chamber pot, and she had purposely drunk very little at dinner so that she would not have to interrupt her vigil. She was fully dressed, with her boots and dagger. Her cloak, her rapier, and the fake staff she had secreted behind the curve of the stairwell on the ground floor, where she could easily don them before departing. If everything went well, she'd need only her cloak and boots. If not, she didn't want to leave anything behind.

Her note had cited "midnight" as an unfortunately inexact rendezvous time, but to be more specific would risk exposing the note for a forgery. She didn't know what the Zhentarim might use for timekeeping. Thus, if Ahegi took the bait, Kehrsyn knew only that he'd leave his suite roughly in the middle of the midnight watch. That left a lot of flexibility, which Kehrsyn's hind end started to pay for as she waited on the narrow stairs.

Ahegi left and reentered his study once, right after Kehrsyn began to wait, but he moved indifferently and was wrapped in a warm woolen housecoat and slippers. Twice she was interrupted when someone climbed her stairwell. To conceal her intent, Kehrsyn broke her vigil to act as if she was moving in the opposite direction. Aside from that, the watch was quite tedious.

Long after Kehrsyn had expected something to happen (but, her intellect objected, still early during the midnight watch), Kehrsyn waited still. She sighed and blew a stray strand of hair from her face.

Funny, she thought, to go from such a dangerous thrill that seemed to last forever, even if it was a very short while, to such a boring activity that, though not overly long, also seemed to go on forever.

Ahegi marked the page and closed his book, sliding it to the rear of his desk. It was late, and sleep tugged at the corners of his eyes. He rubbed his eyes with his fingers, trying to drive the fatigue back for just a few more moments.

He stood, stretched, and ran his hand over his shaven pate, roughened with stubbly growth. Everything seemed to be proceeding apace despite a few setbacks. The plans were coming together. The young thief, however, had proven disruptive. He hoped her untimely arrival would not undo all they had been trying to accomplish.

He kneeled on the floor and made his obeisance at the darkest hour of the night, whispering the ritual prayers so as not to be overheard. He bowed his head to the floor three times, then arose and gathered his housecoat around him. He blew out all the candles but one, which he carried with him into the next room.

He set his candle on the nightstand, dropped his housecoat to the floor, and sat on the bed. He heard the crinkling of paper as he did so, and felt it buckling through the nightgown covering his posterior. The significance of the sensations trickled into his brain, and he stood up and felt around for the stray paper.

It was folded carefully and creased multiply, though the latter he had done himself. He opened the note and held it close by the candle.

"Midnight. Urgent. -Z."

Ahegi's eyes widened, darting back and forth. How long had the note lain unattended on his bed? He didn't know, but he was already late.

He quickly put his housecoat back on and gathered it around him, then thrust his feet back into his slippers. Taking his candle, he left his suite, pausing a moment to place a grain of sand on the handle of his door. Should anyone try to penetrate his apartments, they would dislodge the sand and he would know.

He looked around, but the hallways were empty save for the guards at each end of the center hall. He moved toward the light and turned down the center hall, passing the guard without acknowledging his presence.

He rapped on the ornate double doors to Massedar's rooms. No response. He knocked louder. Then a third time, louder still.

He heard a voice, groggy and slurred, ask, "What?"

"Sire, thou ordainest an audience with me?"

He heard Massedar rise out of bed and stumble in the dark, followed by a few moments' fumbling as he attired himself. Feet shuffled over to the doors, and Massedar cracked one open.

"Upon what twaddle blatherest thou?" asked Massedar.

"Thou hast asked for to speak with me," said Ahegi, greatly affronted.

"Art thou mad?" sneered Massedar. "Constrain thou thy dreams to thy own sleep, and leave me be."

He shut the door and threw the bolt once more.

For a moment, Ahegi was confused, then his tired brain put everything together. He moved quickly back to his suite, habitually checking that the piece of sand was still in place. Once inside, he lit a candelabrum and went back into his bedchamber. He looked at his window. It had been left unlatched. They had slipped the note through his window, though whether by magical or cunning means, he was unsure.

He had been late already when he had discovered the note, and he had wasted even more time since. He threw on his warmest clothes, grabbed his heavy cloak, and left his chambers at a pace so brisk he was almost running. He took the stairs two or three at a time, nearly losing his balance, then strode through the foyer and puffed out the front door and into the night.

The chill air, the sound of rain, and the cold dampness that leaked in through his boots (for, in his haste, he had donned the pair that was not waterproof) reawakened Ahegi. His mood swung from bitter reproach to the gods for the inhospitable weather, to deeply burning ire at being ordered to inconvenience himself with the uncomfortable nocturnal trek, to deep-seated fear at what penalty he might suffer for his tardiness. He hoped he had not been expected to share in the prayer time, for, if so, his absence would prove troublesome.

What chance events would convene a meeting in this manner and on such short notice? Was this a test of loyalty, or had something transpired? Was there an opening, a weakness to be seized and exploited? Or perhaps a bold move was planned, the timetable moved forward behind the concealing cloak of the accursed rain.

He tromped across the city to the docks, his breath puffing out a regular stream of clouds. Every few steps he wiped away the precipitation that tickled the end of his nose. There was very little light, most of it provided by taverns or the occasional street lamp that had not run out of fuel. The poor visibility made it difficult to spot the puddles in the dark. In his anger and apprehension, Ahegi moved as directly as possible, and thus by the time he got to the meeting place, his legs and feet were soaked through and he could not discern between the squishy noises of his stockings and the splashing of the puddles. Yet despite the chill and the rain, beneath his cloak he sweated with prolonged exertion, activity to which his soft lifestyle had not inured him.

Once at the docks, he moved to the farthest end, enduring the easterly breeze that blew the rain, walking all the way to the Long Wharf where it jutted out into the Alamber Sea. He stomped up the gangplank of the only sailing vessel moored at the Long Wharf and crossed the deck to the main cabin. He wiped the droplets from his nose again, then knocked in the appointed pattern: Knock-knock. Knock. Knock-knock-knock.

A small slit opened in the door, and the beam of the bull's-eye lantern shone directly in his eyes.

"Who goes?" asked a harsh voice.

Ahegi blinked rapidly, and, when his eyes adjusted to the glare, he saw a hard pair of eyes glowering out. The lantern illuminated the guard's face starkly from the side.

The password required that the visitor cough before answering, which Ahegi did. It was an easy requirement considering the weather.

"Ahegi, of Wing's Reach," he answered, using the common tongue. "I was summoned for an urgent meeting."

"That's not for two days," grumped the guard.

"No, not that one. The one tonight."

"What are you talking about?" The irritation in the guard's voice was plainly audible.

"An urgent meeting, tonight, at midnight. A note was left on my bed."

"We sent no note."

"It was signed with…" And only then did he realize that the Zhentarim would never sign such a note.

"With what?" growled the guard.

Ahegi's eyes narrowed. He glanced quickly back to the dock, and he thought he saw a shadow move, disappearing down an alley. He ran back down the gangplank to the alley and cast wildly around, but he saw nothing, and the pounding rain washed away all sounds. He wondered if the rain and darkness and lingering flare of the guard's lamp had played a trick on his old eyes.

Perhaps it had, but he could not take that chance. Someone had lured him out there, compromising his schemes, and he thought he knew who it was.

With a curse as black as the pits of his heart, Ahegi headed back for Wing's Reach as fast as his aging body would allow.