The God Catcher

EIGHT

By the time they had made their way back to the God Catcher, the gray light of dawn was slinking through the alleys and courtyards of Waterdeep. Still trembling with shock and unused to traveling in the south end of the Trades Ward at night, Tennora had gotten lost in the maze of streets and alleys, not noticing where she turned or where she continued. She couldn't think straight-she dared not think straight. She walked hoping the passage of block after block of cobbles beneath her feet would be enough to drive the memories of the heist from her mind.

But when Tennora slipped in through the doors of the God Catcher as quietly as possible-lest her neighbors spot her at that time of the morning, stained with some stranger's death and carrying a sack with a golden mask in it-her thoughts were still full of flying knives and broken necks, spatters of brain, and the sound of a man choking on his own blood.

Nestrix clomped up behind her, her new boots echoing on the stairs. Tennora winced and sprinted up to her apartment, imagining the city Watch hot on her heels. She had made her peace with being a thief-just this once-but murder? There was no making peace with that.

Her hands shook as she unlocked the door. She swept into the apartment, grateful to be out of the sight of others, away from the blood and the broken glass. The leaflet with Nestrix's face was still sitting, folded up, on the table. Tennora set one hand on it and covered her eyes with the other. She could have seen this. She could have prevented it.

"Are you all right?" Nestrix asked, coming in and closing the door. "You look ill."

Tennora didn't move. "Ill is too light a word. That was… terrible."

Nestrix sighed and sat down. "Horrible. I very much wish I'd taken that lovely statue." "Don't you even care that we killed someone?" Tennora said.

"Just now?" Nestrix said. "That hardly counted."

"Of course not," Tennora said bitterly. She turned to face Nestrix. "It's vulgar to count, isn't that right?"

"Don't be dramatic. It doesn't count because they were attacking us."

"Because we were robbing them! We killed two of the antiquary's guards, and he's trapped under a cabinet, probably"-her voice caught in her throat-"bleeding out."

Nestrix rolled her eyes. "Don't waste your pity on those fools. They weren't exactly trying to show us their wares. As if they'd had any to show."

"Of course they weren't! They were trying to stop us… What do you mean by that? The shop was full of wares."

"That wasn't an antiquary's shop," Nestrix said.

Tennora was so startled by the assertion, she stared at Nestrix for a few breaths, waiting for her to amend it. When she didn't, Tennora burst out, "Of course it was! What else would it be?"

Nestrix gave her a look, as if Tennora were being willfully ignorant. "What antiquary trying to sell things fills the part of the shop people see with worthless junk and hides the valuables in the back? That was a lot of rubbish in those cases-polished-up rubbish, but rubbish still. The gold's nothing but brass, the silver's shiny tin, the gems were all chipped quartz and painted glass. The only genuine thing there was that ugly little pin with the spinel on it." She shook her head. "No one with the sense to collect the treasures in the back room would try and convince others that garbage was worth buying. They're trying to keep customers away."

Tennora stared, wondering why a dragon would know so much about shopkeepers. "Did you memorize everything in that shop?"

"Most of it. I'm not a white, after all," Nestrix said with a sneer. "It was the saddest little hoard I've seen in a while. It might very well be a white's."

"Hoard?"

"That was a seed hoard, make no mistake. You have a dragon in your midst, and he's aggressive. And sloppy."

"Dragons can't just show up in Waterdeep," Tennora said. "The dragonward-"

"The dragonward is fallible. Look at me."

Tennora sighed, exasperated. "You hardly count." Dragonfear rippled over Tennora, but she shook it off. "Stop doing that."

"Whether I count or not," Nestrix said in a low voice, "another dragon, a taaldarax, is behind that shop. Mark my words."

"That doesn't excuse you just killing those men!"

"Are you mad? You should be thanking me for killing his minions and lovac. Without them, his plans will have to slow down. Don't you know anything?"

"I know killing is against the law."

"So is stealing," Nestrix said. "And if you play, it's against the rules to move without your agents-so we slowed him down. If you're lucky, when I'm returned to my true form, I'll help you deal with the taaldarax." She smoothed her skirt down and gave Tennora a smug look. "Won't you be happy when I can return your favors?"

"I don't want you to return any favors by killing someone!" Tennora said. "Godsdamnit, Nestrix, there's a difference between pilfering someone's valuables and killing their servants!"

The fear rolled over her like a tidal wave as Nestrix surged to her feet. "You ungrateful little dokaal! I saved your life by killing that man-did you even think of that?"

She hadn't, and that was on purpose. The memory of being pinned by the axe blade, of the man drawing his knife and coming toward her, would not sit comfortably in her mind no matter which way she turned it. She had nearly been killed-the thought made her stomach drop.

However, the memory of Nestrix bludgeoning a man to death with a broken axe haft was never going to find a comfortable place either. The hollow cracking sound would haunt her thoughts forever. And the man writhing on the floor with a dagger stuck in his chest. The soft pop of his neck breaking…

"My life wouldn't have needed saving if we hadn't been robbing them," she said, desperate to tie the events together in her mind. The antiquary was the victim. Not her, not Nestrix.

"They are lovacs," Nestrix snapped. "And their taaldarax plays lightly with the rules. If they are here in your city, your life would have needed saving soon enough." She stood and drew herself up. "You don't even care what I did for you."

"Not when you're acting like a monster."

"If you're going to treat me like a monster, then I'm free to act like one," Nestrix said, her eyes briefly flaring blue. "And if you're going to act like an ungrateful, law-bound-"

"Get out," Tennora said.

Nestrix drew back. "What?"

"Get out. Get out of my home." She pulled the eggshell in its pouch from her neck and held it out. Tennora felt her hands shaking, even harder than they had when the man with the dagger in his chest had died at her feet. But her gut and her wits screamed the same thing. "I am through helping you."

She expected the dragonfear that flowed over her, but strangely it was weak and almost halfhearted. Nestrix's cheeks flushed, and her eyes had taken on their characteristic glow.

"How dare you speak-"

"I don't care," Tennora said. "I don't care what you think you've done for me, I can't do this any longer. I wish you luck. Get out." Nestrix's mouth snapped shut.

"Fine," she said. "Fine. As you say." She snatched the pouch from Tennora, turned, and stalked toward the door. "You would have made a terrible lovac. It's better that I don't take your help."

She slammed the door so fiercely that a jagged strip, damaged by Tennora's carvestars, fell out of the wood.

Tennora ran to the door and threw the bolt. Stepping back into her sitting area, she eyed the back of the door for a few breaths, expecting Nestrix to return, angry and pounding on the door, full of curses and threats and violence. Her hands itched to grab the dagger, to be ready for the inevitability of the blue dragon turning on her word. To show Nestrix how serious she was.

But Nestrix didn't return.

The quiet unknotted the careful hold Tennora had kept on herself since the night began. Sapped of everything she'd held in reserve, she sank down onto her rug and wept until she fell asleep.

"Pardon me," Veron said to the sailors clustered beside the street vendor selling fishcakes. He held up one of the leaflets printed with Clytemorrenestrix's portrait and information. "Have you seen this woman?"

Like all the people he'd approached that day, they squinted at the paper and shook their heads.

"Wouldn't mind seein' her though," one of the men said. The woman beside him gave him a shove.

"Idiot," she said. "They don't make sheets like that for dancing girls. That's for high crimes. Murderers and robbers and such."

"Indeed," Veron said. "She's wanted for both. If you see her, let me know." He gave them the name of the inn he was staying at, for all the good it would do him. No one on the streets had seen Clytemorrnestrix. No one but the young woman from the statue.

The young woman he couldn't seem to find alone and in a public place. Two days in a row, he had waited in the street, just out of sight. She'd come out twice the first day: once for just for a moment, too quick for him to reach her, before slipping back inside; and once again, but a young man had stepped up to talk to her, and Veron had fallen back.

If anything were out of place, he'd scare off his quarry and possibly end up discussing things with the Watch besides.

Tennora, the hearth house owner had called her. He'd waited in the hearth house that night, though she hadn't come, and when he'd taken his place the following day, the owner had chased him off, shouting that he didn't want to see him around anymore.

After the man's previous cheer, Veron was sure Tennora knew he was watching for her.

"Pardon me," Veron said, approaching a well-dressed man carrying a ledger off a large sailing ship. "Do you accept passengers on your vessel?

The man looked him up and down with naked surprise, his gaze lingering half a moment on Veron's protruding teeth. "On occasion," he said, "but-"

Veron held out the leaflet. "Not for me. I'm looking for a criminal. She's in the city, but I have suspicions she may flee. Would you keep an eye out for her?" "Oh… Of course," the man said, taking the paper. He tucked it into his ledger then looked Veron over again. "You speak very good Common," the man said.

Veron pursed his mouth. "Yes, well, it is my first language."

"Oh," the man said, looking faintly embarrassed. "Raised by your mother then? Good of her."

"I suppose," Veron said, blandly.

"Does she live in Waterdeep then?"

"No, Silverymoon."

"Ah," the man said, with a knowing furrow to his brow. "One of those Many-Arrows brutes then?"

"No, that would be my mother." Veron paused, trying to cool his annoyance. "She's the one from the kingdom of Many-Arrows."

"Eh?"

"She's the orc," he said. "She moved to Silverymoon when my parents wed."

"Oh!" the man said turning a deeper shade of red. "Yes, yes of course. Well… you ought to have said something! Good day to you." He skittered off down the road.

"Perhaps you shouldn't have said anything," Veron muttered. He sometimes wondered if it wouldn't be less scandalous to make up a story about a pillaged farmstead and a roving tribe of berserker orcs. At least the man had had the grace to be embarrassed at his mistake.

He bought a fishcake from the vendor and pondered his next move.

"Coins bright, there?" Veron looked up from his slake to see a red-haired half-elf standing in front of him and holding one of his leaflets. "You're looking for this one?"

"Yes," Veron said, wiping the crumbs from his hands "Have you seen her?" "Maybe," she said. "What's it get me if I have?"

Veron stifled another sigh. "A percentage," he said vaguely. "The goodwill of Cormyr. And I won't tell anyone you're harboring a fugitive."

She gave him a withering look. "Not much of a bargain that. And I haven't said I was harboring her. Just that I might have seen her." She leaned a little closer. "And for what it's worth, the Watch and more might be interested in her too. Her and some little blonde birdie. Know anything about that?"

Veron narrowed his eyes. "I'm only interested in the murder."

She smiled at him. "Pity. Thought we might have had something to talk about."

"Goodwoman," he said, "I'm not leaving this city without my quarry. If you don't-"

"Will you take her dead?"

Veron paused. Dead was not what the Nagaenils had asked for. Dead would not get him his full bounty.

It would get him off of this trail and onto something new.

"It's not ideal," he said, "and I don't recommend you try it."

"That's my problem," she said with a winning smile. "I'll let you know what I find out." Before Veron could ask her name or tell her where to find him, she turned on her heel and disappeared quickly into the crowd.

Tennora startled awake, her thoughts heavy with dreams of knives, blood coming up out of her mouth, and the sound of Nestrix laughing as she held Tennora down with a log of wood across her chest until she couldn't breathe.

The Timehands started chiming tharsun. Tennora rubbed her eyes.

"Hells," she said. She'd been asleep for nearly twelve hours. She glanced back at the door as she sat up. Still locked.

A sharp pain seized her just below the ribs, and she remembered the axe and the cut to her side. She stripped off her clothes and dampened a rag in the remnants of Nestrix's bathwater. She gently scrubbed the blood from the cut on her side. It wasn't deep-the axe had bitten in just enough to peel back her skin in a strip as long as her index finger-but it had turned an angry red and burned, and the flesh beneath was tender and purpled. She frowned at it and smeared a good dollop of ointment over the cut before binding it up with rags.

Blood-hers and perhaps the two men's-was drying brown and clotty on her blouse and the belt of her trousers. Shuddering, she balled the clothing up and threw it in the corner. She unfolded fresh clothes from the drawers that lined her sleeping loft, and dressed-the memory of the big man being beaten to death threatening to overwhelm her.

Never, never in Tennora's life had she ever witnessed anything so shocking to her understanding of the way the world worked. People died. She knew that, she accepted that-she had watched first her father, then her mother fall to the featherlung epidemic, their lungs day by day failing, seizing, until they couldn't draw another breath without aid-and soon they could draw no breath at all. The epidemic had killed at least three hundred people besides her parents, and the few score who had survived the illness-including herself-still fought for a good deep breath when the weather was dry. She did not like to dwell on it.

But with those deaths, she did not have to look the featherlung epidemic in the eye. She did not have to watch its eyes light up as it drove the life out of her parents' bodies. She did not end up wondering if the featherlung had enjoyed taking her mother and father, if she did let herself dwell on it.

He would have killed you, a small voice in the back of her thoughts said. She imagined how it would have felt if the axe had buried itself in her chest rather than nicking her waist. She closed her eyes-it would probably not be too dissimilar from the end of featherlung.

In the Hedare family, she'd caught the featherlung first, from a serving girl who had later died. Tennora had spent a long tenday wheezing and trying to get her dry, weak lungs to take the air she was squeezing into them. They hung damp cloths over her face, hoping to moisten her breath, and it made it even harder to breathe. Her chest did not merely ache; the sharp pains that seized her and shook her with spasmodic coughing felt like a hundred knives stabbing up through her diaphragm. The disease desiccated her lungs, and toward the end the tissue had cracked and bled. When she coughed, rusty clumps of dried blood came up.

For a tenday, she felt sure she was going to die.

Then, blessedly, she began to recover. The air came into her lungs in cautious and increasing gasps, and soon after she could sit up. Her breath grew deeper, her stamina improved. She was allowed to go on short walks and visit her parents, sitting by their bedsides. She could not, the healers said, be infected again, and it would do Liferna and Mesial good to have their daughter near.

The healers had been wrong.

As they worsened and weakened and the treatments and prayers failed, Tennora was sent away so that she wouldn't witness the disease's final blow.

But Tennora knew all too well what it would be like. Some nights that was what she dreamed of-the pain in her chest and the blood in her dry, aching lungs.

The last thing her father had said to her was, "Never forget I love you. Never forget your mother loves you. I know you will make the best path of your life."

The last thing her mother had said to her was, "My darling, do not cry when they bury me. Don't give Aowena and the old lord something to hang you on."

She sat down and pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her knees, and laid her head on her elbows. She didn't want to think about her parents. Neither of them would have been too happy with her, but right then, she wasn't too happy with them either. As devastated as she'd been when she'd lost her mother, the realization that the woman who lay beside Tennora's father in the Hedare family tomb was as good as a stranger left her aching anew.

And still, there was the problem of Nestrix.

Tennora thought about alerting the Watch-but what good would that do? She was as much a criminal, as far as they knew, as Nestrix. She'd make Nestrix angry, she'd tip off the men from the antiquary's shop, and she'd be under the Watch's suspicion to boot. And maybe she should be…

She dug her fingers into her hair. The day was growing long, and she had to make up her mind. She went to stand by the window. Nestrix was not in the square, and neither were the Watch. The clouds shifted for a moment, and a ray of sun reflecting off the sphere of the God Catcher struck Tennora's sill.

Aundra.

Tennora looked up at her landlady's abode. Aundra would return tonight to pick up the mask. Tennora could explain what happened. Aundra would understand and explain to the Watch that hers were extraordinary circumstances.

She hoped. There was still the matter that Aundra had been the one to orchestrate the theft in the first place.

Sitting there thinking and thinking and thinking wasn't going to do her a scrap of good though. She had to get out of the God Catcher. Somewhere public and safe and distracting. Her stomach growled. Somewhere she could find a slake.

Tennora put her cloak on and picked up her shopping basket.

The marketplace was busy, despite the low-hanging clouds threatening to burst into storm once more. The sunshine filtered through the rain clouds as a cool, dim light that made the colors of the tents and the stormcloaks stand out bright as spring blossoms and ease the gloom a little.

Tennora strolled through the stalls, taking in the smells of fruit and baking flatbreads; the sounds of flower girls calling out prices and of cleavers coming down on big, rosy cuts of meat; the colors of fat oranges and coffee beans from far south, gold chains, and roses.

Every sensation grated on her.

She kept a polite smile on her face and kept her gaze perusing the various wares, but inside her mind her thoughts were a brewing tempest.

Aundra would help-she must. But where would that leave Nestrix? She'd seemed to enjoy the fight and killing the two men. Tennora shouldn't care where things left the strange woman. She should be glad to have survived the whole mess.

But the dead men had been trying to kill them. She could ignore that until time ran backward, and it would still be waiting for her. The men weren't simply victims.

And Nestrix had said the antiquary's shop was a dragon's hoard. Not just a dragon. A taaldarax.

The word tickled at Tennora's thoughts-where had she heard it? But the more she tried to pin it down, the more it slipped away from her stressed and tired mind. Nestrix had said the taaldarax needed those men. Was it a dragon that couldn't leave its lair? A dragon that collected antiques and relics?

Tennora sighed. She'd look it up later.

She noticed the half-orc, the one from the hearth-house, when she stopped to pick out a few plums. He stood three stalls down, examining fat, spiny perch, but really watching Tennora out of the corner of his eye. He wore his hood low, and a crossbow was strapped to his back. He looked nervous.

Don't panic, Tennora thought. She paid for the plums and hurried into the crowds, twisting between the shoppers to put as many bodies between her and the half-orc as possible. She'd lost suitors in crowded ballrooms that way-she'd lose him too.

She stopped again and bought some butter, glancing back the way she'd come. Again the half-orc was three stalls down, pretending to shop for wooden boxes, but watching her rather than the merchant. The merchant was giving him a hard look.

He was clearly no zealot-even if the hope had lingered in her despite the nature of the leaflet, there was no way he was anything but a hunter after Nestrix.

And Tennora.

He was following her. He recognized her. Who did he think she was, and what did he think she'd done? Her stomach turned over at the possibilities. He was stronger and he was probably faster. He was certainly as slippery as she was.

Tennora took a deep breath and made up her mind.

She slipped between the stalls and doubled back along the other side of Market Street, keeping her eyes forward until she had passed the Market Hall that stood halfway down the row of stalls.

The half-orc was still behind her.

Tennora hurried around a stall of curios and through a tent displaying polished apples. She glanced over her shoulder. He was still behind her, watching her zigzag through the crowded stalls.

More tenacious, she thought, than an Adarbrent. No chance of escaping-he'd follow her anywhere she could go. Her heart was pounding again.

If she couldn't escape, she'd have to let him corner her.

She walked faster. When she broke free of the crowds, she sprinted up the road and ducked into the alley alongside a bakery. A doorway off the alley presented itself, and she ducked into the niche, flattening herself against its side. She drew her dagger and held her breath.

The half-orc bolted down the alleyway a few moments later. He stopped a few feet beyond the doorway, glancing around. She leaped out of her hiding spot, dagger ready.

He shouted in alarm and froze when the tip of her blade found his ribs.

"Put your hands on your head," Tennora said, "push back your hood, and look at me."

He did, moving very slowly. For the first time, Tennora got a decent look at his face. He wasn't much older than she was. His eyes were a strange golden color, and his hair was jet black and in sore need of a trim. His skin was the muddied grayish green she'd expected, but through it his cheeks burned pink.

"Are you blushing?" she blurted.

"A woman half my size is holding me up in an alley," he said, annoyed. "What do you think?"

Tennora jabbed him with the dagger point. "How long have you been following me?"

He hesitated. "Since you left the tenement. You never came back to the hearth-house."

"And how is that any of your business?"

"It isn't what you think," he said. "I know about-"

"Selune preserve us," Tennora said. "Look, you can threaten and blackmail me all you like, but I have nothing to do whatsoever with that Cormyrean. So kindly shove off before I call the Watch on you, Goodman…"

"Veron," he said, lowering his hands. "Veron Angalen. I'm a bounty hunter, sent to capture the woman who calls herself Clytemorrenestrix. And I need your help."

They walked back to the God Catcher and found a spot out of the rain beneath the statue's cheek. Veron told her about the wizard, the one Nestrix admitted to killing, and the brutal mess of his throat. Tennora was ready to hear that, and it was easy-surprisingly easy-to remind herself that Nestrix had been fighting off an attacker, someone like the men in the antiquary's. Easy to imagine the wizard, leering and cocksure, and Nestrix, cornered and determined.

It was not as easy to accept Veron's version of Nestrix's origins.

"She appeared a decade ago, near Tymanther," Veron said. "Before that, I can find no one who remembers seeing a woman claiming to be Clytemorrenestrix."

"Perhaps she was somewhere else," Tennora said.

"And perhaps she was someone else," Veron said. "Look, I don't doubt she's spellscarred. The lands around Tymanther are full of active spellplague pockets. Why is it so hard to believe she might have gone into the changeland swamps, maybe lost off the road, maybe looking for someone gone missing? She goes through the blue fire, and it changes her. It gives her powers, but it addles her too. Makes her think she's a dragon."

"She doesn't have a spellscar. I've seen her undressed." Veron's eyes darted away, and he blushed again. "She took a bath," Tennora added sharply.

Veron closed his eyes, as if he were trying to calm himself, and took a deep breath. "According to the wizard's notes, she has a scar as long as a child's forearm on the right side of her rib cage. That's it, I wager."

The mating scar, Tennora realized. "It doesn't have the glow."

He scowled. "Well, they don't glow unless the spellscarred are using them, do they now? A spellscar is a good way to get that dragonfear people say she has. She used it on you?"

"Yes," Tennora said. "It's rather variable."

"And you'd expect a dragon to do better, wouldn't you? Look, I know it's hard to hear. But you need to understand, she's mad. She does truly believe she's a dragon trapped in a human body-believes it with such conviction that she's convinced a fair number of folks. Smart people. Not just you."

"What are you going to do to her?" Tennora asked.

"There's a bounty on her in Cormyr. That wizard she killed has friends. She's got to face judgment." He pursed his lips, then spoke again. "And if they don't execute her, there's people in Chessenta and Tymanther that will pay to speak with her too."

"What sorts of people?"

"That doesn't matter."

"Doesn't it?" That hit a nerve of some sort, and he scowled again.

"How many do you think she's killed?" Tennora said softly.

"At least a dozen. Probably more. Hard to get a count."

"Are you certain?" Tennora said. He nodded, and she closed her eyes. "What do you want me to do?"

"You can't take her alone. Neither of us can. We need to distract her. When she comes back, tell her that you want to go somewhere. Concoct a reason-it doesn't matter what, but start thinking of it now." He pressed a token into her hands. "Go out the door and back down the main road over there. When you get within ten paces of the alley behind the brewer, drop it. That will send me a signal you're close, and we'll be able to take her down quickly."

"I don't think that will work," Tennora said, recalling the Watch. Had that really been less than a tenday ago?

"It will work because you will be there. She trusts you." "I don't know if I can do this to her."

He set a hand on her shoulder. "You must. She's killed."

"We have all sinned," she said, echoing Nestrix.

The little water leaders ran shrieking across the square, soaked to the skin and happy for every breath of it. Even if they were poor, even if they were orphaned or homeless, nothing terrible seemed to touch them as they scampered in the last gasps of summer.

"Don't do it for what she's done, then. Help me to stop her from killing again. Lives depend on it."

She thought of the man with his neck broken lying on the floor. Of the way Nestrix had nearly attacked her. Of the way she might look, lying on the floor with her head twisted.

Tennora shuddered. "All right. I'll do it."

"Good," he said, and pulled the hood of his cloak up. "If she catches on, drop the token early and I'll come help." He started to walk away.

"Veron," Tennora said, "do you know what taaldarax means?"

He stopped and looked back at her with a puzzled frown. "No. It's Draconic though, if I don't miss my guess."

"She said there was another dragon. A taaldarax."

"I doubt it," Veron said. "But if there is a dragon, your lords know about it."

That was true, Tennora thought as she trudged up the stairs. The dragonward existed for a purpose. No dragon could enter the city without suffering from its effects. Ahghairon's spells had protected the city for well-nigh four centuries. The only way for a dragon to survive the effects unscathed was to touch the dragonstaff and stay in the good graces of its bearer. If there was another dragon here, a genuine dragon, the Masked Lords who ruled the city had to know about it.

Maybe it was a good sort of dragon, she thought, coming up to her landing.

Maybe it was protecting the city.

Maybe…

An uneasy feeling settled on Tennora as she reached to open her door. Something wasn't right.

Something had changed.

Scolding herself, she shook the feeling off. All this skulking around was making her nervous. Nestrix had probably returned and left the door No, she thought, because the door is locked. To reassure herself, she twisted the doorknob.

It opened.

The uneasiness grew into a full-bodied alarm. She slid her mother's dagger around to the small of her back, keeping one hand on it as she nudged the door open with her shopping basket.

A man dressed in a green velvet coat was sitting in her chair. He looked young, perhaps a little older than Tennora herself, with pale skin and eyes the shady color of set emeralds. Across his knees rested a cane with a crystal set in the handle. He had turned the chair to face the door, and he greeted her with a razor-sharp smile.

"Well met, Lady Hedare," he said. "I believe you have something that belongs to me."