The God Catcher

ELEVEN

"You," Veron said to Cassian, not taking his eyes off the half-elf. "Go fetch the hearthmaster and find a Watch patrol."

"Where did he take her?" Tennora said, gripping the half-elf by her shirtfront. "Where did they go?" The woman stared up at Tennora, still looking shocked.

"Tennora," Veron said sharply, "you need to get off her."

She ignored him and shook the half-elf. "Where did they go?" The woman squirmed and shook her head.

"She's not going to talk with you sitting on her chest," Veron said.

"Pardon me," Cassian said, "but who in the Nine Hells are you?"

"Veron Angalen. Go get the Watch."

"He's a bounty hunter," Tennora said.

"Why do you know a bounty hunter?" Cassian asked.

"Go get the Watch, Cassian!" Tennora shouted. After a moment of hesitation, she heard him sprint down the stairs.

"Tennora." Veron set a heavy hand on her shoulder. "I know you're upset. But you need to get up. Let me do my job."

Tennora looked up. His face was stern, but his golden eyes were gentle. Worried, even. She scowled back.

"Your job?" she said, climbing to her feet. "You mean the job where you convinced me to turn traitor on my friend? The job where you nearly got me killed assuming she was a liar? She saved my life and you'd have had me… had me…"

Veron suddenly yanked her behind him and trained the quarrel on the half-elf woman, who had sprung to her feet. "Goodwoman, I suggest you sit and put your hands on your head. I don't miss."

The woman's eyes darted toward the door, as if gauging the distance and the speed with which she could cross it. She set her hands on her head and went slowly to her knees. "I'm not worth your trouble," she said. "I don't know what he's doing. Besides, I was going to give you a hand with that dragon-woman, wasn't I?"

"You have a funny way of doing it," Veron said, still holding Tennora's arm.

Tennora shook herself free of him. "We have to find her. Where is she?"

The woman shrugged. "No idea."

"You were the one with the coin," Veron said. "Are you suggesting you carry teleportation tokens without knowing where they go?"

"That goes back to the shop. Your girl there could guess that much. But Ferremo's not an idiot. He'll get them somewhere safe before you ever get to the shop. And while I could guess, it's just as likely I've never been there. Didn't even know Ferremo worked for a dragon 'til last tenday. Also," she added, "I'm not an idiot either. I'll take you two ready to flay me over Ferremo and the master any day."

"We'll see what the Watch has to add," Veron said. He turned to Tennora. "I've been here before. We'll have to wait for them to resurface."

"He won't let her resurface, you fool!" Tennora cried. "He's not helping her escape: he means to kill her."

A rush of footsteps came up the stairs and Mardin burst through the broken door, red-faced and short of breath.

"Holy gods," he said, "Tennora. Mask's empty casket, you-did they hurt you? You're burned. Sit down." "You sit down," Tennora said. "You look like you're going to have a fit." The shock was wearing off, pain starting to pulse along her nerves. Mardin turned a chair upright and gestured to her to sit, his shoulders still heaving.

"Sit, petal, please," he said. "Ah, all the gods, how could I let this happen?"

Tennora pursed her lips but sat. Mardin seemed to spot Veron for the first time.

"You!" Mardin said. "What have you done? I ought-"

"Mardin, he had nothing to do with this," Tennora said, a bit harshly. "And you couldn't have done anything to help."

"Well, I might have kept the worst of it away," Mardin said. "I might be old, but I know a thing or two."

So do I, Tennora added silently. It was something everyone in the room seemed to be forgetting.

"There were two dragons in here fighting," Tennora said.

"No there weren't," Veron said.

"Yes, there were," the half-elf said.

Tennora turned in her seat. "Truly, Mardin, there was nothing to have stopped it. You'd be just as battered as I."

"Petal, dear, you're-"

Another rush of footsteps and the remnants of the door opened again, this time for Cassian and a trio of Watchmen. The captain stepped forward, short sword out, eyes on Veron.

"Hold and down weapons, you," he shouted.

"I'm not the intruder!" Veron snapped.

"Down arms!"

"I beg your pardon!" Tennora shouted. All three Watchmen turned to look at her. She stood and pulled her shoulders back, despite the pain that raced down her spine, and regarded them like the brighter-nose noble they thought she was. She was sick and tired of being overlooked and stepped over, and she wasn't about to let it happen once more.

"Lady Hedare," the captain said with some surprise. He didn't lower his sword. "This young man says you've had an intruder and a couple of-"

"Captain, the woman is the intruder. I expect you'll take my word for it."

His sword dropped by a hand's length. "As you say, saer."

"She assaulted me!" the half-elf cried. "You're in her home," Veron said.

The captain cleared his throat. "Do allow my asking, saer, but what are you doing so far from the North Ward?"

Tennora began to retort, but the familiar sound of flapping wings made her fall silent. She watched as Aundra Blacklock once more climbed in through her window, her massive, bone white wings trailing behind.

Aundra looked Tennora over, examining her burned face and bleeding shoulder, the bruising that swelled up over her collarbone. She jerked her head back and took a small flask off her belt, setting it into Tennora's hands without a word. Stalking into the kitchen, she picked her way over the burned books and the scraps of wood that had once been Tennora's table. In the middle of the kitchen she squatted, nudged aside a few tatters of paper and bits of trash, and plucked out the case with the golden mask. She set it on the bureau. Everyone stared at her.

"What are the Watch doing here?" she said.

The captain recovered himself. "Goodwoman Blacklock, your, ah… Lady Hedare reported someone came in and, well, seems to have destroyed the place."

Aundra looked at the half-elf. "Are you the perpetrator?" "I perpetrated nothing," the half-elf said.

"She was here when I arrived," Veron said. "Her master and others helped a dangerous criminal escape."

"Ah," Aundra said. She turned her lamplike eyes to the Watch. "It sounds like she is your problem now."

With much staring and apologizing, the Watchmen took custody of the half-elf, shackling her arms and leading her down the stairs. As she passed Tennora, she smirked, as if she had gotten exactly what she wanted. No one spoke until the Watch's footsteps had faded.

"It seems everything went according to plan." Aundra glanced around the damaged room without so much as blinking. "More or less. I expected it to be quieter."

"What?" Tennora cried. "What plan were you going by?"

"I have my mask." Aundra laid a covetous hand on the case. "And you have come out alive." "You don't understand! The antiquary's shop was a dragon hoard. The dragon came here and they… they fought, and he… He took Nestrix!"

Aundra turned a cold yellow eye on her. "Yes, I know. I know all that."

Tennora fell back a step. "You knew he was a dragon? You sent us in anyway?"

Aundra took the mask out of the box and held it up to the candlelight. The light danced over the edges of the feathers. "What's the best way to fight a dragon?" she said dreamily.

"A casting of… meteor swarm?" Cassian ventured as if it were a test. Aundra turned and frowned at him, as if she were only just noticing he was there.

"Another dragon," Mardin said, folding his arms over his chest and frowning.

"Yes, Goodman Eftnacost. Why put yourself in harm's way, when their pride and rage will take care of it for you? At least one of them will no longer be a factor. One is easier to deal with than two.

Especially when that one is wounded." She looked at Tennora again, with a jerky nod of her head. "And I appreciate your help in that, Lady Hedare."

"How could you?" Tennora said, too battered and exhausted to stop the tears that welled up in her eyes. "She asked for your help."

"How could I not? They are, neither of them, paragons of virtue. How could you bring one into my building?" she said. "You brought vultures into this city." "

Tennora met her cold eyes. "We brought the vultures out"-for the first time, Aundra's flat expression flickered-"for good or ill, and that is better than letting Dareun plot under everyone's noses. She just wanted her life back."

"So she can murder and steal and manipulate us all?" Aundra clicked her tongue. "You are young still and haven't learned to see past the lies they all tell. The dragon can't escape her true nature. No one can." "What do you know about her nature?" Tennora cried. "All you know is that her scales were blue."

"Tennora, calm down," Mardin said.

"Blue dragons can be reasonable," Aundra said, "but they're volatile creatures. You cannot trust them in the end, any more than a green or a red or a black or a white. They all hunger for destruction. Between the two of them they would tear this city's heart out if they could. Drink your tonic."

"You judge her too harshly!"

Aundra's feathers swelled, but she gave no other sign of her anger. "This is my home as well, girl. I do what I must to protect Waterdeep."

"She's part of Waterdeep," Tennora said. "She came here, didn't she? Same as you, same as any of us."

"That doesn't mean she's welcome."

"Who are you to decide that?" Tennora surged to her feet. Veron caught her arm.

Aundra picked up the case with the mask in it and shifted her hands over it in a complicated pattern. It vanished with a soft pop.

"A better judge than you, my dear," she said sadly, and crossed back to the window. "Oh yes." Aundra looked back over her shoulder. "She offered you a ritual? One that would improve your magical abilities?"

"She did," Tennora said warily.

Aundra smiled. "It doesn't exist."

With that she leaped into the night with a great flap of her wings, and Tennora collapsed onto her mother's trunk.

Mardin cleared his throat. "I'll make some tea."

"There, there," Cassian said, sitting down beside her. "I'm sure we can clean all of this up in no time at all."

Tennora ignored him and turned to Veron. "What are we going to do?"

He shrugged. "Wait her out."

"And what about him?"

"What about him?"

"We have to do something," Tennora said. "If either of them needs to be taken out of the city, it's Dareun."

Veron shook his head. "We don't know anything about him. It's too risky."

"You'd rather leave a pair of warring dragons-one of whom is clearly up to something-"

"I told you before, it's a spellscar. She isn't a dragon."

"She breathed lightning!"

"And it's probably her spellscar," Veron said. "Or a spell she learned."

There were spells for that, but Tennora had never seen one throw out such a huge amount of lightning or seen anyone do it who wasn't a wizard through and through. And she'd never heard of a spellscar that gave the afflicted so many powers. She thought of the look in Dareun's eye when Nestrix entered, of the way he'd said he didn't want Tennora.

"The other dragon recognized her," Tennora said. "Why would he take her if she's just spellscarred?"

Cassian patted her hand. "That was a man, not a dragon."

"Men don't smell like chlorine," she said. "He's a dragon. He's the taaldarax!" Suddenly the pieces fell together in Tennora's mind. "Oh gods."

"What?" Veron said.

"He's…" She looked up at Veron. "I know what it means. Taaldarax. The man with the copper caps called Nestrix a player and Nestrix said… Dareun is a xorvintaal dragon."

"Xorvintaal is a myth," Cassian said gently. But Veron's countenance became thoughtful.

"They say the dragons who play the great game take pains not to be seen," he said. "Whatever he is or isn't, this fellow walked right into your apartment and tried to kill you. Fairly obvious."

Tennora shook off Cassian and stood. "I spent a few short songs with him, and I know he's an arrogant hawksnarl and was ready to kill me over being robbed of a trinket. And Nestrix called him a wyrmling. He might be young. He might be new to the game. He might be a reckless player."

"Tennora," Cassian said, taking her by the shoulders. "The great game is a legend made up by adventurers who've seen one too many smart beasts."

"Cassian, if you don't stop touching me right now-"

"Enough," Mardin said. "Neither of you are helping."

Tennora buried her face in her hands, if just to grant herself a moment to think. She had to do something, and quickly.

But she was alone. Aundra wasn't going to help her. Veron might, but he'd turn around and take Nestrix back to Cormyr to stand trial-and he'd tell her so as soon as they found her. Dareun could only appreciate them announcing their arrival with the fight that would inevitably result. Mardin was afraid she might skin her knees or give herself nightmares. Worse, if he tried to come along, he was likely to do something rash in order to protect her, and give himself a fit and collapse. She couldn't lose him too.

And Cassian…

Cassian wasn't listening to a word she said. He was patting her shoulder again and suggesting she drink her tea and be thankful the problem took care of itself. Two days ago she would have been thrilled he was there, trying to soothe her. Now she wanted him out of her home. She couldn't rely on Cassian. She couldn't rely on any of them to trust her.

In fact, the only person she could rely on was the person she needed to save.

She looked up.

It wasn't a thought she'd expected to have, but there it was. She could count on Nestrix, who screamed in the rain, who boiled with dragonfear, who'd threatened Tennora's life.

Who gave me her eggshell, she thought. Who said I could do better than Cassian. Who saved my life.

The absence of the eggshell was a palpable thing. She pressed a fist to her chest where it had hung for two days.

She had to save Nestrix.

"You two shoo," Mardin said, stirring up the fire. "Give her some space."

Veron frowned at her. "I'll stay by the door," he said. "Outside. They might come back."

Tennora gave him a pleasant, false smile. "That would be very kind of you."

He held her gaze a moment longer, as if trying to tease her true thoughts out of the placid facade. She held the expression with a vengeance, her thoughts secret and racing.

After both had left, Tennora crossed over to the window and leaned against the sill, looking down at the face of the God Catcher and willing it to come to life once more. To tell her what she could do, how she could fix things. It merely stared back with its one stone eye.

She was on her own.

Mardin came over with a cup of tea and pulled the chair closer. The steam from the mug was fragrant with rose petals and bitter Chessenta black. Tennora sipped it, still quiet.

"So," Mardin said. "Your first adventure didn't quite turn out."

"No."

"Doesn't usually. My first try I ended up walking in on some old lord, his wife, and their page." He shook his head. "Losing a few trinkets is one thing. Losing your privacy like that, well, I had to get out of there fast and lie low. Not much compared to upsetting a dragon, but there you are."

Tennora knew she was supposed to laugh, but she couldn't. "It's not all gnolls and saving fair maidens, then?"

"Never was," Mardin said. "Shouldn't have let you think it was. I'm sorry she never told you the truth, petal. And I'm sorry I didn't either. But you're not her, you know. You're your own person, and you don't have to follow your mother to know that. Go back to your books. That's your place."

"No," she said. "Master Halnian's let me go."

A moment of silence. "Ah," Mardin said.

Tennora set her mug on the floorboards beside her. "I don't feel like talking just now," she said. "What I'd really like…" She paused, very deliberately, feeling guilty at playing Mardin like her aunt and uncle. "I just want to wash all of this away. I'd really like to visit the baths for an hour or so-do you think you could see if Veron would follow me, in case they do come back? I'd ask, but… I don't want to give the wrong idea." "Of course, petal," Mardin said, giving her a kiss on the forehead. "Nothing simpler."

"I'll just get my things together."

Once Mardin had gone, Tennora quickly stood and opened her mother's trunk.

The smell of beeswax and tallow rose up in a cloud as she removed the tray and one by one withdrew the leathers and laid them in an open apron. She tied the apron into a bundle and tucked it under her arm. She picked up her carvestars and tucked them into her pouch, then slipped the dagger into its sheath and took up her staff.

Outside the storm clouds grew darker and heavier with the rain. Despite being hardly past tharsun, it looked as if the sun had retreated for the evening.

It would be dangerous-but that thought rose up and fell away, leaving no mark on her decision. She left the God Catcher.

Veron seemed to sense she was in no mood for conversation and walked silently several paces behind her. It gave her a chance to think.

There was no chance she could find Nestrix and rescue her alone without a little leverage. The only connection she knew of was the antiquary's shop, and the woman had said flat out they wouldn't be there.

"A greedy, sloppy dragon," Nestrix had said. Tennora thought of the treasures, so many amazing things stacked up in that antechamber. Perhaps she could offer a trade? Her mother's keepsakes for Nestrix's life.

No-he was too angry. A few trinkets wouldn't do it.

The key is the singer's collar, the statue had said. The lodestone is the first lord's gift.

"The singer's collar," Tennora said aloud. The back of her neck prickled. The Songdragon's gorget. Invaluable, beautiful-and he would take it because of its powers and never ask questions. She felt dizzy with success. She could save Nestrix.

But first she needed to get away. First she needed to look like someone who could make such a bold offer.

At the Queen of Hearts bathhouse, Tennora turned to face Veron. "Will you wait here?" she asked.

He looked along the street and pointed with his chin at a nearby tavern. "I'll draw less notice there. How long will you be?"

Tennora shrugged. "An hour." Let him wait, she thought.

He started to say something, then seemed to take stock of her expression. He nodded and headed for the tavern. Tennora entered the marble building, paid her donation to the heartwarder at the door, and found herself a dressing alcove. She unwrapped the pieces of armor.

Black, soft, and tooled with graceful curls and whorls-time had hardly touched them. Tennora unwrapped the bracers and the greaves, flexing the material in her hands. Still pliable.

She stripped down to her smallclothes and pulled on the pieces one by one.

The boots were loose and the vambraces snug. The high-collared cuirass fit smoothly over her torso, laced tight around her neck, and buckled with only a little trouble to the harness and the leggings. Each piece, each step, she felt as if she were donning another person's skin, another person's self. She wasn't a thief. She wasn't the Shadow Wind. But in her mother's leather armor, she might be something close. She bound her hair back in a tight braid.

She took the belt she had worn over her skirts-a dusty brown, heavily stitched piece of fabric that dripped with loops and pouches for components-and found places for her picks and carvestars and her mother's dagger, before tying it around her waist. She slid the staff through the back harness meant for a short sword and adjusted it so she could move easily.

Wrapping herself in her stormcloak and pulling up the hood, she slipped back out the door. She didn't dare look up to see if Veron had spotted her, but when his voice didn't call down the street, her shoulders relaxed a little and she pushed back the hood.

As she passed the window of a shop, she caught a glimpse of herself. The stormy sky beyond made her reflection clear as a looking glass, and she was surprised at what she saw.

She looked as if she knew what she was doing.

All the shops along Jembril Street were shut for evenfeast, the lamps turned low, the clerks all shut away in their back rooms. On the door of the antiquary's shop, a small hand-lettered sign had been pasted.

Closed, the sign said, for a family emergency. Please call again in a tenday.

Tennora cracked the lock much more quickly than the previous time. They'd reset it, but not replaced it, and the cylinders moved just as they had before. She slipped inside and shut the door behind her.

Not a body stirred in the seed hoard. Not a sound came from the rooms beyond. Fine, she thought. If they aren't here, I'll bring them here.

The heavy iron urn she'd knocked off the cabinet still rested on the floor. She kicked it over onto its side once more and then rolled it onto the pressure plate with another kick. As it hit the plate, the acid bursts spattered down on it, as expected, and she felt the rush of the alarm triggering-quiet as a breeze, but somewhere, for someone, the alarm was screaming that the treasure was no longer safe.

She sat down on a chest and waited for that someone to turn up.

It took little time. There was a rustle in the shadows at the far end of the building, as if a door had opened, and the man she'd mistaken for an antiquary appeared at the edge of the light from the glowballs, knives out. He eyed her for a moment and, satisfied she didn't present an immediate threat, stepped closer.

"Robbing my shop?" He looked her over once more and frowned. "Again." "You work for Dareun," she said. "Lovac. I assume you're Ferremo. Do you have a proper name?"

The man's eyes narrowed, but he didn't throw the knife. If Dareun thought Nestrix was a player, he had to think Tennora was one of her minions. Perhaps, like the man with the knives, her chief minion. Her lovac.

"It's Magli," he said. "Ferremo Magli. You?"

"You know my name," she said with a smile.

"Why are you here?"

"He has my mistress," she said. "And I'd like her back. But you and I both know he won't listen to a nothing like me. So I came to make you an offer. An offer he might prefer, if he heard it from the right source."

He smiled. "Does your mistress give up her gains so easily? He'll not give her back without a fight."

"I have something he'd like very much."

"What? Alina? Between you and me, he's better off without her."

Tennora smiled back. "You mean you're better off without her." She'd seen the way he'd sneered at the half-elf as he dropped the token. "I can get him something much better."

"I doubt that," he said. "He's very interested in your mistress. So interested he won't consider the fact that she's a fraud. Oh yes," he said, when Tennora's eyes widened. "I'm well aware of the bounty hunter. It was the last useful thing Alina did. Pity I'm going to have to arrange for her… disposal."

Tennora ignored the baiting. "So why not save him some time? Give her to me."

Ferremo shrugged, as if she'd asked him why he hadn't worn a yellow shirt-it didn't matter. "If she's a dragon, he'll want to know how she's avoided the dragonward."

"And if she isn't?"

He laughed. "Humans don't deserve the powers of the dragons. He'll make her understand that."

"Sounds like a waste of his time. And yours."

Ferremo flipped his dagger over his knuckles and caught it again. "What are you offering?"

"A relic," she said, "of the time before the Wailing Years. A collar worn by the Songdragon, to protect her from the dragonward if anyone ever took hold of Ahghairon's staff."

Ferremo's eyebrow twitched. "It protects against the dragonward?" Tennora nodded. "Where is it?"

"Ah-ah." Tennora wagged a finger at him. "I will get it for you in exchange for Clytemorrenestrix. Safe and alive."

"Of course you will," he said, and folded his arms over his chest. "Where is it? Under your linens?"

"It happens to be in the care of a powerful wizard," Tennora said, though she was trying hard not to think of that part. "A master of the House of Wonder. Rhinzen Halnian."

At the name, a light seemed to flare to life behind Ferremo's eyes, and his cold demeanor thawed. He set his hands on his hips and regarded Tennora with a curious smile.

"Rhinzen Halnian?" he asked. "Tymora must be laughing."

She nodded, with a little smile of her own, as if they were sharing a joke. He clearly thought they were. "He hasn't done me any favors lately," she said vaguely.

"He doesn't think much of us and our ilk," Ferremo said.

Her heart was pounding. Ferremo knew Rhinzen, which meant her old master might have been harmed by the dragon and his lovac.

Or he's been helping them, she thought.

"I can't make any promises," Ferremo said. "Especially since there's no proof she's a player. Or even a dragon."

Tennora raised her eyebrows skeptically. "Do you want to take chances?"

"It's what we do," Ferremo said with an edge of menace. "Get the relic from that high-minded long-ears, and I'll have an answer for you."

"Tomorrow evening," Tennora said, and the assassin agreed.

"Rough him up for me, and I'll see about finding you a place with a real taaldarax," he said. "And since I know where you live, I can trust you'll let yourself out." He turned and vanished into the shadows.

Tennora let out the breath she'd been holding. She wasn't dead. She had a plan. The man with the knives wasn't overly suspicious-and why should he be? She'd managed to convince him he was getting a treasure beyond worth.

Now came the difficult part.