The God Catcher

THREE

The God Catcher had quieted down by the time Tennora climbed up the twisting stairs, Nestrix in tow. The children were all tucked into their beds, their families finishing up the day's chores. Behind other doors came the murmur of her neighbors conversing genially and easily with their lovers and friends. A conversation here and there slid through the thin walls-the price of wheat's gone up and there are rumors of blue lightning around Blackstaff Tower and did you see that young man skulking around the square? Tennora caught snippets of them, but her own thoughts were turned squarely toward the tall woman walking behind her-and the leather bag hanging around her own neck.

It was like something out of a legend or one of Mardin's stories. A dragon trapped in the form of a woman-better yet, a dragon who had seen the Spellplague with her own eyes. She had probably seen all sorts of marvels, traveling over Faerun. The Sea of Fallen Stars; the Plaguewrought Land; the city of Airspur. Tennora wondered if she could see them all before she died. She gave her head a little shake as she reached the door of her apartment.

"You're a bright girl," her uncle Eckhart had told her on more than one occasion. "Why, Selune preserve us, would you waste that on daydreaming and fantasy when you could be focusing your mind on improving your status? Or at the least something useful like a trade?" He was right, of course-daydreaming about visiting the earthmotes over Chult wasn't terribly useful. She indulged herself nevertheless, and added a dragon to her dream.

She was jolted from it by the small, dusty trunk resting against her door. For a moment it seemed so out of place it might have sprouted there on its own. Then she remembered her aunt and the trunk of Tennora's mother's things she had sent along.

Tennora sighed. Much as she wanted to go through it, it would have to wait until Nestrix was gone. She reached over it to unlock the door, then dragged the trunk in behind her.

Tennora's apartment rested at the joint that led to the outstretched arm of the statue. It was small, but it was inexpensive and afforded her a lovely view of the square below and the edge of Market Street over the next building.

"This is your den?" Nestrix said, looking around dubiously.

"It's my apartment, yes." Tennora lugged the trunk a safe distance from the door, then hung her stormcloak on the peg and secured the latch. "Have a seat."

"Where?" Nestrix said, looking around the crowded and compact room.

"On the chair." Tennora pulled it out pointedly. "I know this place is small, but it suits me."

More than that-Tennora loved her apartment. The kitchen was simple and cozy, with a neat little hearth that warmed the whole space. Two of the walls were lined with bookshelves, and her bed was tucked away on a platform over her kitchen where the chimney warmed it. And all of it was hers-a far and pleasant cry from the capacious Hedare manor, its empty and lavish rooms, its overworked gardens, and its cold and lonely library.

She had come to study wizardry relatively late, and quickly saw that the distance between Master Halnian's tower, where she took most of her lessons; the House of Wonder, where her tests were administered; and the Hedare manor was enough to drive her to quit for the sake of convenience. At eighteen she had come to the God Catcher where Mardin had mentioned some of her classmates roomed, looking for a place of her own. It had taken the space of a heartbeat for Tennora to fall in love with the cozy, peculiar apartment in the shoulder of the God Catcher. It was hers, all hers, and just big enough to keep her in, happy and secure.

Nestrix sat on the edge of the chair, unimpressed. "What are all those books for?"

Tennora shrugged. "For reading. Those are histories. These over here are my books on magic. That shelf is all chapbooks. Romances, adventures. Some mystery puzzle stories, but I think they're often too easy to figure out. Or too ridiculous."

"Oh." Nestrix gave her a blank look. "Where is Blacklock?"

"Away, most likely," Tennora said. She went into the kitchen. "We'll try to contact her tomorrow. Would you like some tea?"

"No." She glanced around the room again and sighed. "Oh fine, all right."

Tennora hung the kettle over the fire and stirred up the coals. There was a dragon in her sitting room. She measured out a fragrant mix of tea and rose petals to add to the water. She was making tea for a dragon in her sitting room. She took two teacups from the wash water and dried them on her skirt. A dragon in her sitting room.

She was grinning like a fool. If her day had to be a terrible one, then at least it had ended with this. Strange and wonderful and worth talking about. And the promise of the ritual! She poured the tea and carried the cups out to the sitting room. Nestrix was staring out the window at the sphere.

"Here we are," she said, taking her cup and perching on a stack of books.

"That is where she lives?" She looked back at Tennora. "There's no door."

"There's a door. It's magical. Only Aundra can open it."

Nestrix frowned. "But how does she reach it? You'd have to fly to get there."

"And that's what she does," Tennora said. "She flies right up."

"How?" Nestrix asked, still staring at the sphere.

"With her wings," Tennora said. "You didn't know Aundra was a raptoran?"

Nestrix folded her arms over her chest. "No. No one mentioned it."

"She looks like a woman crossed with a hawk," Tennora said. Nestrix glared at her. "Did I say I didn't know what a raptoran was?" she said.

"No," Tennora said, "I just thought… I mean, they aren't exactly filling the streets." Raptorans were an elusive race, tucking their cities into high, sheer cliffs in the Yehimal Mountains far to the east. Few people in Faerun could identify a raptoran, let alone say that they'd met one. Tennora had only seen her reclusive landlady a few times, but each meeting she couldn't help but marvel at Aundra Blacklock, with her enormous feathered wings and her piercing yellow eyes.

Nestrix sighed, turned toward the window, and said nothing.

It would be a very long evening, Tennora thought, if this kept on. She sipped her tea, all too conscious of the weight of the heavy silence filling the room. Nestrix stared out the window as if the sphere would vanish if she took her eyes off it. That tore at Tennora's heart a little-the poor thing had likely seen plenty snatched out of her grasp. Not the least of which was the world before the Blue Fire.

"What was it like?" Tennora asked. "Before the Spellplague."

Nestrix looked back at her and frowned as if confused by the question. "Not that different."

Tennora blinked. "Not that different?"

"Well, the world is still here, and it's still full of dokaal and treasures and threats and everything else. It looks different." She gave her hand a distasteful look. "But it's still the same world. Just as one who makes it through a fight is still the same self, even if she's bruised and bleeding and missing an eye. It's the features that change, and while that's the more important question-How has my life changed? — the world is not that different, in the end."

"I never thought of it like that."

"Dokaal never do. Even elves-you'd think they'd take the long view, but not this time. You're terribly narrow-minded."

"You keep saying that- dokaal. What's it mean?"

"It means you and your ilk," Nestrix said with a careless wave of her hand.

"Humans?"

"Human, elves, dwarves, halflings, those bastard strixiki that came with the fire-all you two-legs. Darastrix slayers, treasure-makers, magic-breakers." She sighed. "Perhaps it's because you lost your gods? Presumably that makes everything feel like it's changed. I don't think you could escape the dragon gods if you tried."

"Where were you," Tennora said softly, "when it happened? When the Blue Fire came."

Nestrix's gaze grew distant. "The Calim. I lived most of my life there. There were no genasi then, no genie slavers. Just wealthy, foolish humans who hung themselves all over with jewels and gold and thought themselves clever for it. Great sprawling cities that sent out caravans through the djinn's desert and were always surprised when they didn't come back." She grinned. "I should have liked to grow old in that desert, where the riches came to you. Not as safe now. The genasi are bellicose and brutal with outsiders."

"Where else did you live?"

"Plenty of places," Nestrix said. "The Raurin-that was where I found my mate. My Tantlevgithus." She sighed heavily. "Now it's full of dokaal building dead civilizations, but it's still the purple desert where my mate and I danced in the storms." She sighed again, her blue eyes focusing on someplace long ago and far away, and Tennora thought that features changing might be bad enough, at least for Nestrix.

"And Waterdeep?" Tennora said, trying to change the subject. "What was it like?"

Nestrix regarded her curiously. "I wouldn't know. I'd never come so far north as this. Besides, everyone knows the dragonward makes Waterdeep unbearable without proper protection."

"Oh," Tennora said. She should have remembered that. "But you're all right now? The dragonward isn't affecting you."

"No," Nestrix said icily.

"Good." Tennora smiled and ran a nervous hand over her blonde braid. "I find history fascinating. Particularly Waterdeep's. This square is a good spot for it. The paving dates back to Baeron Silmaeril's time as the Open Lord. The newer stuff was peeled up when the statue fell, I expect."

"What statue?"

Tennora laughed. "The one you're sitting in. It was one of the Walking Statues."

"This?" Nestrix looked around her.

"It was, yes. The Year of Blue Fire made the statues all come to life. No one could control them-not the Blackstaff, not the Masked Lords. They destroyed huge swaths of the city. This one, they say, used to stand near the sea wall. It was making its way toward the old market when a wizard-they always say the Blackstaff, but there were plenty of powerful wizards in Waterdeep those days and everyone claims she was in their district at the time-tried to stop it. She couldn't command it, so she made the ground beneath it soft as mud. The statue collapsed, but as it fell, it reached up toward the heavens as if it asked the gods for their forgiveness. Another feature changed, I suppose."

Nestrix snorted. "Why would a statue ask the gods for anything?"

"It's just how the story goes." Tennora shrugged. "Though it might be true. I don't suppose anyone ever knows what's going on in the mind of a magical statue." She smiled. "Well, nowadays, a family of half-elves lives there." Nestrix eyed her, puzzled for a moment, until Tennora blushed. "It was a joke."

"Oh." Nestrix reached for her teacup. "Is that why you studied magic then? Because you live in a magic den?"

"No." Tennora fought the urge to sigh. "I… I thought it was interesting. And beautiful. I always wanted to be a wizard. My teacher says I'm no good at magic though."

"Find a different teacher," Nestrix said. "Or a different magic."

Tennora shrugged. "I don't think that will work. At least not right now."

"What else would you do?"

"My aunt and uncle want me to be a proper young lady and fall in love with a proper young man so his proper family and theirs can forge a connection. They're still afraid no one takes them very seriously as a noble family, I suppose," she added as she sipped her tea. "We've only had a title for three generations."

Nestrix was eyeing her again, her eyes wide as if Tennora had admitted to leaping off buildings in her spare time.

"Do dragons not make connections that way?" Tennora asked.

"I cannot speak for other dragons," Nestrix said, "but no self-respecting blue would suggest such a thing. Sire, dam, mate, offspring, enemy." She counted them off on her long fingers. "These are your connections. Anything else you do for your own gain." She drained the tea, then added, "If your aunt were the clutchmate of my darn, I would tear her throat out for suggesting I am a mere tool for her games. You don't have the teeth for such an attack, but you could probably find something to do it for you. You dokaal are good at that."

Tennora's mouth fell open.

"One of those grain-cutters, perhaps," Nestrix said, thoughtfully, making a hook of her finger. "What do you call those?"

"Scythes. And I don't… That isn't how things are done," Tennora managed, "but thank you… for sharing. At any rate, studying wizardry this way was a compromise. I studied at the House of Magic under a master they found suitable, with fellow apprentices whose friendships might be valuable, and I could put off joining society for a little longer. Only, I wasn't terribly good at magic. At least not the way my master teaches it."

The way anyone teaches it, she silently added, remembering the fireball.

"Now that you are no longer a wizard," Nestrix said, "must you go mate for your aunt and uncle's status? Do they decide what you do?"

Tennora ignored the crude description. "I don't know. I haven't figured out what I'm going to do now. It's all sort of falling to pieces." Her voice cracked as she spoke, and she turned away.

Nestrix regarded her for a long moment, in a way that was not predatory, not speculative, nor even confused. She looked weary. She set down her mug and leaned forward onto her knees.

"I will tell you something I have learned," she said. "And I do not do this lightly, so be grateful and listen.

"It is easy to forget, when we are sated, that we may only live our lives-no matter how long or short they may be-from one sunrise to the next. Until the Blue Fire came, I forgot this often, but since then it is the only way I can make my way through the world. I suggest you concern yourself with what is at hand and leave tomorrow to tomorrow."

Tennora frowned. "But it remains rather pressing."

"Not as pressing as finding me a place to sleep," Nestrix said with a wide, white smile.

With the point of his knife, Ferremo picked at a sliver of apple skin lodged between his teeth. The half-elf woman next to him watched out of the comer of her eyes with barely disguised horror. He stopped and wiped the blade on his handkerchief, sucking at the gums where he'd pried the offending bit loose.

"What's wrong, Alina?" he said, waggling the knife at her. "Do you have something stuck as well?"

Her gaze shot back to the manor across the road. "Not a bit," she said.

Poor Alina, he thought. She wasn't long for their way of life. She had a good hand with disarming wards, but she was otherwise too clumsy, too obvious. If she didn't get herself killed, she'd be out of the master's service any day now. Ferremo gave her until midwinter.

The damnable rain had finally slowed to a faint drizzle-enough that he wasn't going to get soaked anymore, but neither would he and Alina look out of place huddled under the archway that led down Ivory Street. The perfect place to watch.

The house was one of Waterdeep's city manors. Three stories; marble everywhere; a big, warded, curly iron gate across the path; and glowballs dripping off every corner of the wall. Wealthy-very wealthy.

Even in the rain, deliveries arrived at the servants' entrance every hour or so, deep into the night. Bundles of linens, cases of candles, an ocean of wine. The last time Ferremo had watched so many delights pass into that house, the owner had thrown an elaborate brightstarfeast two nights later. For nearly a year now he had watched her home until he knew by the deliveries what she would be doing, when she would be doing it, and for how long she would be preoccupied.

And two nights hence, the mistress of the house would be entertaining late into the night, too interested in her guests' gowns and gossip, too soaked in the many bottles of zzar and wine to notice what might be happening in the far corners of her manor.

Twice he had managed to slip into the manor with little trouble. A common thug might stick out, unwashed and displaying all the grace and sartorial aplomb of a muddy haystack. But Ferremo had observed the uniforms the hired servants wore, and dictated their design to his seamstress with exacting specificity. The first time he had simply found his way in and then found his way out. The second though, he had killed one of the hired men, stored the body under a flowering bush, and taken his place for the whole night, memorizing the floor plan of the building.

"How long do we need to stand out here?" Alina asked.

Ferremo revised his estimate-midautumn at best. He looked up at a window on the second floor, far from the kitchens and the ballroom and the gardens, and mentally charted the path he would take to reach it. He hoped in two days it wouldn't be raining.

"Not long," he said. "Wait here and look like you belong."

He walked away from the manor and cut through an alley, so that if anyone was watching, he would seem to come at the house from a different direction. While out of sight, he pulled a tricorn hat from his pocket, popped it up, and settled it on his head. He turned his cloak inside out to show the green lining, adjusted it so that it hung open over his right arm, and slid around the knives he wore to lie beneath it. By the time he came out onto the road, he looked respectable and vaguely shabby-from head to toe a haggard messenger from another house, out too late.

As he approached the gate, a face coalesced out of the iron. The curls coiled into eyes and stretched into lips, the metal shrieking faintly as it did.

"Well met and welcome to the House of the Laughing Star," the face in the gate said. "Are you expected?"

"Well met. Unfortunately no," Ferremo said. "I have a message from my master for the goodwoman."

The gate was silent for a moment. "Enter," it creaked, and swung open, its face splitting in twain. Ferremo stepped onto the path and hurried toward the front door, which was already opening. A dour-looking woman in a well-cut but boring gray gown held the door-the goodwoman's chamberlain, Agnea Palthas, he knew from previous experience. She stopped him on the last step.

"Well met. I understand you have a letter," she said. "You can give it to me. I'll bring it to Goodwoman Mrays."

Ferremo drew back a little. "I've been told to deliver it only to Goodwoman Mrays's hands."

A shadow fell over him. A half-orc the size of a small hill, with a neat beard and clad all in silk. A waste, Ferremo thought, and smiled up at the bodyguard chief he knew was called Jorik. The pair of them were the gatekeepers of the house, Nazra Mrays's eyes and ears. The half-orc folded his arms over his chest.

"No one comes in at this hour," Jorik said. "Hand over the letter and we shall see it to our mistress's hand."

Ferremo eyed the half-orc long enough to give a good show, then held out the letter. Agnea snatched it from him.

"A good evening to you," she said, and shut the door.

Ferremo stood for a moment, staring up at the windows and the fine mist of rain drifting through the light. The fools thought themselves better than him. He smiled again, and turned and walked back down the pathway.

"Master?" he said as he passed through the gate. "We're ready."

The envelope is within?

"Yes."

Are you certain?

Ferremo pursed his mouth briefly. "It is hard to mistake."

We will test it when you return, his master said. Hurry back. We have only two days to prepare.

Tennora lay in a bed made of many blankets, the chair, and the trunk she had still not opened, staring up at the ceiling. A shaft of moonlight eased through the window and painted a stripe across the floor. Her hands wrapped around the pouch at her throat, and she chewed thoughtfully on her lip.

Above her, in the loft Tennora usually slumbered in, Nestrix slept.

Or at least Tennora hoped she was sleeping. She hadn't worked up the nerve to check. Only now, in the night, was she rethinking her plan.

Her aunt and uncle's admonishments about Tennora's fanciful tendencies argued with her mother's voice telling her to trust her instincts, and the warring voices churned up her thoughts, making it almost impossible for Tennora to sleep.

It was as good a time as any to see what was in the trunk.

She lit a candle and pulled it out into the center of the room. The lock that dangled from the latch was old and corroded. A few quick strikes with the bone hilt of a knife knocked it open. A shiver ran over Tennora's arms as she opened the chest.

The top was a shallow bed lined with mildew-spotted fabric that might have once been green. A layer of tarnished coins, a thimble, a tindertwig long past its usefulness, some cheap but pretty jewelry-Tennora picked them up, one by one, wondering at their importance, their meanings to her mother. They had to be from before her mother married, a time Tennora knew little about.

Liferna Hedare hadn't been a noblewoman when she met Tennora's father-Tennora knew that much. She told Tennora her people had come from the west after the tumultuous time following the Spellplague known as the Wailing Years, and that she had lived all her life in Waterdeep, in Field Ward.

She had no siblings. Her parents were dead. That was that.

Tennora imagined a younger version of her mother delighting in the red glass beads of the bracelet or the bright brass locket on that necklace. Sewing her clothes with the little thimble on her thumb. Tying up her blonde hair with the strap of leather that had since hardened into a stick. She pulled out a trio of small freshwater pearls on a string-her mother had loved pearls.

Tennora pulled the tray from the trunk, setting it on the floor beside her.

A new smell mingled with the mildew-the smell of tallow and beeswax. The deeper part of the trunk held several cotton-wrapped bundles, neatly packed and only faintly stained. Tennora pulled a long, thin one out and laid it in her lap to unroll the fabric, giddy as a child opening a gift.

The bundle held a dagger.

Tennora was so startled to see it she nearly dropped it. The sheath was tooled with a carving of a phoenix. She took the hilt in a trembling hand and drew the blade. Well oiled and untouched by the mildew or rust. Sharp too, she found, touching the end of it.

She didn't know much about weapons, to be certain, but she knew it was not a blade for a girl in the Field Ward. Not a blade for chopping vegetables, cutting lengths of rope, or even gutting fish. It could have done all those things, but it was too fine to be wasted that way. Tennora slid it back into the sheath.

A family heirloom, perhaps? Something carried over from the nebulous west, cared for so carefully and tucked away? She nodded to herself, imagining a man with her mother's brown eyes and blond hair in war-scarred armor, with the dagger at his hip. That made the most sense.

Tennora took out the next bundle, which held a leather vam-brace. A good sturdy one, scarred over so much that the black leather seemed to be tooled with waving grasses.

A family heirloom, she thought, though the surety wavered. It was fit for a slim woman's arm. Slimmer than her own. Slim as her mother's.

Tennora laughed. Her prim and painfully proper mother. Dressed in leather armor and carrying a sharp dagger. The woman whose daily refrain to Tennora was to smile and be polite, to not upset Old Lord Hedare or her grandmother. The old man would have had a fit of shock if he could have seen his daughter-in-law in leather armor.

More bundles revealed more pieces of armor, each carefully treated and wrapped away from the change of seasons. A pair of boots with crepe-soft soles that could have walked through a forest in autumn without making a sound. Gloves with a faint and mediocre enchantment that had unraveled slowly in the years since its activation. They seemed so pristine that Tennora paused to check the trunk for the telltale traces of a spell that would have preserved the leather. Nothing. Liferna had known how to pack such things away.

Tennora's heart was starting to pound. What were these things? Why had her mother had them? Liferna had been in the ground five years, yet Tennora felt the sudden urge to find her-to dig her up with her bare hands-and demand to know what these artifacts of her old life meant. What she had kept from her daughter.

She took the last of the bundles from the chest, one that was small and streaked with rust. She unrolled it to find a smaller cloth roll nestled inside. Inside the smaller roll were thirty-two badly rusted wires. Tennora pulled one out and studied it for a moment. It had a sturdy handle, and the thinner end curved into a crescent moon shape.

For a moment, she just pondered that shape.

Then she realized what she was holding. Lockpicks.

Lockpicks were not a family heirloom, not so far as Tennora could see. Her heart was in her throat. Why had her mother owned lockpicks?

To pick locks, you fool, she thought. What else?

Her mother had been so proper, so boring in her easy adherence to the niceties of the North Ward.

And yet buried somewhere underneath her effortless manners and graceful charm, beneath the hostess and the wife and the mother, there might have been a creature who moved in the darkness with a well-kept weapon in her hand, finding her way through locked doors-How? How could mild-mannered, easily laughing Mesial Hedare have tamed that creature of the night into a house pet-her wings clipped, her teeth filed, her manner calm and subdued?

Tennora shook herself. Fanciful tendencies. There must be another answer.

She reached into the chest. Perhaps she'd missed something-a letter from a long-dead aunt requesting Liferna hold on to her things, maybe. Nothing. The chest was empty.

Or perhaps not. Tennora frowned. The hand that brushed the bottom of the trunk sat a solid three inches from the ground. A false bottom.

It would not pry up when scratched her fingernails at the edges. Tennora picked up the dagger, ready to slam the hilt into the thin wood She looked up at the loft, at Nestrix sleeping there. Even though she'd slept through the breaking of the lock, the woman was bound to wake if she heard Tennora smashing open the bottom of the trunk-Tennora felt certain. Much as she wanted to know what was in the box, she should wait. She would wait-she needed to think, to find her way out of the tangle of thoughts that would overwhelm her.

She stood, feeling oddly light-headed-unmoored and empty. As if she had nothing left to stand on. Her steps uneven, she crossed to the window and nudged the shutters open. Fresh air would help.

Below, the City of Splendors stretched out, lights shining like jewels scattered all the way up to the black silk of the Sea of Swords. Selune hung full and bright above her. The God Catcher gleamed in the moon's light. She sat on the ledge and leaned against the sill. A cool breeze ran over her skin. The remains of the clouds from earlier scattered.

One of the statue's eyes had been knocked out to form a window, and from the socket a flimsy drape hung, limp as torn flesh. The other eye, a great carved orb the size of the trunk sitting in Tennora's living room, stared up at her. The statue's other features wavered uncomfortably in the midst of masculine and feminine, youth and age-full lips, hard chin, round cheeks. She wondered who it had been meant to look like. A hero, or the sculptor's lover, or a god with a fickle form?

From where she sat, Tennora could just make out the shadows and lights of other Walking Statues, now fallen or frozen. Against Mount Waterdeep, the dark humps of the prone warrior who had become Downgiant Row. The tall and listing silhouette to the north of Sparaunt Tower, its hawklike beak illumined by a line of magical lights. The crown of a seated man, the suggestion of leather armor carved into his chest and limbs, peeking over the buildings of the Castle Ward, the edges of his stone hairline traced by the lights of the tavern built in his lap.

Time had not forgotten the fallen statues. The city had rebuilt the damage they had caused when the Spellplague had erupted, and then continued building, hollowing out the fallen statues and laying stonework over the tops of their feet.

Tennora looked down at the face of the God Catcher. It was easy to forget what those carved eyes had seen, what horrors and wonders they had witnessed. She thought back to what Nestrix had said about the way the world had or had not changed, and she wondered how wild a lie she had been told.

Then the eye below blinked.

Tennora startled, sliding back off the windowsill as she did.

The lips parted with a crack, and the God Catcher sighed, the dry and powdery breath gusting up at her. The moon brightened and turned faintly blue, and the stars burned through the blanket of the night.

"A tempest is coming," the statue said, its voice clattering like a rockslide. It lowered the hand it normally held outstretched, and with it the sphere of Aundra Blacklock. The sphere settled into its palm and it turned its great head, shattering years of gull droppings. "I feel it in the ground. The door is left wide and the path uncovers itself."

Tennora froze, too startled to move.

In the distance the other statues cracked to life as they lifted their heads, the murmur of a half dozen other stone voices echoing the God Catcher. "The door is left wide."

The sphere in its hand shimmered, and there appeared atop it a woman of sorts wrapped in a cloak of feathered wings. Aundra Blacklock stood as still as a statue herself.

"What else do you see in your dreams?" she said.

The God Catcher gave a low, growling hum. "A blue stone. A spiral of vultures. A gathering storm."

"Spellplague?" Aundra whispered. "Does the Blue Fire return?

"There is Blue Fire here, but it sleeps, as it sleeps in us. Beware that one-it will flush out the vultures. For good or ill."

"What good do buzzards bring?" Aundra said. "What else?" "A child walks in the storm," the statues chanted in a single voice. Tennora's ears rang with the sound. "The vultures follow. A path reveals itself, old stones that have seen many feet and lain beneath the sand for many more years. The key is the singer's collar. The lodestone is the first lord's gift."

"Is the child the plaguechanged one?"

"It is," the statues said. "And it is not."

Aundra's wings twitched. "You speak in riddles, Old Ones," she said. "This information does not aid me."

"We speak truth. We always speak truth," the God Catcher rumbled. "The future unfolds itself in myriad ways. You will discern the proper path. Or the city will fall."

"As always," Aundra Blacklock said. She turned her yellow eyes skyward toward the low-hanging moon and stars. And caught sight of Tennora leaning over the windowsill. She frowned.

Tennora blinked and jerked awake as her elbow slid out from where it had propped her chin. The statue's face below lay quiet and unmoving, still staring up at the heavens and crusted in bird droppings. Clouds smeared over the sky, dulling the distant moonlight's silver fire. The moon hung much farther along its path than where Tennora had left it. Aundra's sphere floated once more twenty feet above the hand of the God Catcher, which was once more reaching up as if offering the sphere to the moon.

The carved eye stared up at it, rainwater pooling along its lower lid like a rim of tears.

Tennora rubbed her own eyes. What a strange dream. A dream of dreams, she thought, stretching her stiff back. Usually her dreams were all urgent and panicked and plotted like a handful of chapbooks shredded and pasted back together. She woke from them feeling harried and tired more often than not, shreds of the dream clinging to her thoughts like cobwebs. But the dream of Aundra and the God Catcher had left her feeling more… peculiar, and oddly calm.

She studied the God Catcher's face a moment, wondering if it had been a dream at all.

She sighed and tugged on the roots of her hair-of course it was a dream. The statues had not moved in a century. People would notice if they started talking. Especially if they started talking about lost paths, children, and vultures. "Fanciful tendencies" was being kind.

"The key is the singer's collar," she said. "The lodestone is the first lord's gift." Wasn't that the way of dreams? To sound portentous and riddling, but in the end mean nothing at all? She'd dreamed hardly a tenday before that her aunt and Master Halnian had been trying to convince her to marry some hideous spider creature, telling her that if she didn't a portal to a plane of mud would open and everyone's garden would be ruined. And that hadn't meant anything, of course, except that she was overworked.

She went back into the sitting room. Even though she'd managed to doze off, she didn't feel tired. Her thoughts kept returning to the cryptic notions of the dream-a puzzle she wanted to piece together, but could not. And then another puzzle-her mother's trunk. She glanced up at Nestrix, still sleeping in the loft.

"To the Hells with it," she said. She stomped, heavy on her heel, into the false bottom. The wood cracked. Nestrix stirred and grumbled, but did not wake.

As she peeled the splintered wood away, the candlelight caught the gleam of gold.

Tennora reached into the false bottom and drew out a long chain, gold with tiny perfect pearls strung on every third link. A trio of pendants hung from it-two intricate cameos of a man and a woman facing a clear, buttery-colored gem ringed by still more pearls. Tennora forgot to breathe a moment. Between the piece's artistry and the fact that the man's profile had a decidedly Adarbrent family nose-long and pointed-it should not have been where it was.

She laid it on the blankets beside her and reached back in. Treasure after treasure came up from the trunk, each one bubbling with pearls. A coronet of hundreds of bright, tiny diamonds with fat pearls on its points. A collar of emeralds dripping a swag of seed pearls. A brooch of cinnabar carved into the shape of a copulating couple-the pearls were very creative there, Tennora thought with a blush. A man's signet ring with an unfamiliar crest-a horse and anchor-old and well worn and banded by flat squares of nacre. A rope of pearls, enough to wrap her neck from skull to collarbone. She pulled all those and more from the trunk and laid them on the blanket.

At the bottom, beneath all the jewels, were three folded pieces of parchment. Tennora opened them, greedy for information.

Watch postings. Three of them, looking for a thief. A very prolific thief with a penchant for pearls.

The date stamped across the latest one had been a tenday before Liferna wed Mesial Hedare.

Her breath stuck in her throat.

There were too many lies in that trunk, too many deceptions that unseated her own life and her own understandings. She couldn't do it.

Blood pounding in Tennora's ears, she folded the sheaf of papers together and put it back in the box followed by all the jewels, the bundles of armor and weapons, the lockpicks, and the tray. She closed the box up and slid it back across the rug to where it had been sitting propping up her feet, and climbed back into her makeshift bed, trying to keep her mind blank and failing.