The God Catcher

FOUR

The lint on Rhinzen's robe burned white hot against his eyes like stars against the night. He rubbed his eyes and hoped the redness was fading, even if the headache the morning light gave him was not. The haepthum was still clinging to his senses despite a long and dreamless night.

The students didn't seem to have noticed-which was, Rhinzen thought, both good and bad. Good because it gave them nothing unsavory to report back to the headmaster or their parents. Bad because it had to be obvious that he was riding out something even if they couldn't tell what, and so he was clearly tutoring a bunch of nearsighted morons too easily distracted to notice a damned thing. Infants, he thought, looking out over his students.

A score of children were seated at two long tables-humans and half-elves with spindly legs hardly long enough to touch the ground; a trio of dwarves, still downy-cheeked; a single gnome girl who looked like a very ugly doll; half-orc twins that he expected to fail if they'd just stop passing their exams. Each had a book open in front of him or her, and all twenty foreheads were crinkled in concentration. The susurrations of turned pages and mouthed words grated on the wizard's ears.

"Silent reading, please," he said. The noise stopped, only to begin again a few breaths later.

Rhinzen sighed. When the quarter ended, he would have fulfilled his obligations and could leave these little fools to the next of the House of Wonder's faculty and go back to teaching wizards. Especially now that he'd released the weakest of that bunch.

Still, as tedious as teaching the children of Waterdeep's wealthy-most of them were too young and too untested to show even an inkling of skill with the Art-could be, it wasn't a poor place to firm up connections. In that class alone, he had a handful of patrons' sons and daughters, and a few who could prove more useful still.

His eyes fell on a rather skinny half-elf boy with brown hair and serious eyes, a young man named Antoum Mrays. Rhinzen was terrible at guessing human ages, but the boy was old enough to have gained his first bit of height and lost the paleness of his curls, but not old enough yet to have started growing in earnest. Nothing special in him as far as the Weave was concerned, but his mother was a woman of significant influence.

Nazra Mrays might have been losing what good looks humans claimed she had, but she still knew how to gain a wealthy merchant or lord's ear and purse strings. She was well known for her gregarious nature, and more than once Rhinzen had watched her make a fool of herself and others at parties only to come out of it with a new confidante, a new investor, and a handful of future friends. Appalling, in Rhinzen's opinion, but useful.

Unlike his drunken, nattering mother, Antoum was blessedly quiet and studious. For a roomful of students as quiet as Antoum Mrays, Rhinzen would give his left hand.

He winced at the inopportune thought and rubbed the back of his hand, as if to rub away the memory of the knife.

"Young Master Mrays," he said. The boy's head shot up, with a guilty look on his face. Another appreciable quality in a child: shame. "Come here, please."

The boy shuffled to the front of the room. "Yes, Master Halnian?"

Rhinzen smiled as pleasantly as he could. "I wanted to ask how the warding spells I set up for your mother are working out. How does she find them?"

The boy shifted. "Well, master," he said in a light, unbroken voice.

"No trouble at all?" Rhinzen smiled more broadly. "Nothing that needs to be adjusted? Nothing refreshed?"

"No, master. She says they're very fine indeed."

Rhinzen didn't doubt Nazra had said no such thing to her son. But now the boy would mention it, and later, if anything did happen, it would be in her mind. She would remember Master Halnian had expressed concerns, and the blame would fall a little lighter.

"Well, dear boy, do tell your mother that if anything does not please her, she should let me know at once. Such things often require finessing before they work perfectly-and I wish to be certain they work perfectly."

"Yes, master."

"You may take your seat." Antoum made a little bow and took his place at the end of the table once more.

A very pleasant child, Rhinzen thought. His headache was finally fading and the children were scheduled to study their cantrips for another hour yet. It was as good a time as any to puzzle out Ferremo's counterspell. He drew a sheet of parchment from the sheaf beside him, wet his quill on his tongue, and started the initial calculations.

Whatever the garish assassin and his master were after, it would certainly have to be a great deal of coin to be worth the risks involved. Rhinzen had to admit to himself that his curiosity over Ferremo's mysterious patron drove him mad in the wee hours of the night when the haepthum wouldn't ebb as it once had. A crime lord from Luskan? Or Baldur's Gate? A cleric of some dark and inscrutable god?

There were hints, tantalizing hints. He or she was wealthy, for certain, and Ferremo's master had only entered Waterdeep in the past few days, expecting their plans to be ready-someone who did not want to be in the city. Rhinzen had also seen the way the assassin's face occasionally went ever so slightly slack as they spoke-a sign if Rhinzen had ever seen one that someone was psionically dictating to Ferremo. And their plan, if he had the right of it, was far too complicated for a simple robbery…

Insight jolted Rhinzen's thoughts. Avoiding the city, psionic conversations, attempting a seemingly random robbery in a very pointed fashion. Wealthy. Dangerous. Obsessively secretive. The hints started to fall together, led along by the faintest memory of a word in a book in the dusty recesses of his collection- xorvintaal.

He cleared his throat and twenty little heads jerked up simultaneously, eyes alert. Rhinzen smiled at their sudden attention.

"Who would like to volunteer," he said, "to bring me a book from the library?"

Goodwoman Blacklock,

An acquaintance of mine seeks audience with you in regards to a matter of some urgency. She is

Tennora tapped the end of the stylus against the table. A dragon? A lunatic? Very rude? She glanced back over her shoulder at Nestrix, perusing Tennora's copy of The Draconomicon and making faces at the text. She'd been doing that since the sun had come up, when-after bargaining out loud in her sleep over jewels for a solid quarter hour, she finally bolted awake. When Tennora asked about her dream, she snarled.

It had taken Tennora several hours, but at last she'd managed to fall asleep, arguing with her dead parents in her own thoughts as she did. Awake too early, she was tired and a little edgy.

She is in dire need of your aid, Tennora wrote. Please visit at your earliest convenience. Regards, Tennora Hedare, sixth floor (shoulder). She sprinkled sand over the wet ink, shook it off, and left it to dry a moment.

"Who is that?" Nestrix asked. She pointed her chin at a painting that hung between the door and the comer, a portrait of a woman seated beside a table covered in lilies and vinestars. The woman was slim, with elaborately coiffed hair the color of honey. She wore a peach-colored dress that seemed as if it were made of many layers of spider's silk, and many strands of rosy pearls-all the rage a decade earlier. Her smile, considered alone, was demure, but the look in her eyes made her seem as if she were laughing at the absurdity of the scene.

"My mother," Tennora said. "My, er, dam."

Nestrix considered the painting. "She looks like a thief too."

Tennora pursed her lips and waited a breath before replying, "She was a noblewoman." But she studied the painting, wondering what it was that Nestrix saw in her mother that Tennora had never realized was there. What she'd seen hiding in Tennora.

"A thief in noblewoman's clothing." Nestrix tilted her head. "I suppose that's where you get that look."

"No," Tennora answered.

Looking back in the light of day, there were clues. Her mother had been careful to raise Tennora to survive in her father's family's world. To read their emotions and hide her own. To please them when she could. It became a sort of game, to show one face and hide the other. The Hedares were only a generation past being considered bright-coin interlopers, the ink just drying on their titles. It made them touchy.

She remembered how angry her mother had been when eight-year-old Tennora had shown her how she could make a coin disappear after one of the pantry jacks had shown her some sleight of hand-the beginnings of her love affair with magic. Liferna's face had gone red. She'd demanded to know where Tennora had learned the trick and said it wasn't kind of her to lie to people. Frightened, Tennora had dropped the coin from her sleeve and was in the midst of confessing all, when her father came in from the gardens wanting to know what was happening. Her father had laughed and soothed his wife until she laughed too, but the pantry jack was gone the next day.

Lord Mesial Hedare, a younger son and a decade older than his wife, seemed to have grown tired of those manners and that life. He had always known how to make Liferna laugh, but never how to make her stop worrying that his family was watching.

When Tennora left her aunt and uncle's house, she moved into the God Catcher and, for the first time in her young life, tried to unfasten the tight halter of control she'd put herself into.

And now, she thought, looking up at her mother's portrait, that Liferna's reasons were growing clear,

Tennora knew it had all been for her mother's pride and never for her daughter.

"Well," Nestrix said, "whatever you want to call it, you get your look from your dam. Are we going to find Blacklock now?"

"Yes," Tennora said with a certain sense of relief. She picked up the foolscap. "I wrote a note. My rent is due today, and I'll slip it in with the coins."

Nestrix gave her a dubious look. "That's all? I could do that myself."

"You could not," Tennora said. She opened a drawer in the kitchen and took out the bag she collected her rent in. She slipped the folded note inside and crossed over to the window. Hanging off the window frame-and each window frame along the God Catcher-was a small basket, the perfect size to hold the bag of coins.

"It's easier for her to fly down and get them," Tennora explained. "And that's the best way to get her attention."

Nestrix frowned. "How long will it take?"

"We'll have to wait and see," Tennora said. Aundra was fairly punctual about picking up payments. When she'd deal with the note was another matter-if it was as quickly as she found someone to clean the flue when it needed it, they should hear back by the next morning. Tennora looked up at the sun reflected dully on the slate-colored sphere.

"So until then… we sit here?" Nestrix said in a tone that clearly said she couldn't think of anything less appealing.

Tennora looked Nestrix over-her hair was greasy and tangled, her shift torn and filthy, her skin dull. And the smell… suffice it to say, Nestrix did not smell like a summer storm that morning.

"I have a better idea," Tennora said.

The only thing Tennora missed about living in her family's manor-if she were to be brutally honest-was the bathing chamber. There was no room in the God Catcher for such a space, no servants to stoke the fires and carry the water, no way to cloud the room with perfumed steam without her neighbors all smelling it and complaining.

She usually went to the bathhouse a song's walk away. Clean, reputable, and well run-but the Queen of Hearts bathhouse was also terribly public. Not the sort of place to take Nestrix.

Instead, Tennora borrowed a copper tub from her downstairs neighbor, a heartwarder at the temple of Sune. Tennora then went down to the square and whistled at a quartet of children all carrying buckets. She sent them to the fountain and went back upstairs to stir up the hearth.

Nestrix had another book in her lap. She sat with her chin in her hand and scowled at the text.

"This is ridiculous," she said. "They may as well have printed a children's tale."

"What are you looking at?"

Nestrix held up the book, one of Tennora's older, leather-bound tomes, secreted out of her father's library. There was no title on its cover, but she knew it by sight: A History of Draconic Interactions. "There is a section on the great game. Have you read it?"

"Probably," Tennora said, adding some chunks of wood to the fire. A chimney grate extended up through the lower apartments, and warm air was wafting up from it, making the coals hot. "But not recently. What's the problem?"

"It makes it sound as if every dragon were a taaldarax. And as if xorvintaal were a matter of trying to kill one another. What sort of game would it be if you stood to be killed by a bunch of idiotic wyrmlings every time you made a move?"

"Well… a rather frustrating one, I'd suppose."

"Frustrating and idiotic. There isn't a dragon on Toril stupid enough to play a game like this, which is why most of the things the book says are against the rules. You should tell the writer of this book he's an idiot."

Xorvintaal. Tennora couldn't remember exactly what the book said-only that it claimed that dragons played a sort of game of thrones, trying to outwit one another. The book wasn't the only one that made such a claim; she knew she'd seen mention of the great game elsewhere, and assertions that the game involved the governments of many nations, the clergy of many gods, and gangs and businesses alike. It seemed a bit far-fetched, she had always thought, and most books on the subject of dragons agreed-they were beasts driven by simple desires.

But then there was Nestrix.

"Did you play this game?" she asked Nestrix.

"It is not to my taste," Nestrix said, dropping her eyes to the book again. "But my dam's sire, Chendarixanath, was quite the taaldarax. Very good at what he did. He wanted to bring me under his wing, but I wasn't interested. If I want something, I'd rather take it than have a minion's minion trick some idiot's idiot."

Tennora started to ask what exactly Nestrix's grandfather had been so good at and what xorvintaal had to do with minions and idiots, but Nestrix had sunk back into the book and was no longer listening. Tennora rolled her eyes and hurried back downstairs to collect the water.

Tennora hadn't realized how successfully Nestrix's presence had put her lost studies out of her mind, until Cassian came up, as she was paying her little water leaders their copper nibs, and hailed her.

"Coins bright," he said cheerfully. "How are you this fine morning?"

"Cassian!" Tennora said. "Good morning. Well met."

He regarded the four buckets with a smile. "Thirsty?"

Tennora laughed because he had meant it as a joke, but not because it was funny. "Oh. No, no. I have… a guest. She's been traveling a bit, and now she's in desperate need of a soak."

"Ah. Do you want a hand with these? You can't possibly carry all four yourself." "Yes! That would be wonderful. Thank you." She bent, picked up two buckets, and nudged the door open with her foot. "I was a little worried someone might take them," she lied.

"Always a concern," he said with a pleasant smile. "I didn't see you last night. Did you go home early?"

Tennora's heart sank like a bag of sand. "Yes. That is… Master Halnian decided to discontinue my arrangement."

She heard Cassian come to a stop on the stairs behind her. "Oh," he said. "Oh Tennora, I'm so sorry. Permanently?"

Tennora felt a lump form in her throat. She took a deep breath, but it wouldn't fade. "Unless something changes," she managed, and continued up the stairs.

Nestrix didn't look up as they entered. Tennora set her buckets down in the kitchen and Cassian did the same.

"Nestrix?" Tennora said. "This is a"-she caught herself before she said classmate-"friend of mine,

Cassiari Lafornari. Cassian, this is Nestrix."

Nestrix looked up and speared Cassian with her sapphire gaze. Cassian hesitated, then held out a hand. Nestrix recoiled slightly at the proffered greeting.

Tennora cleared her throat. "She's just settling in. The, um, trip here was rather trying."

"Oh," Cassian said. "Well met. Where have you come to us from?"

Nestrix frowned. "The Calim."

"Almraiven," Tennora added hastily, naming the only human bastion in the Calim. "She came from Almraiven. With a caravan." For a moment Tennora was afraid Nestrix would disagree, but the confusion in the glance she gave Tennora fled. A slow smile curved over her lips.

"Yes," she said, looking back up at Cassian. "A very long, dusty trip. You'll excuse me. I'm tired." "Of course," Cassian said, sounding confused himself. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance." He turned to Tennora. "Do take care of yourself."

"Certainly," she said. She thanked Cassian again and managed to handle herself a little more graciously than usual when he suggested she come along with some of the other apprentices for evenfeast.

"It sounds most entertaining," she said, escorting him out the door. "I'll consider it." He smiled at her, and she melted a little.

When she turned back to the room, Nestrix was smirking at her.

"You lied much better that time," she said. "Is that one your mate?"

"No," Tennora snapped. She heaved one of the buckets over to the iron pot that hung over the fire. "He's just a friend."

"Your smell says otherwise. You may be a dokaal, but the smell of a creature interested in-" "You know, I don't believe that is any of your concern," Tennora said, continuing to pour the water in.

Nestrix stood and crossed over to the table. "Ah! I see. He doesn't want to mate with you."

"That isn't-"

"It's for the best, you know," Nestrix continued. "You could do far better. He's a poor specimen. You could beat him to a bloody pulp if you weren't careful." She looked back at the door. "And he probably wouldn't even notice."

Tennora slammed the bucket down on the table. "Shut up."

Nestrix looked startled. "What?"

"You are not going to sit here and insult my friends, my romantic life, or the way I lie, you understand?" Tennora added the last of the buckets. "And if you don't like it, you can find someone else to put up with you."

She expected to be hit with another tantrum of dragonfear, but instead she found Nestrix regarding her curiously.

"You're very strange, dokaal," Nestrix said. "Everything I said was true-and a compliment besides-and yet you act angry. Except you clearly mean none of what you say. You won't turn me out. You like me."

"Where the Hells do you get that impression?" Tennora fumed.

Nestrix smiled, again with that peculiar fragility. "I've been hated by plenty. You don't hate me. And-lucky you-I'm growing rather fond of you. If I did play xorvintaal like that book says I must, you could be my lovac, that's how well I like you."

Tennora found herself too annoyed to leap on the information, and she folded her arms across her chest and looked away, shaking her head at the fireplace. "Bring those buckets back down to the door and have the water leaders fill them up again."

When the water started to boil, Tennora enlisted Nestrix's help in lifting the heavy cauldron and dumping it into the copper bath along with the cooler water from the children's second delivery.

"What are you making?" Nestrix asked. "Soup?"

"You're going to have a bath," Tennora said.

"In hot water?" Nestrix said dubiously. "I don't think so."

"You'll like it more than you expect, I promise. Get in."

Nestrix shook her head. "Why should I?"

"Because you smell terrible and these are small quarters," Tennora said. "Get out of that shift and get in the tub. We'll all be happier for it."

Nestrix glowered at her for a moment, as if she were daring Tennora to force her. Then she sighed and rolled her eyes. She stripped off the shift with hardly a moment's modesty. Tennora averted her eyes, but couldn't help but notice a scar wide as her thumb that wrapped around her rib cage from the middle of her back to the top of her hip bone.

"Oh my," she said. "What happened to you?"

Nestrix looked down at the scar. "The shell is what I have left of my clutch. That is what I have left of my mate."

"He cut you? With what?"

Nestrix rolled her eyes. "It's a mating scar, dokaal. His claws."

Tennora blushed. "Oh. I… How very interesting. Different customs… so often are."

"If he didn't prove he was strong," Nestrix said, "I would have had no interest in him. You should have seen the scars I left on him. How long do you expect me to sit in this stewpot?"

"Until you're clean." Tennora held out a cake of rose-scented soap and a rag. "Skin, hair, face."

Nestrix looked at the proffered items. "With that?"

"Yes." Tennora rubbed the soap into the rag and shoved it into Nestrix's hands. "When is the last time you bathed?"

Nestrix made a face at her. "It rained yesterday." She rubbed the rag gingerly against her arm. Tennora took it from her and dunked it into the water.

"Look, I understand you're"- new wasn't the right word" unaccustomed to being a human, but for Sune's bright face, you have got to put a little effort into your hygiene. You're going to have to bathe. You're certainly going to have to replace your clothes and wash what you get. And comb your hair. And get some shoes."

"Why?" Nestrix said blankly.

Because people expect it of you, and you expect it of others-Tennora caught herself before she said it, words straight from her mother's mouth.

"Because if you don't, you are going to have a rather hard time of it in Waterdeep. People won't treat you as well if you look like a beggar and smell like a rubbish heap."

"I don't care," Nestrix said, though she started scrubbing her skin as she said it. "I'll have to leave after Blacklock fixes me anyway. Then I can go bathe properly: sand and ocean water." She smiled at her knees. "The salt dries and polishes your scales when you brush it off."

"In the meantime, then," Tennora said. "And clean your hair."

The shift Nestrix had worn was in such terrible shape that Tennora doubted it could survive a washing and come out the other side in one piece. She was a good head shorter than the dragon, but perhaps she had a skirt and blouse that she could part with, at least until Aundra had her say.

Not for the first time in the last day, Tennora wondered what the Hells she had gotten herself into. But-also not for the first time-the thought of the ritual Nestrix had promised soothed her concerns.

She closed her eyes and imagined how focused she would become, how the Weave would flow through her, how surprised Master Halnian would be. Perhaps he would promote her on to her own studies, so she could read spellbooks at her leisure.

And no one would convince her to be an idle noblewoman or confuse her with a thief.

She sorted through her things and found some clean smallclothes, the loose dress and tunic she'd been wearing the day before, and stockings. Boots would be a problem, she thought, looking over as Nestrix rubbed soap between the toes of her rather large and rough foot. It would have to wait until later.

She folded the clothes neatly on the kitchen table, and noticed the pocket of the skirt held something. A folded piece of paper-she couldn't recall where she'd picked it up for a moment.

Then she remembered the half-orc in the stormcloak from Mardin's, the one who seemed keen to warn her of a coming storm or some such nonsense. She sighed again and unfolded the leaflet, wondering which god or exarch he was so keen to sell.

And found a fair likeness of Nestrix looking back at her.

Crimes, the leaflet read, murder of Ardusk Nagaenil, a wizard of Cormyr; theft, burglary, fraud.

The blood drained from Tennora's face. She set the skirt on the table, still staring at the leaflet.

"Why are you making that face?" Nestrix said. "What's wrong?"

Tennora looked up. "You're wanted for murder."

"Oh," Nestrix said, returning to scrubbing the soap into her hair.

"Did you really kill this man?"

"Yes," Nestrix said blithely. She paused a moment. "Wait, who does it say I killed?"

Tennora wet her lips. "A wizard of Cormyr. His name was Ardusk Nagaenil."

"Oh him. Yes, then." She went back to scrubbing her hair. "Most definitely."

A horrible feeling writhed in Tennora's stomach. "You had to ask who. How many have you killed?"

"Ever?"

"Ever."

Nestrix gave a jerky shrug. "I don't know. It seems vulgar to keep a count."

Tennora fell backward into the chair beside the table. Her ears felt curiously numb and her head felt loose. Nestrix looked her over.

"Are you all right?"

"No," Tennora managed. "You're a murderer."

"You are getting upset over nothing. I am allowed to defend myself."

"No! Not so many times that you can't remember!"

Nestrix gave her a confused look. "I don't know what you're so upset about this time either. You knew I was a dragon. I'm more prone than most to… defending myself." She smiled wickedly and ducked her head under to rinse the soap from her hair. "Anyway, that one was after I was changed. I asked him for help, and he tried to take advantage of me. First as a mate, then as a… how did he put it? An object of interest-he wanted to throw spells at me and see what happened. So I knocked him over, took one of his retorts, smashed it on the table, and cut his throat with the glass. What was I supposed to do?"

"Leave!" Tennora spluttered. "Disarm him and get out!"

Nestrix made a face. "That seems like the same amount of effort."

"It's not about effort!"

Nestrix shrugged again. "Well, no use wringing your hands over it. He's dead and that's that. They should be happy. He was disgusting." She looked up at Tennora and her eyes took on the faint glow they had before. "Are you thinking of turning me over to someone?" she said sweetly-too sweetly. It made Tennora's blood curdle.

"I never said that."

"You could," she said. "Does that one say I'm mad?"

It did. Just under the listing of the crimes. Spellscarred. Afflicted with madness and delusions. Do not approach alone. She's not a dragon, it said between the lines. She's simply insane.

Nestrix was staring up at her, but the glow had faded. "You could," she said again, but there was no threat there. "If they catch you helping me, I don't think it will go well for you. Not at all."

Tennora scrambled for something to say, but her mind was occupied with thoughts of escape. She could run, now-while Nestrix was naked and wet-and what could Nestrix do? She could wait until Nestrix went to sleep, or slip out on any number of errands. She could find the Watch and tell them everything, or track down the half-orc in the cloak and give him the key to her apartment. She could stop everything. She should.

But she wasn't sure she would.

Nestrix raised her eyebrows. "Do you think I'm mad?"

"Not a bit," Tennora said, lightly as she could. "Are you?"

"A little," Nestrix admitted. "A century is a long time to be a dokaal. Are you going to turn me in?"

Tennora watched her for a long moment and then shook her head. She still wanted that ritual. She still wanted Nestrix to be real.

"Good," Nestrix said. She stood, water sluicing off her smooth body. "I believe I smell like the soap now. What am I supposed to do about the wet?"