The Shattered Mask

Chapter 5

Shamur pulled on the cabinet door and was not surprised to find it locked, Thamalon being the prudent soul he was. She picked up one of the long pins she'd bent into something vaguely resembling a proper thief s tool and set to work. Since her interlude with Audra Sweet-dreams the night before, Shamur had been hard-pressed to contain her fury whenever she encountered her husband. Her mind boiled with fancies of bloody retribution, and her hand fairly twitched with the impulse to drive a blade into his flesh. Yet at the same time, some small part of her, a part that recalled the sweetness she had occasionally discovered in his arms and the way he'd gobbled and made faces to amuse their infant children, still sought to avoid the confrontation to come. She despised that weak, equivocating portion of her nature, and to silence it, she'd crept to Thamalon's receiving room to search for more evidence of his guilt, for all that she'd proved it beyond a doubt already.

It had been obliging of him, she sardonically reflected, to absent himself from home tonight. He'd claimed he had to make sure that one of his merchantmen was loaded and ready to sail with the morning tide, but she suspected he was visiting one of his doxies. Perhaps wide-eyed little Larajin had begun to bore him.

The parlor smelled of lemon oil, a testament to the diligence of the servants. Since Shamur had only bothered to light a single sconce, it was rather dark, and certain of the shapes around her, like the white bearskin rug from the Great Glacier and the harp that Thamalon vowed he would learn to play someday, looked strange and subtly unreal swimming in the gloom.

All was silent, inside the room and beyond. Shamur knew that elsewhere in the mansion, a handful of guards and lackeys were performing various tasks while the rest of the household slumbered, but she couldn't hear them up here on the second floor.

Then something did make a noise. Just as the cabinet yielded to her efforts, the latch securing the door to the passage clicked. The brass handle turned.

Shamur fleetingly considered hiding, but wasn't sure she could manage it in the split second remaining, not with the sconce burning, anyway. So she simply closed the cabinet, scooped up her makeshift lockpicks, and concealed them beneath the blue sussapine sleeve drooping over her hand. An instant later Erevis stepped through the door.

The gaunt major-domo had evidently come inside rather recently, for he still wore a dark gray cloak which, though woven of good-quality broadcloth, hung about his gangly form like a winding-sheet. The garments beneath the mantle, at least what Shamur could see of them, were equally unattractive: subfusc, devoid of ornament, and generally funereal.

Erevis was not a demonstrative man. Indeed, Shamur believed he prided himself on his composure. Still, his deep-set, melancholy eyes widened slightly in surprise when he beheld her. For though the matriarch of Storm-weather Towers presumably had the right to visit her husband's apartments, she rarely chose to exercise that prerogative even when Thamalon was there.

"Good evening, my lady," the butler said.

"Erevis," she replied. "You've been out of doors, I see. A night on the town?" Not that she cared where the chief steward had been, but she'd rather ask questions than give him an opening to do the same.

"No, my lady," he said. "I couldn't sleep, so I decided to walk the house and grounds, just to make sure that everything is in order and the night staff are performing their duties."

"Commendable," Shamur said, "but I hope now that you've verified that all is as it should be, you'll be able to rest. Sleep well." Her tone, though cordial enough, made it clear that he was dismissed.

He hesitated, then said, "Thank you, my lady. Good night." He turned toward the door, she started to relax, and then, in his graceless way, he lurched back around. "Is there something I could help you with?"

Shamur felt a pang of annoyance, though, with the ease of long practice, she kept any trace of it from showing. She should have known she wouldn't be able to rid herself of Erevis so easily. Though he'd always served her well, he was ultimately Thamalon's man, not hers, and, knowing something of the cool relations between his lord and lady, he was reluctant to leave her here alone. Mask only knew what he thought she was up to, but if she wanted him to go away, and to refrain from informing Thamalon of her visit later on, she'd have to disarm his suspicions with a persuasive excuse for her presence.

"I'm fine, thank you," she said. "I'm looking for something, that's all."

Erevis nodded. "I thought as much, my lady. Lord Uskevren has an abundance of drawers, shelves, chests, cabinets, and armoires, here in this suite and elsewhere in the mansion, and if it isn't presumptuous of me to say so, I probably have a better sense of what he keeps where than you do. If you'll permit me to assist you, I may be able to shorten your search."

"That's kind of you," she said, "but I can manage."

"Will you at least tell me what it is? Perhaps I've seen it lying about."

She heaved a sigh. "Moon above, you're stubborn. And you must think I'm acting very strangely."

"No, my lady. Such a notion never entered my mind."

She smiled. "You're tactful as well. All right, since you leave me little alternative, I'm going to tell you what I'm looking for, and then you'll comprehend why I need to search by myself. I wouldn't confide in most people, but I know I can depend on your discretion."

"Of course, my lady."

"Many years ago, when we first were married, Tha-malon gave me a love token. A tenday ago, we argued rather vehemently, and I threw the gift back in his face."

"Ah," Erevis said.

Shamur was a bit bemused that the butler didn't seem surprised by the thought of his reserved, dignified mistress flinging objects angrily about like a fishwife in a pantomime. Perhaps all the servants imagined that Lord and Lady Uskevren were given to furious rows whenever closeted together.

"Well," she continued, "now I'd like the object back. Sometimes… sometimes Thamalon and I have trouble expressing our fonder feelings to one another, but if he sees his present in my hand, he'll understand that I want to mend our quarrel."

Erevis frowned. "Yes, my lady, but I still don't quite grasp why you can't tell me what the token is."

"It's a… sort of toy intended for private moments," she said, "and if you discovered precisely what, then you'd know rather more about my personal inclinations than I would prefer."

"Oh," he said, and then his dark, deep-set eyes flew wide open. "Oh! Yes, of course I don't want to know… uh, that is, I mean to say, I understand the difficulty. I understand, and with your permission, I'll withdraw."

"Good night, Erevis," she said.

She managed to hold in a grin until he closed the door behind him, but for all her finely honed skill at dissembling, it was hard, for she'd never seen the sober major-domo so flustered. She was confident he'd never speak of their embarrassing conversation to anyone, especially Thamalon.

But her mirth couldn't endure for long, not considering the nature of her errand. By the time she reopened the cabinet, she was frowning once again.

She searched the parlor and wardrobe without result. That left the bedchamber, one of the few rooms where Thamalon's enthusiasm for things elven had been allowed to influence the decor; a colorful tapestry, the weaver's panoramic, and, Shamur suspected, entirely fanciful depiction of life on the elf island of Evermeet, adorned one of the walls. A casement opened onto a small balcony, and an ornately carved walnut bed even larger than Shamur's own took up fully a quarter of the inlaid floor. A long sword and target hung beside the headboard, so that if danger ever threatened in the dead of night, Thamalon could arm himself the instant he awoke.

Always ready for anything, Shamur thought. But, husband, you won't be ready for me. She continued her search, and found what she was seeking shortly thereafter.

Thamalon kept a small chest beneath the bed, a shabby, battered leather box he'd carried about in those desperate, starveling days when he'd struggled to rebuild the Uskevren fortune. These days, he used it primarily as a repository for date-nut bread, almond cookies, a silver flask of brandy, a book or two, and other items he might suddenly crave when already comfortably ensconced beneath his silk sheets, furs, and eiderdowns.

Or at least Shamur assumed that was the box's primary purpose, for unlike many of the drawers and cabinets, it wasn't locked. Indeed, infrequent guest in this chamber though she had been, over the years she'd watched him root around in it half a hundred times. Had Errendar not schooled her to overlook no possibility when conducting a search, she might not even have bothered to check inside it.

When she did, the flask was there at the very bottom of the chest, green, delicate, whorled, and unmistakably one of Audra Sweetdreams's bottles. An inch of clear fluid sat in the bottom.

For a moment Shamur didn't know what she felt, and then the rage came, black, cold, and overwhelming. She'd imagined she hated Thamalon before, but it was nothing compared to the loathing that gripped her now. The monster had kept the poison-the poison with which, he believed, he had once tried to murder her-under the very bed where the two of them had lain together and quite possibly conceived their children. Had its proximity amused him? Had he laughed every time he'd opened the chest and given her the chance to spy the emerald glass glinting at the bottom? Had it excited him to know that if he wished, he could caress or kiss the venom onto her lips as she slept?

She forswore any further hesitation or second thoughts. Thamalon was going to die, and before the month was out. All she needed was a plan.

She pondered for a few moments, until her idly roving eyes fell on the tapestry of Evermeet again. Then a notion came to her, and her lips stretched into a feral grin.