Downshadow (14 page)

“You’re back early,” the halfling said when he came through the open window. She had risen from her cot, a towel wrapped around her little body, but she didn’t look sleepy.

“Did I wake you?” Kalen took care not to hit the strange woman’s head against the sill.

“I never sleep when you’re—” Cellica’s eyes widened. “Who’s that?”

“No idea.”

Kalen strode into Cellica’s room and laid his burden on rhe halfling’s cot.

“She’s…” The halfling trailed off, touching the sleeping woman’s cheek. “She’s bone cold! Out! Out! I’ll take care of this.”

Kalen felt Cellica’s will take hold of him and wandered out while she laid blanket after blanket over the sleeping woman. The stranger’s uncertain frown became a blissful smile.

Gods, Kalen felt tired. His limbs ached and his armor stank of sweat. The girl was light, but he’d carried her all the way across the city. In that time, her azure tattoos had all but disappeared. Her breathing seemed normal, and she slept peacefully.

“Why lasses run around the night streets naked in this day and age, I’ll never understand,” Cellica said. “Younglings! Hmpf.”

“Mmm,” Kalen returned. He was rubbing his eyes. Gods, he was tired.

“Who is she ?” the halfling asked. Rather than being upset, she was inspecting the woman critically, fascinated; “Your hunting extends to naked ladies in addition to villains and dastards?”

Kalen murmured a reply that did not befit a paladin. He traipsed off to his cot, shedding his leathers as he went, and slumped into bed. He was asleep two breaths later.

It only briefly occurred ro him ro wonder where he’d left his watchsword.

Fayne slammed her fist on the table in the little chamber in Downshadow.

“I should have known.” She spat in most unladylike fashion on the array of cards. “Useless. Utterly useless. I should have known you were a perverse little fraud, after you fed me all the drivel about the doppelganger conspiracy.”

B’Zeer the Seer—the tiefling who ran this small, illicit “diviner’s council” in a hidden chamber in Downshadow, of which only those of questionable honor knew—spread his many-ringed hands. “Divination is an imprecise art, my sweet Satin, and requires much patience.”

“Oh, ore shit,” Fayne said. “Divination hasn’t worked right in Waterdeep for a hundred years.” She shoved her scroll of notes in her scrip satchel. “I don’t know what I was thinking, coming to a pimply faced voyeur like you.”

B’Zeer ran his fingers over the cards and furrowed his brow. His milky white eyes, devoid of pupils, scanned the tabletop, and he scratched at one of his horns. “Now wait, I think I see aught, now. Something to do with your father … your need to please him… perhaps in—”

“I don’t need, some peeping, pus-faced pervert to tell me about

my father, thanks,” Fayne said. “I was asking about my dreams—you

know, the girl in blue fire?”

“Ah yes, B’Zeer sees and understands. I believe—”

“Wirh all due respect—and that’s none—piss off and die. I have

business to attend to this night, and a tale for rhe Minstrel to deliver

to print.”

Fayne exploded from her chair, but a hand clamped around her wrist. She looked down, eyes narrow. “Let go of me, or I will end you.”

“This may be a touch indelicate, what I ask now,” the seer said. “But what of my coin?”

Fayne glared. “No hrasting service, no hrasting coin.” “Call it an entertainment fee,” he said. “We all have to eat.” “Piss,” Fayne said, “off.”

He moved faster than a shriveled little devil man should be able to, darting forward and seizing her throat to thrust her against the chamber wall. She saw steel in his other hand.

“You give me my coin,” he said, “or I’ll take it out of you elsewise.”

She should have expected this. Most women in Downshadow were of negotiable virtue. It was simply part of living coin-shy. Particularly amusing were those monsters that took the form of women and revealed themselves only in a passionate embrace. Justice, Fayne thought.

She smiled at B’Zeer dangerously.

“Hark, Seer—it isn’t bound to happen,” she said. “I think, if you read your destiny, you’ll see only you… alone but for your hand.”

“So you say, birch,” rhe tiefling said. “But let us see what—uuk!”

The seer choked and coughed, grasping at himself where she had driven a knife through his bowels. Blackness poured down his legs. He mumbled broken words in his fiendish language—harsh, guttural sounds—but he could summon no magic with his life spilling down his groin.

“If it gives you any comfort,” she said as he sank to the floor, “I did warn you.”

Then she left him in his small nook in Downshadow, which to him had become a shrinking, blurry world of heaving breaths, pain, and—quite later—wet darkness.

As dawn rose, Araezra sat alone in her private room at the barracks. She slapped the broadsheet down on the table and leaned back in her chair, fuming.

“Watch fails to apprehend vigilante in Castle Ward,” noted the Mocking Minstrel, this particular tale written by the bard Satin Rutshear. “Clumsy fool Talanna Taenfeather injured in pursuit while narcissistic superior, Araezra Hondyl, parades half-naked through streets.”

Araezra groaned. The emphasized words were underlined in a girlish hand.

“Open Lord Neverember calls Araezra’s actions ‘justified,’ saying ‘I’m sure she acted for the best’ … in protecting his bedmate interests in the Watch,” she read. “Neverember was later seen furtively arriving at Taenfeather’s bedside in the temple of Torm, protected by cloaked men.”

Then: “For misuse of city taxes to support nonregulated religious bodies, see over”

Araezra rubbed her eyes. The quotations were accurate if slanted, and the additions infuriated her. Lord Neverember and Talanna’s energetic flirtations were well known, but had never been put quite this way. The casual cruelty left a foul taste in Araezra’s mouth. She stabbed her nails into her palms hard.

And of course, Satin quoted Lord Bladderblat, the broadsheet’s ubiquitous parody noble.

“On young Hondyl’s competency as a valabrar, Lord Bladderblat calls Hondyl ‘too pretty for a thinking woman, but she’s got assets; better she find a blade for ‘twixt her rhighs than one for her belt— though she can wear the belt to my bed, if she likes.’ “

That Araezra was presented as the bedmate of a fiction rankled.

And being described as “young”—true, she was just over twenty, but her rank came from her success, not her beauty.

This wasn’t new to her, this ridicule. She’d often tried to track down “Satin Rutshear,” but it was just a fancyname, of course. The Minstrel protected its own, and the Lords’ command against punishing broadsheet writers and printers stayed Araezra’s hand. Violating it would have led to her discharge—but it would have made her feel much better.

“Watch keeps silent on continued threat,” Satin went on. “Hondyl has no comment.”

In that private, unheard, and thus safe moment, Araezra finally let vent. “Mayhap you might ask, Lady Rutshear,” she cried. “I’d give you a comment, well and good—then twist your snobby head off your shoulders, you little whore!”

She balled up the Minstrel and hurled it across the office into the spittoon.

She felt better.

Then she set to repressing her anger into a tight, simmering ball.

Burn her eyes and her waggling tongue, but this “Satin” had the right of it—there was no place for screaming, hysterical lasses in the Guard, particularly not those ranked as highly as she.

This story—and the whole situation it cat-raked with such fiendish glee—was bad enough. If she was going to be humiliated and reprimanded for abandoning her patrol, endangering her men, and landing her second in a bed at the temple of Torm, then at least she could do it with some dignity. The judgmental eyes of the rest of the Watch and Guard, the disapproving glare of Commander Jarthay—they were bad enough.

And where in the Hells was Kalen? He hadn’t appeared for duty this morn, and she could really use his shoulder to—

Araezra dropped her face into her hands. She wouldn’t cry—she couldn’t. Crying was for weak-willed women, and she must be strong—for Talanna, if for nothing else.

Don’t think about Talanna, fading in and out of life under the hands of those priests.

She looked instead at the sword on the table, and let its silvery masterwork distract her.

It was a bastard sword, well and good, but deceptively light and sharp. Magical, she knew—it had glowed fiercely silver in Shadowbane’s hand, and retained this glow even after he’d left it. Now, sitting cool on her desk, it radiated power at a touch—but balanced power.

A sword is neither good nor evil, she thought, but that its wielder uses it for either.

Araezra looked in particular at the sigil carved into its black hilt: an upright gauntlet with a stylized eye in its open palm. She’d thought at first it was the gauntlet of Torm, but an hour in the room of records had shown her otherwise: it was the symbol of a long-dead church—that of Helm, God of Guardians.

That god—a deity neither inherently evil nor good—had faded since the old world, like many across Faerűn. She’d read one story of his death at the hands of the then-god of justice, Tyr—who had also perished in the last century. That hardly made sense to her: Why would two such gods make war? And why were they not left to resr?

She found this sword a mystery, a relic of an ancient past. Its symbol—in particular, the eye—stared at her wryly, as though amused by its secrets.

She thought about the gauntlets on her own breasrplate—five, for valabrar. Here was only one, for the rank of trusty. But, she noted, the gauntlet adorned both sides of the hilt, making two, for vigilant. And Helm had been called the Vigilant One.

Araezra thought of Kalen, who wore two gauntlets. Something about a ring he wore…

But that was ridiculous—with his worsening illness, Kalen could hardly walk fast, much less run. He trained, she knew, and kept his body in excellent condition to stave off the illness he’d told her about—but surely he couldn’t outpace Talanna Taenfeather.

She was startled out of her thoughts when a loud knock came at the door. She wiped at her cheeks and was aghast that her hand came away damp. “Come,” she said.

The door opened and Bors Jarthay glided into the room, his

face solemn. Standing at attention, Araezra felt a chill of terror and grief.

“Talanna,” Araezra said. “How—how is she?”

Bors narrowed his eyes. “Well, Rayse—I don’t know the best way to say this…”

Tears welled up in Araezra’s eyes and her lip rrembled.

“She’ll be…” Bors whispered, “perfectly well.”

Araezra’s heart skipped a beat. “Wait—what?”

“Healing went fine, and she’ll be well,” the commander said. “A little wrathful, but generally her precocious, loud, and—ow!” Araezra slapped him. “Heh. Suppose I deserved that.”

Araezra slapped him again. “Gods burn you! Why do you have to do that?”

He smiled gently. “All’s well, Rayse.”

“You monstrous oaf!” She wound back to strike again. “Damn you to all the Hells!”

Bors caught her wrist, pulled her to him, and hugged her. “All’s well,” he whispered.

Stunned, she put her arms around him and buried her head in his chest. Tears came—thankful, angry tears—and she didn’t stop them.

“You ever want to talk, lass,” he said. “I’m here.”

“Just… another moment.” Then she glared up at him. “And don’t think this means anything. With all due respect, you’re still a boor and won’t be seeing me naked any time soon.”

Bors sighed. “Mores the pity.”

He hugged her tighter.

Ralen woke with the kind of splitting headache that comes after one has slept only moments in the space of several hours. He felt as though he’d never bedded down at all. His nose was stuffy and he coughed and sneezed to clear it.

Worse, he was numb all over. He allowed himself one horrified breath before he tried to move his senseless hands. With some hesitation, they rose, and he pressed them to his cheeks. “Thank the gods,” Kalen whispered.

Cellica srood in the room, a bucket of water in her hands. She looked a touch disappointed, and moved the water behind her back. “Well!” she said. “About time.”

Kalen groaned.

“Get up, Sir Slug, and come have aught to eat. Our guest has been at the stew all morning, and if you don’t make haste, it might be gone.” As he started to sit up, she glanced down, then back up at his face, unashamed. “And put those on.” She pointed at a pair of black hose, crumpled at the foot of his bed.

Kalen realized he was naked, which made sense. He hadn’t donned aught last night.

“Try and be presentable for our guest.”

“Guest?” he managed as he plucked up the hose, but the halfling was already gone.

The highsun light filtered through his shuttered window, and deep shadows undercut his eyes in the mirror. His wiry chest, with its familiar scars, gleamed back at him. Stubble gone to an early gray studded his chin and neck. Generally, he looked and felt terrible. Pushing himself too hard, he decided.

“Gods,” he murmured.

He paused at the door to his bedchamber and fought down a wave

of dizziness. His legs felt beyond exhausted. He still hadn’t recovered from his flight from Talanna and Araezra.

“Fair morn, Risen Sun,” said Cellica when Kalen staggered out to morningfeast—or highsunfeast. She turned to the table with a brilliant smile. “Myrin? This is Kalen.”

Kalen realized someone else was in the room—a tawny-skinned young woman who couldn’t have seen more than twenty winters, with shoulder-length hair of a hue like cut sapphire, who seemed more bone than flesh. He remembered her now—the woman in the alley from the night before.

“Oh!” She blushed, casting her eyes away from his bare chest.

Kalen grunted something like “well met”—which sounded more like “wuhlmt.”

Myrin wore a ratty, sweat-stained tunic and a pair of loose breeches—his, Kalen realized. Being far too big, they made her look even more frail than when he had carried her home.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Cellica said to Kalen. “None of my things would fit her.”