Lady Leona’s voice rang out from the wedding table. “Attention, everyone. Lords and ladies.” The tent quieted to a low hum, and the mother of the bride continued. “I am very pleased to introduce Olive Ruskettle, master bard and songsmith. Mistress Ruskettle has composed an ode to commemorate the joining of our two families.”
Polite applause followed, and then people were still again.
Alias decided to take advantage of the temporary emptiness of the doorway to escort Dragonbait back to their room. She grabbed a handful of the baggy motley and began tugging him away from the crowd. Whimpering slightly, he pointed at Olive.
“I think he wants to hear the bard sing,” Akabar said.
Alias sighed in resignation.
Dragonbait folded his arms and tilted his head, the very archetype of a music connoisseur. Except for being a lizard.
Ruskettle began strumming the yarting. The opening chords sounded to Alias like those the bard had used to taunt the dragon three days ago.
Though the halfling sang well and her tune was catchy, conversations continued about the edges of the tent, out of earshot of the hostess.
Alias caught the words of a nasal voice. “As I said to Sir Rafner, taxes. Raise taxes.”
“She seems awfully short for a bard,” remarked one of the bride’s girlfriends, “but I wouldn’t know good music if it attacked me in the dark.”
“Not much, just fourteen or fifteen mugs,” a drunken voice insisted from the ale table.
“Giogi, do it for me, please?”
For gods’ sake, Giogi, Alias thought, would you just get it over with?
Giogioni Wyvernspur sighed. Minda would not quit asking him to repeat the imitation until he complied. He should never have done it for her in the first place. Giogi was not a young man of much sense, but he had enough to realize that his cousin Freffie’s wedding reception was not the sort of place one did imitations of one’s sovereign king. His only hope lay in getting it over with quickly and quietly.
Alias heard a young man’s voice reply, “All right.”
“Hooray, Giogi!” the woman cheered.
“Finally,” Alias mumbled.
“Let me gather myself,” Giogi said. Then his voice changed, becoming deeper, huskier, masking the squeakiness of youth and taking on a mountain lander’s burr.
“My Cormytes. My People. As your king, as King Azoun, and as King Azoun IV, I must say that the need to raise your taxes is a result of the direct depravations of …” The voice dropped to a whisper. “Vangy, who is being depraved this time?”
Alias’s breath quickened. She focused her attention on Giogi’s altered voice. To her, the rest of the chatter died away, leaving only the husky tone. A powerfully sinister feeling swept over her, leaving her dizzy. The crowd was suffocating her. Her arm began to ache miserably. Nearby she heard a growl.
Panic rose in Alias. Her body was moving of its own accord, just as it had when she nearly killed Winefiddle. She tried to hold herself still, fight the urge to lunge at the Wyvernspur noble, but without success. Far off she heard women screaming and men shouting. Something nearby was burning.
Standing right beside Alias, Akabar felt her stiffen. He noticed the smell of smoke almost immediately. With horror he watched the glove that covered her tattoos blister and burn away. Then he heard Alias snarl like a dog, and saw her face contort into a mask of rage.
Dragonbait turned to look at her in confusion. When Akabar laid a hand on her left arm to offer his assistance, she shoved both man and beast away with unbelievable strength, propelling herself in the opposite direction. With murder in her eyes, Alias leaped onto Giogi.
She landed on top of him with a scream, her hands about his throat in an instant. She might have wrung his neck, but she caught sight of a long, sharp knife used to cut pies and cake. She reached for it, but lost her grip on the young man as she did so. Giogi managed to twist away from her, and she plunged the pastry blade into the table where he’d been pinned only a moment before.
“I say, I wasn’t that bad,” the green-and-gold-clad noble sputtered. “I didn’t want to do it, really. It’s just that Minda kept begging me, you know?”
Alias yanked the blade from the tabletop and drew a fresh bead on her target. Giogi backpedaled furiously. Women screamed and several Wyvernspur menfolk, seeing their kin beseiged, shouted a battle cry and moved in on the attacker. Alias kept them all at bay with the knife. One cocky fellow got too close and received a slash across his cheek to show for it.
Several of the groom’s relatives, faced with a mad assassin, fled the area as quickly as possible, leaving the tent sides flapping where they’d torn up the stakes.
Olive, her ode interrupted, her audience gone, moved toward the fight. She helped Akabar up from the ground as she demanded, “Just what does she think she’s doing?”
“I think the sigils,” Akabar explained in a whisper, “are trying to make her kill that man because he sounds like the king of Cormyr.”
Olive glanced over at Giogi, who was now crawling along the ground. “But he doesn’t look anything like Azoun.”
“The sigils don’t know that,” Akabar pointed out, wracking his brain for some way to put the warrior woman out of commission without injuring her too severely.
A northerner of huge girth tried tackling her from behind. Alias pivoted, jammed an elbow into the man’s belly, and backhanded him in the face with the handle of the knife. Bleeding from the nose, the man fell into the crowd.
Having lost her target, Alias’s eyes swept through the tent. She spotted Giogi cowering beneath the punch table. She dove for him just as he managed to scramble to the other side.
Dimswart, realizing that it would not look good if one of his clients murdered one of his new in-laws, grabbed Akabar’s shoulder. “Do something,” he demanded.
Akabar nodded his head, but he hadn’t prepared any magical spells that would be useful at a wedding celebration-turned-brawl.
Olive seized control of the situation by grabbing Dragonbait. “We have to stop her!”
The lizard cocked his head in confusion.
In a flash of inspiration Akabar cried, “Stop her, before she gets hurt!”
Dragonbait nodded. Dodging the confused, fleeing guests, he tackled the central pole of the tent. The huge beam slid across the grass, pulling the walls up and the roof down. Stakes ripped from the ground, and the pole toppled over with a thud, bringing acres of tent down and putting an end to the pandemonium with a great whoosh.
8
The Sigils
Akabar was one of the first to emerge from under the cloth, his red and white silk robes only slightly stained with grass. He immediately scanned the area for Alias’s figure, but his view of the grounds was blocked by the growing throng of refugees. He waited by the edge of the collapsed structure, assisting others to their feet and hoping the swordswoman would appear.
When Giogi emerged from beneath the tent, he kept crawling until he bumped into the knees of a dowager Wyvernspur.
“Giogioni, you are a fool,” the lady declared. “This civil unrest is a direct consequence of your open disrespect for our sovereign. I’ve warned you time and again that you were courting disaster.”
“Yes, Aunt Dorath.”
“Get off your knees, you idiot.”
“Yes, Aunt Dorath.”
The bride and groom and their attendants rolled out from the tent, giggling hysterically. Lady Leona emerged near Dragonbait, looking less than amused. Upon seeing whose scaly hand had helped her rise, the woman jerked her arm back while blasting the Turmishman with a withering glare. She looked about impatiently for Sir Dimswart.
When the sage finally appeared, empty mug in hand, Leona drew him aside. In quiet but threatening tones she declared, “I will not have Gaylyn’s wedding day ruined. I am taking our guests into the garden to continue with the celebration. You must deal with this … situation.”