The shop doorbell tinkled merrily as the heavily scented merchant’s wife sailed out, pleased with her purchase.
The alchemist sat back with a sigh, glad to see the back of her. Sixteen vials sampled, none chosen, and an ointment that had been buried on a high back shelf beneath three seasons’ dust preferred instead. By a woman who seemed to think it was highsun and not the middle of the night when weary men must be roused from their beds to serve her. Gods-cursed highnoses…
He set to work tidying up. “If I didn’t need so stlarned much coin just to live in this noble-infested city…”
A sympathetic chuckle from behind the curtain over his shoulder reminded Sraunter that he wasn’t alone.
The fear that never left him reminded him that this particular guest was never to be kept waiting. He hastened off his stool and through the curtain.
“S-sorry, lord,” he stammered. “I-”
“I know you are, Sraunter. No matter, and no apology needed. Commerce must come first. Not to mention the damage to your trade if Nechelseiya Sammartael thought you’d slighted her. Word of it would be all over Suzail before sunrise.”
“Ah, indeed,” Sraunter agreed, leading the way past the man who’d conquered his mind so easily three nights back, to reveal what until then had been his greatest secret.
Alchemists were more feared than loved, and if they desired long careers, they needed powerful secret weapons. These were to be his latest-if he ever learned some manner of commanding them. Until then, they could at least serve as a deadly trap against thieves. Or so he’d schemed, before Manshoon had stepped into his life.
In his fearful haste, Sraunter had some trouble with the locks, fumbling with the chains and the dummy padlock. Twice he dropped the key that opened the hidden coffer that held the real key.
Manshoon smiled an easy smile. “There’s no particular haste, diligent alchemist. Unless, of course, Goodwife Sammartael takes it into her head to return for something else.”
That horrible thought made Sraunter drop the padlock on his toe.
His involuntary roar and hopping ended as swiftly as he could master himself. He was still wincing, teeth clenched, as he put his shoulder to the door and flung it wide in a loud rattle of chains.
His guest stayed right where he was.
“There’s no particular need to move them, is there?”
“N-no, lord. None at all.”
Sraunter hastened into his strongroom and across to the cage Manshoon had come to see. His guest could take his home and shop and everything in it-blackfire, his very mind! — whenever the whim took him, after all.
Face it, he was a slave already, and slaves enjoyed better lives when their masters were content.
Sraunter undid his special knot and drew back the nearest half of the hide cover. The five occupants of the cage flew in smooth unison to its revealed front, the better to hover there and peer out through the bars.
Five little spheres, each the size of a blacksmith’s fist. Beholderkin, their tiny eyestalks like so many writhing worms, eager to gaze upon something and do it harm, hissing in malevolence.
And falling silent as the smiling man just beyond the doorway thrust his mind into all of theirs at once, overwhelming them as easily as he’d humbled Sraunter.
That terrible smile grew.
“Acceptable, Sraunter, most acceptable. Five little flying steeds, whenever I need them. Release them.”
“R-release them?”
“At once. Give them the freedom of your strongroom. What with all the locks and chains, you use it seldom, do you not?”
“Well, yes, but-”
Sraunter found that the objection he’d been going to raise had vanished from his mind, and his astonished anger with it. A malicious glee rose in him, twisting his dour face into a grin that sought to mirror the smile on his guest’s face.
Oh, Watching Gods Above, what will become of me? he thought.
“The time for all ‘buts’ is long past, Sraunter,” Manshoon purred. “You’ll see the coming sunrise in as much health as you enjoy now, believe me-and you can believe me. I am no courtier of Cormyr nor yet one of its noblemen. My word means something.”
He pointed past the cage with a languid hand. “Yon window opens readily? No? Ah, but I see its panes can be broken should I ever have need of haste. Good. My steeds can get out that way if need be.”
“Need of haste?”
“Such a need is, I’ll grant, doubtful, now that Elminster’s dead; but, one never knows, good saer alchemist, one never knows. During my overlong lives these realms have taught me that much, at least.”
“Overlong lives?”
“You make an admirable echo, good Sraunter, but someone-nay, several someones-have espied your lit lamps and approach your shop entrance. So open the cage and close this door. Now.”
The next few moments were a whirlwind of panting activity for Immaero Sraunter, and his accustomed feelings of grim superiority and darkly sinister accomplishment had quite vanished by the time he found himself puffing and panting his way back through the curtain to blink at the customers shuffling into the gloom of his shop.
Manshoon had vanished sometime during that whirlwind, Sraunter knew not quite where, but he was uncomfortably aware that five beholderkin that could slay him or almost any Suzailan with casual ease roamed free in his strongroom-where he kept his poisons, his best drinkables, and most of his coin.
Not that this undesirable state of affairs would continue for long, if his suspicions were correct. And when it came to matters of personal misfortune for Immaero Sraunter, they usually were.
The boldest shopper’s request struck his ears, then, and he heard himself answering it with the ease of long habit.
“Dragonmere eel essence, Goodwife? Well, there’s not a lot of call for that, particularly at this time of night, but-”
Arclath’s face hardened. “Trust? Trust? Hah, you don’t fool me, wizard! It’s you in there, Elminster, and you have my lady ruined or bound silent. She’s a mask you put on when you seek to deceive me!”
He sliced the air with his sword, weaving a glittering wall of steel as he took two slow, menacing steps forward, forcing his beloved back.
She looked so hurt, through her tears…
He scowled, reminding himself that this was really Elminster, just using his Amarune’s body. “You must cease this evil of riding living folk! Right now!”
“Or you’ll-what?” Rune asked, regarding him sidelong. “Carve me up, Arclath? Kill me, the mask dancer you call your lady and say you’re doing all of this for? And when you’ve butchered me, and I’m lying hewn apart in my blood all over this floor, what then? How will you stop the wizard you so misjudge then?”
Baffled anger was rising in the heir of House Delcastle. She was right, Dragon take it! How could he strike at the wizard without harming Rune?
Arclath realized, as she reached the far wall of the hut’s lone room and sidestepped along it, that his advance had taken him far from the brazier. Hastily he shuffled back the way he’d come, trying not to stumble in the abandoned bedding as he retreated, without taking his gaze off her for a moment.
Spell, she might cast a spell… he needed something to throw and another hand to throw it with. Ah, his dagger, of course, but Oh, damn and blast! Why was life always so difficult?
“These endless complications are irksome, but then, complications are what give life its interest,” Manshoon murmured aloud as he strolled along one of the quieter streets of Suzail’s Windmarket neighborhood, hired lamp boys before and behind.
“Irksome, did you say, saer?” a Purple Dragon swordcaptain asked, passing at the head of his watch patrol.
Manshoon gave the man an easy smile. “Minor annoyances, I assure you. The cut and thrust of mercantile trade brings obstacles to the most prudent investments and stratagems. I’ll be happier when the Council is past, and matters have, ah, settled down somewhat.”