Mirt gave him a cheery wave and brought the coach to a rattling stop outside the Three Dolphins Door.
Four impassive guards held their positions, spears slanted just so, as if he, his coach, and their dust weren’t there at all.
Behind the four Dragons, the double doors that made up the Three Dolphins “Door” started to swing inward.
Smoothly the door guards swung around to face inward, so that whoever was departing the palace would pass between them.
“These prisoners,” an officer’s voice inside began suspiciously.
“I have my orders,” came a flat reply, then the same voice snapped some orders of its own. “Forward. Into the coach. Remember, my wand is ready.”
Storm Silverhand strode out of the palace in shackles and dangling chains, her head bowed. The Lord Delcastle followed her, then Amarune, also in shackles. Behind them came the War Wizard Tracegar, his wand in hand.
Storm stopped in front of the coach and waited. After a long span of hesitation, one of the outer-door guards stepped forward, opened the coach door, and folded down its pair of steps. She ascended, and the other two prisoners followed, under the frowningly suspicious stares of all the guards.
As Tracegar got into the coach with them, one of the guards peered up at Mirt, then snapped, “I’ve not seen you before, and you wear no uniform! Who are you?”
Mirt gave the man a hard stare. “Ask the king. Keep in mind that your low rank will limit the answers you’ll get. And may well wind up lower, when you’re done asking.”
Tracegar rapped on the inside roof of the coach then, so Mirt flicked his whip, clucked to the horses, and set the coach in motion, his stare never leaving the guard’s eyes.
Unhindered, Glathra’s prisoners were conveyed in stately splendor up the Promenade-and out of her reach.
For a while.
The Lady Deleira Truesilver was not in a good mood. Wherefore, fools and those who merely happened to displease her did well to get themselves out of her sight and stay there. Though it was true she was eye-catchingly beautiful, lithe, and elegant, her exquisitely styled white hair contrasting with her flashing yellow eyes, it was the edge of her tongue and the weight of her formidable wits and character they were apt to remember instead, on nights like this.
To put it plainly, she ruled Truesilver House like a tyrant, and in the so-late-they-were-early hours since her reappearance from her chambers, she had verbally demolished two of her kin and a few servants for various stupidities. Having grown tired of having to find fresh words to find so much fault when it seemed to besiege her on all sides, she retired to her chambers again, dismissing her maids and locking them out.
Certain of her inner chambers had bars as well as bolts, and she used these with the deft vigor of a woman half her age, her movements both graceful and imperious.
When the last door was firmly fastened, leaving her only the windows, balconies, and certain secret passages as ways of departing her self-imposed retreat, the Lady Truesilver turned and began to disrobe as she walked toward her favorite bedchamber, kicking off her dainty boots and then doing off her gown and petticoats and hurling them aside for all the world as if she were a club dancer.
When she was down to the most scandalously brief of clouts-definitely the fashion of club dancers, and not aging noble matriarchs-she padded barefoot to a particular relief-carved wall panel, did something to the eye of the doe carved on it and then something else to a moon depicted in a panel across the room-and then returned to the first panel, put two fingertips around some gnarled tree roots in the carving, and drew the panel gently open.
The revealed recess beyond was just large enough for her to hide in-she’d done so just twice, and one had been only a short trial-but held, on foldout hooks, things that did not look at all ladylike. She drew them out, one by one, draping them on handy furniture: boots, several weapon-belts, and then some garments.
The tight leathers of a thief.
All that was left in the closet were wigs-long, dark hair that hung on their hooks like cowls-and a coil of dark, slender cord.
She shook out the leathers, reached for the well-oiled, supple breeches-and froze.
The curtains that framed the door to her balcony were swirling, and no one should have been there to make them move.
Someone was. Not of Truesilver House, but someone she’d never seen before. An intruder. Dark, agile, feminine… and bearing a drawn sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.
Lady Truesilver glanced over at her swordbelt- just out of reach, slung over the back of a chair, with her dagger-baldrics impossibly distant on the lounge beyond-and asked calmly, “Who are you, and what do you want?”
“I am one who has served Cormyr since your grandmother was young,” the intruder replied almost mockingly, the voice female, gentle, and at the same time colder than Deleira Truesilver’s frostiest tones, “and I want to know your secrets. Talane.”
Lady Truesilver stiffened. No one should know that she was She whirled and fled, seeking her innermost bedchamber and a door she could slam between her and this intruder.
Who shed a dark helm as she sprang across the room like a panther and pounced, slamming Deleira Truesilver bruisingly to the floor and easily overpowering her in a chilling, steel-strong grip.
“Not so fast,” the intruder hissed, their faces almost touching. An eerie glow came from between the unfamiliar woman’s teeth. “Your death can be easily achieved, but I want what you know first.”
“And just how are you going to get that?” Lady Truesilver snarled defiantly, arching and struggling, trying to buck her attacker off.
“Like this,” Targrael replied, opening her mouth to reveal a glowing white gem on her tongue-before she forced Deleira Truesilver’s jaws open with iron-hard fingers, and kissed her.
A flash of light erupted as their tongues met that Deleira Truesilver felt, like a silent roar of surf crashing through her very bones, and she felt the cold, somehow minty feeling of magic awakening within her.
Her attacker was now more than a stronger, colder body than hers, holding her down. There was another mind in hers, a dark and looming presence growing larger and closer.
Lady Truesilver did not hear the words that Targrael spoke then so much as she felt them.
“The royal magicians of Cormyr left some very interesting magics hidden around the palace. This was the one that most interested me.”
Enthralled and helpless, Deleira Truesilver couldn’t move or speak as the dark malice of her foe’s cruel, hostile mind flooded into hers, drowning her in shivering darkness…
The Horngate, of course, was locked and barred for the night. The stone-faced guards there crisply informed Mirt that they had no intention whatsoever, short of the correct horncalls from the palace, or the king himself wagging “crown and scepter” in their faces, of opening it before morning.
“All Cormyreans know these rules,” one of them added sharply. “Climb down from there, man, and yield up to us your name, your business here, the land you hail from, your passengers-and their destination. Now.”
Mirt sighed. “I have my orders, an’ they don’t sit well with the ones ye’re giving me, man. So a little less of the ‘now,’ if ye don’t mind.”
“But I do mind, saer! Now, there are ten crossbows aimed at you, so I’m going to tell you agai-”
“If ye put a quarrel through any of my passengers,” Mirt roared, “ ‘tis yer lives as’ll be forfeit, idiot Dragons! Now, down bows, an’ pay heed to who’s stepping out of my coach!”
His shout rang back at him off the closed gates, and he sat down sweating, hoping very much he’d bought Elminster enough time to think of something.
Under him, the coach made the slight rocking that meant its door had been opened and someone was stepping down.