The wizard gave Mirt a solemn wink. Then he turned to the door the bodyguards had disappeared through and called, “Done, lass?”
The door opened and Storm stepped through it, dragging the limp body of the largest bodyguard by his throat.
She was barefoot and bloody, the gown torn to shreds that still clung to her largely because the blood was making them stick-but she was grinning.
“Done,” she said simply, striding across the room. Behind her, through the doorway, the rest of the bodyguards could be seen strewn senseless all over the room she’d departed.
She was coming for Illance, who after one look at her turned and fled across the room with surprising speed.
El hurried after him, caught him up, and calmly tripped him.
Illance had just time to scramble up to his knees before Storm reached him. Her kick took him under the chin, snapped his head back, and lifted the rest of him right off the ground.
They watched the old lord bounce, out cold. Storm waited until Illance lay quite still before plucking out the noble’s belt dagger and heading over to Mirt.
“Hey, now,” Mirt said, “ye look dangerous with that fang.”
Storm smiled through the blood. “I feel dangerous with this fang. Yet, Mirt, why the worry? You always wanted bondage, and bared women to come for you…”
“Not with knives, and not me bound,” Mirt protested.
Storm sighed as she set about cutting him free. “Details, details…”
“Hoy!” Mirt yelped. “Get yer knife away from that! It’s not a detail!”
Elminster looked up from Lord Illance’s body. “Stop playing with Mirt and get over here. Undressing unconscious men is harder than I remember.”
“Undressing…?” Storm teased. “El, is there something you should be telling me?”
“Just help me get all this clobber off him,” El growled. “By Siamorphe, Tiamat, and Waukeen, but nobles wear more costly tripe than they ever did when I was playing at being one!”
Mirt shook free of the last few coils and lurched to his feet, wincing and growling at the numbness-and the pain, wherever there was no numbness. “What’re ye baring him for, anyhail?”
“I want every last bauble and stitch of magic on him, to take to Alassra,” Elminster replied. “Though none of it-even if we amass a cartload of it-will do her as much good as a blueflame item. If I could get one of those before we go to her…”
Mirt shook his head. “Well, I just want to be free of nobles trying to harm me. D’ye know if anyone else in Suzail is likely to treat kindly old Helderstone like this one was planning to? For that matter, what’s to stop him trying again, when he wakes?”
El and Storm looked at each other, then shrugged.
“We’ll change thy appearance again and give ye another name, so ye can dwell in Suzail free of that particular problem,” El told him.
“And we’ll spread word that Illance tortured and killed Helderstone, then hid his body, so our kindly old lord here will receive some very unwanted attention from the war wizards,” Storm added with a sly smile.
Mirt grinned. “The two of ye would have made very good Lords of Waterdeep, ye know?”
El and Storm exchanged glances again.
“As I recall,” Storm added sweetly, “we did.”
Lady Greatgaunt’s rented suite boasted three guest bedchambers, and although her war wizard escort bedded down in the most distant one, there was no one at all to see that he stayed there.
Particularly in the hours just before dawn, when two tired walkers came home with some wine and a filched wheel of Illance’s cheese to share between them.
“So,” Storm asked Elminster as they munched and sipped, “how do we find the mysterious noble who has a blueflame ghost up his sleeve? We can’t just go from mansion to tower all around Suzail knocking down doors and trying to shake the truth out of every lord and lady we meet!”
El grinned. “No,” he agreed, “so we’ll lure a ghost to us, instead. I’ll use a spell to grace a certain mask dancer with blue flames, and wait for word to spread.”
“Tress won’t thank you for getting her club wrecked by a blueflame ghost,” Storm said quietly. “And young Arclath will probably try to serve your beard up to you on a platter-attached to your head or not-for endangering his love.”
“The dancer isn’t going to be at the Dragonriders’ and isn’t going to be Amarune,” El told her happily.
“Then who…” Storm gave him a sharp look. “Oh, no, El. Oh, no!”
“I’d much rather see you barepelt than young Rune, and I’ll wager most of Suzail will, too. You’re something splendid, lass. Truly. And you don’t look a day older than, say, twenty-two summers.”
“You rogue,” she replied with a twinkling smile. “You lying, flattering rogue.”
“Aye, that’s me,” he said serenely. “Shall we go out and purchase a mask?”
“After I’ve had a good long sleep,” Storm replied emphatically. “There’s no longer a Weave to replenish us, Old Mage, and I get tired, these days. Weren’t you ‘about done’ most of the night ago?”
“I was,” El agreed-and fell face-first onto her bed. He was snoring in a trice.
Storm rolled her eyes.
“Now that’s a useful trick, Sage of Shadowdale,” she told him.
Then she bent closer and frowned. He really was snoring.
She kicked off Illance’s boots, wriggled out of his clothes-they fit terribly, and she resolved to burn them before someone recognized them; Suzail these days seemed a city of tireless spies-and cuddled against him.
In his sleep, Elminster stroked her then put an arm around her.
Storm amused herself by trying to undress him, but fell asleep in his arms before she got very far.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Manshoon leaned eagerly forward in his chair, straining to see and hear better.
Or rather, to urge Ironhand, ever so gently, to shift to where he could see and hear better.
Manshoon’s spell would let him observe what Ironhand was seeing and hearing for just a little longer. He wasn’t riding the man’s mind, because he didn’t want the risk of being where Ironhand was just then.
He had found his best blueflame hunter yet. Imglor “Imhammer” Ironhand was very expensive, but worth it. The man was almost as ruthless, careful, and coldly calm as Manshoon himself, and had carved himself out an impressive career as a slayer-for-hire specializing in swift and covert killings disguised as accidents.
No slaying was necessary, this time-only a slayer unmasked. The noble who commanded the lone blueflame ghost that had appeared at the Council.
Thus far, Ironhand had helped make almost certain that three candidates for the blueflame noble were not, in fact, the one Manshoon sought.
At that moment, Manshoon’s new hireling had wormed his way onto the roof of a high house adjacent to the one where Lord Harkuldragon was strutting around an upper room that had open windows. Through which Ironhand could hear a discussion between Harkuldragon and his longtime hired mage, the homely, aging sourface Sarrak of Westgate about the slaying of a certain inconvenient courtier.
The courtier was one whose death half Suzail would greet cheerfully. The pompous Khaladan Mallowfaer, Master of Revels, was no one’s favorite or confidant, and as far as Manshoon knew was kinless, had never married, and had never romanced anyone. He’d hired doxies aplenty, of course, but that was an entirely different matter. His inconvenience to Harkuldragon was that he’d inadvertently learned something of the noble’s planned treason, and so could expose Harkuldragon, if he so desired. A situation the lord naturally found intolerable.
What had made Manshoon pay far too much to have Ironhand eavesdropping on the noble and his mage was Harkuldragon’s grim comment over one too many goblets, at The Three Ravens some nights ago, that if “the usual magics failed” he had “something more to settle scores with.”