It was Narnra's turn for head-shaking. "I-I don't understand you. You seem tender and kind, you protest your noble reasons and causes, insist you look at everything from all sorts of viewpoints . . . yet you use people as if they were farm-beasts, love women and leave them as casually as you change your socks, and-and-why?"
"Because I'm a mere mortal, twisted beyond sanity by what I've seen and done, and by holding a goddess in my arms, and by living for far too long," Elminster whispered. "I'm a crazed villain and a proudly enthusiastic meddler as well as thy father . . . but I'd also like to be thy friend. I take folk as I find them and leave judgments to the young; I hope ye can learn to do that, too."
"Old Mage," Narnra told him firmly, "young people have to learn to judge others or they never survive to become older. Yet I'll grant that you . . . are more than I thought you were."
She turned to look directly into his eyes and added, "If I'd never known you'd sired me, we'd already be friends. I'm . . . I'm trying to set aside my anger over growing up fatherless then being left alone to fend for myself after my mother died. I may be just one of uncounted thousands of forgotten, abandoned orphans in Faerun, but I'm me, the only person I've ever had to worry about, and-"
"Precisely. Ye're the only person ye've ever had to worry about. Go get thyself a few friends-real friends-and ye'll have that many more folk to worry over."
"And you worry about thousands, is that it?"
"Worry and do something-lots of things, endlessly-for them. Grieve for all those I failed and those the passing years have taken from me. Whole realms I loved are now gone," Elminster replied and added calmly, "Boo hoo."
Narnra snorted in surprised mirth and set her tankard down. "I could learn to love this place," she said almost wistfully-and then turned her head to look into her father's eyes and added slowly, almost struggling with the words, "To accept you too, I think, with all your lies and meddling. Someday."
"I'd like that," he said gently. " 'Twould mean much to me."
She nodded, and they looked calmly into each other's eyes for what seemed a very long time.
Abruptly Narnra became aware, as she stared through it at her father, of how tangled and sweat-soiled her hair was. Her gaze fell longingly to the pool, and after a few breaths of silence she asked, "Would you mind going away whilst I bathe if I promise to work no mischief?"
Elminster chuckled, took up her tankard, and laid a hand on her shoulder. "I'll be up in the Tower preparing evenfeast when ye're done. Florin has probably worn his sword-edge dull slicing edibles by now. I'm not much of a family, lass, but ye're welcome, whenever."
Narnra gave him a strange look and waved at the pool. "There aren't-snakes or biting turtles or anything like that, are there?"
"Nay," Elminster told her, as he conjured up a fluffy robe, towels, and slippers, and bent with a grunt to lay them out on a handy rock. "I asked the beast that eats them to depart when ye arrived, and it did."
She gave him a longer look, until he turned and added, "Trust me."
"I'm learning to," she said with a lopsided smile. "Don't make me regret it. Please."
"Well, if ye'd like to toss your clothes onto yon rock, I'll snatch them away with a spell and give them a wash whilst ye're soaking-because they certainly need it. Knives and all, mind. I'll be careful not to let things rust. Oh, and the little blades ye keep hidden in thy hair, too they're starting to tarnish."
Narnra gave her father quite another look and said, "If you trick me . . ."
"I'll be overcome with remorse," he said with a grin and strolled off, his pipe floating after him.
Narnra watched him go, shaking her head. Well, at least she had an interesting father. When she heard the Tower door close, she disrobed, carefully putting her gear where he'd indicated-all but one knife with its sheath, which she laid ready at the water's edge.
She lifted the stone Elminster had pointed out, scooped up some flakes of soap, and waded in.
The water was wonderful.
* * * * *
"B'gads, what if they find us here?" Bezrar muttered. "What tale do we tell them then?"
"That we're thinking of importing some new sort of shingles from-from Alaghon, and had to see if the barracks roofs would ever be a market for us," his partner Surth hissed. "If you shut up for once, perhaps they won't find us here!"
They both froze, there on the roof of the largest Purple Dragon barracks in Marsember, as at least a dozen dragons-each larger than any barracks, and far more impressive-swooped past, in a mighty hurry to get to somewhere in the city!
The great wyrms passed over the barracks so low that Malakar Surth, the taller of the two swindlers, could almost have touched one of those vast and scaled underbellies by standing tall and leaping upward.
He chose not to do so. It seemed more sensible to faint instead.
Twenty-Two
Sometimes, all you can do is take what little victory you can.
"Stand easy," Laspeera murmured. "Whatever happens, we've War Wizards enough to keep you both safe."
Filfaeril and Alusair gave her identical sighs. "Speera, it's not that," the Steel Regent exclaimed, armor gleaming. "It's how many loyal folk this will cost us-and how many noble families who lose their young hotheads here will turn against us. When will Cormyr stop bleeding?"
"Here they come," Caladnei muttered, stepping back, as many men stalked into the dimly lit hall, drawn swords glittering in the light of her conjured light.
"Hail, Ladies Obarskyr," one of them called in a grand and cultured voice. "Your attendance-even with so many of your mages-gratifies us. We desire to discuss the future of our fair real-"
The noble staggered forward to fall on his face with a cough and lie still, sword ringing on the tiles. His fellows whirled around with shouts of anger.
Many men in robes were fading into visibility out of empty air-Thayans! Harnrim Starangh glared coldly around Thundae-rlyn Hall and commanded his fellow Red Wizards, "Kill them all-yon women first. Let no one leave alive!"
* * * * *
Bezrar and Surth came back to Marsember at about the same time, with damp and misty air singing past their ears as a grand rooftop-all spires and skylights-rushed up to meet them. They were . . . oh, gods … in the grip of great talons.
Talons that were attached to a huge and iridescent silver-blue dragon. Turquoise eyes burned into theirs with force enough to keep them blinkingly, tremblingly awake. When both Surth and Bezrar would quite happily have fainted again great jaws hissed in a soft thunder, "Open those skylights so we can see and hear who's within. I've no desire to provoke all the War Wizards and whatever other mages happen to be in Marsember by tearing apart a few buildings at random and slaughtering folk heedlessly."
"B-b-but-" Bezrar managed to splutter.
"However," Joysil told him, "I can make a few exceptions when it comes to slaughtering if you provoke me. Yes, this is the roof of Thundaerlyn Hall, and yes, I'm a dragon, just as you are Aumun Tholant Bezrar and you are Malakar Surth. Get those open!"
The two smugglers leaped to the panes with frantic eagerness, fumbling at catches that hadn't been oiled or thrown open in decades-decades of sea-mists and incontinent birds and nesting fowl that . . . that. . .