“As to that,” Durncaskyn replied dryly, bringing up both hands to try to wrench himself free of Mirt’s hairy fist, “they’re right behind you.”
Purple Dragons crowded into the outer office, their swords drawn. The angry bodyguard Mirt had thrown out of that room was with them, pointing at the fat old intruder and spitting a stream of curses and commands.
Mirt looked profoundly unimpressed. “Them? They look like a mob of untrained dolts, to me. Where’re their scouts? The man with the ready crossbow and some sleep syrup on his loaded quarrel? The backup bowman, for when the first one misses? Hey?”
“Hey,” Durncaskyn agreed wearily. “At ease!” he barked over Mirt’s shoulder at the Dragons. “Wait out in the passage, all of you!”
They eyed him doubtfully.
“All of you!” Durncaskyn roared with sudden fire. “And close the door after you go out!”
He added a glare, and kept it on them until they’d all reluctantly retreated and shut the door. By then, he was unsurprised to find the lady slumped in his own desk chair, and Mirt rummaging in his cabinets for decent wine to give her.
“Bottom drawer,” Durncaskyn told him. “The swill on display is for visiting complainants-such as yourself.”
That earned him a grin from Mirt. Durncaskyn fetched one of the chairs kept for visitors, drew it up to the wrong side of his own desk, sat down, and said, “You seem a forceful man, but decisive enough, possibly even capable. Perhaps we can make a deal.”
“As one snarling bull to another?”
“Indeed. I will wholeheartedly extend to this good lady the dubious shelter of Immerkeep if you, Lord of Waterdeep, will go to Suzail for me, without delay. To fetch the help I so desperately need.”
A decanter of Durncaskyn’s best wine thunked down on the desk between them. “Explain,” Mirt suggested, filling glasses.
The king’s lord obliged.
Wherefore, a short time later, after kissing Rensharra thoroughly and accepting a second decanter for road thirst, Mirt of Waterdeep strode right back out of Immerkeep, patted the neck of one of the fresh horses that had been hitched to his stolen coach, and began a wild race back to Suzail.
Decisive and capable men did those sorts of things.
Clouds were everywhere, but they were the white, wispy, spun-silk sort, betokening no rain or lightning. The Sword of the Clouds was gliding along under half-sail.
No grand skyship of the Five Companies, she, but an ancient Halruaan treasure only recently salvaged from dust-shrouded, motionlessly floating neglect in a ruin by the adventurers who crewed her. And kept busy shuttling envoys, vital messages, and precious treaties to and fro above southerly realms-when they weren’t mooring briefly to various high towers and turrets to conduct daring night robberies and kidnappings, that is.
Yet Vaeren Dragonskorn had never called himself a pirate. “Pirate” was such an uncouth word. “Adventurer of the skies,” now that was an attractive phrase. Aye, adventurers of the skies are we, aboard the Sword …
A skyship much heavier than it had been when this particular voyage had begun, thanks to the treasures of the rival wizards Algaubrel and Sarlarthont, crowded into the shallow hold. Strongchests upon strongchests full of coins and gems and metal-bound grimoires, statuettes and many curious metal items that gave off weird magical glows, and things that were better undisturbed until off-loaded in a mountaintop hidehold. Thinking of which …
Dragonskorn turned and nodded to the helmsman, who could see the needle-sharp tops of the Rauntrils ahead just as well as he could. Such peaks were perils as well as landmarks, and-
There was a sudden commotion behind him. The helmsman gaped. Dragonskorn spun around-and started gaping too.
The woman standing on the deck amid his startled crew was tall and queenly, despite being barefoot and either lightly or entirely unclad. He couldn’t be sure which, through all her hair. It was silver, by the Wildwanderer, and almost as long as she was-and it was curling around her like a colony of angry snakes or hungry maggots or-or-
“Who is your captain?”
Her question brought no helpful replies, but that was hardly surprising. The crew happened to be all male and the Sword’s recent schedule had kept them long from the company of women, so their swords were out and the air rang with their responses, the politest of which was, “Who by the waiting, wanton charms of Sharess are you?”
“I am best known as The Simbul. Which one of you captains this ship?”
Before she could receive any useful reply, she caught sight of Dragonskorn, and said, “Ah! It would you!”
She strode toward him. Valkur and Baervan, she was bare skinned!
“Saer,” she said politely, “I have no quarrel with you or your crew, but I must have the blueflame in your hold.”
“Blueflame?”
“Some of the enchanted things you carry glow with an intense blue flame that looks like fire but is not hot, and ignites nothing. I require it of you.”
“You do.” Dragonskorn looked her up and down. “And you expect me to just yield them up?”
The Simbul sighed. “No,” she told him, her face grave, “I expect you to resist me. I’d rather you continued to live, instead, but … I know too much of humans, down the centuries, to expect your polite assistance. Yet I’d be grateful-delighted, even-if you’d surprise me.”
Dragonskorn smiled-and then sneered. “Oh, I’ll surprise you, all right. Take her, men! Yet remember: as your captain, I get her first!”
As the crew of the Sword roared in glee and converged on the lone woman in a rush, The Simbul regarded Dragonskorn sadly and shook her head.
Then she lifted one empty hand and gave them fire.
“Magic! She has magic!” one crewman shouted warningly as a ring of flames blazed up out of nowhere, and the closest running men to the silver-haired woman all crashed to the deck like discarded dolls. Cooked and sizzling discarded dolls.
“Well of course she has magic,” someone else snarled. “She appeared on our deck out of farruking thin air, didn’t she?” That same someone else hurled a hand axe, hard and accurately, right at the woman’s head.
The Simbul watched it come, her face calm, and made no move to duck or leap aside. By the time it flashed up close to her, the air was full of hurtling knives and cutlasses, converging on her like the men who’d hurled them. She stood motionless, and let them all rush right through her, the axe first, to bite into or clang off whoever was directly beyond her. Cries and curses rent the air.
Then there rose another roar, this one of fury-and the surviving burly crew of the Sword charged at the woman from all sides, their arms out to grapple and throttle.
In a swirl of silver hair that hooked ankles, slapped blindingly across faces, and curled tightly around necks, The Simbul moved at last, ducking and rushing and diving like a Calishite dancer.
Metal weapons flashed through her as if she were but an illusion, though her hair and feet and fists were solid enough, as she tugged one man off-balance to sprawl onto the upthrusting sword of another, then leaned unconcernedly forward into the vicious slash of a third man to jab at his eyes with two rigid fingers. Screams and grunts started to drown out the curses.