At the door, Arclath turned on his heel and looked back.
As it happened, her pose had her standing with her arms outstretched toward him almost imploringly.
He smiled a tired smile and tossed two golden lions at her, high and hard. A good throw even for a wide-awake man.
Amarune broke her pose at the last possible instant to pluck the coins deftly out of the air. Then she bowed to him, waved thanks with the most fluid grace she could manage, whirled, and ran lightly off the stage.
She knew, without looking, that he’d stood and watched until after the swirling curtains had swallowed her.
“Stormserpent’s met with real guards, this time,” Alusair observed with some satisfaction. “Dead ones-mere bones-but they can ply blades well enough. Hearken to the fray.”
“Aye,” Elminster agreed, “They’ll not last long, but they’d probably destroy a few thieves. They’re hacking down yon lordling’s boldblades like harbor rain.”
“So what’s this war wizard trap that will hurl you skyward?” Storm murmured, peering warily ahead.
Elminster shrugged. “The feeling grows within me that we’ll find it soon enough.”
Amarune yawned again, uncontrollably. Dances as long as tonight’s were always tiring, and the hot soaking bath she liked to follow them with, to keep from stiffening up on the walk home, always made her sleepy.
Then there was the walk itself and the long climb up the stairs to her lodgings at the end of it … yes, she was more than ready for sleep.
Yet it was one of those nights-the times when she found herself prowling wearily around her few cramped, dingy, rented rooms, mind too awake and excited for slumber. The council and all those nobles descending on the city, with their bodyguards and dressers and scores of other servants-what would such visitors who found their ways to the Dragonriders’ find most alluring?
Well, the unobtainable, of course. If they were nobles, that meant coupling with a willing, hitherto-unknown Obarskyr princess, of course, but she couldn’t give them that.
Or could she?
Hugging her thick, much-patched old nightrobe around herself, Amarune stared at herself in the mirror. Dark eyes stared back in smoldering challenge.
She blew herself a kiss, stone-faced, almost insolent in her inscrutability.
She was-tell truth, lass, and shame the Dragon-the best mask dancer in Suzail.
Yes, it just might work.
She’d fool no one, of course, and it’d be death to even try any sort of Obarskyr-kin claim-but she could tease …
The Princess in the Mask, she could be, hungering after the right dragon to warm her throne. Yes …
She bent to her littered desk in sudden urgency, snatched a bit of reed-weave paper out of her heap of salvaged scraps, plucked up her quill, and started scribbling. Sometimes ideas came pelting down harder than harbor rain …
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Elminster gave the undead Steel Regent of Cormyr a long, hard look. “I thought I knew these halls. Evidently not.”
Not surprisingly, Alusair’s answering smile was thin and ghostly. “Evidently not.”
That was all she said, so after waiting vainly for more, El sighed and asked, “So just how many whirlbone traps don’t I know about?”
Alusair shrugged. “Six, perhaps seven. I could be more precise if I knew just how many secrets of my family you know about.” She held up a hand to forestall his reply and added, “I speak now of palace architecture only, not long-hidden heirs, bastards, scandals, and proverbial skeletons in wardrobes. We’d be here a tenday or more, I’m sure, if you started in on those.”
Elminster nodded. “At least. Well, then-”
Alusair flung up both her hand and her sword in urgent unison, whirled, and was gone, leaving behind the whisper: “He’s done something. The skeletons are down and done. Our Stormserpent continues to surprise. I must see.”
“Go, then,” Elminster murmured. “My time for flying and hurrying isn’t upon us yet.”
Not for the first time, he spoke to empty air. Much to Alusair’s displeasure, Elminster trudged along no more swiftly than before Storm had been at his side.
The two former Chosen walked patiently, trusting in the young noble’s men needing some time to plunder once they found what they were seeking. That did not suit the ghost’s patience-or lack of it-at all.
The passage they were traversing ran on into unseen gloomy distances, but Elminster suddenly stopped at a stretch that looked the same as the rest of it and flung out one hand to halt Storm. Then he touched a certain stone in the wall beside him with the other.
With the briefest of stony grating sounds, a section of wall slid inward, revealing the edges of a door-sized opening. El shoved on that moving door of stones-and they pivoted aside in unison, to reveal a dark passage beyond.
Storm rolled her eyes. “Are you still finding them? The early Obarskyrs must have been suspicious of everyone in all the Realms!”
“Now, now, lass; they probably told Baerauble to see to the making of some secret passages, and he did his usual thoroughly overefficient job of it: thrice as many passages as needed, plus a more secret passage for exclusively royal use, not to mention an utterly secret passage for his own use-to spy on both the royal passage and the secret way that had been ordered for mere palace courtiers to trot along.”
Storm regarded him with some amusement. “So he was as devious as you? I can scarce believe it! Fancy a wizard being sly!”
“Behave, stormy one,” he told her fondly.
Startled, Storm fell silent. He hadn’t addressed her by that term for centuries.
They padded along the new passage in companionable silence for some time ere once more starting to murmur to each other-low-voiced and often, as was their wont. They rarely mentioned Alassra. Instead, El spoke of items that held blueflame ghosts, items of real power, and the possibilities of seizing them to restore shattered minds. Which of course meant just one person who mattered to them both.
When he was done recounting snatches of blueflame ghost lore, El looked to Storm, seeking her willing agreement for such hunts.
She shrugged. “Why not? We’re losing her.”
“Hardly words of ringing eagerness,” he murmured.
Storm sighed. “We’ve run out of easily snatched magic items, and those who guard what’s left are watching and waiting for us. Our luck can’t hold forever, and our skills are failing us.”
“Well, there’s always the possibility of recruiting someone suitable to do the snatching for us.”
Storm regarded him soberly, knowing what was coming. “A blood descendant,” she said flatly. “And you have at least one young, vigorous, nearby, and quite likely suitable candidate in mind: Amarune Whitewave.”
At his nod, she frowned. “Just how much does she know of her heritage?”
Elminster spread his hands. “She’s heard that her father’s father’s mother, Narnra, was said to be the daughter of the notorious Elminster, but she considers such talk mere wild legend. One claim among so many others, in the small army of women reputed to have been fathered by everyone’s favorite Old Mage.”
Storm smiled thinly. “You were busy, weren’t you?”
El sighed. “So rumor has it. Now, if rumor could just turn its mighty power to making me again a worlds-striding, peerless-in-Art Chosen of Mystra, once more young, hearty-strong, and a dallier with, say, a slim hundredth of the women I’m supposed to have, ah, entertained …”
“You’d have that army and several more besides.”
El gave her a wry grin, sighed heavily … and said no more.