He had magic to plunder, a hiding place to find, and a kingdom to save. In short, the usual …
Amarune drew in a deep breath, pulled her cloak more snugly around her-the moon was up, but the night had turned cold-and firmly clacked the knocker of the porter’s door beside the gates of Delcastle Manor. Slowly and deliberately, thrice.
Almost immediately, she heard a soft, sliding sound, as if a plate on the other side of the door had been slid aside to let someone peer at her. In the shadowed gloom, she couldn’t see any change in the door, but someone was there, watching and listening. There was movement behind the high, many-barred gates, too; guards, no doubt, taking up and aiming ready crossbows.
Silence stretched. She worked the knocker again.
This time, the response was a rattle of chain and a louder sliding. A square of heavy, double-layered grille revealed itself in the door at about eye level, a pair of steady eyes regarding her from behind it.
“Delcastle Manor,” their owner murmured. “Your business?”
“I’ve come at the invitation of Lord Arclath Delcastle,” Amarune replied carefully, knowing well what might be assumed about a woman walking alone and cloaked by night, and trying to sound polite, refined, and formal, “to speak with him. I am aware of the hour.”
“I am sorry,” the porter replied, sounding as if he really was, “but the Lord Delcastle is not now at home. Perhaps tomorrow, around highsun, I will be able to give you a different reply.”
“I see,” Amarune said, managing to keep her sigh quiet. “Do you know where he is?”
“Out dining. I was given to understand. Darcleir’s Haven is a likelihood, but with so many friends, old and otherwise, newly arrived in Suzail, he might very well end up elsewhere. In the meantime, I regret I cannot admit guests to wait for him.”
“Of course,” she replied, turning away.
Where to, she was not quite sure. Nowhere at all might be safe for her, and among all these tall, formidable walls and the frequent Watch patrols, she could hardly linger on these streets of mansions and-
Lost in her thoughts, she almost walked right into a pair of gleaming boots and the dark-clad man who was wearing them, standing right in front of her in the night.
She flung herself back, clapping hand to knife-and saw that it was Arclath Delcastle, smiling a rather tired smile at her. He was just arriving home from the Haven, having grown heartily tired of the company of overpainted, oh-so-pretty venomous vipers of young and predatory noble ladies, with their honeyed threats and condescensions.
Their eyes met, and one good look at her frightened, imploring eyes told him something. Breaking into a broad grin, he swept one arm around Amarune with a loud and delighted, “Lady Amarune! We must talk! Your castle or mine?”
“Y-yours,” she managed to whisper. “If it’s … convenient.”
“In your company, all things are convenient,” he replied heartily. “Open up, Lorold!”
The gates were already parting, guards coming to attention. Arclath gave them both bright smiles and nods, waved to the porter, and swept his cloaked guest past them all into the moonlit gardens beyond.
“I’m honored that you came to visit us so promptly! The family will be so pleased!”
He took her arm, firmly guiding her up a gentle slope of grass wet with heavy dew to a path lined with tall plantings of uruth and bedaelia. “To our right, the Delcastle bridal bower! Ahead of us, the summerhouse, and to our left, looking down across the main carriageway to the arbor, we can see in the distance the five fishponds my great-grandsire was so proud of. The Delcastle stables are justly famed for their-”
By then they were well along the floral path, and he stopped in midsentence, dropped his voice to a murmur, and asked, “Do you need shelter? A meal? A place to talk?”
“All of those, I suppose,” Amarune replied, hesitantly. “To talk, mostly.”
“Here, or inside, where the dragon that is my mother snorts fire and growls, devouring a steady procession of young and perfumed men entering her bedchamber?”
Amarune sighed. “Do you have a room you can call your own, with a door that locks?”
Arclath eyed her gravely. “I do. Have you a reputation left to maintain?”
Amarune snorted. “As a barepelt club dancer? I’ll risk it.”
“But what of my reputation?” he asked lightly.
“I can probably manage to moan and gasp and sob your name loudly from time to time, and thereby salvage it,” she told him dryly.
Arclath rolled his eyes then grinned like an eager lad, his eyes dancing. “Then come!”
“Can we at least have drinks first?” she teased. “Isn’t that the courtly way?”
“We can,” he promised. “Yet never make the mistake again of thinking nobles are courtly away from court. As mistakes go, that can be one of the fatal ones.”
Well, at least he was still good at one thing.
Not that breaking into the royal palace of Suzail with swift ease was apt to advance him far in any new career he’d prefer to pursue.
Panderer? Nay …
Elminster gave the dark and empty secret passage he was traversing his best wry grin as he hastened along it. Then he winced. Aye, he had a blister rising on his left heel. He was getting too old for waltzing young lasses home and then rushing back across too much of Suzail to seek his own hidehold, before-
Hoy, there! He stiffened, slowed, and then advanced more cautiously. The murmur of voices ahead was many-throated and excited; something had befallen.
The clack was coming through some spyholes from a room beside the passage and had the same air of alert bustle that befalls a castle before a siege; something he’d heard a time or twelvescore and remembered all too well.
Ah, that voice was Mallowfaer, the Master of Revels, in full pompous bluster.
Elminster rolled his eyes and glided to a cautious halt by the spyholes, taking care to keep well back from them as he peered through.
The robing-room on the other side of the wall was crowded with courtiers, and war wizards, too; facing El but half-hidden behind the shoulder of Understeward Corleth Fentable was a rather bruised-looking Rorskryn Mreldrake. The spyholes were situated behind and just above the left shoulder of Khaladan Mallowfaer, who evidently wanted to impress everyone with his authority and exacting attention to detail, but also sounded determined to demonstrate just how pompous and nasty he could be, in the process.
The burdens of his song were intertwined harmonies of exasperation at unfolding chaos, glee that the problem could not-by any stretch of verbiage he would allow-be laid at his door, and that he was in charge of formal protocols at the moment and could therefore decree with nigh royal authority. It seemed the palace had become aware that Ganrahast and Vainrence both seemed to be missing, with our wizards of war very alarmed about it and rushing about searching here, there, and everywhere without wanting to admit that anything at all was amiss-with the council only days away! What to do? What to do?
At that moment, with a sputtering roar, it became clear that Understeward Fentable’s superior, the bullying, blustering, and overblown Palace Steward Rorstil Hallowdant-who was both lazy and a drunkard and therefore spent much of his time snoring somewhere, leaving things to the highly efficient and widely liked understeward, much to the relief of most courtiers-had heard quite enough of someone else being haughty and giving orders right and left.
“The Master of Revels,” he said in a voice that had a finger-lopping-sharp edge to it, “seems to forget that everyone in this chamber right now is a dedicated, skilled professional, from the clerk of the shield here beside me to the under-clerks of protocol yonder, all four of them. It is our common business to know the location and deeds of each royal personage, both before and throughout the council, from the smallest appointment to the grandest feast, and from our beloved King Foril to Lord Royal Erzoured and the Countess of Dhedluk. The Master of Revels needs only to coordinate, and not to command.”