The room was large, and opened onto the next chamber of the mansion through a great tapestry-filled arch rather than doors. Rhauligan listened at the wall of cloth, hearing nothing, went to one end of it—rather than disturb it trying to find its center parting—and slipped his head around it.
He found himself looking at a large, dust-dancing stairwell, with a railed landing joining it to his room and others out of sight beyond the wall that cradled the stairs.
"Nothing," a voice called suddenly. "Something disturbed the doves, right enough—a gorcraw, mayhap—but none of 'em had any messages. I checked every blessed one."
Rhauligan hastily drew back a breath or two before a bored servant-woman whose bosom resembled a large sack of potatoes trudged down the nearest stair and went along the landing.
"Well, that's all right, then," another, sharper voice said from somewhere under Rhauligan's boots, presumably the next landing down. "So long as we miss nothing and catch no Lady-fury . . ."
"Huh," the large woman agreed, as she started down the next flight of steps and passed out of Rhauligan's view. "Can't be thieves, unless they can fl—" She stopped, stock-still and said in a different voice, "Hold, now! That was it—the window was shut! Shut and latched! One of them birds 'prolly came flying to get in and smacked right into the glass! Send Norn down to check for one lying in the gardens, and get the lantern—oh, and fire-pokers for the both of us! I'm not going back up there alone!"
"Aye," Sharp Voice agreed, her voice fading as she descended unseen stairs, "but what sort of thief shuts a window behind his-self?"
"An idiot thief, that's what sort!" Lumpy Bosom replied sourly, almost driving Rhauligan to chuckle.
You have that right, goodwoman, you do indeed . . . and I'm assigned to be her keeper, more's the pity. . . .
No, that was unfair. The Waterdhavian's only mistakes had been to blunder after a wizard to get here—and to run from half the gathered War Wizards and Harpers in the realm.
Well, she'd ended up with only one following her, hadn't she? So perhaps her lone hunter was the idiot. . . .
Rhauligan put away that wry thought and turned back to the task at hand. So the window had been left open to let doves in and out of their cote. Well, that explained the handy open window and the bird-dung . . . and if Lumpy there had gone up the stairs to answer whatever alarm Narnra had triggered in any sort of haste, the thief from Waterdeep had to still be somewhere above him.
Of course, he now had to keep watch over the stairs so she couldn't slip down past him and at the same time manage not to be seen by two wary she-servants when they came back up here—and walked right past his staring face—with pokers in their hands.
Perhaps the rooms on the far side of the stair . . .
Rhauligan was out along the landing and around the stair-head like a hurrying ghost, and into . . . more dark, shrouded rooms given over to dust. Smaller than the one he'd been in, one giving into another through archways, again. Must be hard to heat in winter, with no doors to close, and that was probably why this tower of the mansion had been the one chosen to languish as storage. Cold storage, ha ha.
Well, he'd best turn and find the best vantage p—hold! What was . . . another stair!
Rhauligan was across the room like a storm wind, already fearing he was too late. This stair was narrower and steeper—a servants' route, no doubt—and deserted. He peered at it then went chin-down to the dusty floor and squinted up at the steps. Aye, there! And there! She'd been down it, right enough, and not long ago.
* * * * *
Mask aid me, how big was this house? A grand pile indeed, from outside, yes—but to leave so much of it to the dark and dust! Was its owner a half-witted hermit, clinging to a few rooms and shuffling about mumbling about past glories? Or shut up in a sick-bed, with dwindling coins keeping fewer and fewer servants?
Or were there newer, grander wings and towers and entire rambling mansions beyond this, that she hadn't seen yet?
Somehow Narnra suspected the latter.
"Just go on being the Silken Shadow," she breathed to herself, hoping the Harper hound on her trail had given up or been caught . . . and knowing, somehow, that she was just dream-wishing.
Yet she felt—good. When her prowls were going well, she seemed almost to float along in the silence and the gloom, silence wrapped around her like a cloak.
She felt like that now.
Narnra gave the darkness a fierce grin and went on, wondering what lay ahead. Perhaps the stables, with a hay loft to hide in. And coaches. All nobles had coaches, and coaches betimes went out through city gates. . . .
* * * * *
Rhauligan followed the stair down as quietly as he could, which was quiet indeed. This was old, solid stonework and thick boards pegged into place, none of your slapdash modern gaudy work.
As he went down, the noises of work—servants, of course— began to be audible: people chattering, laughing, hurrying back and forth laden with things, someone chopping food on a wooden board or table, someone else making banging and scraping sounds.
"Where're them brooms, then?" The rough male voice was accompanied by a striding entry too sudden for Rhauligan to draw back. He froze on the stairs as sudden light spilled across a landing below, as a man with a long-ago broken nose and wheezing lungs snatched up a long-handled pushbroom from where it leaned against a wall, spun around without sparing a glance up the dark and dusty stairs where the Harper stood, and banged his door closed behind him again.
Rhauligan hurried, in case the habit was to return the broom the moment its job was done. He was past that door and on down the next flight ere the door opened again, but by then the growing hubbub and light around him, through various ill-fitting hatches in the stairwell walls—it seemed he was passing a large, multilevel kitchen where a small legion of servants were keeping quite busy—was considerable.
One hatch afforded him a gap large enough to peer through, and he put his eye to it. Shiny copper vats or tanks greeted his view, with men in aprons squatting at the taps filling great tankards as large as their torsos. Below them, several steps down on another level in the same vast room, stood a great table covered with flour and dough, with women swarming busily around it. Steam from cauldrons was rising from a lower level yet, down out of sight to his left. Rhauligan cast a glance right across the chamber and froze again.
There, just visible through a forest of hanging pans and pots and ladles, was another, open stair—and peering through that kitch-enmongery was Narnra Shalace, just for a moment ere she melted back and away and went on down those dark steps.
She must have passed through the rooms of the floor above and found that matching servants' stair. So she was below him, now, and he'd have to move like a man trying to catch the morrow.
Rhauligan raced down steps with more haste than quiet. Given all the racket in the kitchen, he'd probably have to shout or bang one of those pans with a sword-hilt to be noticed, anyway, and—
There was a door at the next landing, facing neither into the kitchen nor away from it but north into the "blind end" of the landing turn, and he plucked it open cautiously—in time to see the heel of Narnra's boot flick past. He was out into the cross-passage she'd been traversing as fast as he could move, but she'd already stepped into a great room or gallery beyond and darted to the right.
Rhauligan ran after her and froze, just before the archway where the passage opened out into this larger chamber ahead.