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Amarune eyed him for only a moment ere shaking her head wearily. “No, Lord Delcastle, not there. The kindness of an escort back to the Dragonriders’ forthwith, however, I’ll not refuse.”

“But of course!” Arclath replied with a smile, bowing low. Far wealthier and more respectable women didn’t want lords to know where they lived—neither location nor depth of squalor. Well enough.

“I can promise you, Lady Dragonrider, that you’ll be quite safe. There won’t be just one upright and well-bred man guarding you; there’ll be me, my title, and my honor—so that’s three!”

Amarune rolled her eyes amid amused snorts from several of the Dragons. “I’m not Lady anyth—oh, never mind.”

“Of course not,” Arclath told her jovially. “I barely ever use my mind at all!”

Heralded by a louder chorus of snorts, the two of them set off back down the street. Elminster kept his eyes on the Dragons and was not surprised to see the telsword point at one of his men and then at the departing noble’s back.

That Dragon nodded and started to drift off down the street after the lord and the dancer, walking casually to a nearby doorway and standing in its shadow until Amarune looked back. When she was done doing so and the pair walked on, Delcastle airily declaiming something about local architecture, the Dragon strode a little way down the street into another, deeper doorway to await their next look back.

Throughout all of this, the rest of the Dragons studiously failed to notice their departing fellow, returning instead to their aimless back-and-forth strolling and muttered conversations.

Elminster let them get well and truly into these before he slid out from behind the crates and walked slowly out of the alley, hunched over, affecting a rolling limp, and paying the milling Dragons not even a glance. They returned the favor.

So as the Dragon skulked down the street from doorway to doorway, a hunched and limping old man followed him.

Around the curve of shuttered shopfronts, as the street bent in a southerly direction, all four went.

Elminster considered the Dragon’s shadowing about as subtle as a series of warhorn blasts, but Arclath, at least, never looked back.

Neither did the Purple Dragon, so when the Dragonriders’ was a little more than a city block away, the stooped old man limped a little faster.

Which meant that he calmly caught up to the Purple Dragon in the space of a few breaths to murmur in the man’s ear, “Have my apologies, loyal blade, but I fear common thuggery is about all I can manage, these days.”

“Err—uh?” the startled soldier grunted intelligently, turning to face Elminster—and receiving a well-worn dagger pommel hard and squarely right between his eyes.

As the senseless Dragon slumped heavily into Elminster’s arms, leaving him staggering under the sudden weight, Lord Arclath Delcastle decided it was finally time to look suspiciously behind him.

However, all he saw was a drunken Purple Dragon staggering down to a wavering chin-first meeting with the cobbles, a sight that evidently didn’t strike him as suspicious at all.

As he shrugged, opened the door of the Dragonriders’ Club, and waved Amarune inside with another low and florid bow, Elminster rolled the Dragon against the nearest wall, out of the way of any wagons or carts, and ducked into the nearest alley that came furnished with a handy heap of refuse to hide behind. After all his years, he knew the night streets of Suzail very well.

With a grunt or two, El leaned his weary limbs against the alley wall and settled down to wait for Amarune to reappear.

“Pleased, Lord?”

“Indeed, Gaskur. It went well,” Marlin replied, making the gesture that told Gaskur he was dismissed for the night.

Smiling, the younger Lord Stormserpent watched his servant vanish down the back stair, then strode into his own rooms and started locking and securing doors.

He was just about done when blue flames erupted from a nearby wall, as the two ghosts of the Nine stepped into the room with dripping bundles in their hands. The thief, Langral, plunged one