Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [120]
One wizard lost his smile, another snorted back laughter, and the rest winced.
“Anyone else?” Starbridge barked. “Speak out now, because once we’re at work, I’ll take a very dim view of anyone trying to confound the results I’m seeking, or deciding on their own to just change things a little.”
No one said a word. Not even the sullen-looking Narulph.
“Right,” Starbridge said heavily. “Hear then my orders: Everyone is to depart the palace, starting now and leaving by ones and twos. We’ll all meet again—before highsun, if you want to stay a highknight—at the Stone Goat paddock marker out on Jester’s Green. Mounts, provisions, weathercloaks, and all have been gathered ready there long since, under guard. Fetch only the weapons you most want with you, and tell no one where you’re going or what you’re about. If anyone follows you to the Goat, I’ll deal with them. Swift, now! The sooner gone, the sooner back again—whereupon Narulph here will be able to sleep on his bed of fears a little less fitfully. Dismissed.”
Everyone broke into chatter and headed for the door, and Sir Starbridge rose from his chair with an air of quiet satisfaction. He’d be in a saddle soon, rather than this gods-stlarned chair behind this triple-be-damned desk, and that was worth any number of urgent all-hands missions.
So, where had he put that blasted cloak?
Manshoon turned away from both Starbridge’s mind and that scrying, enjoying the same satisfaction that the gruff head highknight was feeling.
Another deft manipulation bearing fruit, another piece in the building mosaic …
On to the next piece, over there in that scene …
Shrouded in the gloom where moonlight was feeble, the muddy midyard was deserted.
Or almost deserted. It was furnished with a few small, moving shadows.
It was the same city mid-yard where Arclath Delcastle and the Crown messenger Delnor had seen a certain mask dancer carrying her nightsoil bucket to a dung wagon.
There were no wagons in the yard at the moment. The prowling shadows belonged to cats out hunting—and a few furtive, smaller, scuttling things that darted from crevices across the yard’s few strips of uneven cobbles to handy heaps of fallen refuse, then on into tangled, thorny clumps of weeds, in hopes none of the cats would manage a successful pounce.
High above the midyard, a much larger shadow moved. The size of shadow that would attract the interest of Purple Dragons on Watch duty, had there been any in the midyard.
Dark, lithe, and somehow feminine, it swung down from the roof to hang against a stretch of house wall where it could peer at a certain dark, shuttered window.
Amarune’s window.
After a long, silent time of watching and listening, it slipped silently back up onto the roof again.
Where almost immediately there arose a brief disturbance, a choked-off sound of startlement—and a body plunged from that rooftop to splat and bounce heavily on the cobbles, its throat slit.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
BLOOD ON THE ROOFTOPS
I thank you, Lord Delcastle,” Amarune murmured gravely, sliding into Arclath’s arms to look into his eyes from very near, expecting him to want at least a kiss, “and remain mindful of … the debt I owe you. Yet if you have any kind regard for me at all, I would ask that you depart this place now and let me go my own way until at least dusk on the morrow, when—”
Arclath was already using the arm that wasn’t around her to push open the Dragonriders’ street doors. Amarune broke off abruptly at what she saw inside.
At the look on her face, Arclath spun around to see what was the matter, letting the door start to swing closed again, and in so doing whirled Amarune away from what she was facing. With the briefest of angry