Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [122]
“Aye.”
“So, graybeard, how do you usually spend your days?”
“Growing older,” Elminster told him wryly. “And ye?”
It was almost dawn, and a weary and heartsick Amarune Whitewave didn’t know what to do.
She was standing in a dark street surrounded by grim-faced Purple Dragons, listening to Lord Arclath Delcastle glibly explain to them all once more that the dancer couldn’t possibly be the Silent Shadow, because she’d been with him more than once when that notorious thief had performed a daring theft, and that she must have fled out of sheer fear of being enspelled by a drunken wizard of war. Not only was he of noble birth, he himself had suffered thefts at the hands of the Shadow, and so, believe me …
Oh, gods. And he was again, oh-so-gallantly, offering to escort Amarune home.
She wanted to hit him. Or lose herself to sobbing in the warm comfort of his arms, and … she didn’t know what she wanted to do.
And she couldn’t stop yawning.
The Dragons believed him, nodding and looking at her with faces a little less unfriendly, and lowering the swords that had been pointed her way.
Which meant they’d soon leave her alone with him. A young and spirited noble lord who suddenly knew, whatever his clever tongue was saying to them that moment, that she was the Silent Shadow.
She remembered full well she’d stolen from him more than once. So, obviously, did he. Should she just deny all and claim the wizard must have mistaken her for someone else? Finding proof wouldn’t be easy—so long as he didn’t come upon Ruthgul or any of her other clients, and tie what they said to where she lived—but driving away his suspicions would be harder still. Suspicion always died a slow death.
“Go with the Lord Delcastle, lass,” a Purple Dragon was saying in her ear then, kind but firm. “He’ll see you safe home.”
That’s just what he could not do—but she dared not admit it.
Wearily she nodded, half-numb, and accepted Arclath’s attentive arm.
All she could think of doing was wandering the streets of Suzail until full day ran him out of time and into the jaws of some important business or appointment or other that he dared not miss. If her legs held out that long and she could keep her eyes open, that is …
“Trust me,” Arclath murmured, giving her that bright grin that she couldn’t tell if she loved or hated. “Dawn will be breaking soon enough. If you don’t happen to live next door or in the rafters above us, we’ll have time to see it—and sober, too!”
The stench at the end of the alley was indescribable. “Man-strangling” wasn’t a strong enough description. Nor was “forty sick snails lying dead in their own fresh vomit,” or “the heaped wet offerings of a hairy garrison all in the throes of the runs, brought on by eating lots of candy and mustard.”
El tried all of those and some far more colorful ones on for size as he winced and hobbled his way down the greasy, narrowing, and increasingly refuse-choked way. Even the rats avoided that end of the alley, and the smell had long before forced the boarding-up and mud-sealing of all the windows opening onto it.
Alone in the graying tail end of night, the Sage of Shadowdale set his teeth and lurched on. His many bruises were stiffening, and his ribs felt on fire. He’d fallen twice, many alleys before, but it had been worth it to persuade the young and fastidious Dragon tailing him that he really was an old crazed-wits living on the streets, and make the man turn back. The soldier had fallen at least once, too, and Elminster hoped the young dolt’s bright uniform was so besmirched that he was gagging.
Nevertheless, the filth had its uses. Not the least of which was safeguarding what he was retrieving. At the end of the alley was a fly-swarming heap of dung, old topped by fresh, beneath a cracked tile protruding from the wall.
El tugged the tile out—it came away in pieces, just like last time, brown and dripping—and thrust his fingers into the hole it had come from. There was a cavity in one side of that hole, within the thickness of the wall, and—aye!—the reassuring smooth hardness