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Arclath Delcastle stared rather coolly back at his interrogator. “I’ve seldom seen a need to pay anyone to fill my bed, Lady Wizard. Handsome, remember? Noble? Dashing, yes?”

Glathra’s expression remained coldly unimpressed.

He sighed, waved dismissively, and added, “Ne’er mind. I was interested in her for a reason you already know; I wanted to learn why she’d been listening to what Halance, Belnar, and I were discussing about the council. Particularly now that Halance and Belnar are so suddenly and violently dead. Though I grant that it’s both unusual and unfashionable for nobles to be so, in this day and age, Lady Glathra, I do happen to be loyal to the Crown.”

“We know that,” she replied quietly, “and that’s why I’ve brought you here. We have a proposition for you, Lord Delcastle.”

“ ‘We’?” Arclath asked pointedly, staring around the room. The two of them were sitting facing each other across a shining expanse of table, and the palace chamber around them was bare of all guards, war wizards, scribes, or anyone else. Just a few portraits, a tapestry or two, and a lone closed door. “Have you a twin? Or are you using the royal ‘we,’ and there’s been a royal marriage I’m not privy to that I should be congratulating you about, Lady?”

As if his questions had been a signal, one of those tapestries was thrust aside by a firm hand, and Delcastle found himself staring into the wise old eyes and familiar face of King Foril Obarskyr of Cormyr.

The High Dragon of the Forest Kingdom was wearing a simple circlet on his brow and hunter’s garb of jerkin, belt, breeches, and boots of plain leather. Of the finest make and tailored to fit his lean, trim body. A simple belt knife rode his hip, and discreet rows of plain rings—most of them enchanted, no doubt—adorned his fingers. He was smiling.

“Nothing so dramatic, Lord Delcastle,” the king said dryly.” The Lady Glathra was speaking on my behalf and was aware of my presence—as, now, are you.”

By then, Delcastle was out of his chair and down on one knee. Foril looked pained and waved at him to rise.

“Up, up, lad; I’ve servants enough to do that far too often for me as it is. I need your loyalty and your friendship, not your knees ruined on my behalf. Nobles who can be eyes and ears for me are rare and precious things in this kingdom, now as ever; we need to talk.”

“Majesty,” Arclath replied with a smile, rising, “it so happens that talking is one of my strengths.”

“I find myself strangely unsurprised,” the king told him dryly, taking up his chair and coming forward to the table.

Amarune knew The Willing Smile only by its reputation. A rundown, seedy, low-coin brothel on a formerly fashionable street in Suzail, where wrinkled old harridans and a few wide-eyed younglings desperate for quick coin entertained toothless old men desiring to deceive themselves that they were still bold lions of youth and vigor whose very names left Cormyr in awe.

She was surprised to find it a clean, quiet, and dimly lit grand house that seemed to stretch on forever, run by a matron more motherly than alluring, who obviously regarded Elminster as an old and trusted friend.

“Mother” Maraedra patted the limping graybeard on the arm when he greeted her, nodded after he murmured in her ear for a moment, and then led them through lushly carpeted halls adorned with many full-length portraits that were probably doors into the rooms of the women depicted in them, to a back room decorated like a successful but careful-with-coin family’s private parlor, where a table was set for four.

Humming to herself, she shuffled through a door and returned almost immediately to set before them bowls of cubed redruth goat cheese, biscuits, and an herbed paste of oil and crushed and roasted vegetables.

Then she slipped out again, holding up a finger as if in warning to them to say nothing until her return—and again, came back into the room swiftly, this time with tallglasses, which would have done any noble House proud, and a large decanter.

Then she bowed, smiled, and backed out