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When the clatter of the last one had died, she said, “Sit down here and await the recovery of your fellows. Do not follow the Sage of Shadowdale as he enters Our home, for it is also his home. He is always welcome here.”

She bent her stare upon them until the last knight had sat himself down, then gave Elminster a wry smile.

“Thank ye, lass,” he said quietly, bowing low to her. She held out her hand, and he bent and kissed it, never flinching from the cold that made the nearby watching highknights wince.

Then he rose, waved a hand at her in salute, and turned to trudge on into the undercellars.

“You’re welcome,” Alusair told his back. “Many have defended Cormyr. You, Elminster—more than me; more than my father; more than Vangey, damn him; more than anyone—are the one who’s defended Cormyr against itself.”

CHAPTER

SIX

A CHALICE, MUCH BLOOD, AND A MASKED PRINCESS

I know not why the Open Feast’s held on the score-and-sixth night of Mirtul, lass,” Lord Parespur Bloodbright said testily, jerking at her arm to drag her attention back to him.

Amarune blinked at him, turning only reluctantly away from staring up at the magnificent gilded statues guarding the double doors of Dragontriumph Hall. They were, if she hadn’t lost count of grand staircases, three floors above the street and just about at the south wall of the royal palace.

“It just is,” snarled the young nobleman who’d hired her for the night, “and always has been, since the king was young. So stop asking tomfool questions, and start acting smitten with me. All I want to hear out of you is moans of desire for my manly charms and murmured thanks when I offer you something! You’re being very well paid for this, remember?”

Amarune nodded hastily, gave him a smile, and moaned as requested, lips parted to let every nearby eye in the palace see her tongue. Dropping her eyelids half over her eyes, she purred like a cat, as she often did when leaning forward from the edge of the Dragonriders’ Club stage—and Bloodbright brightened visibly.

“That’s the way of it!” he said delightedly. “Oh, they’ll be so jealous! I can’t wait to see their faces—Delcastle’s, most of all!”

“By my sword!” a splendidly dressed young noble exclaimed delightedly from behind them, striding around to stand in front of Bloodbright and adjusting his monocle as a deft excuse to thrust his nose practically into Amarune’s bosom. “Who is this enchanting creature, Bloodbright? Where’ve you been hiding her?”

“Heh heh,” her patron for the evening replied jovially, swelling up almost visibly as he started to preen. “Now, Reinlake, I can’t be giving away all my secrets. Ladies of taste know what they like, of course, and can’t help but cast their eyes at the most rampant stags, eh, what?”

The two young lords roared out almost identical dirty laughs and dug each other in the ribs like two drunken drovers, as Amarune smiled prettily up into Bloodbright’s face and kept her own countenance serene—and her eyes steady, not rolling—through extreme effort.

She was well aware of many other eyes on her, drinking in her dark beauty. She’d been receiving such stares since back at the palace gates. Not that she wasn’t used to avid looks, and more, throughout most evenings. Amarune knew she had a magnificent figure—more the result of a wasp-thin waist and a sleekly muscled body than the overly lush curves possessed by some of her fellow dancers at the Dragonriders’—and a strikingly beautiful face, thanks to eyes that were larger and darker than most. Add to that her long, swirling fall of dark hair and the graceful, flowing movements she’d worked so hard to make her unwavering habit, and she drew gazes wherever she went.

Even if Bloodbright proved to be a clumsy lover when he inevitably bedded her at the end of this long night, there were far worse ways to earn coin than to spend an evening as the hired arm-adornment of a young noble attending a palace feast. There’d be good food and better wine in her near