Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [48]
Tossing her hair as she caught Tarandar’s eye, she parted her lips longingly, ran her tongue around them—and watched him blush. Delcastle chuckled, of course, and the chamberjack looked so overwhelmed by her displayed self that she almost burst into laughter. His tongue was actually hanging out.
She wondered what his face would look like if she told him who and what she truly was: Amarune Lyone Amalra Whitewave, an orphan from Marsember, who for some very hard-bitten years had earned her meals with her body—and thievery. A string of bold thefts every wizard of war had been publicly ordered to stop, if they could, by any and all means.
Not that anyone knew she was the Silent Shadow.
So hearing who she really was would make his face change, to be sure.
Yes, mageling, behold my bared charms. I’m your very own Silent Shadow—mask dancer, sometime forger, and busy prostitute.
The daughter of a much-respected and trusted war wizard, too, though Beltar Whitewave had been slain decades earlier in a frontier battle by hire-spells working for Sembian smugglers. Those same smugglers had later knifed her mother and her brother, leaving Amarune kinless in the world. She’d fled Marsember across its rain-slick rooftops that very night, never to return. If she’d waited until morning, she was sure she’d have suffered the same fate.
So, drooling young war wizard, you think I’m for you? Well, if you’ve coins enough in your purse, certainly.
Yet will you ever dare take them out and proffer them? I think not.
Wormling.
As they trotted along a dark passageway, a great crashing clangor of steel striking stone arose, ahead and below, and echoed off vaulted ceilings above them.
“Stormserpent’s snakes meeting with more guards?” Storm asked, turning her shoulders and ducking to crash open a door stuck in its frame from long disuse.
It yielded, sending her staggering.
Alusair was waiting for them, glowing like a coldly amused flame.
“You could say that. They blundered into some suits of empty armor set upon pedestals as adornment, and got buried in old cracked plate for their troubles.”
“Cracked?” the Bard of Shadowdale asked, as the ghost led them out onto another balcony.
“We don’t waste still-serviceable armor in Cormyr,” Alusair replied. “Or didn’t. Things are different in the palace, these days.”
“A lot of things are different, these days,” Elminster muttered. “Is yon lordling going to be allowed to wander these halls all night, without challenge? There are still wizards of war, aren’t there? And Purple Dragons, too? Cormyr still has a few of those?”
“They seldom pay much heed to what goes on in the haunted wing, Old Mage,” the ghostly princess replied.
“So who does guard it?”
Alusair turned to face him, striking a pose that mocked the gestures preferred by flamboyantly foppish nobles. “Me.”
They had been easy coins, but Arclath’s deft rain of them was coming to an end; all three men were visibly weary. They’d downed about half a decanter each, followed by bowls of mulled broth, then sweet iced buns; even Arclath was yawning. The other two were sagging in their seats.
Abruptly they all seemed to realize they were more than half asleep and thrust themselves to their feet, clasping arms and parting. Arclath tossed a generous handful of golden lions onto the table—enough to pay for six men to enjoy five such nights, at first glance—and they were heading for the door. The lordling no doubt for his soft silk mansion bed, and the other two, by their murmured converse, back to the palace to write down some of the concerns and ideas they’d thought of across the table regarding this precious council.
Ignored, Amarune stared thoughtfully after them, holding her last pose. Saers, behold, your very own nude statue. Forgotten and discarded,