Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [49]
At the door, Arclath turned on his heel and looked back.
As it happened, her pose had her standing with her arms outstretched toward him almost imploringly.
He smiled a tired smile and tossed two golden lions at her, high and hard. A good throw even for a wide-awake man.
Amarune broke her pose at the last possible instant to pluck the coins deftly out of the air. Then she bowed to him, waved thanks with the most fluid grace she could manage, whirled, and ran lightly off the stage.
She knew, without looking, that he’d stood and watched until after the swirling curtains had swallowed her.
“Stormserpent’s met with real guards, this time,” Alusair observed with some satisfaction. “Dead ones—mere bones—but they can ply blades well enough. Hearken to the fray.”
“Aye,” Elminster agreed, “They’ll not last long, but they’d probably destroy a few thieves. They’re hacking down yon lordling’s boldblades like harbor rain.”
“So what’s this war wizard trap that will hurl you skyward?” Storm murmured, peering warily ahead.
Elminster shrugged. “The feeling grows within me that we’ll find it soon enough.”
Amarune yawned again, uncontrollably. Dances as long as tonight’s were always tiring, and the hot soaking bath she liked to follow them with, to keep from stiffening up on the walk home, always made her sleepy.
Then there was the walk itself and the long climb up the stairs to her lodgings at the end of it … yes, she was more than ready for sleep.
Yet it was one of those nights—the times when she found herself prowling wearily around her few cramped, dingy, rented rooms, mind too awake and excited for slumber. The council and all those nobles descending on the city, with their bodyguards and dressers and scores of other servants—what would such visitors who found their ways to the Dragonriders’ find most alluring?
Well, the unobtainable, of course. If they were nobles, that meant coupling with a willing, hitherto-unknown Obarskyr princess, of course, but she couldn’t give them that.
Or could she?
Hugging her thick, much-patched old nightrobe around herself, Amarune stared at herself in the mirror. Dark eyes stared back in smoldering challenge.
She blew herself a kiss, stone-faced, almost insolent in her inscrutability.
She was—tell truth, lass, and shame the Dragon—the best mask dancer in Suzail.
Yes, it just might work.
She’d fool no one, of course, and it’d be death to even try any sort of Obarskyr-kin claim—but she could tease …
The Princess in the Mask, she could be, hungering after the right dragon to warm her throne. Yes …
She bent to her littered desk in sudden urgency, snatched a bit of reed-weave paper out of her heap of salvaged scraps, plucked up her quill, and started scribbling. Sometimes ideas came pelting down harder than harbor rain …
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
TEMPTATIONS FOR MANY
Elminster gave the undead Steel Regent of Cormyr a long, hard look. “I thought I knew these halls. Evidently not.”
Not surprisingly, Alusair’s answering smile was thin and ghostly. “Evidently not.”
That was all she said, so after waiting vainly for more, El sighed and asked, “So just how many whirlbone traps don’t I know about?”
Alusair shrugged. “Six, perhaps seven. I could be more precise if I knew just how many secrets of my family you know about.” She held up a hand to forestall his reply and added, “I speak now of palace architecture only, not long-hidden heirs, bastards, scandals, and proverbial skeletons in wardrobes. We’d be here a tenday or more, I’m sure, if you started in on those.”
Elminster nodded. “At least. Well, then—”
Alusair flung up both her hand and her sword in urgent unison, whirled, and was gone, leaving behind the whisper: “He’s done something. The skeletons are down and done. Our Stormserpent continues to surprise. I must see.”
“Go, then,” Elminster murmured. “My time for flying and hurrying isn’t upon us yet.”
Not for the first time, he spoke to empty air. Much to Alusair’s displeasure, Elminster trudged along no more