Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [115]
With a growl he'd reached up into the crowded tangle of oddments in the rafter and brought down some jangling manacles, advancing on Narnra with a glint in his eye that suggested he might continue where Urrusk had been hauled off, after he-
She fought weakly as he snatched at her wrists. His fingers were as cold and hard as stone when he caught her, and he'd lifted her like a doll toward a ring set into one wall, chuckling. Then up from behind him Urrusk had lurched, face twisted in rage, and thrust the chain of the second manacle around the larger man's throat, ere hauling hard.
The big man's eyes had bulged as he roared and tugged. Narnra had put her shoulders to the wall and kicked him between the legs, as high and as hard as she could, ending up bruisingly on her behind on the littered floor as he staggered, found a wall with his face… and she was out into the night like a rushing wind, running blindly with a Watch-patrol soon after her…
{Fear disgust rage helpless rage revulsion}
[Narnra, be easy. You're not the only one who knew trouble in Waterdeep.]
Sweating and panting in that upper room in the house off Soothsayer's Way, where old Nathdarr ran his school of the sword better with one eye than many men can fight with two. Caladnei the only lass in the room, her desperate leaps and nimble blade-work slowly turning his contempt into grudging admiration, until the night when Marcon and Thloram burst in breathless to shout at her to flee with them-now!
While she worked to become better with steel, her companions of the Sash had run riot spending their coins in the City of Splendors. Rimardo and Vonda had foolishly tried to rob a noble, and his men had captured them and tortured them to death, forcing from them the names of all in the Brightstar Sash… as the noble's guards had jeeringly told Marcon whilst trying to impale him in a tavern, less than an hour ago.
He and Thloram had fought their way clear, with a mob on their heels and four guardsmen in livery dead, and now the Watch had joined the hounding. If she still had most of her gold, they knew where they could buy room together inside a crate being loaded onto a wagon for transport out of the city this night.
Nathdarr's look of admiration had melted back into sour disgust. He was shaking his head as they ran out the back way into the night-but when the mob came howling up to the front door of his training-room, he'd calmly put his sword through one, two, and three of them before drawing breath.
Such fun. So did you outlive all the others then come running to Cormyr to hide?
[Cruel, Narnra. I'll show you why I parted ways with the Sash. You deserve that much.]
With Thloram dead and buried in the Rift, Marcon was the only one left of the jovial band who'd plucked her up from her table at the Cracked Flagon. Oh, he'd found replacements-more blades and wizards than ever, younger and even more apt to swagger than Bertro had been-but the fun was gone. Too many sad memories, too many absent smiling faces.
Wherefore she hadn't bothered to tell Marcon when Meleghost Telchaedrin had sent word that she should come to him in private. If some decadent Halruaan wanted to make an end of her, so be it. We all greet the gods sometime, and Caladnei was past caring when her time would come.
The Sash was here in the Telchaedrin family towers to accept a commission. Sarde Telchaedrin wanted them to hunt down a renegade heir before the bloodtaint spell he'd crafted spread death to every corner of Halruaa. It was a task Caladnei mistrusted, but the coin being offered was staggering-another mark of suspicion that her younger comrades in the Sash didn't seem to see… and Marcon obviously didn't want to notice.
Lord Meleghost was an older uncle of Lord Sarde, considered "an odd one" by the few Halruaans Caladnei had been able to mention his name to. In his younger days he'd gone adventuring outside the Walls, bringing back strange tales of colorful Faerun beyond the mountains. He was alone when she arrived