Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [18]
She waved the fingers of her other hand over it in a flourish, hoping he'd think she was working some sort of magic, and swallowed hard. She'd seen throats slit before, but Sorval had given the world so gods-blessed much blood…
Sorval's slayer hurried in another direction, and was lost behind pillars and through archways. Narnra kept going, trying to forget Sorval's last horrible moments. Whoever he was, he hadn't… but enough!
She waved a hand as if to banish the memory and looked back once more. No slayer creeping back to follow her. Good.
Another amorous couple were locked together in half-seen urgency in a corner of the next chamber she crossed, and on the other side of the same room some furious men were trying to stab each other with daggers. They were too falling-down drunk to do much more than snarl incoherent threats and curses at each other, fall on their faces, roar and rage some more, and fall over again. Yes, a "Rightful Conspiracy" indeed.
Dancing was still going on here and there, though the piping and drum-thumping seemed to have stopped back behind her. The men ahead were chattering tirelessly, words flashing back and forth between them like slung stones: lots of excited speculation about how riches would come to them once "those bastard Obarskyrs were all dead."
Narnra frowned. Obarskyrs? They were the royal family of some realm way east of Waterdeep-a good, trustworthy, law-abiding place. Some place with a strange name… Cromyar? Cromeer? Cormeer-Cormyr, that was it!
Gods, she was halfway across the world!
Well, that'll teach you to follow wizards through glowing archways, she told herself savagely. Idiot.
Dagger in hand, Narnra joined the men climbing the stairs. No one paid her the slightest attention, as they wallowed in their own excited schemes and conclusions and get-even-richer dreams. Twice men stopped to strike dramatic poses and declaim things to their fellows, only to get shoved from below with calls of, "Move along!" and "Stand aside!" and "Don't hold up the Conspiracy!"
The steps were old, broad, and well-worn, but there were a lot of them, in little short flights that led to landings that gave onto more little runs of worn steps. As she ascended, Narnra felt the dampness increase, and tendrils of mist started to drift in around the busy stair.
Quite suddenly, she was in a many-pillared portico, on a dock that looked at the glittering lights and darkened spires of a sizable city-across mist-wreathed waters that stank. Skiffs and lantern-hung pleasure-barges bobbed against the dock, anchored to metal struts of many rings that were nothing like the great bollards of Waterdeep Harbor. This was the sea, all right- asea-but… oh, so different from the City of Splendors.
A stone arch bridge linked the land she stood on to a small islet crowded with rotting, leaking buildings with slate-tile roofs that sagged alarmingly and railings that were fire-brown with rust. No lamps were lit anywhere on it or on what seemed to be a second island beyond the first, where half-sunken barges lined crumbling, bird-dung-streaked wharves.
Instinctively, Narnra stepped away from the rush of chattering men proceeding over the bridge or strolling to barges where the patient faces of crewmen could be seen surveying the arrivals. Along the covered dock she went, seeking to be alone. There must be some way up to a vantage point where she could look around and see more of this new place… but where?
Behind her, someone fell into the water with a splash, and there were shouts of drunken merriment. Someone else on a nearby barge took advantage of the tumult to slit a throat and shove the body over the side. Narnra watched it slip head-first beneath the inky waters without a sound.
A third someone lit a hand-lamp and hauled the drunken man roughly aboard another barge, and by its light Narnra got her first look at the water, as the man's pale