Stormlight - Ed Greenwood [12]
"Please bear in mind that the dowager lady we met in the courtyard is precisely the type to go running to the king with complaints no matter what happens. Let's not be stupid enough, or allow ourselves to be goaded far enough, to give her anything reasonable to complain about. Let her make herself ridiculous. Don't give her any chance to make us look the fools."
He tossed his belt to the floor and undid the sash to let his overrobe fall open. "Now, the baths await. See to your rooms and baggage-and gentlesirs all, let us be very clear this situation could hold peril, so I'll tolerate no pranks. Save your nasty magics for other folk, not your fellow mages."
Without another word, Broglan strode to the bath chamber. Insprin followed, and they heard the metal lids clatter up as the two older mages uncovered the heated baths.
With one accord the four younger war wizards turned to the heap of baggage and started pulling and tossing satchels and crates aside.
"So, laddies-pleased to be here?" Lhansig cooed in mimicry of a gushing matron, batting his eyebrows.
Thanks to Mother Laspeera," Corathar said savagely, "I'll have to miss the Six Harpists concert, just to cool my heels in this backwater. Thank you, Mother Inthre!"
Murndal smiled. "I remember when she still called herself Laspeera Naerinth, before she married her mysterious man."
"Oh, yes. Do we still know nothing about him?"
"Well, he keeps to her quarters all the time-and I do mean all the time-cloaked and masked. The mask, they say, changes his features constantly, so that none know what he truly looks like. He can cast spells, but wears a blade. Some say he's a Harper, some-"
"I know, I know," Hundarr broke in sarcastically. "Some say he's a Red Wizard, some a Zhentarim, some a Halruaan outcast, and a few are even proposing he's a lich from long-lost Netheril. They say such things about every recluse in this land who knows a few light spells!"
Murndal sighed. "Yes, but this one does spend time scrying and working on spells. I've seen glimpses of the first and smelled and heard the less successful forays of the second. He's a powerful mage, all right, but he can't be a lich! Can you see Laspeera going to bed with a dead man? Or some sort of well-spoken, magically adept monster? I don't think so!"
"We're not here to think" Corathar said sharply. "That's the problem. We're always sent to places to look impressive and scare the chitlins out of folk, so they'll think-think twice, that is, about doing naughty things ever again."
"Well, I think we look very impressive," Lhansig joked, turning a cartwheel. "By the gods-you were all upside down, for just an instant there! How do you mages do that?"
Hundarr rolled his eyes. "Must you?" He turned to one of the doors. "If you must play such tricks, turn a few of those cartwheels in your bath-and call us in to watch, first!"
"One of these days Lhansig'll trip over his own tongue," Murndal murmured. "I wonder if we'll all be there to watch then?"
*****
The wine and the roast boar had both been good, very good. They almost made up for having to listen to the barbs of the old Dowager Lady Daggertongue.
Lhansig chuckled and shook his head as he strode to the jakes-they probably called it a garderobe here, just to seem more sophisticated. It was the same brittle, empty way that Hundarr strove to be sophisticated. Lhansig rolled his eyes and hummed "I've Always Been A Lady Fair" as he shouldered his way through the door.
A single lamp was guttering, and the place wasn't any too well lit. The sea-serpent-mawed bowl he was seeking ought to be around here… yes. He contentedly fumbled with the laces of his codpiece-and so never saw the hand that drove his head forward against