The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [53]
"Why, I was talking to Lady Hiilgauntlet just the other day, ahaha, and she told me-"
Lark began drifting toward the seaward wall. Now if I was an ascending staircase, where would I be? Close enough to a garderobe to serve as an excuse, it was to be hoped…
"What a sly little snake you are, Bedeira. How many hang-tongued men have you demolished as thoroughly as you did poor Laeburl, I wonder?"
"Forty-six, my lord," came the gloating reply. "Care to be my forty-seventh?"
Lark's progress thankfully took her out of hearing whatever reply Bedeira was offered-and even more thankfully, showed her broad stone steps, flanked by suits of armor far too ancient to have living men inside them, within the third archway in the wall before her. The light was dimmer here, and inevitably the gossip was more whispered and vicious-and some hands were wandering.
Lark stepped around a couple so lost in rapture that the feminine half of it was using her chin to hold up her own gathered gown. Beyond them was the arch that opened onto the stairway.
Glass in hand and affecting the frown of a well-bred lady who was beginning to feel some urgency in a search for the nearest garderobe, she stepped through the arch, glanced up the stair, and discovered something else.
There was not a guard to be seen, and over a landing far above her hung the paired blue and red lanterns that proclaimed: Garderobe Here.
Gasping a relief she didn't quite feel, Lark started up the stairs.
* * * * *
"You look as bored as I feel," Taeros murmured to Beldar, deftly avoiding a drunken Brokengulf maiden aunt. The aging beldame seemed bent on changing that status before the evening was out; she reeled past, twittering and clutching at all and sundry.
Beldar inspected the dregs in his latest goblet and told them, "I am hideously bored. One thinks of the notorious Serpent with the spice of danger, not-so-veiled elven insults, a whiff of things illicit-and a lot more elverquisst than I've seen yet." He waved a hand to indicate the room all around and added, "But this… this is our parents, chattering about their petty politics and intrigues. As harbor-filling usual."
To underscore his judgment, Beldar nodded his head toward old Laranthavurr Irlingstar just as the craggy-faced old bore's monocle made another of its inevitable plunges from its cheek-top perch into the grotesquely large snifter in the eldest Irlingstar uncle's hand. Droplets of luminous green liquid arced up in all directions in the wake of its loud "plop," and Aeramacrista Gauntyl, whom he'd been lecturing about proper precedence when dealing with "those new-coin think-far-too-well-of-them-selves visitors from Amn," drew hastily back from the shower with a little crow of alarm that she clumsily transformed into a titter.
Her retreat caused her to jostle Mornarra Cassalantar. Exaggerated exception was taken. Cutting words erupted.
Taeros rolled his eyes.
Beldar was rather gloomily regarding a glistening emerald droplet that had just landed on the back of his hand. "Calishite aumbruril. How three decades back!"
Taeros chuckled rueful agreement. "Shall we flit elsewhere, then?"
"Decidedly. There's a dance on at the Slow Cheese. Find Malark, will you?"
"Consider him found. Behold our royal blade-besieged, as usual."
Taeros pointed with his fresh goblet at a solid ring of noble matrons, all waving ring-laden hands expressively and spouting nonsense as fast as they could draw breath. The two Gemcloaks could just see Malark's rather weary smile over the fantastic coiffures of the shortest noblewomen. It seemed silver galleons were fashionable at the moment, for no less than three such vessels were sailing through cranial waves of artfully dyed, pinned, and stiffened hair.
As they watched, Malark's smile slid just a trifle more. Taeros made a sympathetic sound, tossed his goblet in the general direction of the nearest servant, and strode into the press of loud laughter, overwhelming perfumes, and glittering, gleaming "my taste is even worse and more expensive than thine"