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“I told you I don’t know,” Remy said. “The vizier forbade me to look at it. I’m guessing he put some kind of protection on it to make sure I wouldn’t.”

“I am going to show you a few things that Roji showed me,” Iriani said as he made a gesture over the box. The characters carved into its lid gave off a brief, pale glow. “You guess correctly,” Iriani said. “There are several different charms on it. One so it can be found in the event …” He glanced up at Remy. “In the event that the courier doesn’t finish his errand. Others to prevent scrying its contents or physically opening it. It’s thoroughly trapped and ensorcelled, this box. Whoever is sending it—also whoever is receiving it—thinks it’s very important.”

“And someone involved in the creation of the box and the protection of its contents,” Biri-Daar added, “has added an appeal to Tiamat’s protection.”

Turning back to the rest of the group, he said, “I should have seen this before. It was there to see, but I didn’t know what to look for. After talking to Roji and seeing imps …” He trailed off.

“What about the imps?” Remy asked.

“They tend to appear as emissaries between certain underworld beings and certain corrupt mortals,” Keverel said. “Certain forces are looking for you, or for what you carry. They are mostly looking along the Toradan Road, or we would have seen much stiffer resistance so far.”

“Here’s my guess,” Iriani said. “There are two factions in Toradan. One is waiting for whatever Remy has because they want to use it the way it was intended to be used. The other is trying to prevent it from getting there because they want to use it as leverage for some other goal. Which is which and who is who, that we might find out more about.”

“Either way,” Lucan added with a tap on Remy’s shoulder, “there’s not much interest in keeping you alive.”

“Put another way,” Biri-Daar said, “Philomen is involved with demons. He may not know it, but that is the case. And if Tiamat’s protection has been solicited …” She trailed off, lost in thought.

“What?” Iriani prompted. “Dragonish business, no doubt, but are we going to be seeing drakes in the skies on the way to Karga Kul?”

“No, not that,” Biri-Daar said. “But I fear what might await us at the Bridge of Iban Ja.”

She would say no more on the subject, and after a short meal taken mostly in silence, the party retired each to his or her own thoughts. Remy’s head spun as he lay on the straw mattress. Imps? Tiamat? What was he carrying? Suddenly he wanted very much to go home and forget he had ever met the vizier of Avankil. The Quayside life was for him …

Yet when he dreamed, it was of places he had never yet seen in waking life.

“The market is supposed to be a sanctuary,” Keverel said with some sorrow the next morning. They were sitting around the central oasis. Once it had been a spring in the desert. After centuries of development, it was a rectangular pool, with stone steps built into all four sides so visitors could step down and fill their canteens while merchants and travelers haggled in the surrounding plaza. It reminded Remy of one of the courtyards of Avankil, where noblewomen under parasols gossiped while flanked by tiefling bodyguards, which were the current fashion in the city. Along one side of the oasis plaza, the keep loomed, extending to the market’s north wall. The other three sides were lined with permanent houses and trading posts maintained by the Dragondown’s established mercantile clans, interspersed with other clearinghouses of families from as far north as the Nentir Vale. In the plaza, Crow Fork Market had the aspect of a city coming to be. A hundred feet in any direction—save for into the keep itself—it looked like a bazaar again.

The spring itself was clear and cold and deep, water welling into it from a series of underwater caves. Incursions from those watery catacombs were not unknown, and the keep kept a detachment of guards on watch around the pool at all times.

“I wish I had come here sooner,” Keverel went