The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [15]
In the meantime, the storm had torn itself apart and the sun glowed orange through the tattered clouds. Alassra reached for her staff.
*****
Boesild was waiting for her on the balcony. Scrubbed and shaved, he looked quite the prince in linen breeches and an embroidered shirt that hadn't come from the palace wardrobe. By contrast, Alassra wore her customary storm-cloud gown, a bit worse in the bodice for quicksilver burns it had taken earlier in the day.
"You look… enchanting," her guest said with a diplomatic smile.
"Nonsense, I look like a street-waif."
His smile turned genuine. "A street-waif who sunders Thayan armies with a wooden staff."
"Not tonight, I hope," Alassra replied, leaning said staff against the table as she sat in the chair he held for her. "A little company on my birthday is pleasant; an army would be too much."
He was wrong about the staff. It wasn't a weapon; she never took it into battle. The wood had a memory for places, though, and could take her almost anywhere she'd ever been. It was the easiest way in and out of her tower workroom.
Alassra's nephew spoke entertainingly while they ate, savoring the excellent fish and the culinary talents of the Simbul's underworked cooks until there was only a bowl of iced fruit beside the melting snow-flowers on the table between them.
"So tell me, Boesild, why have you come to Velprintalar?"
"Not for your birthday, Honored Aunt. I didn't think you'd be fooled."
"I'd have dined alone without you."
A silent moment passed. The first star appeared in the violet sky. And Boesild dug into a suede belt pouch. He produced two small disks, which, after examination, he laid on the table.
"I found these yesterday in Nethra."
Supper soured in the Simbul's stomach. Nethra was one of the port cities south of the Yuirwood. Like all the cities of Aglarond and Thay, Nethra had started out as a Mulhorandi outpost. The Nethrans fought for and won their independence as the Mulhorand Empire faded, but their freedom was a chancy thing, balanced between Thayan greed and the price of Aglarondan protection. These days Nethra paid a handsome tithe into the Velprintalar treasury, and Alassra paid a reward for any Red Wizard tokens taken within its territory.
The Aerasume weren't bounty hunters.
"How did you acquire them?" she asked.
"I was out late in a quarter where respectable folk lock their doors at sunset and stay inside, no matter what, until the sun's up again. I heard a cry for help-"
Alassra's eyebrows rose to a dramatic height.
"A full-throated cry, I assure you. Naturally, I investigated."
"Naturally," she agreed.
Boesild pushed one of the disks closer to his aunt. "I was too late. This one was already dead and the other, fool that she was, attacked me."
"Foolishness is part of Red Wizard training."
"Indeed, though I didn't guess she was a wizard until after I'd broken her neck. They have a kind of scent, you know. That one," Boesild indicated the disk he'd pushed, "had cloaked himself well. Still, I'd have known him for what he was if we'd come in sight of each other, but the woman-oh, my Honored Aunt-she could have deceived you."
"Never."
Pale hair swayed in the twilight as Boesild shook his head. "There was nothing, nothing, about her while she lived and only the faintest trace after she'd died. I wouldn't have found the token-wouldn't even have looked for one-if my suspicions hadn't already been aroused."
Alassra took the nearest disk in her sensitive fingers. Red Wizards carried such disks as proof of their place in the hierarchies of their various disciplines and as means to summon protection from their superiors.
"Had he called for help?"
Boesild shook his head. "Another interesting thing: She'd slain him without magic, smashed his skull in with a cobblestone. She fought me the same way. As I said, I'd no notion what