Fire in the Blood, page 29
The war wizard frowned. “Princess, I don’t think it’s wise—”
“As if you cannot blast her into ashes from a hundred yards, Pelia,” Raedra said. “If the Royal Magician has something to say about it, tell him to come and be quarrelsome at me.” To Farideh, she said nothing, only walked into the hall of paintings, leaving Farideh to follow.
Raedra stopped a little more than halfway down, looking up at a painting of a strikingly beautiful woman in jewels, holding a stiletto in one hand and a rose in the other.
“I’m sorry,” Farideh said. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”
“Of course you did,” Raedra said, sounding weary. “What was I doing but dragging your sister through the mud and asking you to bite your tongue? I would have hit you—I did nearly hit you—so I must concede, it was invited.” She looked askance at Farideh. “Do they call her stupid?”
“Yes,” Farideh said. “She’s not, not really. Just flighty. She gets things mixed up sometimes.” She looked up at the beautiful woman. “But she sees things other people don’t. And she’s brilliant with her weapon.” Raedra said nothing. “I didn’t mean those things. About your broth—I mean, the prince.”
Raedra nodded, absently. “Do you want to see the portrait of the two princesses? The better one?”
Farideh glanced back at the trio of protectors, each one ready to leap to action if Raedra gave the slightest sign. “Do you want to know what I saw?”
“In a moment,” Raedra said. She crossed the hallway, and at the other side of a window indicated a large painting of two women, side by side. Where the painting in the dark little room had been gauzy and sweet, all pastels and soft lines, this was rich and detailed and stern. The brown-haired woman here was turned in profile, one hand on a stack of books, the other arm cradling a baby in swaddling. The blond woman wore armor with a cream-colored hood, one hand on her sister’s shoulder and one holding a shield emblazoned with a purple dragon.
“It’s not accurate,” Raedra said. “Tanalasta died in childbirth. And some say they never really got along that well.”
“I see why you prefer it,” Farideh said. She leaned forward, eyes locked on the woman’s warm brown eyes. “What was her name again? The Steel One?”
“Alusair. It does look like her.”
“How do you know?”
“She haunts the palace,” Raedra said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “I’ve only seen her once—after one of the revels they held before my other wedding. I don’t think she likes me much—I’ve never been scowled at like that before, by the living or the dead. But maybe she knew better about the wedding.”
“You were already married?” Farideh asked. “What happened?”
Raedra looked at her, surprised. “No one told you that? I can’t believe Aubrin …” Raedra trailed off and shook her head. “It seems like the sort of detail one would tell one’s mistress, if one were trying to make a case. Maybe she didn’t tell you.”
Mistress. It had such an ugly sound, the way Raedra said it, like a disease, an infestation. A mistress.
Raedra sighed. “Baerovus and I used to come up here, play a silly little game called Tribute. We’d take turns choosing which piece we would want as a gift, until we chose them all. Or I got bored.”
Farideh frowned up at a tapestry of a woman holding a shining sword, surrounded by bestial-looking orcs. “That’s … a game?”
Raedra paused. “My brother’s a little particular.” Whatever friendliness had crept into Raedra’s manner fled, and she suddenly became formal and not a little defensive.
“Which did he pick first?” Farideh asked.
Raedra was silent a moment, before she beckoned Farideh down the long hall. She pointed up at a painting of a cool-eyed man in full armor, holding a shining greatsword. If someone had folded the board it had been painted on in half, it would match perfectly side to side. “Faerlthann the First King, and Ansrivarr, the Blade of Memory,” she said. “He liked how tidy it is.” She bit her lip. “Likes,” she corrected. “He likes how tidy it is.”
Farideh’s chest tightened. “Is he doing any better?”
Raedra stared up at the dead king. “The same. Every day, the same.” She folded her hands. “I always let him choose this one,” she said briskly. “My first was either the princesses or Azoun the Second killing the Purple Dragon.”
Farideh frowned. “Why did he kill a guardsman?”
Raedra snorted. “No, no. The Purple Dragon.” She took Farideh’s arm and led her back down the hall to a painting of a man astride an enormous dragon’s skull, his sword nearly to the hilt in the creature’s violet-scaled crown. At their feet a man in voluminous robes raised his hands, spangled with magic, a second lay supine, clutching a chest wound.
“Thauglorimorgorus,” Raedra said. “The Purple Dragon. He ruled the Forest Kingdom before the humans arrived, before we built Cormyr. He returned once to take it back—it took the king, two High Wizards—Jorunhast, that’s him with the beard; and his teacher, Thanderahast who’s there rolling around on the ground—plus a whole company of soldiers to kill him.”
She waggled her fingers at Farideh. “Some say it wasn’t enough, and if an Obarskyr ever doesn’t sit on the Dragon Throne, Thauglor will return again and reclaim the Forest Kingdom.”
“But he’s dead?”
“Well one never can tell with a dragon,” Raedra sighed. “Better to keep an Obarskyr on the throne anyway. Speaking of—” She glanced down the hallway at the Purple Dragon guards and sighed. “Are they safe?”
Farideh nodded. “None of them is in service to Shar. Neither are your friends, or the maids.” She paused. “You might watch out for Florelle, I think.”
“Florelle?” Raedra said, incredulous.
“I get the impression that she might be swayed to do a lot of things if it meant she gained a little power.”
Raedra chuckled. “That describes half the noblewomen in Suzail. I should expect you to warn me about Varauna before Florelle.”
“No—Varauna …” Farideh hesitated, the noblewoman’s sharp, unkind words replaying in her thoughts. “She’s likely the safest of them all. She’s … satisfied in a way the others aren’t. And regardless of anything else, Maranth clearly dotes on you. They’re safe,” she said again. “You’re safe.”
“Thank you,” Raedra said. “That is a burden from my mind.” But she didn’t walk back toward the guards, staring instead for several breaths at the dying black dragon in the painting. “Would you come again?” she asked. “In a day or so? There are others … I will tell Varauna she must keep her tongue about your sister. About you.” She looked at Farideh, clearly embarrassed. “You’re not ugly, you know. She was only trying to gain attention.”
Farideh smiled, an empty thing. “I know what I am.”
“You might come again,” Raedra said once more. “If nothing else … I owe you a better measure of hospitality.”
“That isn’t necessary,” Farideh insisted. “And your war wizards—”
“Are very good at what they do,” Raedra finished. “But they cannot spy the Lady of Loss’s mark on a person, and they’re sure Varauna is going to ruin me. You will come. Please?”
Farideh swallowed a sigh of her own. “Do I have to wear the dress?”
“I’ll find something with a more suitable hem.” Raedra assured her, and set off for the guards before Farideh could protest that wasn’t what she meant. The Purple Dragons and Pelia whisked Raedra off, down the corridors.
“Should I follow?” Farideh called.
“That isn’t necessary.” Farideh’s heart leaped, and her pact poured Hells’ magic through her veins, carrying the soul sight with it. She spun—ready for ghosts, ready for kidnappers, ready for more sharp-tongued nobles—and found Ilstan standing behind her with a pleasant smile.
“My apologies. It seemed faster to just make the jump, so to speak.” Ilstan’s soul lights flickered like a hundred candles in a drafty room—silver and blue and violet and gold. But in the center of that glittering mass was another shape—a glyph, the sort of glyph she’d seen impressed upon the souls of Chosen. She couldn’t read it, but she knew it was the mark of a god, a claim placed upon this soul, their blessed agent in the world of Toril.
But Farideh was sure she’d seen that same glyph before: emblazoned on the heart of the god of sin himself. Ilstan’s smile didn’t waver as he took her by the arm.
“You’ll want to change,” he said. “You can’t go out in fencing gear.” He gave a good-natured chuckle. “That would look very odd, indeed.”
“I NEVER THOUGHT I’d see the princess disguising a tiefling and squiring her around the city,” Pelia Rowanmantle said as she and Ilstan headed toward the Royal Magician’s tower as the sun set. “Utterly bizarre. Whatever she’s doing, certainly we could do it just as well.”
Ilstan kept his eyes on the path, his expression as blank as he could manage, but the memory of Farideh, jumpy and staring on the ride back to the tallhouse, nagged at him. “The tiefling is the one who identified Lady Thundersword’s true allegiances. It’s a safety measure.”
“Hm,” Pelia said. “The same tiefling who punched her in the mouth? Very safe.”
“An accident.”
“None of her retinue has ever struck her. Not even Lady Thundersword.”
“None of her retinue has had work as a bounty hunter,” Ilstan said, though privately he was just as appalled as Pelia. Raedra had brushed the whole incident off when he returned from dropping Farideh back at Lord Crownsilver’s tallhouse.
“She slipped,” Raedra said. “And she wasn’t holding back the way the others do.”
“With all due respect, Highness,” Ilstan said. “They hold back for a reason.” But she’d waved him off and gone to sit instead with Baerovus. He wondered what Farideh had told her.
“Have you brought it up with Ganrahast?” Pelia asked.
Ilstan blew out a breath. “He has more important things to be concerned about.”
“At this point?” Pelia said. “With the crown prince lost and his son comatose? Anything that touches the life of an Obarskyr is something to be concerned about.”
They reached the Royal Magician’s tower, but as Pelia passed through the door, Ilstan was seized with a dizziness so sudden and overwhelming he slammed into the tower’s stone wall.
How is a devil like a wizard? The voice from the ether rang all around him like the pealing of a bell. Neither is a god—until they are … we all snatch and scrabble … we know it can always be lost, ah yes …
“Ilstan!” Pelia shouted. The vertigo vanished and with it the strange voice. But unlike before, it didn’t leave Ilstan at peace. He dropped to a crouch and was sick all over the path and Pelia’s slippers.
“Ye gods, man!” she cried, leaping back. “What’s the matter with you?”
I don’t know, Ilstan thought. But it was rapidly becoming apparent that he needed to figure it out. This wasn’t a hiccup in the Weave. This wasn’t a spell going awry.
But the moment Ilstan said something, Ganrahast would pull him aside, for safety’s sake, and Cormyr couldn’t spare another war wizard. A devil, a wizard, and it can always be lost. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Just … a spot of vertigo.”
“Go lie down,” Pelia said, though by her look, it was clear she didn’t believe Ilstan. He hurried back to the palace, his thoughts ringing with warnings of gods and devils, of keys and locks, of traitors and saviors and all that might be lost. Too many fingers pointing to the same trap, the flat eyes that widened at him, that wouldn’t stop staring. She’d made him uneasy as he conveyed her back home—was this why?
He hardly knew where he was going, until he passed between the guards standing outside the prince’s sickroom.
Raedra looked up as he came in, the haze of his vision making her seem as golden and glowing as a solar in the sunset. Her pale eyes flicked over him.
“Ilstan?” she said. “Whatever’s the matter?”
“You cannot send for her again,” he blurted.
Raedra stiffened. “I beg your pardon.”
“The tiefling. Farideh. Your Highness.” The manic feeling ebbed in a jerky uneven way, but that sureness that something was wrong, that the voice meant the tiefling, remained. “There’s something … I can’t be sure what she might be up to.”
“She’s up to nothing at all,” Raedra said. “You already assured me of that much.” She peered at him, over the sleeping prince. “Are you well?”
“Of course I’m well,” he snapped. Raedra raised an eyebrow and through his sureness Ilstan realized the Purple Dragons near the door had moved closer. “My apologies. I’ve just … I have a terrible feeling … What did she tell you?”
Raedra folded her hands. “That you are correct about Lord and Lady Goldfeather, Lady Ambershield, Nell, and the four guards that attended us. And Wizard of War Rowanmantle, as well,” she added coolly. “She also complimented several aged paintings of variable quality. But I’m sure Ganrahast is well aware of all of that.”
Ilstan heard the rebuke she didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.
“Is there something you’ve found?” Raedra asked. “Or is it only this feeling?”
“I’ve overstepped,” he said. “I … I beg your forgiveness, Highness.”
Raedra smoothed Prince Baerovus’s blankets unnecessarily, and did not meet his eyes. “She will return again, tomorrow. If you find something more concrete than a feeling, I’d be happy to hear it, but otherwise …” She cleared her throat. “You will keep your opinions to yourself, War Wizard.”
Ilstan bowed his head. “Of course, Your Highness. Your pardon.” He slipped from the room, feeling as though he’d managed to fail both the princess and the intrusive voice.
15
30 Eleasias, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Suzail, Cormyr
DAHL BLEW OUT A NERVOUS BREATH, SCANNING THE PROMENADE BEFORE the tallhouse as though it would make Farideh step out of the cobbles. “How long has she been gone?”
“A few hours,” Dumuzi said. Then, “She told me not to go with her.”
“She would.” Dahl drummed his fingers against the punnet of blackberries. I have good news and I have bad news, he imagined himself saying. Possibly. Depending on how mad she really was about the other night, maybe it was all bad news. “So you’ve just been sitting here since?”
“You are all so very nosy about what I do,” Dumuzi said. “I ate a meal. I pulled some weeds from the flower boxes and the garden. I was going to fetch a book from the library when you showed up.”
“What’s in Brin’s library?” Dahl scoffed. “Mountains of chapbooks?”
“Lot of history books. Books about planes and devils.” He was silent a moment. “I just finished one about trade in the Heartlands. It’s interesting.”
“Is it?”
“You don’t do things like we do,” Dumuzi said simply.
A carriage rattled up to the iron gate, unmarked by any family’s crest. The coachman climbed down, but before he could reach the door, the rider inside opened it and stepped out. The tall, dark-robed war wizard from the previous night smiled pleasantly at Dahl and Dumuzi, then helped Farideh from the carriage.
She looked human again, and worse—she was cinched into a purple gown that made the blue one look demure. Her hair had been pinned up in a pile of braids and curls, displaying the long column of her neck, and if he wasn’t mistaken, she was wearing a little paint. She spoke to Ilstan briefly, her blue-and-brown eyes averted, then came up the walk with a stormy expression.
“If you say a word,” she told Dahl, “I will kill you.” She frowned at the blackberries.
“A gift,” he said holding them out. “An apology. I was an ass the other night—”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about it,” she said, pushing past him, but she took the blackberries as she opened the door.
“There’s … more,” Dahl said. He nodded at the pegs by the door. “I got your cloak back. And you were absolutely right—the cellarer is an agent of Netheril. That’s the good news.”
“You say that like there’s bad news coming.”
“Maybe.” Dahl hesitated. “I got your cloak back by letting the innkeeper at the Brigand’s Bottle believe we were unlucky lovers hiding from my hidebound employer. And I’m wondering if you’d mind keeping that ruse up, because I have seventeen more possible Sharrans to flush out. Also,” he added, “I’m fairly sure she’s going to spread that gossip around like it’s tilling season. So … I might need to do better than blackberries.”
Whatever Farideh’d been expecting him to say, that clearly wasn’t it. “I thought … you said you were going to think of a different cover.”
“Circumstances changed. And all things considered, it’s a very solid cover. If the Sharrans talk to each other and note they’ve seen us in more than one place, well, of course they have, we’re trying to stay ahead of Vescaras. All you have to do is come with me to the places on the list,” he said. “Sit there, let me buy you a meal or a drink. Pretend you’re enjoying my company. Thwart some Sharrans.”
“Lorcan …” She sighed. “He wasn’t happy the other night. He’s firmly convinced you’re going to talk me out of the pact or something.”
Dahl snorted. “Has he met you?”
“You’re trying to talk me into this, so don’t play to my stubbornness so quickly.” She chewed her lower lip, deep in thought. “Would you help me with something if I help you?”
“Name your price.”
She beckoned him down the hall and into what turned out to be the tallhouse’s library. It wasn’t much of a library, that was certain, but at least it was dedicated to being a library, and not a sitting room or gallery or second parlor, the way so many nobles did. Only a little bigger than the entryway, and lined ceiling to floor with shelves and packed with books and scrolls. Farideh plucked a bit of foolscap from the narrow desk, scratched a stylus across it with careful, forceful strokes. She considered the finished product, then handed it over to Dahl, the ink still wet.
