Frowning, she grabbed Crackletongue's scabbard to keep it from fouling her leg and broke into a run. Zazesspur's city council had issued several decrees officially deploring the activities of Star Protective Ser-vices, but had never quite mustered the presumption to try to outlaw it. Though the civic guard grew apace-with the aim, some said, of reuniting Tethyr by force-the council was currently preoccupied by a complicated gavotte preparatory to naming Baron Hardisty lord of the city. An attempt to arrest Zaranda and her lieu-tenants-or, less formally, assassinate them-was not outside possibility's realm, however.
She rounded the corner and stopped. Two figures faced each other, one slender and feminine, one scarcely less slim but taller and broader through the shoulders. Each wore quilted, heavily padded jerkins, leather gloves, and masks of wire mesh, and fought each other with capped rapiers. Stablehands lounged on the side-lines, uttering calls of encouragement.
As Zaranda appeared in the gateway, the fencers stopped and swept the masks from their heads. The master was Farlorn, his pupil, Chenowyn.
The girl's cheeks were flushed beneath her freckles. "Oh, Zaranda, it's so marvelous! He's teaching me-"
She saw Zaranda's expression. Her words faltered to a stop. "What do you think you're doing?" Zaranda asked quietly.
Chenowyn gazed down at her feet, which were kicking at a clump of matted straw. "Learning to fence."
Zaranda walked to her, touched her arm, guided her aside. The stablehands abruptly found business that wanted tending to. Farlorn stood with rapier tip grounded and protective mask under one arm, a faint supercilious smile on his face.
"Don't you understand," Zaranda asked in a quiet but pressing voice, "that you haven't time for that? If you want to be a mage, you've got to work at it full-time."
A full underlip trembled, then, "You didn't have to!
You're a mage and a warrior, both! I just want to be tike you."
"Chen, dear, you don't understand. I did have to devote myself to studying magic, body and soul. It didn't come easy for me-it doesn't come easy to anyone who really wants to be good at it. I didn't become a warrior until I had studied magic for many years-and only after I'd put that study aside for good and all." Chenowyn sniffled, dabbed at an eye with her thumb, and looked away. "But that's not the real problem," Zaranda said. "The real problem is… you've got to stop trying to be me. Because you can't be me, you cannot be more than an imitation me, and a poor one at that-however hard you try. Whereas the Chen I know is strong and vibrant and alive, an altogether ad-mirable girl-and you do a marvelous job of being her." She touched Chen's cheek. The girl pulled away. "You're just jealous because Farlorn is spending so much time with me!" she cried through tears. She ran off toward the stables.
Zaranda sighed and shook her head. And how much truth is there in that? she wondered. A commotion came from inside the stalls. Chen burst forth, clinging tike a monkey to the back of a handsome chestnut gelding. She rode right out of the yard and away up the brick street, grooms shouting angrily after her. "I'll bring her back," Farlorn called. He loped grace-fully into the stable, plucking the cap from his rapier and sheathing it. Zaranda teetered on the edge of fol-lowing him.
The bard emerged on his dappled gray mare. He waved jauntily to Zaranda and rode in pursuit of her errant apprentice.
No, Zaranda thought. It won't help if I go. Instead she went inside the stable on feet that had turned to lead, to greet Goldie before taking herself to her chamber.
As Zaranda arrived, the serving maid was leaving, having just lit the lanterns. Zaranda smiled mechaniccally at her, went into her chamber, pulled off her boots, and sat down at a table by the window.
The shutters were open, admitting evening smells of water and spring flowers and pavement slowly giving up the day's heat. The lights were coming on all over Ithmong, and out on the river lanterns bobbed from barge prows like the lures of giant anglerfish.
The town council had sent wine, sprays of flowers, and baskets of preserved fruit-cheap enough gestures of goodwill. And indeed Zaranda appreciated them, though she wasn't about to roll over on their account. She took up a wedge of orange preserved in ginger, bit into it, and noticed something new: a purple glass flask with stout body and long, slim neck.
Zaranda picked it up and turned it over in her hands, impressed. This was no local product like the rather insipid wine-Ithmong produced several serviceable beers, but their vineyards couldn't hold a candle to Zazesspur's. This was Tintoram's Select, a blackberry brandy made by the halflings of the Purple Hills of the coast between Zazesspur and Myratma, famed throughout Faerun for its flavor and potency. A notable gift,. even for a town councilor who had been fattening on tolls the last few years.
She broke the lead seal and uncorked the flask. The aroma that flowed out was sweet and heady as first love and nourishing as a meal. She poured some-just a splash-into a tumbler. It was a purple so dark it was almost black. She passed it beneath her nose, allowing its richness to permeate her being, and sipped. It burned, and soothed, and burst like a bomb within her.
She let herself savor the sensations for a moment. Then she reached for her inkpot, her pen made from a sahuagin spine with steel nib from Kara-Tur, and a clean sheet of papyrus. It was time to begin drafting a contract proposal.
She wrote a little. Then, feeling the weariness of the day's events clamp a heavy hand on the back of her neck, she picked up the tumbler, sipped again, rolled the brandy around in her mouth.
I wonder where Chen and Farlorn are, she thought, feeling concern stir. Yet she could muster no great urgency. Nor could she readily drag her attention back to the lines on the papyrus sheet.
Instead her attention wandered out the window. Away in the distance, over the river perhaps, a single amber light burned. It seemed both poignantly lonely and jewel-beautiful, and Zaranda found herself staring at it. As she stared, her vision wandered further and further out of focus, and the amber light grew steadily larger and fuzzier, until it became huge, became a sun, and swallowed her altogether.
23
With a several-voiced whistle and a resounding smack, the knotted rawhide thongs bit into Zaranda's bare flesh. Clenched teeth barred a scream, but a groan escaped her throat. Her body twisted clockwise from the force of the blow, then turned widdershins, toes dangling two inches from a drain set in the slimy stone floor. Her whole weight depended from her arms, chained to a hook in the low, round-vaulted ceiling. Manacles bit her wrists like the pincers of a giant scorpion; her shoulders burned from unnatural strain.
When she could trust herself to speak more or less steadily, she moistened her lips and said, "I hate to disappoint you, but I don't really have any vital secrets to withhold from you. So there's not… much point… to this exercise."
Shaveli Sword-Master laughed hoarsely. He swung his cat-o'-nine-tails so its thongs sang savagely. Zaranda shut her eyes and clamped her jaw, then winced as the lash struck stone flagging with a crack.
"Clearly you don't understand, Countess," he said cheerfully. The glare from a brazier, in which various iron implements nestled yellow-glowing heads among the coals, cast entirely redundant, fiendish highlights over his face. The dungeon stank of mold and hot metal and all the scents of fear. "You know nothing that could possibly be of the slightest use to my master-only how to inconvenience him, which I fancy you'll not be doing any more. As to-"