Beneath the City of Mulmaster:

Volo put his arm around his corpulent friend. The grown man had stopped crying and seemed resigned to the fact that the two of them would die together in the darkness. Despite the telltale rumblings of his impatient stomach, nary a complaint or whine issued from his lips.

Idle and Catinflas would be proud, thought the master traveler.

Volo passed the time with his friend relating tales of his expedition to the Underdark. What seemed like hours passed, and still the master traveler was without a plan. The irregular contours of the ground and walls, and the frequent underground cliffs overlooking bottomless pits made groping around in the dark unadvisable. Had he had ample time to prepare for this excursion in the darkness, there would have been numerous precautions against situations such as this that he would have taken, but unfortunately such was not the case.

The master traveler's thoughts drifted back to Honor Fullstaff and Mason McKern. He was still not quite sure if they had planned for this to happen once he and Passepout had fulfilled their mission, but was quite confident that neither member of the old guard of Mulmaster had the least bit of concern for himself or his friend's lives now that their task had been performed. In fact, to a certain degree, they might even be more comfortable with their now assured permanent silence on the matters that had recently transpired.

Volo sighed, but Passepout seemed not to notice, having slipped into an almost catatonic state of despairing acceptance.

The master traveler was fairly confident that he could find their way back to the sewer hole and would have been willing to accept the risks involved in surviving the subterranean trip out to sea, had he not also been confident that his dear friend would never have survived such a journey.

If no alternative came to them shortly, they would have to take the risk.

Passepout bolted upright, his nose sniffing the air.

"What's that?" the portly thespian asked urgently.

"What's what?" the master traveler responded.

"I smell breakfast rolls," Passepout replied.

Volo sniffed the air, but was unable to detect a change in the aroma of their locale. He feared that his friend was beginning to hallucinate, until he heard what seemed like the soft patting of slippered footsteps on the underground path.

"Well, can you smell it?" the thespian asked desperately.

"Hush!" Volo commanded. "I think someone is coming."

"Friend or foe?" Passepout asked in a quivering whisper.

"I don't know," Volo answered, "but we'll find out soon enough. Whoever they are they're coming closer."

Volo looked in the direction that he and his friend had come from, and saw the beginnings of a torch's glow entering the chamber in which they now sat, soon followed by the silhouette of either their savior or the latest threat to their existence.

"Well, it's about time I found you two," Chesslyn said, a bit of good-natured impatience in her voice. "Breakfast is almost stone cold."

The Harper secret agent reached into her pack, and handed the two travelers breakfast buns. Passepout devoured his immediately, and looked longingly at Volo's. The master traveler gladly offered it to his friend, who gratefully accepted.

Volo stood up, and hugged their savior.

"What took you so long?" he said happily.

"I'm a good tracker," she replied, "but not that good. Honor sent a message instructing me that what had transpired over the past few days had never taken place, and that it was only because I had been his favorite student that he knew that I would understand. He then made mention of his being grateful for my part in the beginnings of the restoration of Mulmaster to its former glory. That was it."

"I see." said Volo cautiously.

"Since he never mentioned you or Passepout, I naturally assumed something had happened," she explained, "and since you still owe me that chance to get to know you better, I decided to trace your steps from where I left you the other night and, voila, here I am."

"In the nick of time, I might add," Passepout interjected. "I had despaired of ever eating again."

Chesslyn handed him another breakfast bun and turned her attention back to Volo. "Do you think it's safe for us to return with you to Mulmaster?" the master traveler asked guardedly.

"I think so," Chesslyn answered. "Though Honor might allow you to disappear without a trace, I don't think he would actually lift a hand to have you removed, given the current business in court. It might attract too much unwanted attention. You should be safe around town for at least the next few days."

"Just enough time for us to get further acquainted," the master traveler offered.

"My thoughts exactly," she agreed with a smile.

The two held romantic eye contact in the shadowy subterranean chamber, until Passepout once again injected himself into their conversation.

"Do you think you can show us the way out of here?" he asked.

"Certainly," she replied, handing him the last of the buns, "just let me rearrange my pack and we can be on our way."

"Wonderful!" the chubby thespian replied.

As the Harper secret agent attended to her preparations, Passepout turned to his traveling companion and whispered assuredly, "See, I told you she liked me."

"Indeed," the master traveler replied, giving his friend a good-natured pat on the back. "Indeed."

"Wonderful!"

Epilogue

Over the previous few days Mulmaster was a flurry of activities. Two different executions were held with the normal accompaniment of festive fanfare.

Former captain of the Hawks Sir Melker Rickman was executed for conspiracy to incite treason. He was hung from the scaffold in front of the keep that had housed his offices. The customary last words of the accused were dispensed with as the prisoner's tongue had been removed immediately upon his incarceration. His lifeless corpse was allowed to hang in state for a full day before the annoyance and public health concerns necessitated it be removed.

Farther down the road, and a day later, the Thayan embassy added to the festivities when the Tharchioness hosted an execution of her own as former ambassador and envoy, Joechairo Lawre, a wormlike politician of the worst sort, was publicly incinerated at the stake by a fireball cast by the First Princess herself. The crowd that gathered was quite impressed since nary a cry of mercy or anguish escaped the Red Wizard's lips as the flames engulfed him, the crowd being quite ignorant that his tongue, also, had been removed upon his arrest. As he was a Thayan national, he was thus executed by a duly empowered representative of Thay, and it was not necessary for him to be charged, or the execution justified. Among the members of the court, there was rumor that the charge was similar to that of Rickman; or perhaps it was just, according to those who knew the ambassador, simple incompetence. The Mulman mob didn't really care about justifications or the whys and wherefores-they just turned out for an afternoon's entertainment.

Curiously enough, the High Blade and his bride presided over both occasions.

The crowds interpreted this as further evidence of the diplomatic alliance that began with their nuptials, a sense of mutuality of their governmental responsibilities, and the development of a further closeness between the leaders whose marriage of diplomatic advantage may have evolved into something deeper between the two individuals. Rumors abounded among the mob that they had mutually agreed that the time had come for them to assume the responsibilities of parenthood.