cloak around him, he lurched away.
Semoor smirked at Doust. “Well, if they all drink like that, you chose the right faith, of us two.”
Doust reddened. “I did not ‘choose’ the Lady,” he said. “She chose me. Appearing to me in my dreams, so strongly that… well…”
He waved his hand, as if to hurl away Semoor’s suggestion, and stared after the reeling priest. Beyond Rathan, he saw a Purple Dragon patrol approaching briskly out of the night, a robed and hooded man marching grimly in their midst. “ Look you,” he said warningly.
“Another patrol yonder,” Pennae added, nodding down a different street. She peered in all directions, then pointed. “An inn! Hurry! ”
“ ‘The Weary Knight’?” Agannor read aloud. “Lass, ’tis right across the street from the citadel-which is also the city jail! Are you trying to save the Dragons trouble?”
“In the back door, fast,” she snapped, “and straight through, out the front. The moment I open that door and start talking to guards, no one act anxious or in a hurry. I’ll be haughty, and will likely tell some very large lies, hear you?”
Semoor rolled his eyes. “Now why does that not surprise me?”
“Purple Dragons everywhere,” Jhessail murmured as they ran. “Doesn’t this city have a watch?”
Bey laughed. “Lass, Arabel’s rebelled so often that the Dragons are the watch, these days! Just as the Blue Dragons serve in Marsember, the other city that’s none too happy to be ruled by the Dragon Throne!”
Then they were at the inn’s back door. Pennae whirled, snatched Florin’s sword out of its sheath, and held it up solemnly before her, blade vertical. Assuming a stern look, she opened the door.
Two startled nightguards shoved themselves away from where they’d been lounging against the walls, grabbing for their weapons.
Pennae ignored them, both hands holding the sword out before her as she strode between them with slow, stately tread.
“Hoy!” one guard told her, skipping sideways to get in front of her so he could bar her way with his arm. “Hold!”
“Hold what?” Semoor inquired innocently.
“Sirrah, make way,” Pennae told the man. “We are pilgrims of Tempus, the Drawn Sword.”
“You’re what? ” the other guard asked. “Well, you can’t all just come charging in here, after dark! This is-”
“One of Arabel’s best inns, I’ve heard,” Pennae said, “which is why we chose it. Make way, lest holy displeasure fall upon the Weary Knight! Make way! ”
Uncertainly, the two guards did so. “Uh, the steward of the house can be found straight down this hall, in the front-”
“Thank you,” Pennae called back in firm dismissal, pacing on in a stately manner, her sword held high.
Florin matched her gait, and so did Islif; the other Swords saw and did likewise.
Behind them all, the two nightguards traded looks, shrugged, and rolled their eyes. Truly, the strange-in- the-head guests came thick and fast, this time of year…
At the sound of the chime, Narantha Crownsilver put down her goblet of warmed zzar, rose, retied the sash of her gown, and went to the door.
It opened onto a smiling face.
“Uncle Lorneth,” she said in genuine pleasure, stepping back to let him in. “Zzar?”
“My thanks for your thoughtfulness, Ladylass, but I fear not. I’ve much clear-headed work still ahead of me this night.”
“Work I can help with?” Narantha asked wistfully.
Her uncle hugged her. “Ahh, would that Cormyr had a dozen like you! You’re doing the Crown great service!”
Narantha grinned at him. “If I go on doing it well enough, will there come a time when I’ll truly be told what I’m doing? How it fits in with greater plans to confound the foes of Cormyr? Learn some deep secrets?”
Uncle Lorneth’s face grew solemn, and he laid a warning finger across her lips. “Little one,” he murmured, “you already know several deep secrets. That I’m alive, for one thing.”
“Wha-do Mother and Father not know? ”
“No, and they must not, yet, for fear they’ll tell ‘just a few close friends,’ and so warn certain folk who should not yet be warned. As for secrets, your mother and father have never known what you already know: that I’m among the most secret and highly placed agents of the Purple Dragon himself.”
Narantha smiled. “In a handful of days I’ve learned my own worth, found something useful to do-and drunk deep of adventure! ” She raised her goblet in salute.
“Actually,” Lorneth Crownsilver said brightly, “I think you’ll find that’s zzar…”
Then he turned his back in a flash, in case her snort of laughter heralded the goblet being flung at him.
It did not. When he turned around again, the glass was empty and Narantha was poised over it, chin on hands, regarding him with bright and eager eyes. “So, my highly secret uncle, what’s my next task?”
“There are always guards at the citadel gates, and around the palace,” Pennae snapped. “Just match my pace, keep walking, and don’t look guilty. Ignore the Dragons; to you, they’re… furniture.”
“Really?” Semoor murmured. “Remind me not to sit down on anything in your home.”
“If I had a home, Holy Wolftooth, you’d be the sort of man I’d turn away from my door,” Pennae hissed. “Now stop playing the fool! There are Dragons and war wizards all around us!”
“Strangely enough, I’d noticed as much,” he muttered as the Swords passed between the palace and the gaudy windows of Dulbiir’s Finery and Finer Promises, still bright at this late hour. The rain was no more than a light, clinging mist now, but the Swords were growing more worried about the clinging tendencies of the lawkeepers of Cormyr, patiently closing in around them.
“Pennae,” Florin murmured, “I hope you know where you’re-”
“I’m looking for an inn I know only by name,” she muttered over her shoulder. “It should be right along here… and if we’ve coins enough, or give good weapons in lieu, they’ll both give us rooms and help hide us.”
They walked in slow, steady procession the length of a long block ere Pennae relaxed with a sigh, and turned in at the door of the nearest corner building of the next block.
“The Falcon’s Rest,” Islif and Agannor murmured in rough unison, looking up to read the sign.
Pennae tapped at a small sliding panel in the door. When it slid aside, revealing only darkness, she announced, “We must go to ground, for the Dragons hunt.”
The door clicked open and a dry, elderly male voice said, “Then hurry in, turn to the right, and walk far enough to let all your fellows in behind you. Be welcome in the Rest.”
The Swords hastened inside, the door was closed, bolted, and barred, and lamps were unhooded to reveal a common room with a huge oaken stair rising up to unseen levels above. As they blinked at the staff of the Rest, who nodded welcome to them over loaded and ready handbows, the owner of a rather sly smile stepped back from a lofty landing on the stair, nodded, and stole away into deeper darkness.
The Swords of Eveningstar were in Arabel, and in the Rest. Which meant a certain someone, whose orders had been explicit and forceful, must be informed without delay.
Green adventurers are so easily baited and blamed. This was going to be fun.
Chapter 19
Married thrice, and a lover of many men more, I have seen into the minds of many men with my spells. ’Tis astonishing, even after all this time, what darksome cesspits most men’s minds are.
Murathauna Darmeir
