horns used by the Purple Dragons rang out across the town.
“Who’s that, d’ye think?” a cooper asked the vintner across the yard-fence, as they both tossed out discarded casks to be chopped up into kindling.
The vintner straightened up. By the look on his face, he was thinking hard. “Someone with a hunting-horn, down center way. Oldcoats, or near there.”
“Someone in a hurry to signal something.”
They nodded, stared at each other, and then shrugged in unison. Either they’d never know, or the taverns would ring with various wild tales about who’d winded that horn, and why.
Not far from the cooper and the vintner, two local “oddwares” traders who bought and sold goods for costers and factors in distant cities-but whom no one in town had the slightest idea were agents of two nobles of Cormyr, the Lords Yellander and Eldroon-smiled knowingly at the sound of that horn-call, and turned in their strolling toward the door of a particular shop.
Baraskor’s Brightwares wasn’t an establishment either Horl Bryntwynter or Jarandorn Vantur visited often, but it was one they wandered through from time to time, looking for items to interest their far-off contacts. It would not have flattered Ordaurl Baraskor to know that they were choosing to tour his shop, at this particular time, because he was widely considered to be Halfhap’s worst gossip. But then, neither of them intended to tell him that.
The two traders began to chat as they drifted through Baraskor’s doors.
“Aye, the Dragonfire magic’s been found at last!”
“No! Horl, are you sure this isn’t just another of Traulaunna’s wildtongue tales?”
“Well if it is, lots of folk were a-telling it before Traulaunna ever heard it. Though she’ll burnish and adorn it, right enough! So hear truth from me now, before she gets the chance: Emmaera Dragonfire’s leavings are a heap of magic. Rings, wands, rods-the lot! And her spellbooks too!”
“Ho!” Jarandorn exclaimed, raising both his eyebrows as he peered at some tall, fluted glass bottles from Turmish. “That’d make it everything legends have glowingly described, all these years!”
“It is!” Bryntwynter ran a critical finger over the inlaid flank of an ornamented jewel-coffer, ignoring the hovering, watchful presence of Ordaurl Baraskor at his elbow, and added, “Yet I doubt any of us will get to see any of it! Adventurers just arrived from Arabel have camped in Oldcoats and are keeping everyone away with their swords-and spells too!”
“Everyone? Purple Dragons of the grasping Crown, too?” Jarandorn stopped in front of a display of belts and pouches, to peer and stroke his chin and consider.
“Well, not yet,” Horl told him through the shelves, “but they’re probably plodding over there right now! You know how word gets around in this town!”
“So who are these lucky swordswingers of Arabel? Rebels who’ll use the Dragonfire treasure to challenge the king? Or outlanders who’ll rush off to Westgate or Waterdeep or Amn to sell it all, as fast as they can fall over each other?”
“The Knights of Myth Drannor, they call themselves! There’s talk of them all over Suzail. They must be the ones Queen Filfaeril bedded-with them in full armor all stained with monster-blood too!”
Without lifting his gaze for a moment from the shelves of glittering coffers in front of him, Horl Bryntwynter became aware that the shopkeeper had stopped oh-so-patiently awaiting a moment to break into their chatter with an offer to assist him in selecting this coffer or that, and receded smoothly from anywhere Bryntwynter might happen to notice him. He was listening avidly to the converse between the two traders.
“What?” Jarandorn chuckled. “Do you believe that sort of gossip? I mean, how now? The Ice Queen, bedding anything? ”
“Ah, but who called her the Ice Queen before the rest of us? Suzailans, that’s who. Who sees more of her than all the rest of us unwashed upcountry louts? Suzailans. So if they can believe such talk, I can believe it, too!”
Vantur chuckled. “You mean you want to believe it, for the sheer fun of picturing such sport.”
Bryntwynter moved on from the coffers, passing over a selection of hats and bound presses of parchments to a squared, rough-hewn pillar decorated in a selection of ornate hasps and latches. “Well, yes,” he laughed. “You have me there!”
“Well, folk seem fair crazed up in Suzail,” Jarandorn said dismissively. “It’s we of Halfhap, good and bad, as I have to live with, every morn to every dusking. So how’re they taking all of this down at Oldcoats? Or have these adventurers turned them out, slit their throats, or locked them all in the wellhouse?”
Bryntwynter snorted. “Vantur, you spend entirely too much time listening to minstrels’ fancies. Nothing so wild-bold, to be sure! Maelrin’s fair gnawed away all his mustache already, for fear they’ll sword him and all his staff, and blast the Oldcoats to dust around his dying ears-but they’ve not done any of that, yet, and they’d be fools to do so, with the Purple Dragons marching down to see what they are up to.” He sighed. “Well, I see nothing here to impress Suzailans. Fine wares, but nothing… you know; gleaming. ”
“I know, and am finding much the same. Good wares, but Suzail’s awash in good wares and bad, and so’s Athkatla. We’ll have to check again in good time, of course. Have you heard from Turrityn yet?”
“No,” Bryntwynter said mournfully, sighing an even bigger sigh, “and that’s beginning to concern me. What’s Faerun coming to, that a…”
He nodded to the shopkeeper with the vacant smile of a polite man whose mind is now on financially graver things, and strolled back out of Baraskor’s Brightwares, Jarandorn Vantur drifting along in his wake.
As if as an afterthought, and with an apologetic smile for not buying anything, Vantur turned briefly upon the threshold to give the proprietor a farewell nod of his own, and then turned again and was gone.
Ordaurl Baraskor calmly returned that nod, but after the weighted front door of Brightwares glided gently shut again, he hurried into the back to snap excitedly at his wife, bidding her leave her cooking upon the instant to take over the shop.
Before she could reply, he was out the back door and hastening down the alley. Certain local ears must hear of the Dragonfire treasure and of these Knights of Myth Drannor.
Zhentarim ears.
“What’s that?” Jhessail asked sharply.
Pennae flung back a scornful reply without turning her head. “Rats. Quiet. ”
The thief raised her lantern, waiting until Florin had come up on her left and Islif on her right, and then advanced, slowly and cautiously.
More rats scurried; Pennae saw Islif’s frown, and nodded. Yes, she agreed silently, it was unusual for an inn to let quite so many rats run hither and yon in the cellars where they presumably stored their foodstuffs.
Unless something was there to draw them. Something like…
The light of the lantern fell on an unmoving human hand. A man’s hand, fingers spread on the uneven stone floor.
Fingers that had been nibbled.
Grimly Pennae took another step, lifting the lantern higher.
There were two dead men on the cellar floor of the Oldcoats Inn, one draped over the other. Their slack faces would have been staring at her if the rats had left them any eyes to stare with, but the Knights of Myth Drannor knew their faces and their uniforms.
They were staring at the corpses of the serving-jacks who’d brought soup and cider to their rooms, upon their arrival at the inn this morning.
Chapter 12
Too many nobles and young officers alike
