He let out a little squeak of fear, and thrust his free hand wildly into the front of his jacket. Islif let him draw the dagger she’d expected clear of the garment-and then deftly punched the point of his elbow with her free hand, and sent the dagger clanging away along the passage.
“Well met, courtier,” she said heartily. “Have you by chance seen a ranger named Florin? Or a lady in leathers, who goes by the name of Pennae? Or anyone at all down here, who shouldn’t be here?”
“Y-you,” the man stammered.
Islif shook him. The Knights heard his teeth rattle. “Anyone else? ”
“N-no.”
“Where’s the nearest way up into the Palace floor above us?” she said.
He gestured mutely, pointing with fervor somewhere diagonally through stone walls. Suspecting this meant along the passage and then turning the right corner to find stairs, Islif kept hold of the courtier’s arm and told him flatly, “Take us there. Now.”
“My… my dagger… my mother’ll kill me if I don’t come home with it…”
“And I’ll kill you right now if you try to go and get it,” Islif told him pleasantly. “Does that make your choice easier?”
He nodded, clapping a hand to his mouth and staring over it at her with wide, fearful eyes.
Then those eyes rolled up into his head and he fainted in her arms. Disgusted, Islif let him fall to the passage floor in a heap.
Chapter 21
Well may dragon roar
And dying captains shout
For the fields are red with gore
And they’re letting the madwits out.
'Florin?” Pennae called softly. “Florin?”
She waited, but he did not shout again. After standing still and silent in the darkness for a long time-in case the iron barrier rose as suddenly as it had descended-Pennae shrugged, turned, and set off alone down the passage.
She could see nothing at all except very faint light a long way ahead, but her fingertips trailed lightly along the stone wall, the passage floor was smooth and level, and there seemed to be nothing standing between her and that distant light.
So Pennae strode on, quickly and confidently, her soft-soled boots making little sound, and was soon approaching that light.
It was leaking around the frame of an ill-fitting door, the first of a row of closed doors; the rest were dark. As she slowed to think about what to do next, the door suddenly opened-giving her a momentary glimpse of an untidy office stacked high with scrolls and coffers-and a tall, black-robed man strode out to face her, pointing at her as he did so.
A war wizard, his eyes unfriendly-tall, thin, and wart-covered, his face was homely and entirely dominated by a great ravenbeak nose. “You,” he snapped imperiously. “Wench! What’re you doing here?”
“Seeking Vangerdahast,” Pennae replied calmly, striding steadily nearer as if she had every right to be walking along this passage, and was mildly surprised at both his presence and his question.
“Why?”
“My business, I believe,” Pennae told him. “As you seem suspicious, perhaps you’ll take me to him.”
He shook his head. “I’m very busy-the revel. No, a cell will keep you just fine until this is all over. Thieves and hired slayers are just what we’re here to thwart. You look the very picture of one, and you might well be wanting to get to Royal Magician Vangerdahast so as to slay him! Or distract and delay him whilst someone you’re working with manages something nefarious! Oh, no, you’ll not be distracting-”
A bare two paces away from him, Pennae quelled her sigh and deftly stripped off her leather jack, baring herself from the waist up with the allure of long practice, leaving her leathers dangling from one wrist.
The war wizard’s eyes bulged, he started to stammer something unintelligible-and she glided forward, gently took his hands, and guided them to her breasts.
“Like them?” she murmured, looking hungrily up into his eyes. “Ahhh, war wizards… I admire you all so much. I wanted Vangerdahast, but… you’re here, and so commanding…”
She let her eyes half-close, and moaned as his cold fingers, trembling with excitement, moved inexpertly over her. He drew in a sharp, ragged breath, and she whispered, “May I… kiss you?”
“Uh, ah, well-” War Wizard Lhonsan Arkstead ran out of things to say, and settled for swallowing. Hard.
Her mouth was parted and reaching for him, so temptingly close below him. Arkstead was not a handsome man, and had never learned the arts of being pleasant. No woman’s mouth had ever been so offered to him.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he muttered, as he bent his head to hers. “This is… less than wise.”
Abruptly leathers whirled over his head, blinding him, then were thrust into his mouth, muffling his cries-and the very hard pommel of a dagger struck Arkstead in the throat, robbing him of breath and voice, and then on the side of the head, robbing him of all Faerun.
“You were quite correct,” Pennae told his senseless body, as it slid down her legs into a crumpled heap at her feet. “Loins-driven idiot. But then, I seldom do wise things either.”
She reached down to retrieve her jack-and three Purple Dragons came rushing at her out of the darkness, blades stabbing.
Pennae spat out a curse and sprang back, abandoning her leathers. There was no place to flee to. She snatched out her dagger and crouched behind the war wizard’s body, hoping they’d not trample him, and so give her a little room to move.
She was wrong. The soldiers charged right over him, maintaining their unbroken line three abreast. Pennae sprang to one side, to try to cut down on the number of blades that could reach her, and parried desperately.
One blade, then two, clanging aside in a skirling of ringing steel-and the third burst past her little steel fang.
Despite her desperate twisting and arching, it darted in, snakelike, and slid like icy fire into her side.
Islif slapped the courtier’s face briskly, then pinched the skin of his throat between her fingernails, and finally rolled back an eyelid and put a fingertip to his staring-at-nothing eyeball. He never flinched in the slightest.
Exasperated, she rose from him and snapped, “Come on! We haven’t time to try to get this fool awake and talking!”
The Knights rushed off, Semoor plucking up the man’s fallen glowstone as he passed.
The moment they were out of sight the courtier sat up.
“What do you know?” Bravran Merendil said aloud in wonder, managing a shaky smile through the drug-sweat that was suddenly drenching him. “Mother’s deadsleep proved useful at last!” His smile of disbelief grew. “Who’d have thought playing dead ever helped anyone?”
He pulled another glowstone from his codpiece, used it to find his fallen dagger, sheathed it back inside the grand barrel-front of his courtier’s jacket-and then smotes himself on the forehead, and gasped, “Talan Yarl!”
He launched himself down the passage, sprinting hard and thanking the gods that woman and her ruffians had gone in the other direction. “Suddenly,” he muttered wryly to himself, “playing dead sounds like a very good idea indeed!”
