Still wearing that crooked smile, she looked at Rellond Blacksilver, lying asleep on the table her spell had just brought him to. She ran a hand down his nearest hip and leg. And smiled.
“Physically magnificent,” she said thoughtfully, “with a boorish reputation that will sour any revelations he might try to make, and just enough wits left to obey orders and use a garderobe without instruction… the perfect slave. And if anything happens to my dolt of a son, this walking meat can serve me in another way, and sire replacement Merendil heirs. So, Roughshod, lie you there and wait this revel out. Other days of glory await you.”
Pennae had never thought it would take such effort to climb a simple flight of stairs. If they hadn’t been narrow servants’ stairs, with rails on both sides for her to reel to and rest her forearms on, she’d never have made it.
Finding the stairs at last, it seemed, had been the easy part.
“Gods, I’m in bad shape,” she mumbled. “No Purple Dragons, please. I need… I need…”
She’d had to abandon the poker down below, and slide her sword back into its scabbard. The din of all the revelers talking raged on all sides, which meant Palace staterooms were all around her. Dressed like this, covered in nothing but dirt and blood and sweat above her waist, she’d certainly attract attention… but to get a priest’s healing, she’d somehow have to look like a revel guest, not some sneak-thief or pleasure-lass. So she needed a gown.
“But strike me if I have the strength left to take one off some passing lady,” she whispered, leaning against a wall as a wave of weakness washed over her, leaving her feeling empty, weak, and trembling.
The stairs opened onto a moot of narrow and deserted passages, one running straight off to a distant curtain, and the other at right angles to the first, and lined with doors, the nearest one open and spilling light out into the passage. She was still in the realm of the servants, obviously, and she either had to go through that door or get past it unseen.
The door opened into just what she’d been seeking: a “ready wardrobe,” of the sort most palaces and feasting halls kept, for the fashion emergencies of guests. It was a large room with chairs and tall, tilted dressing- glasses, lined with racks and racks of gowns, cloaks, sashes, and the like.
And of course, it came with a dresser. A maid, now rising from her stool by the door, looking at Pennae in startlement.
And no wonder. Pennae gave her a wavering half-smile, only too well aware of her white-faced, staggering, half-dressed state. “Well met,” she husked. “In the name of the king-”
The maid shrieked.
Pennae winced. It sounded like a wyvern’s scream, stabbing right through her ears. She snatched a garment off the nearest rack, as the wide-eyed maid tried desperately to sprint past and get out the door, and tossed it over that still-shrieking head, dropping her hands to catch hold of the maid’s wrist, and hold on.
The terrified lass was still running hard; she dragged Pennae as far as the door, pivoting blindly around Pennae’s hold, before running right into the doorframe.
Still running blind with a gown around her head, the maid reeled back into Pennae, her shriek becoming a moan.
When it promptly rose back to a sirenlike wail again, and the maid started running once more, Pennae sighed, took hold of her shoulders, and ran her hard into the wall.
Which she slid down in limp silence, to lie still in a heap on the floor.
“In the name of the king,” Pennae muttered, “ shut up. ”
Then it was her turn to groan, as the room started to move. It was turning slowly around her, now, and things seemed oddly dark…
Pennae clawed at the nearest rack of gowns, desperately seeking something that looked as if it would fit her. Twice she had to cling to the hanging-bar and rest for a moment, ere grimly clutching at gowns again.
This one! It looked like a fall of roses, and was a horrid blushing pink hue, but Pennae was long past being choosy. Slowly, moving as if in a dream with the room still turning slowly, she shrugged it on over her leather breeches and boots.
The floor seemed uphill, somehow, as she stepped cautiously out of the room…
Pennae managed three steps out and along the passage-and then fainted, falling on her face right in front of the boots of a startled Purple Dragon, who’d been rushing to the wardrobe with seven Palace Guards right behind him, to seek the cause of all the shrieking.
The shield-hung passages, magnificently paneled staterooms, and vaulted- and painted-ceilinged great halls of the ground floor of the Palace were all crowded now, and still the guests were streaming in.
All in their finery, gems and false jewelry alike gleaming and glittering on arms and down plunging fronts and a-drip from earlobes, great sleeves of shimmerweave and other exalted fabrics bright and flowing, men nodding grandly to each other and the women on their arms tittering and finger-waving and leaning their heads together conspiratorially to share the latest, juiciest gossip.
The din was incredible, overwhelming upon the ears. Goodwife Deleflower Heldanorn had gone from glowing-eyed awe and wonder to a look of worry and brow-furrowed, wincing pain; one of her hammering headaches must be coming on. Her husband patted her arm and tried to mask his irritation behind a soothing tenderness he did not feel.
Servers were everywhere, sliding deftly past with platters of cakes and decanters of wine, ensuring every guest was well supplied. Arbitryce Heldanorn could taste the faint bitterness under his tongue, and nodded sourly. The wine had been treated to make drunkards sleepy rather than angry or boisterous. Of course.
“I–I don’t know how all of these people are going to fit into Anglond’s Great Hall,” Deleflower remarked worriedly, watching still more fellow guests arrive. “After all, it’s only one hall, isn’t it?”
Arbitryce Heldanorn, Master Trader In Spices, Scents, and Wonders, was one of the wealthiest merchants in Suzail, and had been in Anglond’s Great Hall a time or two; he knew just how vast and many-balconied that chamber was. Yet he agreed with his wife, and was pleased. She wasn’t going to say only silly things for once, after all.
A dozen Purple Dragons with the grand tabards of Palace Guards over their armor swept past, shouldering through the thronging guests swiftly with snapped orders of “Make way!” with a war wizard stalking along in their wake.
“Tryce, what’s happening? ” Deleflower Heldanorn gasped, eyes widening as she clutched his arm. “All these men with swords striding around-they look so stern!”
Arbitryce smiled and airily told his wife, “Ah, but think, my flower: there’s nothing exciting about this for them. They do this sort of thing every day. See that one yawning? They’re bored as posts, all of them. They’ll probably welcome some pratfall or statue toppled over-or some such-just for a little excitement.”
Crouched over his crystal ball in the nearest ready room, a war wizard rolled his eyes. “Oh, please, Goodman!” he begged the oblivious image of the spice merchant. “Don’t tempt the stlarning gods any more than they already have been, I beg of you!”
A Purple Dragon leaned his head in the door, peered around until he saw the wheat-sheaf badge that clerics of Chauntea used when on healing duty at the Palace, and called gruffly, “Saer priest? Healing needed, down by the ready wardrobe. Some lass in a gown has hurt herself.”
“Gods, they’ve started already,” another war wizard groaned, a little way down the line of crystal balls.
Chapter 25
Swordcaptains look to you, and dying shout
Who now stands for the Cormyr we die for?
Amid armed dispute and frantic runnings-about
