“When are they going to let us in, I want to know?”
“And if they say there’s too many of us,” a sea captain splendid in swashbuckling green shimmerwave grunted, “and turn us away without so much as a look at the Silvaeren, who rises against them, hey? Will you be with me, then?”
The well-dressed horse-trader tossed her glossy fall of hair and snorted, “Outlanders! This always happens with outlanders! They take so long to bathe and dress, I doubt we’ll be in there before nightfall!”
“I care not, so long as they keep these cheeses coming. And the cakes too! Huh; almost makes up for this cellar-swill they’re serving us! Do they think shopkeepers of Suzail know nothing about wine?”
Some guests had discovered the sculpted delights of Blackhakret’s Chamber, next door, and accordingly a little space opened up on the Bower’s magnificent carpet, allowing guests to mill about.
That milling happened to bring a young and excitedly breathless jeweler’s model-spectacular in a night blue gown that both supported and displayed the two magnificent reasons old Raskro the Jeweler employed her to display his best pectorals-face to face with a grandly monacled and bewhiskered man whose sash of intricately scrolled badges, each denoting a hamlet or farm annually taxed for a thousand golden lions or more, proclaimed him some sort of noble.
“Well met, Lord!” she said with shining eyes.
“Well met, lass,” the grand personage replied kindly. “Enjoying the evening, thus far?”
“Oh, yes! I’ve met so many exciting people, and learned so much about the kingdom! Folk are so interesting, so knowledgeable!”
“Folk here? In this room? Child, if this is what passes for informed converse, the realm totters,” the crusty old noble growled, glaring momentarily at a merchant in a fur-trimmed greatcloak before turning his fond smile once more upon the shop-lass. “What I hear around me, to my great chagrin, is but an admixture of floridly vapid discourse, mere furbelows-or, dare I jest, ‘fur-bellows,’ ah ha ha-uttered by fools so charmed by the unaccustomed sound of their own wits working that they-”
The deafening chatter all around them fell into a hush in an instant, the old lord among the silenced, as a young woman in a bloodied gown burst into the room, running like a hurrying wind across its carpet with Purple Dragons in hot pursuit.
Her gown was down around her waist, leaving her bare above; she wore no dethma. As she ran she cried, “Take your hands off me, you beasts! I don’t care how heroic you’ve been, battling for the realm! Nor how magnificent and rampant Purple Dragons are, either! Nothing gives you the right to-”
All over the room, nobles flung down goblets and started striding forward, growling.
The shop-lass stared open-mouthed as the man she’d been speaking with stepped right into the path of the foremost Purple Dragons.
And drew his ornamented sword.
“I am Lord Cormelryn,” he announced, in a deep roar that rang off the vaulting overhead, “and for fifty-two summers I rode with the Purple Dragons. No man under my command would ever treat a lady so-or even a lass who is decidely not a lady. Stand and explain yourselves!”
The soldiers skidded to a stop to avoid being spitted on that needlelike blade, and sought to duck around its wielder, for their hard-breathing quarry was clear across the room by now and fast on her way to disappearing.
Only to find their way barred by a taller, thinner, and slightly younger, but just as furious noble, who snapped, “Lord Rustryn Staglance am I, Dragons, and I stand champion for the fair damsel. You would despoil her before our very eyes, sirrahs? What have Purple Dragons come to, these days?”
Then half a dozen nobles were coldly barring the Dragons’ way and disputing passage with them. At the far wall of the chamber, Pennae put her hand on the pull-ring of the door she most liked the look of; narrow and unmarked, it probably gave onto a servants’ passage. The wrinkled old noble who’d been leaning against it to give his arms a rest from taking all his weight on two canes gave her a grin and shuffled aside, winking.
Pennae winked back, paused for a moment with hand on hip to give him a good look-and slipped through the door.
Good, she’d judged a-right, and was back in passages that might just lead her closer to the royal family or Vangerdahast.
She pulled her gown back up into place-it looked a ruin, and no wonder, but there was no helping it now-and then started to hurry.
On an impulse, she tapped the little inlaid eye in Yassandra’s belt buckle, and whistled softly in appreciation when it shed a glow in front of her, like a glowstone. She tapped it again, and the glow went away.
By the noise, grand chambers of state full of guests were all around her, now. The center of this floor of the Palace should be this way, and surely she should soon find stairs up, to take her closer to the royal apartments, or at least meet with someone she might be able to trust. Perhaps this way, where the doors were most numerous.
She rounded a corner and found herself looking into a decidedly wolfish smile.
It was adorning the face she’d seen in Arabel, of the man talking treason, the man who had the “crystals trap.” The man who now stood barring her way with arms folded across his confident chest.
“Who are you?” she asked, in the manner of a dazzled young lass.
“I am War Wizard Ghoruld Applethorn,” he replied politely. “And you?”
“They call me Pennae.”
“Well met,” he said pleasantly, “you little scampering bitch. Prepare-as they say-to die.”
Pennae rolled her eyes. “I always am,” she told him, snatching open a door and plunging into another ballroom full of guests. “Can you say the same?”
“I am getting so sick of these endless passages,” Islif muttered. “How big is this Palace, hey?”
“I heard some of the servants talking,” Semoor offered, “and they said these cellars run for miles-out under the gardens, and in that direction under the courtyard, to link up with the cellars of the Royal Court across the way, and then even out across the Promenade!”
“ Thank you, Anointed of Lathander. Such cheery aid you render.”
“Always happy to be of assistance,” Semoor responded.
Jhessail was wrinkling her nose. “If it goes out under the city, how do they keep everyone who’s digging out a bigger cellar from accidentally or deliberately breaking into it, and then wandering around looting the Palace?”
“Guardians,” Semoor said. “Lots of them. Magic guardians; striding suits of armor with swords, statues of stone, skeletons with weapons… that sort of thing.”
“Thanks,” Doust muttered, peering around a little nervously. “You lift my spirits so, that you do.”
“But of course,” Semoor said airily. “Think nothing of it. We faithful of Lathander delight in new opportunities, in the happiness of-”
“Belting up when told to,” Islif snapped, reaching for Semoor’s throat.
He gave her a startled look. “Have I done something wrong?”
“ ‘Thing’? No. Many things? Yes. Right now, however, you can tell me more about these striding suits of armor you were just gabbling about.”
“Aye?”
“What do they look like, exactly?”
Semoor blinked. “Well, I’ve not seen one; I just heard the servants… why?”
Islif pointed down the passage. In the distance, a helm atop armored shoulders was turning silently to regard them. It was dark and empty, with no head inside it.
“That’s why,” she said.
“Oh, tluin, ” Semoor said with fervor.
Ghoruld Applethorn murmured an incantation, clung in his mind to the noble lordling look he desired-tall, tip- of-the-chin white beard and bristling brows to match, flame-hued silk doublet, cods, and hose, yes — and waited for the tingling to die away.
Damn that hargaunt for disappearing when it had. He knew it was still in the Palace, slithering around somewhere nearby-but hrast him if he had the time to go seeking it now, what with Knights of Myth Drannor running all over the Palace, Vangerdahast roused and roaring, and dozens of Zhents and Red Wizards and worse in the rooms of state all around him, wearing their little disguises and pursuing their little schemes.
