towel in cold water.
Gustin distinctly remembered hearing their mother Reye sigh and then say in aweary tone, 'I would like all of you out of my kitchen. If you have nothing else to do, go sweep up the courtyard.'
'At night? You want us to sweep at night?' Leaplow and his cousins exclaimed together in a way that made the pots rattle on the shelves.
'Just make yourself useful somewhere else!' Myemaw scolded.
Sophraea had draped the cold towel across his head and water had dripped into his ear and down the back of his neck. He'd drooped a bit lower in the chair so she'd lean over him and shield him from all the noise that several truly enormous Carvers in the kitchen were creating.
And then another male voice had said, 'Come on, boys,' and it sounded to Gustin like an army of boots tramping out of the room.
Unfortunately, he had recognized Leaplow's voice saying, 'I think I'd better stay here. I want, to know why he was in the basement with my sister.'
Gustin slumped into the position of a remarkably harmless fellow. He really hadn't felt up to facing an angry brother.
But it had seemed a pretty unlikely tale that Sophraea told to Leaplow, something silly about wanting to show him the foundation stones laid by the first Carver. As if he'd leave a warm parlor to go looking at a foundation! And he'd been about to say so when Sophraea's soft little hand was clamped tightly over his lips and she had whispered in his ear, 'Just moan and don't say anything. We'll get out of this faster.'
Then Reye and Myemaw replaced the cold towel with cloths soaked in hot water and a very sharp needle, and moaning was an incredibly simple thing to do.
After all that, when Myemaw had slipped a nice cup of a hot spicy drink into his hand that eased the sting on the top of his scalp,
Leaplow said, 'What are we going to do with him? Leave him in the chair all night?'
And Sophraea had protested and said something nice about him being so brave (which was true, he now realized, recalling the fight with the thief, even though she hadn't spoken any other word of truth in the kitchen that night).
Then Reye Carver said in her quiet voice, 'He deserves a room of his own tonight so he can rest. We will give him Fitlor's, he certainly doesn't need it anymore.'
While wondering vaguely what had happened to Fitlor and why he wouldn't want such a splendid room, Gustin pulled the covers a little higher around his shoulders and prepared to enjoy a short snooze before finding something to eat.
Just as he started to settle back into the warm and comfortable bed, a horrible thought occurred to him. This room was perfect. It smelled perfect. It felt perfect: It was exactly what he had been seeking ever since he ran away from the dull little farm smelling of despair and ruin where he had grown up. And it was only his on a temporary basis.
Once the Carvers figured out that Sophraea had fibbed, one of her enormous brothers or cousins or uncles was going to kick him out of this room, right back into the streets of Waterdeep, where he would wake up every morning smelling fried fish but only finding watery boiled vegetables to eat.
After a few anxious moments, Gustin's usual optimism overrode his black mood. It might be days and days before the Carvers decided to drop him into the gutter. Until that time, this room, this soft bed, this magnificent clean linen, were all his to enjoy. With a sigh of contentment not unlike a cat's purr, the wizard slid under the feather quilt and buried his nose in the pillow. He would sleep just a little longer and then sample whatever was baking in the kitchen for breakfast.
Sophraea slid the bedroom door open a crack. The wizard wasn't snoring, at least not in way the Carvers snored, more a satisfied snuffle coming from somewhere under the blankets. All she could see of him was a few brown curls sprouting out of the top of the huddle of covers.
Relieved that he was apparently fine, she dropped Bentnor's second best shirt and Leaplow s only decent pair of pants on the chair by the door. And, since both her cousin and her brother were a good deal wider than the slender Gustin, she added a spare belt to the pile.
Upstairs, she rapped on Volponia's door.
'I'm awake,' came the spirited reply. 'What else can an old lady be in earliest hours of the morning?'
Sophraea noted the bedstead was woven from wicker and a high canopy of gauze with brilliant silver spangles swayed above Volponia's head. Rain lashed against the windows but the bedroom smelled of warm spices and the sharp tang of citrus blossoms.
'Tired of winter already?' asked Sophraea as she curled up on the overstuffed silk cushion of the bed big enough for four or five more people.
'I'm tired of all seasons,' said Volponia, warming her hands around a steaming stone cup carved so fine and thin that the pale winter light glowed through it. 'But never tired of your stories. I heard there was another rumpus last night, a thief actually tried the basement door all by himself?'
Sophraea gave a half shrug and the true story to her oldest living relation. 'We were down in the tunnels, and the thief came after us. He grabbed me, I kicked him.'
'Caught him where it hurt?'
'Side of the knee. I could see he was wearing an armored codpiece.'
'That's my girl, always look for the spot they've forgotten to protect.' The old pirate captain chuckled as she sipped her morning brew.
'Gustin, he's the wizard that I mentioned finding, pulled me away.'
'Men, they always look out for each other.'
'No, no, he was trying to help. And he got clipped on the head so Mother and Myemaw sewed up the wound and put him to bed in Fitlor's old room.'
'Well, it's not like Fitlor's going to need it any time soon.'
'Absolutely. And Gustin seems all right. Which is a relief. Because I didn't mean anyone to get hurt. I just wanted to find out what's going on in the graveyard.'
'And did you find anything?' Volponia asked when Sophraea's breathless explanation had wound down.
'Just this.' Sophraea pulled the little gold brocade shoe out of her apron pocket and dropped it in Volponia's lap.
'A lady's dancing shoe,' said Volponia, turning it over with her long fingers. 'Obviously not new.'
'Gustin thought it was off a corpse.'
'Quite possibly. It was something of the fashion once if a noble maid died young to dress her in a ball gown and her best dancing shoes for burial.'
'Truly?'
'During the dark era,' said Volponia, referring to those long and bitter years after magic changed and the world rearranged itself in a manner not altogether expected. 'I suspect it was a way to wish her brighter and happier times after death.'
'So somebody was disturbing the corpses near the Markarl tomb,' guessed Sophraea. 'Or,' and this was a more troubling thought, 'the dead are starting to walk.'
'If they are, then trouble is coming,' Volponia told her. 'The
City of the Dead had been quiet for a long time, the Blackstaff and the Watchful Order did their best to make the wards strong along the wall, but when I was very young, the ghosts used to get out and cause some real harm. And sometimes the more intact corpses walked and other trouble too.'
'Ghosts appear everywhere in Waterdeep and spirit mists too,' Sophraea pointed out.
'I'm not talking about those feeble shadow shows and their prophetic nonsense. That's just leftover magic from the Spellplague,' said Volponia and then sketched the symbol in the air that the very elderly tended to make to ward off another coming of that terrible blight. 'The old ghosts of Waterdeep were different. They were much stronger and much more terrible. When the dead walked, they were substantial,' she said in an echo of the warning that Sophraea had heard earlier from the thorn, Briarsting.
'But why disturb us?' Sophraea said. 'Why try our gate? We've always been respectful of the City and its residents.'
'The Dead End gate, the Carvers' own special entrance into the graveyard,' Volponia mused, handing the
