materials and jewels, but the faces above the lace collars were the faces of corpses, rotting away.
'Unusual choice for a portrait,' said Gustin, quickly letting the cloth fall back over the portrait. 'I'm surprised the attist dared to paint him that way.'
'It wasn't always like that,' said the valet.
'Did it start to change when the haunting began?'
'Oh no, it's been changing for much longer than that, getting worse every day.'
'An early warning, one that wasn't heeded,' Gustin speculated.
'The master won't have it removed,' the valet moaned. 'He only covered it after my lady objected to seeing it every time she came up the stairs. My master said that he won't be frightened by such tricks. He was keeping it to feed to whoever was doing this, scrap by canvas scrap until the jokester chokes. At least that was what the master said.'
'After my interview with him, I would say that Rampage Stunk has very little sense of humor,' Gustin remarked.
The valet shuddered slightly and responded, 'Please don't say anything about the master to me.' He gave a quick glance over his shoulder to the two guards stationed nearby.
'No, no, of course not,' Gustin had no wish to get Stunk's servant into trouble. 'I only meant that I was quite impressed by your master's gravity in the face of adversity.'
The last was pitched loud enough for the guards to hear and the plump valet gave Gustin a grateful smile. 'Secondus Marplate,' said the man, bowing slightly and indicating his round person.
'Philious Fornasta,' said Gustin Bone, who'd always been fond of this particular persona. Philious had had numerous dubious adventures among the war wizards of Cormyr but, Gustin felt, always exchanged the social pleasantries with exceptional panache.
'Have you been with Stunk long?' asked Gustin as he continued to examine the hall. He rather doubted that the shoe would turn up here or even downstairs where Sophraea was searching. If the curse was directed at Stunk, than the object tied to the curse probably had been placed in the man's personal apartment to draw the dead to him. Which was one of the reasons that he had not objected to Sophraea searching in the basements below. She would be perfectly safe there and unlikely to run into any of Stunk's more dangerous servants.
'I came here following the master's marriage to Lady Ruellyn,' explained Marplate as he trailed after Gustin.
'If she's a lady, wouldn't he be a lord?' Gustin asked casually as he opened the doors of a small cupboard. Inside it, he found brushes, a small fire' shovel, and a bucket for carrying out ashes, but no shoe.
'Lady Ruellyn carries her own title by right of birth to a very noble family. They have a mansion in Castle Ward,' Marplate said. 'I can say no more.' And then he proceeded to follow Gustin, gossiping as the wizard sniffed around for the missing brocade shoe.
In the valet's guarded opinion, Stunk was waiting to buy just the right title for himself, one that would increase his influence in Waterdeep. 'As close to a mask as he can get,' Marplate explained and then looked as if he'd regretted suggesting his master was angling for a position of power in Waterdeep.
'So, you can become a noble here if you have enough money?' queried Gustin.
'You would be shocked at what you can buy in Waterdeep,' said Marplate quite sincerely.
'Not after living here for a very short time,' replied Gustin cheerfully as he walked up to the guards flanking the door into Stunk's chambers.
'I have your master's permission to set my protections throughout the house,' he told the guards, who looked doubtful. 'Of course, I can always tell your master that I could not enter his rooms and therefore they are unprotected, a consequence of your actions.'
The two guards stepped quickly aside. Gustin swept through the lacquered door, gesturing to Marplate to accompany him.
In the suite of rooms that Marplate called 'the master's apartment,' Gustin found a dressing chamber filled with racks of luxurious clothing and shelves of shoes, but no dancing slipper. A bathing chamber, a small study, and an even smaller library, filled primarily with ledgers for Stunk's various enterprises, also lacked any evidence of the haunting except the candles burning in every room, necessary because of the tightly drawn curtains concealing each window that they passed.
'There're always things looking in at night,' Marplate said as he checked the curtains, making sure the fabric overlapped at the edges, completely shrouding the room from anyone or anything looking in.
A huge bed dominated the center of the last room, swathed in draperies that allowed the occupant to protect himself from the slightest draft. Gigantic feather pillows filled the top of the bed.
Set neatly to one side was a food safe, a neat contraption of wood and perforated tin made to keep certain types of pastries fresh. Gustin had seen such pieces in bakeries and even the larger kitchens of noble houses in Cormyr. But he'd never seen one in a bedroom.
'The master does a great deal of work in this room,' said the valet, obviously feeling the need to explain. 'He often needs sustenance in the middle of the night.'
'You must spend all your time sweeping crumbs out of the sheets,' Gustin said, flipping back the covers to peer under the bed. No shoe. He straightened back up, thinking hard. He was sure that the shoe had to be in the house and, most logically, near Stunk or in a room that Stunk occupied a good deal of the time. Of course, it could be downstairs, perhaps even in the room where Stunk held his audiences. The thought of going back there and searching under the fat man's cold gaze made Gustin shudder.
'There is a maid to change the linen every day.' Marplate straightened the covers that Gustin had rumpled. 'The master is most particular about such things.'
The wizard wandered to the far end of the room where a small table held a number of papers and a few personal items on a tray, like a comb and a bottle of men's hair pomade. Gustin picked up the latter, pulling out the glass stopper to confirm that it was the thick, inky liquid sold in numerous Waterdeep shops with assurances that it would give even the oldest and grayest of gentlemen the luxurious locks of a young man. With a very slight smile at this evidence of Stunk's vanity, Gustin replaced the bottle on the silver tray.
Beneath the inlaid table, he spotted a slip of paper crumbled upon the floor, as if somebody had hurled it there in anger. He glanced back at Marplate. The valet was still fussing with the covers of Stunk's bed, making sure the corners were absolutely straight. Gustin snatched up the note, glanced quickly at the signature, and tucked it in his tunic. He would read it later, someplace where nobody was watching.
'Are you done, saer?' asked Marplate, twitching slightly when he saw Gustin so close to his master's table.
'Almost, almost,' Gustin said, circling the room once more. He noticed every time he crossed near the heavily draped windows, the valet flinched. He put one hand upon the crimson velvet curtains to draw them open.
'Oh, there's nothing out there,' Marplate said with a nervous start.
'Perhaps I should look for myself.' Gustin twitched the curtains open to reveal long glass windows that opened onto a small wrought iron balcony with a planter filled with dead plants. Other than that, there was, as the other man had said, nothing there.
Behind him, Gustin heard the valet give a relieved sigh.
Ah, thought Gustin, this is where the ghosts must appear each night. Throwing his hands into the air and letting his head fall backward until he was staring at the brightly painted ceiling, Gustin cried, 'I sense the presence of the dead!'
Marplate let out a startled shriek at Gustin's antics and then clapped both his hands to his mouth.
Gustin slowly rolled his head forward until he was staring at his boots. 'Each night, they come here, testing the fortifications of this house. Here they gather, looking in, attempting to reach the master of this place.'
The valet let out a strangled whimper.
'They rattle the windows, they shake the handle.' Gustin lowered his arms bit by bit and then tested the latch of the windows, rattling it slightly.
Marplate moaned behind him, 'Every night, it gets worse. And he won't move out of this room. He always has me open the curtains so he can state at them. He glowers at the dead and then mutters about how he's going to kill whoever is doing this. And he makes me stay in the room so they all know what I look like too!'
Gustin turned until he faced the man, raising one arm gradually to point at him. The valet quivered. Gustin tried not to smile. The deliberate gesture, the deepening of the voice, it worked every time, he thought. Everyone
