'Not for your birthday, Honored Aunt. I didn't think you'd be fooled.'
'I'd have dined alone without you.'
A silent moment passed. The first star appeared in the violet sky. And Boesild dug into a suede belt pouch. He produced two small disks, which, after examination, he laid on the table.
'I found these yesterday in Nethra.'
Supper soured in the Simbul's stomach. Nethra was one of the port cities south of the Yuirwood. Like all the cities of Aglarond and Thay, Nethra had started out as a Mulhorandi outpost. The Nethrans fought for and won their independence as the Mulhorand Empire faded, but their freedom was a chancy thing, balanced between Thayan greed and the price of Aglarondan protection. These days Nethra paid a handsome tithe into the Velprintalar treasury, and Alassra paid a reward for any Red Wizard tokens taken within its territory.
The Aerasume weren't bounty hunters.
'How did you acquire them?' she asked.
'I was out late in a quarter where respectable folk lock their doors at sunset and stay inside, no matter what, until the sun's up again. I heard a cry for help-'
Alassra's eyebrows rose to a dramatic height.
'A full-throated cry, I assure you. Naturally, I investigated.'
'Naturally,' she agreed.
Boesild pushed one of the disks closer to his aunt. 'I was too late. This one was already dead and the other, fool that she was, attacked me.'
'Foolishness is part of Red Wizard training.'
'Indeed, though I didn't guess she was a wizard until after I'd broken her neck. They have a kind of scent, you know. That one,' Boesild indicated the disk he'd pushed, 'had cloaked himself well. Still, I'd have known him for what he was if we'd come in sight of each other, but the woman-oh, my Honored Aunt-she could have deceived you.'
'Never.'
Pale hair swayed in the twilight as Boesild shook his head. 'There was nothing, nothing, about her while she lived and only the faintest trace after she'd died. I wouldn't have found the token-wouldn't even have looked for one-if my suspicions hadn't already been aroused.'
Alassra took the nearest disk in her sensitive fingers. Red Wizards carried such disks as proof of their place in the hierarchies of their various disciplines and as means to summon protection from their superiors.
'Had he called for help?'
Boesild shook his head. 'Another interesting thing: She'd slain him without magic, smashed his skull in with a cobblestone. She fought me the same way. As I said, I'd no notion what she was until after I'd killed her.'
Reluctantly, the Simbul picked up the second disk. It was, as her nephew promised, lifeless. Wrapped in cloth, as it surely had been, she would not have been aware of its owner's true identity unless they touched. Her quicksilver mirror would never discern it. The implications of that were dire.
'I don't suppose there was anything else? No codes or messages? No tattoos? She didn't say anything before she died?'
'Nothing at all. They'd both peeled their skin. My guess is she'd recognized the man in passing and hunted him down. Mystra knows that's common enough among the Red Wizards. Is there one man or woman among them who truly knows the meaning of the word trust, given or taken? It wouldn't be the first time one of their little wars has claimed victims in another realm, but Red Wizards slaying each other with stones? I don't like it, Honored Aunt.'
'You don't like it!' Alassra let out a bitter laugh. 'You don't know the meaning of your words. I'll keep these.' She closed her fist over the tokens.
'Of course, I'm sorry-they're a poor birthday present.'
'No, a valued one. You'll understand if I leave you to your own devices now? I've lost my taste for fruit and company.' She reached for the staff.
The Simbul's mirror shone with its own light when she returned to her privy chamber.
Show me Nethra! she demanded before the echo of her entrance faded. What's loose in Nethra?
Nothing untoward, according to the mirror with a mix of Aglarondan clarity and foreign fuzziness.
Nothing other than what she'd expected, based on Boesild's tale and the tokens clutched in her hand.
Alassra took the noisier of the disks, the one that had belonged to the dead man, and balanced it carefully on the cap of the crystal dome. The quicksilver flowed up to cover it. The image of Nethra blurred, then reconstructed itself exactly as before. It was the same with the dead woman's token.
'Cold tea and crumpets!' the queen grumbled, resorting to the harmless curse the Rashemaar Witches had taught her a long time ago and a measure of the foreboding she felt.
Red Wizards rarely traveled alone; as Boesild pointed out, they didn't trust one another and the zulkirs trusted least of all. At best, Boesild had stumbled across a pair that had lost the little trust that held it together. At worst, he'd interrupted a skirmish between rival groups, which remained invisible if they remained in Nethra.
And if they'd left Nethra?
The quicksilver trembled in rhythm with Alassra's frustration: If they'd left Nethra, they could be anywhere. She didn't worry too much about Red Wizards infiltrating the Yuirwood. Little as the wilder Cha'Tel'Quessir might love Aglarond's queen, they preferred her to anyone from Thay. A Red Wizard falling afoul of them might well wish he'd crossed the Simbul's path instead. The Fangers were a different problem; they should know better-their parents and grandparents had formed the core of Halacar's defeated army. But their discontent was rooted in nostalgia for a time that had never been, and their ears were fertile ground for sedition.
Alassra could, and would, keep a closer watch on the Fang. She had the resources: trusted men and women, and magic, too. Keeping watch wouldn't solve the greater problem. Taking the dead woman's token from the quicksilver, Alassra polished it between her fingers and studied it by the light of a spell-dissolving lamp. Foul smells poisoned the air: blood pearl and dragon's wing foremost among them; not the Simbul's favorite reagents, but common enough in Thay. Probing deeper, she heated the token in the lamp's flame. It melted into a mottled lump while she learned nothing about the Red Wizard who'd cast the spell.
She had better luck, in a sense, with the dead man's token, which had been protected by a familiar spell cast by a familiar mage: Lauzoril. His green-eyed grinning face was harder and colder in her mind's eye than it had been earlier on the quicksilver. The world would be a better place when he was gone-at least until the new zulkir learned his predecessor's tricks.
'Somebody's stalking your spies, Lauzoril,' she said to the man who wasn't there. 'Someone's turned on you. You'd best look carefully among your allies.' She thought of the zulkirs together and shook the thought from her head. 'Let me look upon something peaceful instead: Zandilar's Dancer. Show me Zandilar's Dancer and the boy. Take me to Sulalk.'
The mirror obliged, showing them both bedded down for the night, the colt in a pasture, Ember stripped down to his breeches and smiling as he dreamt in his narrow bed. Alassra envied them a moment-Mystra's Chosen didn't need to sleep; their dreams were mostly daydreams, pale imitations of the real thing-then, without prompting, the quicksilver roiled. The Simbul, expecting the unimaginable, readied a potent barrage of spells.
The mirror's image resolved into four men hunched around a plank table in a dirt-floor room. Alassra recognized the room. Sulalk was too small to have an inn or tavern. When folk gathered or strangers visited, they gathered and visited in the sacking room behind the mill. The four men were strangers, travel-stained traders with gamblers' eyes. Town merchants sent such men into the countryside each summer to measure the coming harvest. The traders drove hard bargains and weren't beloved by the farmers, but they'd been part of Aglarondan life longer than the Simbul.
Alassra saw no reason for alarm. Though she'd constructed the mirror, she didn't always understand its workings: It had shown her scenes both unexpected and trivial before. She was releasing her uncast spells when she read a word as it formed on one man's lips.
Horse, he'd said-in what tone Alassra couldn't say because the mirror didn't reflect sound. She thought she saw him add the word tomorrow. She was no lip-reader; she couldn't be sure, but a grain trader could easily become a
