jutting balconies. One of them, on the seaward side, was larger than most and was glassed in. All was in darkness on both of those upper levels; the Serpent obviously wanted his guests to crowd and mingle beneath the glowflames and the chandeliers, to make it clear to all just how many of Waterdeep's best and brightest his invitation could bring.
'Eltorchul! Eltorchul! Hoy, Bunny-Ears! Over here!'
Lark winced at the deafening bellow and swiftly turned her back. If people looked this way, she would just as soon have them look at her bared back than her face. There were none in this city who'd recognize it, as she wasn't in the habit of baring her spine in noble mansions or anywhere else.
'Why, I was talking to Lady Hiilgauntlet just the other day, ahaha, and she told me-'
Lark began drifting toward the seaward wall. Now if I was an ascending staircase, where would I be? Close enough to a garderobe to serve as an excuse, it was to be hoped…
'What a sly little snake you are, Bedeira. How many hang-tongued men have you demolished as thoroughly as you did poor Laeburl, I wonder?'
'Forty-six, my lord,' came the gloating reply. 'Care to be my forty-seventh?'
Lark's progress thankfully took her out of hearing whatever reply Bedeira was offered-and even more thankfully, showed her broad stone steps, flanked by suits of armor far too ancient to have living men inside them, within the third archway in the wall before her. The light was dimmer here, and inevitably the gossip was more whispered and vicious-and some hands were wandering.
Lark stepped around a couple so lost in rapture that the feminine half of it was using her chin to hold up her own gathered gown. Beyond them was the arch that opened onto the stairway.
Glass in hand and affecting the frown of a well-bred lady who was beginning to feel some urgency in a search for the nearest garderobe, she stepped through the arch, glanced up the stair, and discovered something else.
There was not a guard to be seen, and over a landing far above her hung the paired blue and red lanterns that proclaimed: Garderobe Here.
Gasping a relief she didn't quite feel, Lark started up the stairs.
'You look as bored as I feel,' Taeros murmured to Beldar, deftly avoiding a drunken Brokengulf maiden aunt. The aging beldame seemed bent on changing that status before the evening was out; she reeled past, twittering and clutching at all and sundry.
Beldar inspected the dregs in his latest goblet and told them, 'I am hideously bored. One thinks of the notorious Serpent with the spice of danger, not-so-veiled elven insults, a whiff of things illicit-and a lot more elverquisst than I've seen yet.' He waved a hand to indicate the room all around and added, 'But this… this is our parents, chattering about their petty politics and intrigues. As harbor-filling usual.'
To underscore his judgment, Beldar nodded his head toward old Laranthavurr Irlingstar just as the craggy-faced old bore's monocle made another of its inevitable plunges from its cheek-top perch into the grotesquely large snifter in the eldest Irlingstar uncle's hand. Droplets of luminous green liquid arced up in all directions in the wake of its loud 'plop,' and Aeramacrista Gauntyl, whom he'd been lecturing about proper precedence when dealing with 'those new-coin think-far-too-well-of-them-selves visitors from Amn,' drew hastily back from the shower with a little crow of alarm that she clumsily transformed into a titter.
Her retreat caused her to jostle Mornarra Cassalantar. Exaggerated exception was taken. Cutting words erupted.
Taeros rolled his eyes.
Beldar was rather gloomily regarding a glistening emerald droplet that had just landed on the back of his hand. 'Calishite aumbruril. How three decades back!'
Taeros chuckled rueful agreement. 'Shall we flit elsewhere, then?'
'Decidedly. There's a dance on at the Slow Cheese. Find Malark, will you?'
'Consider him found. Behold our royal blade-besieged, as usual.'
Taeros pointed with his fresh goblet at a solid ring of noble matrons, all waving ring-laden hands expressively and spouting nonsense as fast as they could draw breath. The two Gemcloaks could just see Malark's rather weary smile over the fantastic coiffures of the shortest noblewomen. It seemed silver galleons were fashionable at the moment, for no less than three such vessels were sailing through cranial waves of artfully dyed, pinned, and stiffened hair.
As they watched, Malark's smile slid just a trifle more. Taeros made a sympathetic sound, tossed his goblet in the general direction of the nearest servant, and strode into the press of loud laughter, overwhelming perfumes, and glittering, gleaming 'my taste is even worse and more expensive than thine' garments. Trills of alarm erupted and flower-bedecked fans swatted at him, but he forged on.
'Come, Lord Kothont,' Taeros announced firmly, arriving at his destination, ''tis past time we attended to your prize pegasus. You know the poor thing goes mad if you don't dose it by four bells past dusk!'
'Goes mad?' one matron crowed delightedly. 'How so, young sir?'
'Dose it?' another shrilled, her plump face gleaming with the avid fascination of one whose own ills were legion, endlessly fascinating, and entirely imaginary. 'What sort of medicine?'
Malark was already grinning helplessly at the fancy Taeros was so glibly spinning and continued to do so as the youngest Lord Hawkwinter laid hands on his shoulder and started steering him out of his twittering prison.
'A secret distillation,' Taeros confided grimly.
'Secrets, my lord? Come now! You dare keep no secrets from us, your elders and betters!'
'Very well,' Taeros said sweetly, turning to survey the bright-eyed host of over painted faces as Beldar, not quite wearing a smirk, took Malark's other arm. ''Tis a distillation of… the blood of noblewomen.'
They departed amid a noisy chaos of scandalized exclamations, delighted laughter, and uncertain mirth. Taeros suspected Malark would have slightly more breathing room at the next revel he attended.
By the lopsided grin on his face, Malark evidently thought so too. 'Couldn't you have said the blood of old noblewomen?'
By the giggles issuing from within, the garderobe was being used for other than its usual form of relief. Good, that gave her a handy excuse. Lark strolled idly on into the darkness to look over the promenade rail and noticed the three Gemcloaks making their way to the doors. Good and better.
She faded back from the rail with the air of someone killing time in casual boredom toward the flight of steps up to the second level. She was almost underneath the study now, if she was right about which room it was. Ribbed vaulting soared from spindles to carved bosses and supporting statues. Lark spared their shadowed beauties no more than a passing glance, because no bored young noblewoman would have done any differently.
She strolled along the promenade and oh-so-casually ascended the second stair. The reign of darkness and silence continued.
Fur rugs covered the landing at the top of the stair, and their whiteness glowed slightly in a faint blue radiance issuing from the open door of the study, immediately to her right.
Lark swallowed. Could things be this easy? Surely not.
It was hard to maintain her casual air, and harder still to stroll on thick furs, but she thought she managed it, passing the door and glancing in as she did so.
The glow was coming from a large map or chart spread out on a desk, and was strong enough to show her a chair and a crammed bookshelf beyond. There was overstuffed seating on the far side of the desk, some sort of large but tidy potted plant, and so far as she could tell in the gloom, no one in the room.
Raising her eyebrows in what she hoped was a look of languid interest, Lark went to the doorway. If that desk had a carved ship-under-sail medallion on its far side, it was the place Texter wanted the report left. She smoothed her gown and felt beneath it the reassuring stiffness of the message written in Naoni's neat, careful hand.
Lark slipped through the door and walked boldly across the soft, deep rugs. As she neared the desk, she noted that the parchment on the table was creased with many rectangular folds-too creased to be parchment, come to think of it, because it hadn't cracked. It showed a finely drawn labyrinth of chambers and passages-more of the
