On the second-story balcony, Padrig gaped upward, bleated, and dived into the tavern, as did the veteran thug. The young tough lingered too long. Tipped from the third-floor balcony, a massive chest of drawers plummeted and smashed to kindling on the second balcony. The young rogue was pulped as the balcony was torn clean off the building. Wood, oak, ice, and a crushed corpse crashed in the street.
Tamlin and friends peeked from the shelter of a doorway opposite. Patrons spilled from the Blue Coot to gawk at the bloody wreckage. Above, Padrig was nowhere to be seen. But on the third balcony…
'Tamlin, you owe us!' Grinning from the high rail were Garth the Gimble, called the 'Snake of Selgaunt' for his green scaly tunic, and the Flame, always in red. Notorious denizens of Selgaunt's shady underground, they'd shared a drink or two with Tamlin in the past. Garth called, 'Pay no attention to Padrig! He seines the wind! Hey, what would you pay for his head, or some other part?'
'Uh…' Having said too much tonight, Tamlin curbed his tongue. 'Uh, that's not necessary. But thank you, Garth, Flame! I do owe you-something.'
With mock salutes, the pair passed into the dark third floor, vanishing like spirits at dawn.
Events rolled by too fast for Tamlin to grasp, but at least his head had cleared. Staring at the shattered balcony in the street, he mused, 'I wonder who got squashed.'
'A cockroach, if he hangs with Padrig.' Wrapped in his cloak, Escevar nodded up the street. 'Come on. We've got to gain the Wizards' Guild. They go to bed at dawn, like vampires.'
'You have some strange coins and want to find a larger hoard?'
'I guess so,' replied Tamlin, still muzzy on details. Then Vox prodded his kidney, and he said, 'Yes, that's exactly it. If you please.'
Helara was a striking tall woman with a cascading mane of blonde hair she fluffed up repeatedly, as if posing. Her crimson robe was girded by a triple chain of gold hung with charms of all shapes and sizes. The Wizards' Guild was a rambling shamble tucked in the southeast corner of Selgaunt. The upper stories would overlook the city wall and the sea. The gloomy parlor was tricked out with odd-shaped furniture and glittery gewgaws, and reeked of chemicals and ashes and incense. A ten-year-old page waited by the wall and bit down yawns.
'I wish someone would bring us a challenge,' Helara rattled. She talked fast yet idly, preoccupied with as many schemes as Padrig the Palmer, except hers usually succeeded. 'That's too simple a spell. 'Like attracts like,' whether it's money or love. Prospectors, dwarves, practice it all the time in the mountains: A compass arrow of silver points to silver, with a little coaxing.'
'So Symbaline said,' Tamlin explained, 'though how an artist knows magic I don't get. Can you conjure it tonight? We need to locate these hillmen.'
'And?' Helara sensed opportunity. 'What will you do when you find them?'
'Eh?' Tamlin blinked. Stuffy smoky air made his head bloat. Too, the guild hall was quiet as a library. Wizards were usually a rowdy lot, but perhaps stayed discreet at home. 'I can't really say-'
'When we find the hillmen,' interjected Escevar, 'and if we can avoid their bloody, gnarly-toothed dogs, we may learn why they tried to snatch Deuce and whether they've seen Zarrin.'
'Zarrin Foxmantle?' The mage's blonde eyebrows wigwagged. 'She's missing?'
Vox poked Tamlin to stifle an answer. Escevar hedged, 'We haven't seen her lately, but Selgaunt's a big city. These whistling hillmen and their gnasher-dogs are a pest. Can you find them?'
'Can you pay?' returned Helara. 'Talk on the street says Tamlin's allowance has been cut off.'
'That rumor ran on fast legs,' groused Tamlin. 'Hasn't anyone better things to gossip about than my pocket money?'
'We can pay later,' said Escevar. 'Draw up a promissary note and he'll sign it.'
Helara pouted rouged lips, but agreed. 'Give me the odd coins.'
'Summon Magdon,' she ordered the child page. 'And wake Ophelia. We may need her.'
All three men blinked when the summoned pair arrived. Sisters, though not twins, each had white hair and white skin and pink eyes. Otherwise, they were squat and chunky as farm girls, hearty enough to wrestle an ox. As the men gawped, Magdon spoke, 'No, we're not cursed, merely albinos. What do you require?'
Magdon's blue robe was triply wrapped by a black belt, and her bone-white fingers were stained odd colors. Ophelia's yellow gown was unbelted but embroidered with flames at hem and sleeves. She yawned and sat on a bench and scratched her hair. Helara handed Magdon the silver triangle-cut coins and some instructions, and departed the parlor. Magdon told the men to wait and followed. Ophelia yawned and scratched. When Tamlin asked what she did, she replied only, 'I have hidden talents.'
With nothing to see or do, the guests slumped onto twisty-backed settles and slanted stools. Borrowing the page as a runner, Escevar gave her a coin and a message for Cale, the butler of Stormweather Towers, emphasizing she not bother Lord Uskevren. Less than an hour passed before three burly men arrived in Uskevren livery, blue with the gold badge of horsehead and anchor. The house-carls came with boar spears so tall they couldn't stand upright in the parlor.
Magdon returned. From her ivory hand dangled a jangly contraption. The sixteen silver coins were alternately threaded on a silver chain with a black bead, an owl's skull, a scallop shell, three blue feathers, a cork, a lumpy gray stone, and other bits. From the bottom hung a curved strip of gold foil beaten so thin it shivered in no breeze at all. The device looked like a child's windchime.
'What is it?' asked Escevar.
'A compass.' Hoisting the charmed chain, Magdon puffed at the gold foil. As it shimmied and bobbed, blue sparkles sizzled up and down the chain. Gradually the gold foil settled and pointed. 'It doesn't point north but at a larger hoard of triangle coins.'
'Really?' Refreshed by a nap, Tamlin reached to touch, but Magdon steered it away.
'The magic is delicate as a spiderweb. I'll hold it.'
'You'll go with us?'
'We all will. Apprentices need guidance.' Helara promenaded into the room like a queen. A floor-sweeping robe of red was quilted with a purple lining and hemmed with tiger hide that set off her wild tawny hair. Magdon and Ophelia donned plain cloaks of gray with gathered hoods that almost covered their heads. Escevar nodded to see them. In Sembia, peasant girls bound for 'service in the city' were invariably given such cloaks as a going-away present. No doubt the girls' talents had been discovered in some village and they bound over to the Wizards' Guild. Yet if Magdon were a 'gadget wizard,' as Escevar thought, he wondered about Ophelia's 'hidden talents' and flaming embroidery.
Passing into a bitter night wind ripe with sea salt, the three men, three women, and three housecarls found Magdon's windchime-compass jingled and jangled, blown every whichway. The three mages had to cluster with their cloaks to shield the flimsy artifact. Settling, it pointed up Rampart Street and onto Rose.
Whipped by winter winds, they pursued tedious rounds of walking, huddling, waiting, and moving on. Slowly, the women assured them, they steered to a trove of triangular coins. The seekers weren't so sure, but Escevar reflected they needn't pay the magicians if they flubbed the magical tracking.
Occasionally they spotted friends scurrying from pub to pub in the cold. By Ironmonger's Lane, a small, lithe woman attached herself to Tamlin. The noble had dallied with Iris a time or two, and smiled as she rubbed against him. Rail thin, Iris wore only a jacket and trousers of rabbitskin, and tilted the neck to show nothing beneath.
'Lovely, dear, if goose-bumpled. We're in a hurry, but I'll stop by later. I hope.' Plodding onward, Tamlin mused, 'For some reason, Iris reminds me of Longjaw. Where's she at these days?'
'Haven't seen her since the Sahuagin Wars,' said Escevar. 'But pirates and smugglers don't live long even in peacetime. What was the name of that artist? She'd make a tasty morsel if you fattened her up.'
Rambling, the young men speculated about various women they knew, oblivious to the albino sisters and tawny-haired Helara, who sniffled either in disgust or from the wintry wind.
The keen lessened in the shadow of the Hulorn's Hunting Garden. Not-so-high on a crag was perched the Hulorn's spired palace like a quiver of upright arrows, and at its feet ran a high stone wall enclosing a ten-acre hunting garden of wild weedy woods. Whether any animals lurked within, and whether the Hulorn actually hunted them, no one knew. No one had seen the erstwhile governor for quite a while, and the usual strange stories circulated. Hunting Street ran along the wall, lit in spots by glow-globes to discourage poachers. Opposite the wall,
