whom each one was, even though hundreds crowded the cramped room. He set the painting back on the table.
Flint suspected he wouldn't know a clue if it leaped out and challenged him with a long sword. His gaze moved from painting to painting around the room, remembering how the abode had looked when Ailea lived there and seeking any element that no longer fit the room's coziness. Finally, shaking his head wearily, he trudged up the stone steps to the second level.
As with most folks, Ailea's bedroom showed more of her personality than did those rooms that the public might visit. The upstairs room smelled of lavender; bunches of the fragrant herb, tied with gray ribbons, had been laid on the midwife's dressing table, next to her tortoise-shell brush and the silver-inlaid combs that had held her braid tight on fancy occasions. Blackened iron hooks, a gift from Flint, held the gathered skirts she sewed in profusion: purple, red, green, and bright yellow. On a nearby table was a new beige shirt, brother to the green one and the blue one she'd made for Flint earlier. A skein of brown embroidery thread and a needle waited by the new garment.
A large feather bed, laid with a purple and green coverlet, stood in the center of the room, while a smaller pallet had been erected in an alcove near the fireplace. Before the hearth sat an ancient wooden rocking chair, scuffed and scarred but polished to a sheen. The dwarf stepped into the alcove and saw the lamps at the head and foot of the pallet, a cauldron on the hearth, and thick piles of sheets, towels, and swaddling rags on a night table nearby. A basket cradle swung from a long iron hook set deep into the ceiling. This was, Flint realized, the alcove to which so many elven women had come to give birth.
Several hours later, as shadows began to lengthen into late afternoon, Flint finished going through Ailea's private records, searching for clues but feeling like a thief. Most of her pieces of parchment referred to births or to herbal remedies that had been effective in treating particular ailments. A search of the eight-drawer chiffonnier next to the feather bed yielded no information that, as far as he could see, had any link to the crime.
Then Flint saw the painting, in a delicate silver and gold frame, that sat atop the chiffonnier. The sidepieces of the frame had been rubbed shiny, as though the owner had often stood here, beholding the painting. He touched a thick finger to it; the paint was faded and old-older, he knew, than he was. It showed a young elf, slight of build, with round, greenish brown eyes and a face like a cat's, standing next to an elderly human man with a square jaw and clothes that proclaimed him to be a farmer. A tidy but small house, with white petunias framing the front path, stood in the background. The two figures were holding hands, and the expression on the faces managed to reflect both great content and overbearing sadness at the same time.
Feeling suddenly as though he were peering through a window into a private scene, Flint returned the painting to the chiffonnier and stepped briskly around the bed and back to the stairway. There was nothing here that contained the slightest clue pertaining to Lord Xenoth.
Downstairs, as twilight grew in the street outside, Flint found himself once more picking up the painting that Ailea had been holding when she died. It wasn't Tanis's portrait; the dwarf had found that one upstairs on the table next to the feather bed. Holding the framed likeness of the two elven youngsters and reflecting that he was still just a bit weak-only a little, though-from the attempt on his life, Flint eased himself into the overstuffed chair that waited at one side of the fireplace. Propping his legs on a footstool and gazing alternately at the portrait and the toy robin he'd given Ailea, he let his thoughts wander.
He'd arrived back home two nights ago to find his toy hutch cleared of everything but the soldiers. In the center of the table, however, Fionia had left him a chunk of rose quartz, fuzzy with lint and smudged with something that smelled suspiciously like grape jam.
What had the child said? 'Ailea was excited. She kept saying, 'Now it all makes sense. The scar. The 'T.' The air. Now I understand.' '
'The scar. The T.' The air.' Flint settled deeper into the chair and gazed at the painting. 'The scar. The T.' The air,' he murmured. 'The air.'
Suddenly, with a shout of 'Reorx!' that brought the guards crashing through the front and back doors, Flint leaped to his feet. What met the guards' eyes was the sight of a dwarf hugging a portrait and chanting, 'The air, the air, the air!'
But the guard outside Tanis's palace chambers was adamant. No one was to be allowed in to visit the half- elf. Even the guard saw Tanis only when he allowed a kitchen elf to set a tray of food just inside the door and collect the old tray-and even then the half-elf often stayed out of sight at the back of the room.
'How am I supposed to gather evidence if I can't talk to Tanis about it?' the dwarf demanded, waving the painting in front of the guard's face. 'Well?'
The guard, nearly as old as Porthios, was unshakable. 'The Speaker left orders for no visitors,' he repeated.
'He didn't mean to shut me out, you doorknob!'
The guard's face grew even more stubborn. 'Go talk to the Speaker, then.'
'I will!' Flint promised. 'And I'll be back!'
But the dwarf had no better luck outside the Speaker's anteroom at the Tower.
'He's in seclusion,' one guard explained, 'meditating and praying, as part of the
The dwarf practically threw the portrait on the floor in his ire. 'This is a crisis of state! I'm in a state of crisis, by Reorx! Now open that door.' He advanced threateningly toward the guards…
And suddenly found himself facing twin short swords held by a pair of grim-faced palace guards. 'Sorry, Master Fireforge,' one said.
Flint threw up his hands in despair. 'Now what?' He stalked away down the corridor. 'You elves and your traditions!' he shouted back.
He returned to the palace. There he found a spot on the steps and sat down to do some meditating of his own. Solostaran, now in seclusion, was the only one who could order the palace guards to admit him to Tanis's room. But the Speaker was in seclusion-unless, Flint assumed, Qualinesti was attacked by minotaurs or some such thing.
Porthios, who probably would not have aided the dwarf anyway, was under guard in the Grove, not to be disturbed for anything less than another Cataclysm. Gilthanas had pledged not to help Tanis in any way, and Laurana hadn't spoken a friendly word to the half-elf in more than a month.
Flint sighed. What a prime selection of helpers. Not for the first time, he wondered if it was time to move on to another spot in Ansalon, someplace with ale that didn't taste like rainwater and wine that didn't leave a dwarf reeking of blossoms.
Someplace like Solace, perhaps.
The dwarf threw that thought off, however, and reviewed the candidates. If Gilthanas even bothered to listen to the dwarf's entire idea, the neophyte guard almost certainly would raise an alarm that would scare off the murderer until another time-most likely until after Tanis had been banished. Which would not help the half-elf at all.
That left…
'Laurana, I have to talk to you,' Flint said through the closed door.
'Go away, Master Fireforge,' came the peevish reply.
'It's about Tanis.'
A pause. Then the same voice, a bit less ill-humored, was heard. 'I don't want to hear about Tanis.
'Fine,' Flint groused. 'I'll just let him die without speaking to you one last time. I'll let you know when the funeral is. In case you're interested in attending.' He stomped on the marble floor, loudly at first, then gradually more softly.
The door swung open. 'Flint, wait!' Laurana called, dashing into the corridor, past the dwarf.
'I figured that might work,' Flint said smugly from next to her doorway. He traipsed into Laurana's chambers.
The elf swung around and faced the dwarf, then stalked back into the small sitting room, a common feature in the palace's private chambers; it was outfitted with fireplace, small table, and two straight chairs before the fire,
