'The fire is well under control, they tell me,' she said in a low, husky voice, unfolding herself from the door frame and gliding forward. Her gown fell open.
Involuntarily Ilgreth looked down, and then up, and gulped again. He kept his eyes firmly on her face, but knew his own face was blazing. Try as he might, nothing would come out of his mouth.
'So it provides me with the distraction I've been waiting for,' she continued, drawing the door firmly closed and wedging a chair against it. 'Think no more about flames, but about this instead: I have always loved you.'
Then she was pressed against him, soft and warm. 'For years,' she told his throat, 'I've looked for a chance for us to … be together.'
In mute disbelief, Ilgreth stared at her.
Emerald eyes smiled up into his. 'Take me to your bed,' she whispered. 'I've waited so long.'
'Ah, uh-a-ho!' Ilgreth burst out intelligently, finding his voice at last. 'Lady, are you sure you're-'
'Ilgreth,' she said, pushing him back onto the bed and planting a knee on his chest. 'I'm very sure. Humor me….'
'Ah, yes, of course, lady,' Ilgreth said faintly, wondering when this dream would end, and where he'd find himself when he awakened….
The man with the tentacles and the face that was slowly changing sprawled at ease in Lady Shayna Summerstar's abandoned bed. A goblet of fine wine was in one hand and the decanter he'd filled it from in the other. He was smiling and nodding at something that was unfolding in another bedchamber.
He suddenly stiffened, spilling wine on the coverlet, and sat up. Newly gained memories of similar things had stirred within him-reminding him of a certain someone who knew far too much.
He tossed goblet and decanter carelessly away and snapped his fingers decisively before the items crashed to the floor. He was gone out the open door in a trice, striding hard along the passage outside, toward the source of the smoke.
'How are we-?' The guardcaptain was too breathless to say more, but the soot-blackened armsman nodded in understanding.
'Winning, sir-the two chambers beyond are as wet as duck ponds, and the fire's more smoke now than flame. As long as the roof-timbers don't catch …'
The weary, sweat-drenched officer nodded grimly. 'Good. Hand me another bucket, and we'll go look at th-'
He reached back for the next bucket in the slopping line, but paused in astonishment. Beside him, old Narlargus slumped against the wall, and the bucket he held gently poured its contents out onto his boots and down the steps.
There was a smoldering, ashen stump where his head should have been.
Armsman and officer looked at each other and then back at the corpse sliding slowly down the wall, trailing a black smear of ash. They gabbled prayers and oaths, and fled in terror.
Storm Silverhand shortly came striding up the stair, cast a grim glance at the slain servant, and broke into a run. She was soon splashing along a passage whose walls were stained with soot, and whose floor stood an inch deep in water. Voices came from a room ahead, and Storm turned into it.
Weary Purple Dragons stood staring at a pile of ashes on the floor. 'Is the fire out?' Storm asked.
'Aye, Lady,' Ergluth Rowanmantle told her, 'that's not what we're worried over, now.'
Storm looked a silent question at him, and he raised grim eyes to meet hers. 'This was the bedchamber of the Dowager Lady Pheirauze Summerstar,' he explained, 'and that was her bed.'
Storm looked down at the pile of ashes. 'And she was in it when the fire…'
'The flames started here, so far as we can tell by the marks,' he said, 'but that's not what-well, look here.' He gestured with the tip of his boot at gold puddles on the floor among the ash. 'This was an anklet, and, here, a row of rings. These-all of these-are what she called her 'gold glisters'; the jewelry she never removed.'
'She died here,' Storm agreed, nodding.
'Lady,' the boldshield said wearily, 'have you ever seen a fire that left puddled gold behind, but not a single bone? She's gone, completely-and yet she must have been in this; I've been told she couldn't get some of those rings off over her knuckles.'
'There's a man on the stairs back there,' Storm told him, 'a servant, by his livery, who has his head-just his head-burnt away. He was carrying water buckets when it happened.'
Their eyes met. Two mouths tightened into identical thin lines.
'Our murderer, it seems,' Ergluth said softly, 'has s-'
'My lords!' The breathless shout came down the passage from a servant who coughed out smoke. 'Lord Boldshield?'
'In here,' Ergluth said sharply, turning to the door.
A man in the livery of the house ducked in through the door, a torch in his hand. 'Sir,' he panted. His eyes went to Storm and then darted away again. 'There's something you must see. Pray come quickly!'
Ergluth wasted no time on questions, but gestured for the man to lead them; the folk in the room emptied out into the passage after him. They had shouldered through a doorway and started down the stairs when the Purple Dragon commander asked his first question.
'Will we need our swords out?'
The man shook his head, and then turned on the landing below them to do it again. His face was grim. 'Nay- too late for that.'
He stopped at an open door where two Purple Dragons were standing guard, and gestured within. Storm and Ergluth looked at each other.
'The steward,' the warrior told her. 'Ilgreth Drimmer.'
Something hard came into Storm's face, and she laid a hand on his arm. 'I'd like to look at this alone for a breath or two, if you don't mind,' she said quietly.
Ergluth shrugged. 'It won't make any difference to him,' he said wearily. 'Go ahead.' Then he laid a hand on her arm, and murmured in her ear, 'Was he a Harper? Is that it?'
Storm whispered back, 'No. I just. . have to say farewell to this one.'
Ergluth waved his hand at her to go forth and do so, and muttered to the armsmen coming up behind him, 'This is getting as bloody as a battle.'
Storm took the torch from the servant who'd fetched them, and stepped cautiously inside. Nothing seemed disturbed in the room but a wicker laundry-basket, fallen by the foot of the bed that Ilgreth Drimmer lay upon. A door at the back of the room was ajar, opening onto a narrow passage where the dim blue light of false dawn was just beginning to show at the windows.
The steward lay sprawled on his back on the bed, a dagger in his breast. His face was slack in death, but nowhere could Storm see the burns left by the consuming powers of the shapeshifter. Had someone else slain the man to settle old scores, trusting to the tumult of the other deaths to quell all hue and cry?
Storm looked at the steward's hands, and took up a single strand of hair from under his nails. A long hair-too long for most men. She bent over Ilgreth's face and wiped at his lip with a finger. The tip of her finger came away red. Lip-rouge.
A woman, then-or a shapechanger posing as a woman, to gain entry here unopposed, and get close to the man. She frowned-and then gasped in astonishment.
Where the steward's red robes had been pulled away from his throat and pinned thus by the dagger, his neck was exposed-and there, glinting up at her, was a silver harp.
Storm reached for it. There was a sudden shout from the door. She looked up to see one of the guards staring past her at the other doorway. She whirled to look there-but saw only empty passage.
Vaulting the bed, the pin in her fist, she sprinted to the door and looked both ways, silver hair swirling. The dark, narrow hall was empty.
She turned back into the bedchamber. 'What was it?' she demanded. 'Who was there?'
The armsman looked at Ergluth, who'd come into the room at the head of a crowd of Purple Dragons. The commander gave him a grim nod.
'A man in a cowled robe, Lady,' he said, 'with a staff in his hands and eyes like red flame.'
