arms, if she was able to spread word of her charms
She’d seen the chamberjack just once, when visiting the royal court to pay her taxes. He was quiet, perhaps the politest courtier she’d ever encountered, and darned handsome to boot. That’s why she’d remembered him … Tarandar, that was his name.
The other one was a war wizard, but that was all she knew about him. Except that if he was a spy and a veteran hurler-of-spells, he was also the greatest actor in all the Realms. If he wasn’t an inexperienced, thoroughly embarrassed youngling, she’d eat her mask-right then, in his lap, and without sauce.
She decided she’d much rather decorate Tarandar’s lap, instead.
As for the loudly effeminate fop across the table from them, well, he was good winking fun, but there was a reason he was mockingly known among his fellow nobles as the Fragrant Flower of House Delcastle. Not that he preferred men in his bed, but because he was all overblown fripperies and dwelt in a Delcastle Manor that was legendary for florid, beribboned, rose-hued decor.
Tossing her hair as she caught Tarandar’s eye, she parted her lips longingly, ran her tongue around them-and watched him blush. Delcastle chuckled, of course, and the chamberjack looked so overwhelmed by her displayed self that she almost burst into laughter. His tongue was actually hanging out.
She wondered what his face would look like if she told him who and what she truly was: Amarune Lyone Amalra Whitewave, an orphan from Marsember, who for some very hard-bitten years had earned her meals with her body-and thievery. A string of bold thefts every wizard of war had been publicly ordered to stop, if they could, by any and all means.
Not that anyone knew she was the Silent Shadow.
So hearing who she really was would make his face change, to be sure.
Yes, mageling, behold my bared charms. I’m your very own Silent Shadow-mask dancer, sometime forger, and busy prostitute.
The daughter of a much-respected and trusted war wizard, too, though Beltar Whitewave had been slain decades earlier in a frontier battle by hire-spells working for Sembian smugglers. Those same smugglers had later knifed her mother and her brother, leaving Amarune kinless in the world. She’d fled Marsember across its rain-slick rooftops that very night, never to return. If she’d waited until morning, she was sure she’d have suffered the same fate.
So, drooling young war wizard, you think I’m for you? Well, if you’ve coins enough in your purse, certainly.
Yet will you ever dare take them out and proffer them? I think not.
Wormling.
As they trotted along a dark passageway, a great crashing clangor of steel striking stone arose, ahead and below, and echoed off vaulted ceilings above them.
“Stormserpent’s snakes meeting with more guards?” Storm asked, turning her shoulders and ducking to crash open a door stuck in its frame from long disuse.
It yielded, sending her staggering.
Alusair was waiting for them, glowing like a coldly amused flame.
“You could say that. They blundered into some suits of empty armor set upon pedestals as adornment, and got buried in old cracked plate for their troubles.”
“Cracked?” the Bard of Shadowdale asked, as the ghost led them out onto another balcony.
“We don’t waste still-serviceable armor in Cormyr,” Alusair replied. “Or didn’t. Things are different in the palace, these days.”
“A lot of things are different, these days,” Elminster muttered. “Is yon lordling going to be allowed to wander these halls all night, without challenge? There
“They seldom pay much heed to what goes on in the haunted wing, Old Mage,” the ghostly princess replied.
“So who does guard it?”
Alusair turned to face him, striking a pose that mocked the gestures preferred by flamboyantly foppish nobles. “Me.”
They had been easy coins, but Arclath’s deft rain of them was coming to an end; all three men were visibly weary. They’d downed about half a decanter each, followed by bowls of mulled broth, then sweet iced buns; even Arclath was yawning. The other two were sagging in their seats.
Abruptly they all seemed to realize they were more than half asleep and thrust themselves to their feet, clasping arms and parting. Arclath tossed a generous handful of golden lions onto the table-enough to pay for six men to enjoy five such nights, at first glance-and they were heading for the door. The lordling no doubt for his soft silk mansion bed, and the other two, by their murmured converse, back to the palace to write down some of the concerns and ideas they’d thought of across the table regarding this precious council.
Ignored, Amarune stared thoughtfully after them, holding her last pose. Saers, behold, your very own nude statue. Forgotten and discarded, like all statues, which sooner or later only incontinent birds remem-
At the door, Arclath turned on his heel and looked back.
As it happened, her pose had her standing with her arms outstretched toward him almost imploringly.
He smiled a tired smile and tossed two golden lions at her, high and hard. A good throw even for a wide- awake man.
Amarune broke her pose at the last possible instant to pluck the coins deftly out of the air. Then she bowed to him, waved thanks with the most fluid grace she could manage, whirled, and ran lightly off the stage.
She knew, without looking, that he’d stood and watched until after the swirling curtains had swallowed her.
“Stormserpent’s met with real guards, this time,” Alusair observed with some satisfaction. “Dead ones-mere bones-but they can ply blades well enough. Hearken to the fray.”
“Aye,” Elminster agreed, “They’ll not last long, but they’d probably destroy a few thieves. They’re hacking down yon lordling’s boldblades like harbor rain.”
“So what’s this war wizard trap that will hurl you skyward?” Storm murmured, peering warily ahead.
Elminster shrugged. “The feeling grows within me that we’ll find it soon enough.”
Amarune yawned again, uncontrollably. Dances as long as tonight’s were always tiring, and the hot soaking bath she liked to follow them with, to keep from stiffening up on the walk home, always made her sleepy.
Then there was the walk itself and the long climb up the stairs to her lodgings at the end of it … yes, she was more than ready for sleep.
Yet it was one of
Well, the unobtainable, of course. If they were nobles, that meant coupling with a willing, hitherto-unknown Obarskyr princess, of course, but she couldn’t give them
Or could she?
Hugging her thick, much-patched old nightrobe around herself, Amarune stared at herself in the mirror. Dark eyes stared back in smoldering challenge.
She blew herself a kiss, stone-faced, almost insolent in her inscrutability.
She was-tell truth, lass, and shame the Dragon-the best mask dancer in Suzail.
Yes, it just might work.
She’d fool no one, of course, and it’d be death to even try any sort of Obarskyr-kin claim-but she could
