Elminster Must Die

These days, success meant departing Delcastle Manor before his mother, exhausted by her parade of hired lovers, awakened and began her daily tyranny. And today, if the gods smiled, would be a string of successes.

With deft skill, Arclath speared a warm bun from a baker’s tray being rushed past, and before the runner could even start to snarl a curse, tossed the man a lion-enough to pay for four such trays, buns and all.

The bun was hot and greasy, the spiced meat inside it splendid on his tongue but threatening to leave his chin glistening.

“Ravenous, Lord?” a hot-nuts vendor called.

“Not at all!” Arclath replied heartily, not slowing. “Merely keeping in training! And how is the trade in roasted jawcrackers this fine morn?”

“Hot, Lord-hot! Get them hot while I have ‘em!”

“Words my mother lives by!” He sauntered on, already hailing the next vendor to indulge in more silly repartee as he tossed a coin to a dirty barefoot child, danced a little flounce-and-flair with her as if she’d been a highborn lady, then with a wave left her and went on, very much the noble dandy at play.

He was heading for The Eel Revealed, an eatery specializing in cheese-and-eel pies, fiery fortified wines, and oiled young lasses who served them both. A welcoming refuge for the famished stomach in the dear dawn hours …

She was the sleekest and swiftest of the serving maids, and his favorite. Wherefore she added a wink to her most ardent smile and twirled in front of him to make her skirt swirl fetchnignly to reveal her thigh-garter as she set down his platter in front of him.

“Ah, thank you, Emsra!” Lord Arclath Delcastle was at his whimsical airiest. “You know how to make a man’s insides roil in delicious pleasure! Just as I-a time or two, when at my most heroic-can claim to know how to do the same to the right maid!”

Emsra tittered as she removed the dome from the steaming platter with a deft flourish, revealing a heap of succulent eels and morels in sardragon sauce. Or so the menu claimed.

She’d heard all of his lordship’s favorite lines before, but it was the playful-as-a-child way he delivered them that still smote her into mirth. There were nobles she hid in the kitchens from and nobles she served with stiff, silent care-but if there’d been more nobles like him, she’d have rushed eagerly forward to greet all nobles and cheerfully would have seen to their every little want.

Around them, The Eel Revealed was growing quiet. The rush of early diners who were departing the city on business or had to get to their shops or to market or to meet and make deals at the docks or in various offices was done, and those who struck work early for highsunfeast hadn’t yet done so.

Wherefore all the serving maids lounged around Lord Delcastle’s table, sharing in the laughter. Not out of greedy desire to get a coin or two for their troubles-for they knew from experience they’d get those, regardless-but because this man had a way about him that lifted hearts and set folk to laughter and made the day brighter.

“Sausages,” Varimbra purred in Arclath’s ear then, setting a small side platter down at his elbow. “Compliments of Laethla, who desires your opinion of this new spicing she’s trying.”

He looked up with a smile to find the women ringing his table all beaming at him, resplendent in their glow- painted suns and high-heeled boots as they struck poses-out of sheer habit.

“Would any of you care to join me?” he asked, and he meant it. “Surely you’ve worked up hunger? I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble, but-”

But the smiles fell right off their faces, leaving only concern behind, and it had nothing to do with his offer. All of the maids stared over his shoulder at the same cause.

A cause that approached him rapidly.

Arclath could move swiftly when he had to, and sprang from his chair, snatching up a hot sausage just in case, even before he turned.

To behold, striding toward his table with their eyes fixed on him, a frightened palace messenger and a suspicious-faced veteran lady war wizard he’d seen about the palace once or twice.

“Sausage?” he offered politely, holding it out to her with a bow-and receiving only silence in return.

From the messenger it was the silence of open-mouthed bafflement; from the war wizard it looked more like cold scorn.

Arclath shrugged, put the end of the spurned sausage into his own mouth, bit down, and started to chew.

He had plenty of time to study the stocky, aging war wizard as she bore down on him, and did not fail to notice she had a wand out and ready. She also had a cold-eyed, thin-lipped face like a horse, and a body that seemed to bulge with more muscles than one of your larger palace guards.

“Lord Arclath Delcastle, I will have words with you,” she announced.

Hmm. A cold voice, too, and probably very keen wits.

Arclath sensed the serving maids melting away from around him and turned in smooth haste to tell Varimbra, “Please convey my compliments to Laethla. Peppery, and therefore should result in many drinks being bought and downed. I like it and would be pleased to pay her for this platter and the same again at my next visit.”

When he turned back to face the wizard of war, she was standing right in front of him. And contriving somehow, though she was a head shorter than he was, to seem to loom over him.

He sketched the briefest of bows. “Well met, Lady-?”

She snorted. “Glathra by name. No lady. Spare me your honey-tongued flatteries.”

She turned her head and gave the messenger beside her a stern look-and he silently stretched out his hand and proffered a parchment note, holding it up and open for Arclath to read but drawing it back and away when, out of sheer habit, he reached to take it.

Arclath demonstrated that not just lady war wizards could dispense dirty looks, and the messenger blanched, swallowed, and advanced the note again. Arclath didn’t reach for it this time, but merely applied himself to silently reading it.

“Tell Arclath Delcastle, Belnar murdered. Also, the dancer in the Dragonriders’ was listening to all we said.” Halance’s handwriting. Freshly written, and smudged in one corner, as if handled before dry.

Belnar murdered?

He raised his eyes questioningly to Glathra, who snapped, “Just what was ‘all we said,’ and why were you to be so swiftly and urgently told of this killing, Lord Delcastle?”

“If ‘Belnar’ is Belnar Buckmantle, Lady,” Arclath said stiffly, “he was my friend. Halance can tell you that.”

“Halance Tarandar’s headless body has just been found in an alley.” Her voice was grim. “He was carrying this note. The Crown desires to know just who ‘we’ are or were and what was said. I’m not accustomed to repeating myself, Lord Delcastle.”

Arclath stared at her, too shocked to give her the sort of stinging rebuke that most nobles would have greeted such words with. Belnar and Halance-? But only last night, we were …

The war wizard was watching him like a hawk.

Arclath bent to take up another sausage. As its greasy magnificence flooded his mouth, he thought back over what had been said across his table at the club.

His eyes narrowed, and he nodded slowly. Glathra took a step forward but said not a word. She knew control as well as bluster.

“The ‘we’ were Halance, Belnar, and me,” he told her. “We’re friends. Not conspirators, Lady Glathra, not schemers after profit. Just friends.”

The sausage, somehow, was gone. He plucked up another and bit into it. Gods, they were good.

“They were both,” he added, chewing, “consumed with the tumult of preparing for the coming council, and I was being sympathetic … merely that, not rat-hunting details of security. So, yes, there was much talk of the unfolding arrangements, and more about the probable troubles there’d be with this noble and that, various opportunistic visitors likely to come to town because of the gathering … spies of Sembia, of course …”

“And did Tarandar or Buckmantle seem particularly interested in anything? Some matter they shared an interest in, perhaps?”