Arna knew that Nonthal was nowhere near the glory it had once boasted, years ago when Turmish was the center of trade of a significant portion of Faerun, and that its central market was like as not a mere shadow of what had existed there before. How glorious must that age have been, therefore, when the remnant was so brisk, and bustling, and filled with all manner of shops and stalls hawking everything from spices to silks, amulets to baskets of many varieties of apples. Here was a farm-woman selling poultry: chickens in willow-wand cages and quail and ducks as well, all cheeping and quacking in their precariously stacked quarters. He paused to glance at a countertop piled high with used armor, some of it scored with ominous-seeming burn marks. The merchant, a dwarf with elaborate braids in her autumn red hair and arm muscles that easily surpassed Arna’s own in girth, glanced up at him from her task of hammering out the dents in a breastplate, ran her eye over him, and turned back to her work, obviously dismissing him as a likely purchaser of fighting gear.
“Stop gawking like a country cousin on his first trip to a town temple,” muttered Vidor, hitting him lightly on the shoulder. “It’s not your first venture outside that rock you call home. And you’ve seen more goods in the caravans bound for Imaskar.”
“Sespech isn’t like this,” returned Arna. “And trade goods are packed tight when they come to Jadaren Hold.”
“Nonsense,” said Vidor distractedly, pulling a roll of paper the length and thickness of his finger from an inner pocket of his stained traveling jacket. “When the caravans come in, the undercaves of Jadaren Hold are like a pasha’s treasure trove. You and I hid there between the bales as youngsters often enough, spying out the bargaining.”
He unrolled the paper partway and frowned at it.
“Nicole Beguine’s manner is as pretty and noncommittal as his handwriting,” he said. “He salutes my clan and pedigree. He pats me on the head for my clever cantrips, as if I were a deserving student. He apologizes that he cannot make the time to discuss the matter with me in a timely fashion, and begs the pressures of business. He refers me to his daughter Ciari, who is empowered to act for the family in all ways.”
Arna snorted. “He’s good.”
“The Beguines are all very good at what they do. It’s a brilliant reply, really. Very kind, nothing you could claim was insulting, and yet it’s perfectly designed to put me at a disadvantage-to make me a petitioner begging for a favor.”
He nudged Arna, who was still looking about him at the panoply of merchant’s stalls and sniffing hungrily after the aroma of meat cooking over an open brazier.
“It doesn’t help that you refuse to let me meet the Beguine daughters at their quarters, and instead hunt them down in the market like some opportunist carpet seller. They’ll never take me seriously.”
Arna shrugged. “My apologies, but I can’t take the risk some member of the household won’t recognize me. It’s not the safest place for a Jadaren. There are those hell-bent on keeping the feud alive. And if Kestrel finds that I came spying after her …”
“If so, it’s only the truth,” said Vidor, tartly.
“And should you keep an appointment with Ciara at House Beguine, there’s no guarantee that Kestrel will accompany her, while all are agreed that every third and seventh day they go marketing together for the needs of the House.”
“Our innkeeper is agreed,” muttered Vidor. “That’s hardly all.”
“Look, Vidor, if this falls through, I’ll take up the issue with my uncle. Fair enough?”
“I’ll hold you to that.” Vidor peered through the increasing mass of people, while Arna looked around for the source of the delicious smell. “Say, Arna, are you sure of your source? I see no pair of sisters bargaining at stalls, and I can’t imagine a Beguine not arguing for the best price.”
“It’s early in the day yet,” replied his friend. “And neither of us knows them by sight.”
He moved three paces to the armory stall, where the dwarf still hammered diligently at a breastplate, wielding her hammer with a delicacy at odds with one so muscular. Arna made a polite bow and addressed her.
“Your pardon, goodmistress dwarf,” he said. “We have business with the sisters of House Beguine, who are to go to market this day. Would you know the ladies?”
The dwarf paused in her work and contemplated him from under bristling eyebrows, unsmiling. Something in his boyish, open face must have struck her as harmless, because she pointed over his shoulder with the head of her hammer.
“It happens that the Beguine girls are over there, at the Widow Bejuer-Vaud’s pie stall,” she said, her voice deep and surprisingly musical.
Arna turned to look, with a certain sense of foreboding. His promised bride was closer than he had thought, and he hadn’t a notion of what to expect.
Vidor had turned to look as well. “There,” he said.
Arna tilted his head to look between the milling mass of folk who had come to do business this day: respectable-looking housewives, sleek upper servants restocking their masters’ pantries, knots of travel-stained adventurers looking to renew their supplies, pickpockets looking for distracted targets.
There was the stall, with neatly wrapped stacked of pies high on the counter, and a portable stove glowing behind it-the source of the tantalizing smell. Several folk-man-size as well as a brace of halflings who mounted a wooden step set out for such as them to view the wares-clustered around the pie shop.
Without turning around, Arna leaned closer to the dwarf. “I don’t know them. Can you tell me which is Kestrel Beguine?”
The lump in his throat, which had been bothering him since the morning, seemed to double in size at that moment. He was about to see the woman he would cleave to for the rest of his life-or would if his uncle and a phalanx of interested parties from both Houses had their way. He felt hot and cold at once, and his forehead felt clammy, as if he were a small boy before his uncle’s desk, being tested in his numbering.
Everything depended on the color of the flame. A yellow flame would simply mean that a close relative of Sanwar’s had sired Kestrel. It would prove Nicol’s paternity, since Sanwar was not aware of any other brothers he might have lying about. A blue flame-well, that would be an extremely interesting situation. It would mean Vorsha was far more duplicitous than he could imagine, and had betrayed both brothers by admitting yet a third man to her bed.
But a green flame would prove the matter of his suspicions true, and Kestrel would be revealed as his daughter, and as her supposed father’s niece.
He lifted his hand and spoke a word, soft and sibilant. Heat flared at the tip of his index finger, and he held it over the green ceramic bowl in time to direct the flame that spurted out into the hairs and Powers within. There was a faint sizzle as the strands, short and long, crisped black and coiled in on themselves like maggots cast into a fire, and then there was a smell like burned meat.
A flame, small yet steady, pulsed over them-a flame green as the cracked heart of an emerald.
“Ouch!”
Kestrel’s hand flew to her head. At the cry of pain, Ciari Beguine left off looking at the stack of savory pies and turned to her sister.
“What’s the matter? Did someone pull your hair?” Ciari cast an angry eye at Widow Bejuer-Vaud’s customers clustering around the stall, as if to force a confession from the culpable party. A halfling standing near her on a convenient stepstool drew back in alarm, but no one looked guilty.
“No, I don’t think so.” Kestrel rubbed at a spot just over her right temple. “It was more of a little jab-as if something bit me.”
She glanced at her fingers and saw a tiny speck of blood.
“Look, Ciari,” she began. “Something did.… Oh!”
She clasped her head again, wincing, and the ledger book she always bore on market days thumped to the ground at her feet.
Concerned, Ciari took her sister by the shoulders and pulled her away from the crush of folk at the counter.
“What’s the matter, my love?” she said, her voice gentling. Ciari was at least a head taller than Kestrel, and
