'Er… sorry, boss.'
I waved off the apology, wishing I could find a lump on the wall at least as large as the one on my head. 'Part of the job. I'm glad to know you can handle yourself in a fight.'
That brought some color back to those cheeks. 'Just trying to do my job.'
'Speaking of which,' said Olivia, her tone hardening as she turned to me, 'you'd best get at least some provisional protection on the Dragon's Pearl. We've had a couple magic lapses this morning.'
My brow beetled. 'Magic lapses?'
'The storms play havoc with magic,' volunteered Filson, clearly wanting to redeem himself. 'Spells fail sometimes.'
'These lapses aren't caused by any storm,' Olivia said, never turning from me. She let the implications sink in before she spoke them. 'One of the guests is trying to dispel the magical protections around the pearl.'
Now it was my turn to go white. 'I'll get on it right away.'
'Once you get the pearl secured nonmagically, I want you to hunt down the cause of these… interruptions.'
'What shall I do when I find the culprit?'
'Kill him.'
Within a few hours, the pearl was secured seven ways to Summertide. I'd locked it in three concentric boxes, chained the outer box to five different spots on the walls, set seventy-three poisoned darts into projectors along the perimeter, lined ceiling and floors with drider web, strung up three hair triggers on the threshold to the chamber, and booby-trapped the vault door so that the slightest disturbance would trigger a circular deadfall. The rock was as safe as I knew how to make it, short of hanging it around my own neck.
The whole time I worked, Filson watched and gabbed. He told me a lot I already knew about Olivia: that she was powerful and ruthless and all-knowing in the Tern. He also hinted in whispers that she used magic to look younger. That didn't surprise me, but I nervously wondered how much younger.
Most interesting of all, though, he spilled his own theory about why the lady kept a gemstone she feared to remove from its vault within a vault. He said the Dragon's Pearl magically powered the whole palace. He said the rock had absorbed Xantrithicus's power and Olivia was now drawing on it. He said the stone couldn't be magically guarded because any spells that kept intruders out would keep the magic in.
Out of the mouths of kids. The Dock Ward had taught me to listen to babbling kids and old fools. A worm too soft and juicy is a worm that hides a hook. Hmm. Where was Olivia's hook, and what fish was she trying to lure, and why? Money, certainly, but she had enough of that. More money, of course, but also… what-power, station… companionship?
No time for such thoughts. I had a would-be jewel thief to catch.
It would not be easy. I doubted Olivia wanted me to rough up her patrons, as I routinely did to the smugglers and black marketeers on the docks. No, this would take subtlety and stealth.
Filson would prove to be a problem.
'Reconnoiter? What's that mean?' he asked suspiciously. 'Are you trying to brush me off?'
'Not at all,' I responded, pushing him toward the crowded dining hall. 'You know the patrons. Watch them. See if any of them look suspicious.'
'What're you gonna do?' the boy asked defensively.
'My job,' I responded. One more shove did the trick, and the kid was off into the whirling cloud of mink and satin and hoity-toity laughter.
My job, in this case, involved grilling the servants. You listen to kids and old fools and servants. They've been in every crack and cranny, seen everything doing and everybody being done, and because of their station, had been ignored all the while. While Filson was giving diners the eye, I'd be giving cooks the ear.
I watched the double doors to see which swung which way, then made my entry. The kitchen-a long, low- ceilinged gallery-was as decked as any other room. Tables and butcher's blocks lined the marble floor, shiny- scrubbed pots and pans hung from the plaster-bossed ceiling, rolling steam stood above bubbling kettles, and chefs bustled about it all, their white smocks and mushroom hats flitting like scrap paper in wind.
I walked up to one of the chefs, who worked a bloody set of knives on five long tenderloins. 'Excuse me,' said I.
The man didn't look up. His hands moved expertly on meat and knife. 'You're excused.'
By his faint Sembian accent, I knew this was a connoisseur snob. Well, to me, a cook's a cook. 'I was wondering if you've noticed any… magical lapses.'
Again, no attention was spared me. He was busy sliding the steaks he'd cut from a tenderloin onto a platter, which was immediately whisked away by another cook. He reached for the second hunk of meat as he spoke. 'I haven't time to notice-'
The words stopped dead. He must have seen it. I certainly couldn't have missed it. The long red wet slab of meat had turned to a great greasy cow pie, and the scoriated butcher's block into an uneven boulder. Worse still, though, the keen-edged knife had disappeared, an ass's jawbone in its place, and the cook's supple, well-trained hand had become a warty, clawed, three-fingered talon. Gone was the white smock and mushroom hat, replaced by a pessimistic clump of matted chest-hair on a bare, greenish, scaly chest… and an oily spit curl above a goblin pate.
Goblin pate!
Those dark, squalid goblin eyes lifted and met mine in that stunned moment, and two protruding lower fangs rose up and out to threaten those gray-green nostrils. But the next moment it was all gone, and the Sembian chef was staring impatiently, baldly, at me.
'Did you see that?' I asked, aghast.
'See what?'
Before our bland talk could go further, we were interrupted by a shout of outrage. I looked toward the doors in time to see a server in the last foot of his fall to the polished marble floor. A platter of steaming turkey and trimmings preceded him. It and he hit ground, and the turkey's featherless wings flapped stupidly as it arced upward, vomited its stuffing onto the server, and flopped onto the marble floor.
The cause of this small catastrophe followed hard on the fall-my doubtable assistant, Filson. He leapt past the open-out door and vaulted the server to run in gleeful pride toward me.
'Look, Quaid! Look what I found in Mr. Stavel's pockets!'
Too stunned to do anything else, I did look at the rich golden treasures spread out on the waifs grubby hands-a clockwork timepiece in gold, a money clip fat with Cormyr-ian notes, a pair of rings with rubies the size of cat's-eyes, and a strand of enormous pearls, any one of which would have equalled my typical take in a given year.
'You… you…' The bald bullocks of this 'assistant'- not only to knock over a server and ruin a turkey after picking pockets in my name, but also to come brag to me and the kitchen staff about it-beggared me. 'You stole from the guests!'
'But look! It's-' Now it was his turn to look flabber gasted as he gazed at the trove in his hands. Unlike me, however, he found too many words to express his consternation. 'But wait. I was going to return them after I checked for any clues or any evidence that might link them to attempts to shut down the lady's magic, only when I'd gotten the take they weren't in my hands more than a second or two before they turned into-'
He didn't have to finish, for I saw it with my own eyes: the clockwork timepiece had become a smooth-edged river stone, the money clip and Cormyrian notes had turned into a bunch of leaves caught in a splinter of bark, the rings were a couple of large ladybug shells, and the pearls were a shriveled strand of grapes.
The reconstitution of all those things happened so quickly that I hadn't had time to be surprised at these revelations before I was being surprised at the reappearance of the gold and pearls and jewels.
…/so worm that hides a hook.
There's a point in every case gone sour when the finder knows he's being had. I'd reached that point. A pearl with the magical might of an ancient wyrm… a woman known to use magic to make her look younger… to use magic to make an impossible lagoon in the heart of a blizzard… cow pies for tenderloin and goblins for chefs… Oh, yes, it was all coming far too clear now. In a flash, I saw through the whole charade, saw why a woman would use a dragon-enchanted emerald to create a magical pleasure dome atop the most forbidding of mountains.
