I towered over the supine man. “Tonias thinks you did. Tonias, and me, and the rest of Selgaunt. Not only do I think that, but also that you killed his sword, too… this sword.” I held out the bloody blade.
V’Torres blinked at the gory steel, then screwed his eyes closed in torment. “Ranjir was mine, Quaid. Why would I murder my own sword?”
I was incredulous. I crouched down atop my heels and held the blade on my knees. “Your sword? Then why was it in your rival’s hand?”
“Why, indeed?” V’Torres nodded, eyes still closed. “Back in my heyday, it had been mine. I’d used it just like Tonias did. It was the voice behind my career. But then it got stolen. I was ruined. I refused to perform. Drank heavily. Woke up in a lot of odd places. People came to their own conclusions. But the real end of my career was losing Ranjir.” He took a shuddering breath. “May I see the blade?”
I handed him the blood-stained sword, and V’Torres positioned it on his body, point down like a weapon laid on a corpse. V’Torres’s nostrils flared as he drew in the scent of the metal. Eyes closing tight once again, he smiled in pain. “In my hands again, at last.”
Tonias’s blade? V’Torres’s blade? It made sense. Two great tenors, one great voice. “If it’s yours, why didn’t you try to hunt it down?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing for the last five years? I suspected Tonias at his debut, but couldn’t get close enough to find out. I’d been banned from concert halls, you know. Offstage he kept the sword in a triple- locked iron trunk. I knew for certain it was Ranjir only when we began rehearsals for Terra Incognita. Since then, I’ve been trying to take it back. I even went to the Guild of Thespians, Bards, and Choristers-”
“Why would they help you? You’re a fraud. Tonias is a fraud.”
“Ranjir was just an instrument, like a cittern-that’s what I told them. They turned me down flat. Guild or no guild, I was determined get the sword back. As long as I was alive I wouldn’t give it up. Tonias knew that. He just didn’t know what my blood would do to the sword.”
“He’s the one that told me how the blade died.”
“He’d tried it once before… took a swipe at me. I’d warned him then, but he scoffed. Now he knows the truth.”
Tonias might have known the truth, but I didn’t. The stories of both men were plausible enough, but still stories, still lies.
“You’d stop at nothing to get the sword back,” I said. “I’m sending you off with the city watch, suggesting you be charged with attempted murder.” I took the sword from the tenor and glanced up at the guardsmen. “Shackle him and take him to the dungeons. I’ll be by shortly to explain.”
Even as the men set to work, rolling V’Torres on his side, the tenor said, “And what about Tonias?”
“He’ll be charged with attempted murder, too.”
“And what about Ranjir? Who killed Ranjirr
I turned the crimson blade slowly in my hand. “That, I still don’t know.”
I delivered the bad news to Tonias and his girlfriend and endured a whole new opera of bluster and threats. That was enough. I’d had a bellyful of singers and silk, hubris and hoi polloi. I wanted dark streets and smoking chimneys, stray dogs and the smell of old fish. I wanted some good honest dirt, dirt that called itself dirt and looked dirty. In the end, even gold and diamonds were just dressed-up dirt.
I took Ranjir with me and headed out alone to the city garrison. On the way, I stopped to get a breath, to get my bearings.
I stood in a small circular courtyard, a cobbled alley surrounded by fieldstone towithouses. The crescent moon was a bright scar on the belly of the night. Thin clouds wrapped the sky in torn gauze. The roof line of the city rankled below. Black tiles, seeping shakes, and shaggy humps of thatch. Widow’s walks bristled like vulgar crowns. Water whispered in gutters and glinted in the distant cup of the sea.
Selgaunt. A quarter the size of Waterdeep, but still embroiled in nastiness. Fakery. Mendacity. Rich fat prima donnas attacking rich fat prima donnas. All that I could’ve stood-I was used to it-but caught in the center of this fight was something fine, something noble and beautiful.
I hefted the sanguine blade before me. Ranjir, ancient singing sword of elven kings, forged for battle, hero of a hundred wars, shaper of continents… and forevermore dead. Killed as an evening’s entertainment. That wasn’t even the worst of it. Before all that, the sword had been enslaved to two stupid, petty men. They’d made it sing for applause, perform like a trick monkey, and spend the rest of its time in triple-locked darkness. It might as well have been used to slice watermelons and pry open stuck doors.
Standing there under gauze clouds and frightened little stars, I knew with a sudden certainty that Tonias and V’Torres hadn’t been the sword’s first taskmasters. How many of the other great tenors of Semmite opera had used this blade? For how many hundreds of years had the singing sword of elven kings been enslaved by puffed up blowfish like Tonias and V’Torres?
Suddenly, there it was again. The smell of death.
I was no longer alone in the cobbled courtyard. From beneath crumbling arched alleyways they came. They emerged from behind ragged wooden tool sheds, abandoned flower boxes, a pile of rotten barrels. Lean, black- suited fighters with eyes like candle flames. They were all around me, blocking all exits.
I crouched, holding out the sword before me, and noticed that not a single one wore any armor over their body stockings.
An eloquent and dramatic voice came from one of my attackers, “It would seem, Agent Quaid, that you are at our mercy, and mercy is perhaps the rarest coin in our realm.” Not assassins. Thespians. “Surrender the sword to us, Quaid, for we have taken your mettle, and our taste is for a much finer alloy.” Bad thespians. There was a bit of whispered protest after that line, and a small slap fight to determine who would get to address me in the future.
“This sword is at the center of this investigation,” I said flatly. “You can’t have it. Besides, it’s dead. What would the Guild of Thespians, Bards, and Choristers want with a dead sword?”
That brought more nervous whispers. Someone argued they should make a run for it. In the end, a new voice won out. “Believe what you will about who surrounds you, Quaid. We will believe what we will about the sword. Now, hand it over or taste our own tongues of steel.” That speech was the most popular so far. Heads nodded in the darkness.
Thespians or no, there were twenty of them. They could kill me with prop swords. Still, Ranjir had been through too much already. I wasn’t about to surrender it to another batch of simpering fops. “Come, take it.”
“We will!” someone improvised, though the group seemed anything but keen on charging me.
The circle slowly tightened. I shifted my feet, turning to keep them all in view. Quick footsteps came behind me. I whirled. Ranjir whistled into the space. Steel struck steel and sparks flashed before a black goatee. With another swipe, I drove the attacker back.
And whirled. Two more swords darted toward my back. Ranjir cracked against them, one, two… I charged after the swordsmen, needing more room. They staggered back, fashionable berets outlined against the starry night, and foundered on a pile of barrels. Staves popped and rusty hoops groaned as they tumbled.
I’d gotten room enough to breathe but wanted to keep it. I swung Ranjir in a wide arc to my right and let the weight of the blade spin me around. With an audible gasp, the black body-suits fell back.
I assumed a fighting stance and growled out, “The damned blade is dead. Give it up, or you may be as well.”
They seemed impressed by this speech-literarily, not literally. One shouted back, “Give it up, or you may be as well.” That pleased the crowd even more, and hardened my resolve. Dead or alive, Ranjir would not end up in the hands of more theatrical taskinasters.
I took the battle to them, rushing a pair of men outlined by an alleyway. If I could bash past them.
Swords rang angrily on each other. The attackers’ blades sounded tinny mixed with the bell-tones of Ranjir. Even dead, it was a beautifully turned blade. I lunged. The tip of Ranjir catching in the basket hilt of a foe’s sword. As I struggled to wrench the blade away, something lashed my sword arm. My shoulder felt suddenly hot and achy. I won free and backed up, carving space around me.
Blood was creeping down my arm, dousing the sleeve of my shirt. One of the leotard crew had gotten in a lucky strike. The blow was superficial. It stung, but I could still wag Ranjir well enough. Then one of the actors was counting to three in an ominous stage whisper, and they all rushed me. I shouted in surprise, but there was no time
