Realms of War

vizier's own habitual, softly mocking voice.

Mirt had barely dozed off when the scream awakened him.

Tauniira tensed, bare and warm against him but awake in an instant. Mirt rolled away, growling, 'You stay here, and keep the bed warm. I won't be long.'

'Said the man stepping off the cliff,' Tauniira hissed at him in the darkness as he buckled on his breeches and stamped his feet into his boots.

Mirt gave her a friendly growl by way of reply as he shrugged on his mail shirt and made for the door, sword in hand.

Deln and another two sentinels were waiting in the passage as he came trotting up to the row of closed bedchamber doors.

One opened momentarily, farther along, but closed again just as swiftly. It was Larl Ambror's door, though Mirt could have sworn the momentary slice of face peering out into the passage had belonged to the Lady Roselarr.

Well, such doings were none of his concern. Deln and the others stood guard over another door.

The door of Harlo Ongalor's bedchamber.

Mirt put his hand on the door ring. Locked. He leaned against the door. Barred, too.

'Begone,' the vizier said curtly, from the other side of the door. 'Get hence.'

'You screamed,' Mirt said.

'It was nothing. A nightmare.'

'You've charged me to investigate two murders,' Mirt replied, 'and I'm doing that. Operating under Hawkwinter orders, not just yours. I insist on entering your room now, to see matters for myself. Open your door or I'll break it down-with great satisfaction.'

There was a long moment of silence, then the gentle thumping of the bar being lifted could be heard, followed by the scrape of the bolt and the rattle of the lock. The door swung inward.

Deln stepped forward in perfect unison With Mirt, the points of their two swords entering the dimly lit room first. The vizier gave way before them, drenched with sweat and staring-eyed, as white as his own bed silks. . but there was no body to be seen, nor anything disarranged in the room. Ongalor was fully dressed, and his bed had been turned open for slumber, but not slept in.

'Satisfied?' the vizier snapped, his voice thin and high with fear.

'What happened?'

Ongalor shrugged.

'You screamed,' Mirt said. 'What happened?'

'A nightmare,' the vizier replied. 'You've seen-and beheld nothing. Now go. Please.'

Mirt walked slowly around the man, peering intently at him from all sides, then turned away without a word and strode out, Deln standing as rearguard as if they were on a battlefield.

'Back to posts,' Mirt ordered wearily, and the sentinels trudged away.

The moment no one else was within earshot, Deln muttered, 'I saw what befell.'

'You fail to surprise me,' Mirt murmured. 'Speak.'

'Ongalor was out in the passage, creeping along like a sneak thief, listening at every door. He went past Marimbrar, then me, ignoring us like we were furniture, so we tailed him. 'Twasn't hard; he never once looked back-until he got his fright, and turned to flee. What scared him was just seeing two men, standing calmly talking to each other, away down the end of the passage.'

'And these two men were…?'

'Prince Elashar's double, and a second double. So alike you couldn't tell one from the other, but neither of them the so-called 'real' Elashar. Neither had that little scab on his cheek from where he cut himself on that hanging lamp.'

Mirt nodded slowly. 'They'll both have fled long since, of course. So our vizier is worried that someone else is playing little games in this house. Or that wizards he thought he had under control are doing what wizards always do: getting up to mischief of their own.'

The strong morning sun did not seem to shine on the dust churned up by the horses trotting hastily out through the gates. Vizier Harlo Ongalor and the three Amnian heirs who did everything in unison seemed in a great hurry to be elsewhere-and Mirt suspected the sun was avoiding their dust for the same reason it couldn't reach into the stables on so bright a morning: magical barriers conjured by Ongalor's wizard allies. This one would be to keep arrows and crossbow quarrels from Ombreir striking them down from behind as they rode away, and the stables' barrier to keep anyone else from taking a horse to flee the mansion before the Just Blades came slaying.

'Good riddance,' grunted Elgan, standing on the wall-walk with Mirt and everyone else, as they all watched the four horsemen dwindle over the flank of the nearest hill. 'Now at least the killings will end, and we can try to decide what to do about yonder approaching army, before they butcher us all.'

As he spat thoughtfully down over the wall into the moat below, a shrill scream split the air behind them-a scream that ended in a wet splattering-in the courtyard of the darm-fruit trees.

It seemed Elgan had been mistaken.

Mirt looked down at the shattered body sprawled in a puddle of blood that was still spreading. Larl Ambror, or had been. Amn now held one fewer wine merchant-or, perhaps, one fewer wine merchant's double.

Lady Roselarr had taken one look at the corpse, shrieked, and fled up the grand staircase like a whirlwind.

'Seems someone wanted her newfound love to fly,' Deln muttered.

Mirt smiled sourly. 'Think Ongalor's wizards did it, from afar? Some compulsion spell or other?'

Deln shrugged. 'Why him? Taking you down would be his best strike against us.'

'Oh? Wouldn't that be the best way to scare everyone into fleeing Ombreir?'

'If we can. I'm thinking they threw up barrier spells we haven't even guessed at yet, to make this place a pris-'

Deln stopped speaking in astonishment. Darmon Halandrath had mounted the stair. Gaping, everyone watched him ascend, a great rolling mound of struggling flesh surging upward.

'Tymora and Tempus preserve us,' Tauniira muttered.

'Or Yurtrus gnaw our bones,' Hargra added.

Panting and sweating, Halandrath reached the upper level and lurched in the direction of his bedchamber. Before he was out of view, Helora Roselarr reappeared, coming back down the stairs with her arms full of gleaming, gilded-and obviously heavy-coffers. Her face was white as bone and set hard with determination, her eyes red from the tears still streaming down her cheeks.

'Whatever,' Ralaerond Galespear drawled, 'are you doing?'

'What you should be doing,' she snapped back. 'Fleeing this deathtrap just as swiftly as I can!' She tried to push past him, toward the open front gates, and found herself surrounded by frowning Amnians and Mirt's warriors.

'We're going to die here, every one of us!' she cried, voice rising. 'I doubt these Just Blades-if they're truly anywhere near here at all! — will find anyone left alive here in Ombreir, when they do come riding in! Someone hiding among us is butchering all the rest of us, and smiling up his sleeve all the while! I-'

Words failing her, she launched into a shriek of frustration, rammed a blinking Torandral out of her way with one of the coffers she was cradling, and shouldered her way through the rest of the warriors-who looked to Mirt for instructions. He waved a hand to indicate they should let her pass.

In her wake, Darmon Halandrath came thundering back down the stairs, clutching a leather satchel to his gigantic belly and howling for breath, sweat streaming down his nigh-purple face like a river. 'M-make way!' he tried to bawl, but lacked the breath to make it more than a hoarse wheeze. 'Make-'

Mirt gestured curtly, and his warriors cleared a path for the gigantic Amnian.

One or two of the other Amnians started to follow Roselarr and Halandrath in their march to the gates-only to halt in horror, and stare.