“It’s fine,” Jhesrhi rapped. “One of us should sleep here in case something happens late at night.”
“Buttercup,” said Gaedynn, sounding less flippant than usual, “bide a moment and look at me.”
Reluctantly, she turned and met his gaze.
“Are you all right?” the archer asked. “You seem strange.”
Everyone already thought her strange. She didn’t want to give them additional reason, or to have her friends regard her with pity. Gaedynn’s solicitude would make her especially uncomfortable.
“I’m fine,” she said.
He studied her for another moment, then said, “I rejoice to hear it. Plainly there’s nothing to learn hereabouts, and I’ve always heard that for all their appalling bigotry, Chessentans know how to enjoy themselves. Let’s find a tavern and drink the chill out of our bones.”
The prospect held little appeal for a woman who detested crowds. But the best way to gauge the mood of the town was to mingle with its inhabitants, and so she offered no objection.
The wizards’ quarter was home not only to full-fledged mages but also to any citizen with the bad judgment to reveal even a smattering of arcane ability. Yet it wasn’t especially large. Jhesrhi and her comrades only had to stroll a little farther to reach a district graced with cobbled streets and the occasional lamppost. Voices clamored from the tavern on the corner, almost drowning out the music of a mandolin, songhorn, and hand drum. The establishment had a sprawling, ramshackle appearance, as if diverse hands had haphazardly slapped on additions over a period of decades. The sign hanging above the entrance displayed a red dragon wearing a jeweled crown.
“Perfect!” Gaedynn said. Jhesrhi gathered her resolve to endure the place as best she could.
If anything, the tavern proved to be even more crowded and raucous than it had sounded from outside. Gamblers crowed and groaned over clattering dice. A dog in a ring caught rats and broke their backs with a toss of its head. Whores with bare limbs and midriffs flirted, trying to lure men upstairs.
But it wasn’t all bad. No one seemed to take any special notice of Khouryn, and the newcomers found a vacant table in the corner, where Jhesrhi could sit without people jostling her and rubbing past her.
Gaedynn waved to a barmaid and made attracting her attention look easy. Maybe it was, if a man was handsome in Gaedynn’s smug, preening sort of way and dressed like he had more coin than sense.
“Once I get a beer,” Khouryn said, “I’ll join the lads throwing knives.”
Gaedynn turned to Jhesrhi. “I wouldn’t mind sticking here and sipping wine with you.”
Apparently she hadn’t really convinced him she was all right. “Don’t be stupid. I can eavesdrop from here. But if you try, you won’t hear anything.”
“All right,” he said. “Just don’t get caught reciting charms.” And before long, he and Khouryn were on the other end of the common room.
Almost immediately, a fat man with a plumed cap tried to take one of the vacant seats, but she dissuaded him with a level stare. Her basilisk stare, Gaedynn called it. Maybe the pudgy man found her amber eyes unsettling. Some people did.
Next she whispered a spell, and the wind-or the memory and potential of wind, caged for the moment in the indoor space-answered. Wherever she directed her gaze, she heard the sounds from that quarter clearly, while the rest of the ambient noise faded to a nearly inaudible hum.
A carpenter with big, grimy hands, whose wooden box of tools rested at the foot on his chair, said, “You get a snakeskin. One molted off natural-like. You keep it with you. Then no filthy wizard can hurt you.”
“Why would that work?” asked a youthful companion, quite possibly his apprentice.
“I don’t know, but that’s what I heard.”
Jhesrhi looked elsewhere.
A squinting mouse of a man whined, “I promise to pay you triple next time.”
A half-naked woman with a magenta streak in her brunette hair shook her head. “Sorry, darling.”
“It’s just that the ship is late-the cloth hasn’t come yet, and until it does, there isn’t any work.”
“Maybe the pirates got it, and it’s never going to come.”
“You know I’m good for the coin! I visit you every tenday!” But the woman was already turning away.
Jhesrhi did the same.
“It’s wonderful,” said a smirking man. “The wife doesn’t know they raised my pay.”
Jhesrhi looked elsewhere.
“This ham is good, but have you ever had it with cherry sauce?” Elsewhere.
“Nobody dared to cross Chessenta when the Red Dragon was king. They say he’ll come again. I don’t know if it’s true, but wouldn’t it be grand!”
Elsewhere.
“I did too swim the Adder. When I was younger. And I can still outswim you any way you care to race. Any stroke, any distance…”
Elsewhere.
“… boy asks, do the gods have gods that they worship? Where does he get…”
Elsewhere.
“… came back different, all cold and dead and thirsty for blood. I have kin on the border. I wish they’d move to Luthcheq, but how would they live if they did? Farming’s all they…”
Elsewhere. Specifically, to a pair of dragonborn occupying a little round table like her own, pewter goblets and an uncorked jug before them. They were sitting just inside one of the extensions that ran away from the central space like the legs of a flattened spider, which was probably why Jhesrhi hadn’t noticed them right away.
Curious, she leaned forward. She’d encountered dragonborn a time or two, but not often. A century after their sudden arrival in Faerun, they were still a rarity outside Tymanther, Chessenta, and High Imaskar.
The six bone or ivory studs pierced into the left profile of each indicated they belonged to the same clan, although she had no idea what clan that was. Their broadswords denoted esquire status or higher. Dragonborn of lesser rank would perforce have carried either blunt arms or weapons with a shorter cutting edge.
The larger of the pair had rust-colored scales and wore a steel medallion in the shape of a gauntlet around his neck. It was the most common emblem of Torm. She’d heard that dragonborn didn’t worship the gods, but apparently this one was an exception. “We should get back out into the streets,” he said.
His ocher-scaled companion, a runt by dragonborn standards, no taller or heavier than the average man, sighed. “I’ll be stuck and roasted if I see why.”
“Because the Loyal Fury prompted me to take a hand in this affair, and because I’m still the only one who’s seen the murderer and lived.”
Now even more interested, wishing she had a better idea how to read their expressions, Jhesrhi studied the dragonborn’s faces. She assumed they were talking about the Green Hand killer, and no one had informed her that anyone had actually seen him.
“Maybe so,” said the smaller Tymantheran, “but has this god of yours spoken to you since?”
“No.”
“And when you say you saw the murderer, was it anything more than just a sense of motion in the dark?”
“Not really.”
“So when it comes to hunting him, you don’t actually have any special advantage over anybody else?”
“No.”
“On top of which, you understand it isn’t our job to catch the wretch. We came to Luthcheq to serve the ambassador. Despite that, I’ve spent night after cold, weary night prowling the city with you. We’ve had plenty of time to spear a fish if it was going to happen, and now there’s no disgrace in giving up.”
“I can’t. A paladin has to answer the call to duty no matter what form it takes, and no matter the difficulties. But if you don’t want to accompany me anymore, I understand.”
The smaller dragonborn showed his fangs in what might have been a reptilian grin. “Right. When reason fails, break out the guilt. Well, it’s not going to work this time. I…” His voice faded out as he craned, peering past his companion.
Jhesrhi followed his gaze. Several genasi were coming through the door, each marked by the elemental force with which he shared a kinship. The one in front was a windsoul with silvery skin crisscrossed by glowing blue lines and jagged gray crystals in place of hair. The one behind him was an earthsoul. His head was bald, and a mesh of
