Three scepters were now leveled at the ghostly figure, but Glathra held up a warning hand to keep the mages from unleashing magic just yet. Drawing a wand from her belt to menace the princess, she told Alusair curtly, “I’m not sure we should even listen to a ghost, let alone believe anything you have to say.”
The longtime Steel Regent kept her eyes on those of the king as she shook her head sadly, sparing Glathra not even the briefest of glances.
“Foril,” she sighed, “it seems you’re surrounded by fools. If you’d like a larger one, I can fetch Vangerdahast-or what’s left of him.”
Lord Danthalus Blacksilver proved to be a tall, mellifluous dunderhead. He and the effete, oh-so- sophisticated Lord Lyrannus Tantorn were as easily subverted as Andolphyn had been.
Rather more easily, as both were straining for any chance to win greater influence and respect in a Suzail teeming with wealthier, more arrogant, and far more powerful nobles.
However, Manshoon felt his smile fading when he found Lord Melder Crownrood hunched over a gleaming platter of skewered roast quail at the best table in the Merdragon. Two steely-eyed hired wizards were seated on either side of the nobleman, wands ready in their hands as they stared watchfully at the diners all around. One shifted his scrutiny to Manshoon and sharpened it into a baleful challenge.
Servers hovered nervously in distant doorways, and no wonder. This was the most exclusive and expensive room of one of the haughtiest and most overpriced clubs in the city, the Rearing Merdragon, and those wands were menacing some of the wealthiest citizens of Suzail. Any misunderstanding could mean disaster.
“Come no closer,” one of the wizards told Manshoon in tones of soft menace.
The advancing future emperor took no notice of the man; his slow, deliberate stride continued without hesitation, and his urbane, slightly bored expression never changed.
“Crownrood,” he asked in the gentle purr an indulgent lover might use, as he bent over the quail-chewing lord, “are these lackspells yours? I was unaware they allowed pets in the Merdragon.”
“As they seem to tolerate walking bones in here,” Crownrood replied without looking up, “I suppose they’ll put up with hired mages.”
His tone was dismissive, even bored, but Manshoon noticed the man was clutching his just-emptied skewer like a dagger. A ring on the lord’s dagger hand had begun to glow fitfully.
Ah, Crownrood’s means of knowing his undeath.
Manshoon sighed, sat down in the vacant chair across from Crownrood, and murmured, “I’d like to discuss a little treason with you. Profitable treason, mind.”
A sharp singing, tinkling sound marked a wizard’s point-blank use of his wand-and the twisting of whatever magic it had unleashed into otherwhere, along a silvery astral conduit. Manshoon felt one of his rings crumble to dust in the wake of that defending, its fading taking the wizard’s deadly magic with it, and he quelled a flare of irritation. Such defenses were expensive these days, not swiftly or easily replaced.
“You are refreshingly direct, undead stranger,” Crownrood muttered, turning to meet Manshoon’s gaze for the first time. “Suppose you convince me why I shouldn’t be just as direct with this skewer. Quickly.”
The wizard on Crownrood’s far side glared at Manshoon and then looked away again, surveying the room for other perils. Such as accomplices.
Manshoon bit down on the dried pea he’d been carrying in one cheek, let its cargo of acrid dust fill his mouth, then turned and blew it in the face of the wizard right beside him, who’d just used his wand and was hauling out another one.
The wizard started to cough helplessly, unable to breathe. Not a surprising result, given what the dust was, and that he wasn’t a vampire.
Manshoon went back to ignoring him. Crownrood chose to do so, too, but lifted the skewer meaningfully.
“I have plans for the future rulership of Cormyr that include you, Melder Crownrood. As chancellor of the realm, you will oversee the Purple Dragons and directly command the wizards of war,” Manshoon told him.
“A splendid dream,” Crownrood drawled, though not before a flash of his eyes betrayed his excitement. “And you are, O granter of dreams-?”
“Your master,” Manshoon purred. He leaned forward until they were almost nose-to-nose, and launched the spell that wrapped around his mind, and hurled it into Crownrood’s.
The skewer started to thrust… then fell back. The nobleman shuddered and spun around in his seat to slap aside the wand the alarmed wizard behind him was trying to aim. “Dolt! D’you want to ruin everything?”
“You’re doing something to the Lord Crownrood!” that mage snarled at Manshoon, springing up from his chair to back hastily away and aiming his wand again. “You’re doing it, undead thing!”
The man’s voice rose, and heads turned at nearby tables. Manshoon smiled crookedly, shook his head, and made Crownrood turn to him and do the same, and cast a swift and simple spell.
The wizard’s head burst in a welter of spattering gore. Even before the screams started, Manshoon rose from his chair, drew a knife from his sleeve, and sliced delicately across the throat of the still-coughing wizard, and strode away.
If he’d been wearing his own face, being seen by so many of Cormyr’s high and mighty would have been a grave mistake.
As it was, Crownrood’s mind was his, now. And it was the mind of an accomplished schemer and lawbreaker, who had already been thinking much treason without any help from visiting Manshoon at all.
As he smiled at a server and made the man flinch back out of his way in stammering fear, Manshoon started to hurry. Not out of any fear of lawkeepers; he’d be long gone before any Dragons arrived.
No, there were still two nobles he wanted to recruit-and with Suzail crowded with ambitious feuding nobility and their already-roused bodyguards, finding and reaching his quarries was going to take time.
Lord Jassur Dragonwood and Lord Relgadrar Loroun. Bane and blasphemy, but they even sounded like arrogant idiots…
“Your Majesty,” Glathra said quickly and a trifle sharper than she intended to, “should we place any trust in the words of a ghost, or even listen to them? My experience has been that undead understand little of the changing world around them, clinging instead to what they knew in life, and that they can appear as anyone they please! This might well be an image sent by a hostile mage sitting in Sembia, or the ghost of an exiled traitor noble just pretending to be the Steel Regent, and-”
“Your ‘experience’ has been?” Alusair’s eyes flashed. “Glathra Barcantle, just what experience have you had, treating with ghosts? You always seek to ignore me when you see me around the palace, and frankly, it shouldn’t matter if I’m the lowliest chambermaid or passing street urchin! The moment you hear the slightest hint of possible treachery on the part of any wizard of war, you must investigate-or the House of Obarskyr, and Cormyr as anything other than a wizard-ruled land, is doomed!”
Glathra gave the ghostly princess an angry glare. “A ghost telling me my business? Why, next you’ll be-”
“Holding your peace,” King Foril Obarskyr said firmly, giving Glathra a glare that outshone her own in ferocity. He glowered at her for a long breath before turning to favor Fentable with the same quelling look, slowing the understeward to fumbling uncertainty as he clawed some sort of talisman or magical token out of a belt pouch.
“Ironhorn,” the king of Cormyr added gently, “I believe the Lady of Graces needs reviving. Please?”
Then he turned to face Alusair directly, nodded to her as an equal, and said gravely, “Your Majesty, we thank you for your counsel.”
The ghostly face drifted closer to his and acquired a smile. “Majesty, you do me honor. I’m a ‘Highness,’ and no more. I never ruled as queen, only as regent.”
Foril waved a grey-haired hand. “To me, anyone who defended the Dragon Throne and the realm, when she could have taken both, is a true monarch of Cormyr. Your Majesty.”
Fentable sputtered.
The king rounded on him and said sternly, “My decision, faithful understeward, and my judgment. This royal princess knew the burden and took it on, without enjoying the reward. She served the realm long and well, and made many of our nobles more loyal to the Crown than they had ever been. So slight her not, in my presence or behind my back. Oh, and it is high time that you and many of your fellow courtiers-to say nothing of others in the realm-ceased to mistake my customary reserve and politeness for weakness and vacillation of mind and
