winced and flushed.
“Arclath,” she spat, her voice very much her own again and full of all the disappointment she felt, “you broke your word, didn’t you? You swore as a Delcastle, did you not?”
“I… I did. My word is my honor and that of House Delcastle. But, my lady, I discovered something here this night. I-”
“What could you possibly discover,” she said, eyes flaring in anger, “that excuses breaking your word?”
Arclath reddened even more but he kept his gaze steady on hers. “I discovered,” he replied, “that when you are endangered, I will sacrifice my honor-and everything else, by all the gods-in an instant. I did this for you.”
Amarune trembled, tears welling up, and before her voice might fail her, she rushed out the words, “You struck down one friend so you could better threaten the other? Why? Are you mad?”
“I-perhaps I am. I know not what to do. I don’t know if I’m talking to my beloved or to Elminster holding you captive in your own head… or facing something more sinister. Shapechangers once infested the Wheloon lands, and the war wizards never got them all.”
Amarune sighed out fresh frustration and took a step back. “I am myself, thank you, Arclath. Though I have no idea how I’ll be able to prove it to you.”
She started to pace, and then she stopped and flung back at him over one bare shoulder, “Can you take nothing on trust?”
The young lord gave her a crooked smile. “Evidently not.”
She took an imploring step back toward him, reaching out-but he raised his sword again, adding in a growl, “I dare not.”
Rune glared at him, tears spilling over, and whispered, “So what will you have me do, Arclath?”
They stared at each other for what seemed a long time, as the brazier crackled.
“And what,” Rune whispered, tears running down her face, “will you be able to do, to make me ever trust you again, Lord Delcastle? Answer me that!”
The shop doorbell tinkled merrily as the heavily scented merchant’s wife sailed out, pleased with her purchase.
The alchemist sat back with a sigh, glad to see the back of her. Sixteen vials sampled, none chosen, and an ointment that had been buried on a high back shelf beneath three seasons’ dust preferred instead. By a woman who seemed to think it was highsun and not the middle of the night when weary men must be roused from their beds to serve her. Gods-cursed highnoses…
He set to work tidying up. “If I didn’t need so stlarned much coin just to live in this noble-infested city…”
A sympathetic chuckle from behind the curtain over his shoulder reminded Sraunter that he wasn’t alone.
The fear that never left him reminded him that this particular guest was never to be kept waiting. He hastened off his stool and through the curtain.
“S-sorry, lord,” he stammered. “I-”
“I know you are, Sraunter. No matter, and no apology needed. Commerce must come first. Not to mention the damage to your trade if Nechelseiya Sammartael thought you’d slighted her. Word of it would be all over Suzail before sunrise.”
“Ah, indeed,” Sraunter agreed, leading the way past the man who’d conquered his mind so easily three nights back, to reveal what until then had been his greatest secret.
Alchemists were more feared than loved, and if they desired long careers, they needed powerful secret weapons. These were to be his latest-if he ever learned some manner of commanding them. Until then, they could at least serve as a deadly trap against thieves. Or so he’d schemed, before Manshoon had stepped into his life.
In his fearful haste, Sraunter had some trouble with the locks, fumbling with the chains and the dummy padlock. Twice he dropped the key that opened the hidden coffer that held the real key.
Manshoon smiled an easy smile. “There’s no particular haste, diligent alchemist. Unless, of course, Goodwife Sammartael takes it into her head to return for something else.”
That horrible thought made Sraunter drop the padlock on his toe.
His involuntary roar and hopping ended as swiftly as he could master himself. He was still wincing, teeth clenched, as he put his shoulder to the door and flung it wide in a loud rattle of chains.
His guest stayed right where he was.
“There’s no particular need to move them, is there?”
“N-no, lord. None at all.”
Sraunter hastened into his strongroom and across to the cage Manshoon had come to see. His guest could take his home and shop and everything in it-blackfire, his very mind! — whenever the whim took him, after all.
Face it, he was a slave already, and slaves enjoyed better lives when their masters were content.
Sraunter undid his special knot and drew back the nearest half of the hide cover. The five occupants of the cage flew in smooth unison to its revealed front, the better to hover there and peer out through the bars.
Five little spheres, each the size of a blacksmith’s fist. Beholderkin, their tiny eyestalks like so many writhing worms, eager to gaze upon something and do it harm, hissing in malevolence.
And falling silent as the smiling man just beyond the doorway thrust his mind into all of theirs at once, overwhelming them as easily as he’d humbled Sraunter.
That terrible smile grew.
“Acceptable, Sraunter, most acceptable. Five little flying steeds, whenever I need them. Release them.”
“R-release them?”
“At once. Give them the freedom of your strongroom. What with all the locks and chains, you use it seldom, do you not?”
“Well, yes, but-”
Sraunter found that the objection he’d been going to raise had vanished from his mind, and his astonished anger with it. A malicious glee rose in him, twisting his dour face into a grin that sought to mirror the smile on his guest’s face.
Oh, Watching Gods Above, what will become of me? he thought.
“The time for all ‘buts’ is long past, Sraunter,” Manshoon purred. “You’ll see the coming sunrise in as much health as you enjoy now, believe me-and you can believe me. I am no courtier of Cormyr nor yet one of its noblemen. My word means something.”
He pointed past the cage with a languid hand. “Yon window opens readily? No? Ah, but I see its panes can be broken should I ever have need of haste. Good. My steeds can get out that way if need be.”
“Need of haste?”
“Such a need is, I’ll grant, doubtful, now that Elminster’s dead; but, one never knows, good saer alchemist, one never knows. During my overlong lives these realms have taught me that much, at least.”
“Overlong lives?”
“You make an admirable echo, good Sraunter, but someone-nay, several someones-have espied your lit lamps and approach your shop entrance. So open the cage and close this door. Now.”
The next few moments were a whirlwind of panting activity for Immaero Sraunter, and his accustomed feelings of grim superiority and darkly sinister accomplishment had quite vanished by the time he found himself puffing and panting his way back through the curtain to blink at the customers shuffling into the gloom of his shop.
Manshoon had vanished sometime during that whirlwind, Sraunter knew not quite where, but he was uncomfortably aware that five beholderkin that could slay him or almost any Suzailan with casual ease roamed free in his strongroom-where he kept his poisons, his best drinkables, and most of his coin.
Not that this undesirable state of affairs would continue for long, if his suspicions were correct. And when it came to matters of personal misfortune for Immaero Sraunter, they usually were.
The boldest shopper’s request struck his ears, then, and he heard himself answering it with the ease of long habit.
