The revealed recess beyond was just large enough for her to hide in-she’d done so just twice, and one had been only a short trial-but held, on foldout hooks, things that did not look at all ladylike. She drew them out, one by one, draping them on handy furniture: boots, several weapon-belts, and then some garments.
The tight leathers of a thief.
All that was left in the closet were wigs-long, dark hair that hung on their hooks like cowls-and a coil of dark, slender cord.
She shook out the leathers, reached for the well-oiled, supple breeches-and froze.
The curtains that framed the door to her balcony were swirling, and no one should have been there to make them move.
Someone was. Not of Truesilver House, but someone she’d never seen before. An intruder. Dark, agile, feminine… and bearing a drawn sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.
Lady Truesilver glanced over at her swordbelt- just out of reach, slung over the back of a chair, with her dagger-baldrics impossibly distant on the lounge beyond-and asked calmly, “Who are you, and what do you want?”
“I am one who has served Cormyr since your grandmother was young,” the intruder replied almost mockingly, the voice female, gentle, and at the same time colder than Deleira Truesilver’s frostiest tones, “and I want to know your secrets. Talane.”
Lady Truesilver stiffened. No one should know that she was She whirled and fled, seeking her innermost bedchamber and a door she could slam between her and this intruder.
Who shed a dark helm as she sprang across the room like a panther and pounced, slamming Deleira Truesilver bruisingly to the floor and easily overpowering her in a chilling, steel-strong grip.
“Not so fast,” the intruder hissed, their faces almost touching. An eerie glow came from between the unfamiliar woman’s teeth. “Your death can be easily achieved, but I want what you know first.”
“And just how are you going to get that?” Lady Truesilver snarled defiantly, arching and struggling, trying to buck her attacker off.
“Like this,” Targrael replied, opening her mouth to reveal a glowing white gem on her tongue-before she forced Deleira Truesilver’s jaws open with iron-hard fingers, and kissed her.
A flash of light erupted as their tongues met that Deleira Truesilver felt, like a silent roar of surf crashing through her very bones, and she felt the cold, somehow minty feeling of magic awakening within her.
Her attacker was now more than a stronger, colder body than hers, holding her down. There was another mind in hers, a dark and looming presence growing larger and closer.
Lady Truesilver did not hear the words that Targrael spoke then so much as she felt them.
“The royal magicians of Cormyr left some very interesting magics hidden around the palace. This was the one that most interested me.”
Enthralled and helpless, Deleira Truesilver couldn’t move or speak as the dark malice of her foe’s cruel, hostile mind flooded into hers, drowning her in shivering darkness…
The Horngate, of course, was locked and barred for the night. The stone-faced guards there crisply informed Mirt that they had no intention whatsoever, short of the correct horncalls from the palace, or the king himself wagging “crown and scepter” in their faces, of opening it before morning.
“All Cormyreans know these rules,” one of them added sharply. “Climb down from there, man, and yield up to us your name, your business here, the land you hail from, your passengers-and their destination. Now.”
Mirt sighed. “I have my orders, an’ they don’t sit well with the ones ye’re giving me, man. So a little less of the ‘now,’ if ye don’t mind.”
“But I do mind, saer! Now, there are ten crossbows aimed at you, so I’m going to tell you agai-”
“If ye put a quarrel through any of my passengers,” Mirt roared, “ ‘tis yer lives as’ll be forfeit, idiot Dragons! Now, down bows, an’ pay heed to who’s stepping out of my coach!”
His shout rang back at him off the closed gates, and he sat down sweating, hoping very much he’d bought Elminster enough time to think of something.
Under him, the coach made the slight rocking that meant its door had been opened and someone was stepping down.
There was a stir among the guards, and he could see crossbows being lowered. They obviously recognized the passenger who’d alighted.
“Open the gate,” came a crisp, simple order.
Mirt hid a smirk. The voice was a very good imitation of the Lady Glathra Barcantle’s shrill of excitement, but it was Elminster’s very good imitation.
And now the guards were opening the gate, and “Glathra” was climbing back into the coach.
Mirt waited for the rap on the coach roof before he urged the horses forward again, and they rumbled out of Suzail into the last dark hours of the night.
Or were they the darkest hours of the morning?
Even after twenty seasons of leading raids in those dark hours, Mirt had never decided.
He waited until they were out of bowshot from the walls before opening the little hatch that let a drover talk with passengers, and asking, “Where now?”
“We take the coach to the paddocks nigh Eastgate,” Elminster’s voice came up to him, “and leave it there, hobbling the horses. Then we go for a long walk on Jester’s Green, well out from the walls. We’ll go well west, around to the Field Gates. Accompanied by this pet war wizard of ours, we’ll trudge back into the city through them at daybreak, looking suitably different than we do now. We’ll be burying those shackles.”
“Oh?” Mirt growled. “What’re ye going to make me look like?”
“Old Lord Helderstone,” Elminster told him. “He has no heirs and has dwelt in seclusion in Sembia for years-no one in Suzail should know that he’s dead yet. I know where a handsome fortune in coins can be had, and ye can lord it up in a highnose inn as long as they hold out. Storm will be thy servant. I’ll make Rune look like a retired Highknight I recall, who died a few months back, who’s now in Suzail and investigating just why rich old Lord Helderstone has returned to Cormyr-in other words, which faction of treason-plotting nobles he’s drenching in floods of coins-and the rest of the time she can look like Amarune and be with Arclath, the two of them keeping well away from ye.”
“While I do what?”
“Wench, trade, work a few swindles, get rich-in short, be thyself,” El replied. “No noble of Cormyr would spend a score of summers in Sembia who did not love coins and the winning of them.”
“And what will ye be doing?”
“Trying to hunt down and slay Manshoon, and hold Cormyr together, and find and come to command or destroy all the blueflame ghosts, of course.”
Mirt shook his head slowly. “Ye’re as crazed as ever.”
“Of course.”
Mirt could hear Elminster’s grin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The morning sun was reaching bright fingers in through the windows. None of the dozen senior wizards of war gathered around the long table, which almost filled this locked room on an upper floor of the sprawling royal court, cared a whit about sunlight, however.
Their minds were on darker things, specifically, the foremost current threats to the realm.
The royal magician of Cormyr and the lord warder had been too long absent from such conversations, and there was much to catch up on.
“Of course our tirelessly treasonous nobles are brewing civil war in earnest in the wake of this disastrous Council,” the Lady Glathra was declaring, “but there are other, smaller players we must now pay attention to.”
