The Clearlight took its name from the multi-colored window in the roof: one of the last surviving sheets of glass in Luskan and one carefully preserved by the folk in the city as a matter of tradition. Kalen was pleased to see the tradition still held. He took in the faint starlight filtering down, and it filled him with as much wonder as it had in his youth. He had seen far greater wonders in Waterdeep and even Westgate, but this sight reminded him that beauty yet persisted even in a place as wretched as Luskan.
Below the window stood the same statue of Tymora from his youth. Someone had actually made efforts to clean the graffiti off and seal the cracks from the years of abuse by the mean-spirited folk of this depraved city.
“Perhaps this Coin Priest of yours truly is reverent,” Kalen said.
“Oh, she’s none of mine.” Toytere pointed. “And look again, no?”
Kalen looked up at the statue’s face, deep in the folds of its cowl. Shadow had hidden it before, but the statue’s face seemed as marred and cracked as ever-rendered unrecognizable by time and spite. If this Coin Priest truly cared for Lady Luck, would she not have fixed the visage of her goddess? Something about that seemed familiar too-as had the tricks and traps-but he couldn’t quite say what.
Gazing at the iconography, Kalen was suddenly uncertain of his initial appraisal of the temple. Perhaps it didn’t represent Tymora at all, but instead Beshaba. “Coin-Spinner” could just as easily refer to the Maid of Misfortune as to her bright-eyed sister, Lady Luck. He wondered if that’s what “turncloak priest” meant.
Toytere murmured a song below his breath. Kalen found that more than a little disturbing-that, and the way Toytere had laughed loudly at the entrance. Again, he wondered what ailed the halfling. Had he been bitten after all, and even now, the Fury grew inside him?
They came at last to the other end of the trapped hall and Toytere directed them to a single door set beside defaced statuary. It was not the main set of double doors, flanked by withered gold curtains, but rather a servant’s door.
“Heh!” Toytere gestured to a large black stain on the floor near the double doors. “That could be us, Little Dren. The doors sprout fangs when you touch them false.”
His huge smile unsettled Kalen more than anything he’d said before. The halfling seemed to long for death and every second without it made his smile all the more manic. Kalen checked Vindicator at his belt. Something about this felt so godsdamned familiar, as well. Almost-
“After you, goodsir,” Toytere said with a bow.
When they entered the Coin Priest’s chambers, it all made sense to him. The traps that could spring at any moment, the defaced feminine statue, the hall bare of ornamentation. He’d known all these things, grown up with them.
And the one common factor that tied them all together was the woman in the loose-fitting white robe, reclining on a black divan in the center of the room.
His hand went to Vindicator’s hilt.
“Kalen,” the Coin Priest said in recognition. “Take them.”
On her word, crossbows clicked and sighted on Kalen and Toytere’s faces. Six of her acolytes stood ready- men and women with cruel faces and no hesitation.
Kalen watched only the woman who issued the commands. She was much older, but he recognized her eyes. One was cold and pale, so like his own. The other was a platinum coin that winked at him in the candlelight.
Toytere eyed the crossbows. “I suppose you two have met, no?”
Priestess and paladin locked eyes across the room. For them, no one else mattered.
“Hail and well met, Kalen,” the Coin Priest said. “Little Brother.”
“Well met, Eden,” he said. “Sister.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
26 KYTHORN (MORNING)
'Well,” Eden said, grinning like a hungry fox among sleeping chickens. “My goddess must love me, to offer me this delicious reunion.”
“Truly.” Kalen did his best to ignore the crossbows. “You look well, Sister.”
“You’re a godsdamned liar.” Eden grinned. “But you’re sweet to say so.”
His assertion had been true, after a fashion. The Eden before him was not the sickly girl of his memory- poorly crafted and worse tempered. Some of the signs of her youth remained: a leather-and-metal brace on her left leg, a cane set with antlers at its head that leaned against the divan, quick to hand. There was a certain fleshy presence about her Kalen found all too familiar. She had the body of a girl who’d been told she could never be thin or pretty.
“Wait,” Toytere said. “Brother? Sister?”
“For a seer, you’re remarkably blind,” Eden said. “I suppose you hardly realize other folk exist, much less their relations. But I suppose you never met us
“You came back to Luskan,” Kalen said. “After mother-”
“Spare me the reminiscences.” Eden brushed ebony black ringlets back from her weathered, Luskan face. “I should kill you right now.”
“If that is what you will have.” Kalen wondered if he could cut down one of the crossbowmen before they shot him. He could use that man as a shield, get to the next …
“A thousand pardons,” said Toytere, “but we be coming here under a banner of king’s parley, Lady of the Clearlight. Or do that not matter?”
“Oh bother.” Eden’s full lips turned into a pout. “Why, of course that matters. This one is with you? Think carefully, ’ere you answer.”
Kalen realized putting his fate in Toytere’s hands did not relieve him in the slightest, Sight or no Sight. The halfling could have his revenge right now.
“Aye, your ladyship, he is mine,” Toytere said at length. “And I’ll have no violence done against him, all the same to you.”
“It isn’t, but very well.” Eden waved her lackeys back, but they kept their weapons trained on the visitors. She gestured to a full sideboard with liquors of various colors. In Waterdeep, such a selection would be a matter of course in a noble’s sitting room; in Luskan, Eden must have robbed or killed a dozen bootleggers to acquire it. “Wine? Something stronger?”
“No,” Kalen said.
“Suit your own self.” Eden waved and one of her attendants poured her a snifter of brandy. “I’m surprised to see you here. To what do I owe the denied pleasure of your deaths?”
Kalen bit his lip. He should have known Beshaba had been frowning on this whole damned quest: to bring him to this city he hated, to try to rescue a woman who didn’t want to leave, to avoid a boy he could not teach. Now, the only lead he had was the word of a dying madman, which pointed to his sister.
He had no choice. “The plague.”
“The Fury. Quite painful, I hear.” She sipped her brandy. “So what of it?”
Kalen had hoped it would be easier, but he saw Eden would not part with any knowledge readily. “We were told you knew of it,” he said.
“Told by whom?” she asked. “The Dragonbloods, who you attacked this very day? I trust the Old Dragon’s well.”
“Dead,” Kalen said.
“Pity,” Eden said. “He was a worthy opponent. Unlike your little halfling there, who can’t even See a waiting ambush.”
“Ah-” Then Toytere shrugged. “True, it be.”
Kalen crossed his arms. “What are you doing here, Eden?”
“Why, serving the pleasure of the goddess.” Eden gave him a mock toast.
“Which one?” Kalen asked. “Tymora or Beshaba?”
