tiny guard force. Not that she would have fought, since she was trying to do business in an honest and aboveboard way.
The rest of the day gave her leisure to repent that choice. It had been spent in fruitless wrangling with officials in the slab-sided Palace of Governance in the city's middle, so new it was still under construction. There had been the usual block-faced indifference of officialdom: No, you'll have to wait for things to take their course, like anyone. No, I can't help you. There had also been the usual half-clever solicitations for bribes, with the odd sniggering suggestion-accompanied by a free wandering of the eye over Zaranda's wiry but very feminine form-that they need not be paid in gold.
Accustomed to dealing with bureaucrats across Faerun, Zaranda had paid such squeeze as she thought would prove useful-in gold on the desktop. The bulk of her resources, not to mention her hopes of keeping her home, were of course locked up somewhere in the city coffers by now, but she retained her private stash of coin, choice gems, and jewelry that she carried on her person and in Goldie's panniers for emergencies. Even after paying off the muleteers and escorts, she wasn't destitute. Yet.
But gold bought her nothing. Bribed or not, the council's lackeys could say nothing more than that she would have to wait for an administrative hearing. But the courts were busy. If a large enough donation to the council's grand plan to remake Zazesspur were forthcoming, the process might be expedited, and a hearing held within, say, three months.
When Zaranda left the palace in disgust, the sun was already dropping into the harbor. She became. aware of a sense of unease that had been stealing, un-noticed, upon her all the time she had spent within the palace.
She shook her head in something like annoyance. I've always dreaded dealing with bureaucrats, she re- minded herself. How could I be other than nervous, with my fortune resting in their hands? I mustn't let these cursed dreams get to me. On the spot she decided to go get drunk.
'Zaranda,' the adventurer declared, leaning forward to bathe her face in the fumes of a less-famous Tethyrian wine, 'your problem is that you're lowering yourself by playing at merchant.'
Zaranda carefully set her own goblet of local red wine-of a somewhat more reputable vintage-care-fully down upon the knife-gouged tabletop before her. She had come to the Smiling Centaur with Stillhawk, Father Pelletyr, Shield, and Farlorn, intending to drown her troubles in wine, a course of action that did little good. Now this scabrous mercenary was interfering with the process, and she didn't know whether to be angry or grateful.
'Oh, so, Valides?' she said neutrally.
The mercenary nodded with the exaggerated emphasis of the drunken. 'Certainly so. How else could it be?' He belched and wiped the back of his mouth with a hand no cleaner but drier. 'Look at yourself, Zaranda. You used to be a warrior.'
'I still am.'
He waved a black-nailed hand, slopping wine from the leather jack over a much-spotted sleeve. 'Now these merchants, you take them; they're just bloodsuckers. No better than vampires, I'm bound, even if their color's better.'
He laughed uproariously, and moistly, at his own jape. After a while he noticed that his audience wasn't laughing with him. He quieted and leaned forward again.
'Merchants make nothing. They delve not, neither do they spin. But they rake off fat profits, yes they do! And for what? For nothing.'
'For taking the effort and the risks in conveying goods to those who wouldn't otherwise see them,' Zaranda said.
A hand wave. 'Nothing, as I said. Now you take the warrior, though-there's a life that's honest and clean.' 'You kill monsters and you take their gold.' 'That's right! Yours is the right of the sword. You take what you will! By the sword!' He slammed his fist down upon the table. 'That's the way for a man to live! And, uh, a woman like yourself, too, Zaranda. Not as some money-grabbing merchant.'
Anger flared behind Zaranda's eyes. She felt her cheeks grow taut and hot. No, she told herself, you've always held that any being had the right to speak freely. You'd cut a poor figure if that went by the way-side whenever someone spoke against your liking..She forced her hand away from the hilt of Crackle-tongue and smiled a grim smile.
Valides had become distracted by discovery that his jack was running dry, and he turned around to bellow for a serving wench. Zaranda scanned the tavern.
The Smiling Centaur was little different from any tavern one would encounter from the Sword Coast to the Vilhon Reach: a broad common room with low smoked rafters and tables and chairs of inexpensive but solid make to resist use by customers of greater than human size or strength, and misuse during bar fights. The place was lit fitfully by candles placed on wagon wheels hung by chains from the ceiling, and by oil lamps in stout, cagelike wrought-iron sconces on the whitewashed walls. An ox-roasting hearth gaped like a monster maw in one wall, but it was cold and dark; the evening was cool to the edge of crispness, but the day's residual heat and the warmth of bodies left no room for afire.
It was crowded, but to her experienced eye, less than she might have expected on such a fine spring evening after a southern day more than amply hot to put an edge on one's thirst. The noise level was lower, too, as if the revelry were somehow subdued. Even the cleanshaven face of proprietor Berdak, the centaur who gave the place its name, seemed to be smiling less broadly than usual as he washed brass flagons behind the bar.
Now and then Zaranda caught a muttered reference to darklings, accompanied by nervous looks around, as if the night-stalking horrors might be lurking beneath tables nearby. As far as gossip informed her, the things posed small threat to those who went abroad in armed parties, which was not unusual for most of the Centaur's patrons. She thought there must be more to the almost furtive mood, the hollow, sunken eyes around her.
Or perhaps it was all Zaranda's imagination, energized by her own nightmare-induced lack of sleep and the day's events. But she had not survived such a hazardous life by taking aught for granted. She made a quick, careful survey of the immediate surroundings, reassuring herself that no one was taking undue interest in her or her four companions.
A serving maid appeared at the table, a young gnome with rather prominent pointed ears and a harried but pretty face that tapered from wide cheekbones to an almost elfin pointed chin. Valides snarled his demand for more wine like a curse, and when the gnome woman's hip accidentally brushed the table as she turned, he raised a fist to strike her.
Zaranda's hand caught him by the wrist, so quickly that it simply seemed to be there. He tried to pull away and turned a red-eyed glare to her when he could not. The serving girl scampered off.
Zaranda Star was one of those rare women who gave away comparatively little to men in the density of muscles, and thus power. The mercenary could have overmatched her strength to strength, with effort. The look in her eyes, now an almost self-luminous pale blue, and the name she had carved for herself with the curve-bladed sword at her side dissuaded him from expending the effort.
'Rest easy, man,' she said. 'What's got into you?'
He dropped his eyes, and she let him wrest his hand free. These gnomes,' he spat. They infest the city like worms in cheese. Arrogant, clannish little beasts! They've long conspired to do honest human folk out of first their wages and then their jobs. But mark my words-Earl Ravenak knows what they're about. And he has the cure for their scheming.'
'Ravenak?' Zaranda spat the word out like a shred of spoiled food.
Valides nodded, looking owlish. The man with the plan; he knows what to do about all these outland scum, these refugee hordes and this inhuman vermin.'
Valides was himself no native Tethyrian, but he plowed on before Zaranda had a chance to point that out. 'We'll see a change when this Baron Hardisty comes to power,' he declared. 'Right now he claims to disdain Ravenak, to assuage the hoity-toity who lack the stomach for doing what must be done, if you get my drift. But mark my words-there's steel beneath that lace and frippery! This Hardisty has steel where he needs it. Hell back the Earl when the time comes.'
The baron may have steel where he needs it, but he's got muck in his brainpan if he has aught to do with that green slime Ravenak,' Zaranda said. 'Even in Tethyr it's a wonder he's not been hanged, noble or not.'
Valides's drunk face began to cloud over.
'Now, Zaranda,' Father Pelletyr said. He sat at Zaranda's left, where he had been occupied addressing
