'Have you ever seen a cowled gargoyle?'
Zaranda stopped with a gob of ointment on her fingertips. 'Was that humor? That was humor, right?'
'I did what must be done. If I suffer, it is no more than my sins have earned.' He frowned. 'Though it gripes my soul to have fled from minions of the law. Did I do wrong? May Great Torm judge me harshly.'
'May Great Torm not be such an ass!' Zaranda burst out. 'Those men intended you harm, and it had nothing to do with anything you've done, or even who you are. It was what they thought you were, and your innocence would have meant nothing to them. Is that what the law is all about?'
'Still, laws are laws,' the great orc said with childlike conviction. 'We must obey.'
'It is against no law in Tethyr to be an orc,' Zaranda said. Of course, that was because for Tethyrians, such a law would be like outlawing venomous serpents or spiders. This didn't seem the time to mention that fact. 'And besides, those weren't minions of the law; they were the servants of the city council. The city police serve the law of Zazesspur. The guard is something else again.'
'Oh,' Shield said.
Zaranda drew in a deep breath, released it in a soundless sigh. She glanced aside at Stillhawk. The ranger was rubbing the dark bristle that covered his chin if he went more than four hours without shaving. He shook his head. Well, sophistication wasn't his strength either.
'There,' she said, putting the finishing touches on the orog. The white ointment made Shield's face, a great pitted, tusked, and snouted moon, a truly terrifying sight, like a mask Dalelands children might put on to frighten homeowners into giving them treats at Highharvestide. 'That's done. And now-'
She turned to look at Stillhawk. 'Now the two of you must leave. Right this minute. Get outside the walls and make yourselves scarce in the countryside. The scullions have packed food for you, and in the unlikely event that it runs out before I come to join you, there's no better huntsman in Tethyr than Vander Stillhawk of the Elven Woods.'
Both her companions spoke at once, which was at least quieter than most such multiple outbursts. 'I serve you,' Shield of Innocence said. 'I will not leave.' For once in accord with the great orc, Stillhawk signed to the same effect.
'You cannot serve me here, Shield. What can you do for me if you're rotting in the dungeons that surely lie beneath that vast ugly slab of a palace Baron Hardisty has built? All you can do here is increase the risks for me. So indulge my cowardice and go.'
She reached out to touch a scarred and pitted cheek. Her flesh still quailed from the contact, but only a little. 'For me, Shield. Please.'
Pouting-which his tusks made a truly alarming sight-he nodded his huge head. Zaranda stood and faced the ranger.
Why-? he started to sign.
'Because someone has to keep Shield of Innocence out of trouble,' she said. 'The countryside's less risky for him, but only just. Something's going to break soon, old friend, and whichever way it falls, I'll have need of all the help I can get. His as well as yours.'
Stillhawk raised his head and managed somehow to look even more grimly stoic than usual-his form of outraged protest and reproach. I cannot tell you the real reason, old friend, Zaranda thought. In my selfishness I brought you here among these gray stone walls you hate. And here you can do nothing but pace like a wilderness beast condemned to a cage, feeling the pressure of those walls like acid on the skin. The least I can do is redeem my misdeed. But of course she could not say she did this for his benefit, or he would refuse to go.
'Please, I ask that you do this for me. If you would help me, this is the best way.'
Stillhawk's brown eyes gazed deep into Zaranda's smoke-gray ones. Then he nodded and turned to pick up his bow, which leaned against a chimney with a beaten-tin cover shaped like a wizard's peaked hat. Shield resumed his cowled robe and strapped on the harness that held his scimitars crossed over his back. After a moment's debate by eye, he slithered over the edge of the roof and swung in through the hallway window Zaranda had left open and under Chen's guard. Stillhawk followed.
Zaranda stood, stretched, gazed up at the stars, treasuring an evanescent moment alone with them. The sullen light-froth from tens of thousands of candles and lanterns, the smokes of the city, and high tattered clouds skidding across the sky from the Trackless Sea hid most of them from her sight. She wished she were alone in her tower at Morninggold, with nothing to impair her intimacy with the stars, neither in the sky nor in her future.
I'll be doing well to keep my freedom out of all this, she thought, much less Morninggold and my astronomy tower.
But she wasn't yet dead, which meant, on principle, that she refused to give up. She turned and made her cautious way down.
'Zaranda!' A familiar call-as clear and beautiful as the cry of a soaring eagle-made her turn from the entrance to her chamber on the Winsome Repose's third floor.
'Farlorn,' she said, shifting without thought to interpose herself between the half-elf and Chenowyn. 'Where have you been?'
He caught her in an embrace that lifted her off the floor-though he'd inherited the delicate appearance of his mother's people, he also had the strength of his father's. 'Zaranda! I'm terribly sorry. I came as soon as I heard.'
'About what?' Zaranda said. It took her a moment to make the decision to disengage herself from his arms after he had set her down again. Damn him! she thought. Or, perhaps, damn me.
'About the orc and Stillhawk! How the guard arrested them.'
'Stillhawk?'
He shrugged. 'I know the ranger well. He cared as little for the beast as I, but he'd die before he'd fail your trust. They cannot have taken the orc without having him as well.'
'They took neither,' Zaranda said. 'Both hid. I've sent them outside the city.'
The half-elf's huge hazel eyes blinked. 'But that's wonderful news,' he said, 'at least so far as Vander Stillhawk's concerned, though I cannot say the same for the evil creature you insisted on adopting.'
As Zaranda wound up to unload on him, he lifted his head so that his pointed ears made him resemble a wary forest creature, sniffed the air in the hallway, lit amber by an a single ancient fly-specked lantern hung on the wall. 'Whatever is that smell?' he asked before Zaranda could speak. 'It's truly prodigious. You must ask for new quarters, Zaranda; a rat-a giant one, by the whiff-has crept among the rafters and expired.'
The hair at the back of Zaranda's neck rose. Something was gathering behind her. It reminded her of the first time she had ever felt dweomer, mustering her first halting spell under the gentle but exacting eye of Alshayn, her mentor. This was similar, yet not the same. It was power, and it was menace.
'Farlorn,' she said, taking her new charge by the arm and feeling the hairs on her own arm rise in response, 'I'd like you to meet Chenowyn. She'll be staying with us for a while. Chen, this is Farlorn Half-Elven, called the Handsome.'
Farlorn shied back, a look of distaste on his face. 'Indeed? This ragamuffin's the source of the smell, I warrant. Have you decided to open your own museum of grotesques, Zaranda?'
'Don't take what he says to heart, Chen,' Zaranda said. 'He's a bard, and bards love the sound of their own voices too well. He doesn't mean anything by it.' 'I don't like him,' the girl said. 'Where have you been the past few days?' Zaranda asked, interposing herself between the two.
'I was visiting among my mother's people. Do you know, that darkling I slew the other night matched the description of a Moon Elf maid from Tethir Forest who vanished six weeks ago? Her people were much grieved to learn of her fate.'
'Did they say where she'd vanished, or what she was doing at the time?'
'All they knew was that she went abroad on the streets at night upon some errand, and was seen no more.'
'So the darklings enslave their victims somehow?'
'That was no slave I fought. Her thirst for my blood was genuine. Would a slave fight with such will?'
'Enchanted, then. Perhaps.' She shrugged. 'Well, we've troubles enough of our own. Good night to you, Farlorn, and I'm glad to see you well.'
'Need you rush away?' He took her shoulders in his hands and began to knead her neck muscles with fine,
