tariffs and expanded trade-through a little well-timed treachery. Zaranda seemed to invite such a ploy by leaving most of her retinue, including senior partners, camped outside the city.
She was not quite so ingenuous. The two hundred Star Protective employees without the walls were recruited from the very best trainees who had passed through the program-smart, brave, and idealistic, devoted to Zaranda Star and to Shield of Innocence, who served as captain in Zaranda's absence. While they were too few to storm the walls if the council got up to mischief, they were more than capable of rousing the countryside-where Gallowglass's legacy ran to abiding distrust for all who dwelt behind Ithmong's high stone walls-and shutting off trade. After all, grain and livestock didn't have to be gathered inside the city before being shipped to the rest of Tethyr.
Zaranda began to whistle. She thought the town council got the point.
Life wore a far more cheerful face than when she had fled Zazesspur. Star Protective Services had extended operations across much of Tethyr. Zaranda drew sufficient salary to meet payments on her county in the east. She was herself an employee now, having quit as lender in a dispute last fall over what direction the company should take. To get her back, the others had been compelled to offer a contract making explicit her powers and duties as chief executive. The possibility had existed that they would not so offer. But she had found attempting to be everything to everybody increasingly intolerable. Had they made no effort to win her back, she would have mounted Goldie-with Chenowyn behind her, if the girl still cared to be her apprentice-and ridden away. She loved Morninggold, but if she had to, she could put it behind.her and start again anew. She had done as much before. Of her comrades, Stillhawk remained mistrustful of Shield, though he was with him now, outside the urban confinement he so hated. After Zaranda walked and was hired back, Balmeric had quit, declaring the enterprise far too strange for him. He let Zaranda buy him out and rode to Myratma, and there, he said, he would take ship for Waterdeep, where a man could still find straightforward sword-swinging employment.
Chenowyn remained with Zaranda, of course. And Farlorn… Farlorn was where he happened to be at any given moment. He was like a cat, the beautiful half-elf bard. What she expected of him, even what she wanted of him, Zaranda could not have said.
The inn's courtyard was surrounded by an eight-foot wall topped with broken glass. Attack from the river was reckoned no major threat; Ithmong had always had a respectably sized and reasonably professional town guard, which Gallowglass's administration had only strengthened, and its riverine patrol kept careful watch for would-be marauders as a byproduct of enforcing the tolls. Thieves, however, were as intrinsic to urban Tethyrian life as houseflies, and found the river a convenient avenue, patrols notwithstanding.
Approaching the courtyard gate, Zaranda heard a familiar female voice crying, 'Hah! Hah!' and the ring of steel on steel.
Frowning, she grabbed Crackletongue's scabbard to keep it from fouling her leg and broke into a run. Zazesspur's city council had issued several decrees officially deploring the activities of Star Protective Ser-vices, but had never quite mustered the presumption to try to outlaw it. Though the civic guard grew apace-with the aim, some said, of reuniting Tethyr by force-the council was currently preoccupied by a complicated gavotte preparatory to naming Baron Hardisty lord of the city. An attempt to arrest Zaranda and her lieu-tenants-or, less formally, assassinate them-was not outside possibility's realm, however.
She rounded the corner and stopped. Two figures faced each other, one slender and feminine, one scarcely less slim but taller and broader through the shoulders. Each wore quilted, heavily padded jerkins, leather gloves, and masks of wire mesh, and fought each other with capped rapiers. Stablehands lounged on the side-lines, uttering calls of encouragement.
As Zaranda appeared in the gateway, the fencers stopped and swept the masks from their heads. The master was Farlorn, his pupil, Chenowyn.
The girl's cheeks were flushed beneath her freckles. 'Oh, Zaranda, it's so marvelous! He's teaching me-'
She saw Zaranda's expression. Her words faltered to a stop. 'What do you think you're doing?' Zaranda asked quietly.
Chenowyn gazed down at her feet, which were kicking at a clump of matted straw. 'Learning to fence.'
Zaranda walked to her, touched her arm, guided her aside. The stablehands abruptly found business that wanted tending to. Farlorn stood with rapier tip grounded and protective mask under one arm, a faint supercilious smile on his face.
'Don't you understand,' Zaranda asked in a quiet but pressing voice, 'that you haven't time for that? If you want to be a mage, you've got to work at it full-time.'
A full underlip trembled, then, 'You didn't have to!
You're a mage and a warrior, both! I just want to be tike you.'
'Chen, dear, you don't understand. I did have to devote myself to studying magic, body and soul. It didn't come easy for me-it doesn't come easy to anyone who really wants to be good at it. I didn't become a warrior until I had studied magic for many years-and only after I'd put that study aside for good and all.' Chenowyn sniffled, dabbed at an eye with her thumb, and looked away. 'But that's not the real problem,' Zaranda said. 'The real problem is… you've got to stop trying to be me. Because you can't be me, you cannot be more than an imitation me, and a poor one at that-however hard you try. Whereas the Chen I know is strong and vibrant and alive, an altogether ad-mirable girl-and you do a marvelous job of being her.' She touched Chen's cheek. The girl pulled away. 'You're just jealous because Farlorn is spending so much time with me!' she cried through tears. She ran off toward the stables.
Zaranda sighed and shook her head. And how much truth is there in that? she wondered. A commotion came from inside the stalls. Chen burst forth, clinging tike a monkey to the back of a handsome chestnut gelding. She rode right out of the yard and away up the brick street, grooms shouting angrily after her. 'I'll bring her back,' Farlorn called. He loped grace-fully into the stable, plucking the cap from his rapier and sheathing it. Zaranda teetered on the edge of fol-lowing him.
The bard emerged on his dappled gray mare. He waved jauntily to Zaranda and rode in pursuit of her errant apprentice.
No, Zaranda thought. It won't help if I go. Instead she went inside the stable on feet that had turned to lead, to greet Goldie before taking herself to her chamber.
As Zaranda arrived, the serving maid was leaving, having just lit the lanterns. Zaranda smiled mechaniccally at her, went into her chamber, pulled off her boots, and sat down at a table by the window.
The shutters were open, admitting evening smells of water and spring flowers and pavement slowly giving up the day's heat. The lights were coming on all over Ithmong, and out on the river lanterns bobbed from barge prows like the lures of giant anglerfish.
The town council had sent wine, sprays of flowers, and baskets of preserved fruit-cheap enough gestures of goodwill. And indeed Zaranda appreciated them, though she wasn't about to roll over on their account. She took up a wedge of orange preserved in ginger, bit into it, and noticed something new: a purple glass flask with stout body and long, slim neck.
Zaranda picked it up and turned it over in her hands, impressed. This was no local product like the rather insipid wine-Ithmong produced several serviceable beers, but their vineyards couldn't hold a candle to Zazesspur's. This was Tintoram's Select, a blackberry brandy made by the halflings of the Purple Hills of the coast between Zazesspur and Myratma, famed throughout Faerun for its flavor and potency. A notable gift, even for a town councilor who had been fattening on tolls the last few years.
She broke the lead seal and uncorked the flask. The aroma that flowed out was sweet and heady as first love and nourishing as a meal. She poured some-just a splash-into a tumbler. It was a purple so dark it was almost black. She passed it beneath her nose, allowing its richness to permeate her being, and sipped. It burned, and soothed, and burst like a bomb within her.
She let herself savor the sensations for a moment. Then she reached for her inkpot, her pen made from a sahuagin spine with steel nib from Kara-Tur, and a clean sheet of papyrus. It was time to begin drafting a contract proposal.
She wrote a little. Then, feeling the weariness of the day's events clamp a heavy hand on the back of her neck, she picked up the tumbler, sipped again, rolled the brandy around in her mouth.
I wonder where Chen and Farlorn are, she thought, feeling concern stir. Yet she could muster no great urgency. Nor could she readily drag her attention back to the lines on the papyrus sheet.
