'Zaranda Star,' Duke Hembreon declared, 'your treason is manifest. Therefore, not without regret, the city council of Zazesspur has decreed that you must pay the penalty. At noon tomorrow-that is, the day following this morning's sunrise-you shall suffer death by breaking upon the great wheel of justice in the midst of the plaza. At the same hour shall the lord of the city be crowned King Faneuil I of all Tethyr.'
She looked up. Her eyes gleamed with wetness, but her cheeks were dry.
'Nothing your executioner can do,' she said in a low voice, 'will cause me half the pain of the tidings you've brought me.'
Shaveli's ugly face split in a sunny smile. 'Don't count upon that, Countess,' he said. 'For I'm the one who'll do the honors.'
26
'I can't believe they're going to put Countess Morninggold to death tomorrow,' the gangly, pimple-faced youth whispered loudly. The stinking water that lapped their ankles and the slimy sewer walls took his words and cast them in all directions, in the faces of the little party and bouncing down the passageway. 'Is there nothing we can do?'
A drop fell from the low-groined ceiling onto the back of Simonne's neck and rolled down it like an ice slug. She forced herself not to think of what it was.
'Yes,' she said more softly. 'We can try to be quiet and not get caught. Beyond that-Gond teaches us to make the best use of what fortune places in our hands. We can but trust to his providence and our own resources.'
By jittering torchlight she surveyed her doughty band: gnomes interspersed with youthful humans and even a smattering of half-elves, faces green-tinted at the stench and knowledge of what was gurgling about their boots. Some of the nongnomes were fellow Gond followers, others the priestess's friends. The way they clutched their motley collection of knives, clubs, swords, and short bows showed far too plainly for Simonne's taste that none of them was a fighter by training or experience.
She looked to the figure by her side. It was even shorter than she, clad in a dark brown cloak with hood thrown back to reveal a head of chestnut curls. It held a hoodwinked bull's-eye lantern in one small hand.
'You're sure this is the way, Nikdemane Birdsong?'
The halfling nodded, a trifle impatiently. 'Down this path, through the narrow passage that forks off to the left there yonder. It's the back way into a subterranean lagoon that feeds into the Sulduskoon and thence to the sea. There's an ancient stone pier where we used to smuggle goods whose makers didn't care to purchase guild stamps or ask a syndic's leave to do business.'
'You'd not steer us wrong?' she asked, wondering what she would do if he did.
He gave her a look of fine halfling disdain. 'I'm a thief, tinker priestess. But I steal goods, not children. Not even bigfeet deserve to be served so.'
She nodded. She wondered at her own motivation in undertaking this mad caper. She suspected with a touch of chagrin that she and her followers shared a reason: the creed of their red-bearded smith god was Action counts! Yet they all did far more talking than acting.
Here was their chance to take action that would truly count.
Father, she thought, I don't think even you could disapprove. But withal, I do this for you.
She gestured with her three-shot repeating pistol crossbow, recently invented by a fellow priest of Gond Wonderbringer. 'Let's go. And please keep it quiet!'
Lying side by side on their bellies, Simonne and Nik Birdsong inched forward up a sloping passage uncomfortably low even for the gnome woman, although the halfling had walked insouciantly upright until both went prone for the final stretch. Gaining the lip first, the little thief gave Simonne a quick grin of vindication. As he turned back, the priestess saw his expression change to disgust. She writhed up beside him.
The tunnel mouth opened twenty feet above the floor of a vast torch-lit chamber. The black galley bobbed gently alongside a mossy stone pier, tied fore and aft to protrusions that might once have been winged statues, but had long since worn to amorphousness — an indication of their age, securely hidden as they were from the erosive forces of wind and weather. The black square-rigged sail hung limp from the yardarm, but there was no mistaking the stylized black nail and Z rune against a white circle — the emblem of the Zhentarim.
Simonne's breath caught in her throat. There was also no mistaking the identities of the men busy herding a coffle of weeping, stumbling children up the gangplank and into the slave ship.
All wore the pure-white robes of the priests of Ao.
Angry murmuring and clatter awoke Zaranda from a fitful but blessedly dreamless sleep. She rose from the bed, feeling as she did so an internal blow to the heart: this is my last morning. She sought to pass the shock off with a joke, murmuring, 'Need they make such racket raising the wheel of justice?' as she shuffled to the window.
Dawn was turning an overcast sky the color of sour milk. Down on the plaza men fought. Some wore the bronze armor of Hardisty's civic guard. Against them strove men in tradesman's garb, with here and there a black- shelled city policeman among them.
Zaranda blinked and dabbed at sleepy eyes. When she looked again, the scene was the same. She marked dark, unmoving shapes strewn liberally across the plaza's sandstone flagging. Some only approximated the human form, not all of them closely. Raising her eyes, she saw pillars of smoke upholding the clouds.
She sat sideways on the sill and watched. The battle flowed off the plaza and out of her field of view. Which side was winning, she couldn't tell, if indeed either was. Occasional armed bands hurried across the plaza, looking apprehensively over their shoulders. Now and again Zaranda saw a roil of activity away up one of the streets radiating from the central square.
Try as she might, she could make no sense of what was happening. She gave it every effort: better than contemplating the way her life would end a few hours hence…
The sound of three door bolts being shot back sent her heart into her throat. She gasped. Then she set her jaw, rose, and faced the door with chin high and shoulders squared.
The door opened. Duke Hembreon came in. He wore plate armor that had once been enameled blue with fastidious white trim. Now it was blood-splashed and fire-blackened. His head was bare; blood from a wound stained pink the hair on the right side of his head. In one steel-gauntleted hand, he carried a broadsword with a notched, gore-crusted blade.
'Good morrow, Your Grace,' Zaranda said. 'Has the council grown too impatient to wait for noon?'
The old nobleman staggered across the floor and sat down with a thump and a clangor. He grounded his sword tip on the floor and leaned on the hilt as if the chair didn't offer support enough to keep him upright.
'The council is no more,' he said. 'Zaranda Star, I owe you a mighty apology.'
She cocked an eyebrow and crossed her arms. 'Is that so? Well, Your Grace, I have been expropriated, pursued, persecuted, kidnapped, tortured, slandered, and sentenced to agonizing death. With all due respect, you'll have to do better than that.'
He glared at her. Slowly the fires of anger died from his blue eyes, and his great head drooped.
'You are right, Countess Morninggold. More right than you know, for I must crave a boon of you.'
'A boon?' She laughed. 'Start talking, Your Grace.'
'Where ought I to begin? Last night a party of armed citizens surprised a Zhentarim slave galley taking on a shipment of kidnapped Zazesspurian children in a cavern beneath the city. Supervising the vile deed were men wearing the robes of Ao's supposed priesthood.'
'So Ao hasn't decided to take an active interest in the affairs of this plane after all.'
The survivors confessed they were in fact priests of Cyric.'
Zaranda sucked in a sharp breath. That's in character, I suppose. That upstart god loves deception for its own sake.' The greatest evil deity currently known in the Realms, Cyric had been born during the Time of Troubles, even as Bhaal, Myrkul, and Bane, whose portfolios he had usurped, were destroyed.
'And Armenides-?'
The duke held up a hand. 'In hiding. But more of that anon. Pray let me tell my tale in order. It is painful
