faced each other on the narrow dock. Both held rust-covered knives. Cursing and grappling, they fought while a crowd watched. Some of the nearby vendors pulled out coins, calling for bets as to whose throat would be slit first.
The bigger of the two men shoved forward, driving his blade into the smaller man's thigh. Blood poured down the man's bare leg, and he stumbled backward into the water. Crimson flowed to join the torchlight dappling the harbor.
Icelin pulled against Sull. 'We have to help him!'
'Too late,' Sull said. 'Look.'
The flash of glowing white came again, just as the man went under in a swell of wake. His head broke the surface once, and he screamed, screamed until he was choking on the terrible water. He disappeared again beneath the waves. This time he did not resurface.
Icelin stood frozen. Her legs felt weak under her. She looked around for a reaction from the crowd, but the bettors and the gawkers had broken up. The crowd kept moving, the vendors kept hawking, and those that did stand by to watch wore vacant expressions. Icelin wondered how much of the vendors' drugs they had coursing through their blood, to be immune to such a sttange, violent spectacle.
'What is this place?' she said. But she wasn't really talking to Sull.
'These are parts of the city you're never meant to see, lass,' Sull said, patting her shoulder.
'And what of you?' Icelin demanded. 'What have you seen of this kind of death? How can you just stand there and do nothing?'
Immediately she regretted her words. She had no cause to attack Sull. None of this was his fault.
'I'm sorry, Sull,' she said. 'That wasn't right.'
But the butcher merely shook his head. 'I been in my share of troubles, doin' things I'm not proud to tell you about,' he said. 'But this'-he spat in the water-'this is unnatural, even for Waterdeep. I didn't mean to patronize you, lass. My aim is to get you out of here safe. 'Keepin' our heads low and out of other folks' path is the only way to do that.'
She knew Sull was right, but nothing about this place made sense to Icelin. The people-scarred by disease and wounds suffered from fights like the one they'd just witnessed-wandered around like refugees from a non- existent war. Where had they come from? And what horrors had they seen out in the world that made them want to stay in a place like Mistshore?
They passed a crude signpost driven into the side of the walkway. Dock beetles scurried over its painted surface.
'Whalebone Court-Dusk and Dawn, appearing nightly,' Icelin read. She followed a painted arrow to an openspace near a pile of rocks. Here the wood had been reinforced several times over with new planks and a fresh coat of paint. The footing still shifted, but Icelin no longer felt the queasy up and down motion that had accompanied all her other movements.
Twelve wooden poles jutted out of the platform like exposed ribs, six on either side. From a distance, they vaguely resembled the carcass of a whale. Men moved among them, tying off ropes and securing the flaps of a bright ted canvas.
'Puttin' up a tent,' Sull said. 'Think they intend on having a show?'
'Make way!' A stumpy man with a blond, pointed beard shouldered past Icelin. He wore a red velvet coat to match the canvas. He hauled an armful of knotted rope whose ends kept sticking in the gaping planks. Cursing, he jerked them free and moved on.
'Is this the Dusk and Dawn?' Icelin called after him.
'Working on it,' the man shouted back. 'Should have been open an age ago.' He threw down an armful of rope. 'Aye, I'm looking at you, Grazlen. Now get moving with that! Every breath you waste costs me coin.'
Icelin and Sull moved out of the way. While they watched, the men hauled two more long poles out of the water where they'd been floating against rocks. Five of the men moved together to stand the poles vertically in the center of the platform. The bearded man stomped over and put his hand around the base of each.
Icelin saw his lips moving, the rhythmic song of magic she knew so well. Light flared at his fingertips, and the poles snapped to attention like wary soldiers, rigid upon the platform.
'Bring down the red!' the man in the red coat yelled. He spat on both his hands, rubbed them together, and shimmied up the poles.
The men below unfurled the canvas to its full length, securing all sides with the rope. The man in the red coat took an end and climbed to the top of the long poles, draping the canvas over them. That done, he slid to the platform, and watched as the men dragged the canvas over the rest of the exposed poles.
While the men tied the ropes to the platform, the man in the red coat removed a crumpled parchment sheet and a slender nail from his breast pocket. He spread the parchment out flat and pinned it to the canvas.
The sheet fluttered madly in the breeze, and Icelin could just barely make out the writing. 'Dusk and Dawn,' she read. And below that: 'Time of Operation-Dusk until Dawn. Proprietor: Relvenar Red Coat.'
'Open for business,' the man in the red coat shouted.
Icelin looked around and saw that a small crowd had gathered with them to watch the proceedings. They filtered past in clusters, pushing and shoving to get into the tent.
Sull shook his head, chuckling. 'I thought I'd seen every-thin'. But a moveable feastin' hall I'd not expected!'
'It makes a certain sense,' Icelin said. 'You were, right about the planks. They're too unstable to support a permanent structure this far offshore, not without stronger magic or more coin, or both. With a tent, he can move his operation whenever he likes and still be in the most crowded area of Mistshore.'
'So it goes in fair Waterdeep,' Sull said. 'Commerce moves ever forward.'
'Let's go in,' Icelin said.
Sull sighed loudly. 'And so it goes with all young people. Stridin' in headstrong, not carin' a bit if they're walkin' into certain doom.'
Icelin threw him a bland look over her shoulder. 'What kind of bodyguard talks thus?'
'A smart one,' Sull replied.
Relvenar 'Red Coat' made a quick round of the card players in one corner of the tent before heading past the dicing area.
All the gambling areas were marked off with paint on the floor. There were no tables and no chairs, and the only bar to speak of was the mass of ale kegs and crates of foodstuffs hauled in every night. The setup suited him just fine. The only thing about him that bore any frills was his bright red coat.
Dancing lamplight cast large shadows on the tent canvas. He paid an aching amount of coin to the gangs to keep the private lamps, but it was worth it not to have his patrons stumbling or knifing each other in the dark.
Relvenar moved to the back of the bar, where the wind teased the loose canvas and the smell of the harbor mingled with food and drink. He counted the kegs to make sure they would have enough for the night's crowd. He knew he should keep a larger stock, but transportation was cumbersome in Mistshore. The Dusk and Dawn had all the problems of a normal tavern mingled with the worries of a ship's captain. Relvenar wore the dual roles as well as he could. Business was. good, and his ship-such as it was-was intact.
The sound of fingernails scratching the outside of the tent brought Relvenar to a halt in his inspection of the kegs. The scratching moved along the canvas, and a shadow loomed suddenly in front of him. Relvenar recognized the slender, agile shape, with a bulky top where a hat might be perched.
A very ugly hat, Relvenar thought. But business was business, and this client didn't enjoy being kept waiting.
Casting a quick glance around to make sure he wasn't being watched, Relvenar huddled down and crawled under the loose canvas. Outside in the clear air, the smell of the rank harbor hit him square in the nose.
Relvenar brushed a hand in front of his face, as if he could banish the stench. He shivered in the cold night air. 'Didn't think you were going to show,' he said to the figure leaning casually against a wood piling. The man stood easily, his arms crossed over his stomach, unbothered by the cold and the stench. He did not look happy. But then, Relvenar had never seen Ruen Morleth wear any expression except for a kind of blank coldness.
It's the man's eyes, Relvenar thought. There's too much wrong with them.
'Is she here?' Morleth said.
'Came in right after opening,' Relvenar said. 'Her and a big fellow. Keeps pretty close watch.'
