dropped the club.
'I…' Nestrix said, hesitantly. 'I don't… We should go.'
'Yes!' Tennora said. 'Now! Please!' She pulled Nestrix to her feet and grabbed the case with the mask.
They ran off into the night.
Shattered glass glittered on the floor. The broken carcasses of more than one wooden cabinet lay splintered and spilling out their entrails of treasures. The ceiling sagged above the cracked column. His lackey's blood and brains clung to the better part of a set of silver.
Ferremo Magli surveyed the damage to the shop as Alina bound the wound on his arm. His knee-mangled and twisted by the fallen iron cabinet-would need a healer's touch. The pain was barely contained by the anesthetic potion he'd gulped down.
It was nothing compared to what his master would do if Ferremo didn't fix things.
Another dragon shouldn't have been there, rifling through his master's seed hoard. And yet there she'd been, clad as a beggar woman and ripping his men down with her dragonfear. He'd almost been swept away by it himself, but he'd had more practice rising above it than the others.
Her lovac — for what else could she be? — was something different. A wizard's spells one moment, a thiefs slippery weapons the next, nervous as a rabbit in a fox's den, and yet always a step ahead of the blades. Tennora, the dragon had called her.
Ferremo frowned. The name itched at the back of his mind in a way he found profoundly annoying. He knew the name-now where did he know it from?
Ferremo, a voice boomed through his thoughts and sent them scattering. Report to me.
'My lord,' he said reverently. 'There was a break-in indeed. We caught them-two women-coming out of the treasure room and-'
What have they taken? the voice snarled.
'I do not know yet, master. We'll find out soon, but there's something more. Something important.'
There had better be. I presume you did not fail me lightly.
Ferremo winced. 'No. It's…'
Speak!
'There seems to be another player in the game, my lord.'
He quickly related the events of the evening, descriptions of the two women, and particularly of the tall one- the one who'd flooded the room with dragonfear and killed two of his men. 'She's… playing on the edge of the rules.'
How did this happen, Ferremo? His patron's tone was dangerous. Rogue player or not, no one was to know we've moved into Waterdeep. How did they find out?
Ferremo started to protest his ignorance-they had taken all possible precautions. But the memory that had itched in his mind earlier crawled to the front of his thoughts, and he checked himself. He remembered where he had heard the name Tennora, and Ferremo breathed a sigh of relief.
'I have a suspicion, my lord,' Ferremo said.
Rhinzen Halnian woke from a dreamless sleep to the sound of a knife scratching on its sheath and the prick of a blade settling on his throat. Nerves nearly made him sit up, right into the blade, but a hand pressed against his forehead an instant sooner.
'Well met, Master Halnian,' Ferremo Magli said with exaggerated grace. 'Who's Tennora?' 'What?' Rhinzen gasped. 'Who?'
'Tennora,' the assassin said. 'You spoke her name this evening, and tonight a thief with the same name ruined my master's shop. So I ask again. Who. Is. Tennora?'
'Tennora? She's… she was my student.'
Ferremo's smile peeled open past his copper canines. 'I'm glad to hear that. Sets my heart at ease to know you're guilty before we get on with things.'
'Guilty?' Rhinzen said. He was starting to feel a bit like a trained bird. 'Guilty of what? Of letting my worst apprentice go?'
'You took my master's coin,' Ferremo said, 'and ran off to tell his plans to another taaldarax. We don't take well to that, Master Halnian.' The edge of his blade traced the prominence of Rhinzen's throat.
'Wait…' Rhinzen said, starting to make sense of things. 'You think I sent Tennora to rob you? Tennora Hedare?' Rhinzen laughed. 'If I were going to cheat you, I certainly would have a better plan than that. That girl is North Ward, born and bred. Proper as a portrait. And she's terrible at magic.'
'Good enough to throw fire in my face. And decent with a carvestar.'
'Now I know you have the wrong girl. My Tennora would be more likely to throw a book at you.' Rhinzen laughed again. The press of the knife cut him short. 'Look,' he said, 'there are probably plenty of Tennoras-'
'But not plenty who know you. And certainly not plenty who run around with dragons.'
'I'll tell you where she lives. You could go and see that it's certainly not the same girl. Though,' he added, wetting his lips, 'if it were, you would probably find the treasure and evidence of the… the dragon.'
The knife edged away a hair. Ferremo seemed to be considering it, but given what he'd learned in the last few days, Rhinzen suspected the assassin was conferring with his monstrous patron. The distant look in the man's eyes gave him away.
The knife abruptly went back into its sheath. 'Very well. Where does she live?'
EIGHT
By the time they had made their way back to the God Catcher, the gray light of dawn was slinking through the alleys and courtyards of Waterdeep. Still trembling with shock and unused to traveling in the south end of the Trades Ward at night, Tennora had gotten lost in the maze of streets and alleys, not noticing where she turned or where she continued. She couldn't think straight-she dared not think straight. She walked hoping the passage of block after block of cobbles beneath her feet would be enough to drive the memories of the heist from her mind.
But when Tennora slipped in through the doors of the God Catcher as quietly as possible-lest her neighbors spot her at that time of the morning, stained with some stranger's death and carrying a sack with a golden mask in it-her thoughts were still full of flying knives and broken necks, spatters of brain, and the sound of a man choking on his own blood.
Nestrix clomped up behind her, her new boots echoing on the stairs. Tennora winced and sprinted up to her apartment, imagining the city Watch hot on her heels. She had made her peace with being a thief-just this once-but murder? There was no making peace with that.
Her hands shook as she unlocked the door. She swept into the apartment, grateful to be out of the sight of others, away from the blood and the broken glass. The leaflet with Nestrix's face was still sitting, folded up, on the table. Tennora set one hand on it and covered her eyes with the other. She could have seen this. She could have prevented it.
'Are you all right?' Nestrix asked, coming in and closing the door. 'You look ill.'
Tennora didn't move. 'Ill is too light a word. That was… terrible.'
Nestrix sighed and sat down. 'Horrible. I very much wish I'd taken that lovely statue.' 'Don't you even care that we killed someone?' Tennora said.
'Just now?' Nestrix said. 'That hardly counted.'
'Of course not,' Tennora said bitterly. She turned to face Nestrix. 'It's vulgar to count, isn't that right?'
'Don't be dramatic. It doesn't count because they were attacking us.'
'Because we were robbing them! We killed two of the antiquary's guards, and he's trapped under a cabinet, probably'-her voice caught in her throat-'bleeding out.'
Nestrix rolled her eyes. 'Don't waste your pity on those fools. They weren't exactly trying to show us their wares. As if they'd had any to show.'
