'I suppose,' Veron said, blandly.
'Does she live in Waterdeep then?'
'No, Silverymoon.'
'Ah,' the man said, with a knowing furrow to his brow. 'One of those Many-Arrows brutes then?'
'No, that would be my mother.' Veron paused, trying to cool his annoyance. 'She's the one from the kingdom of Many-Arrows.'
'Eh?'
'She's the orc,' he said. 'She moved to Silverymoon when my parents wed.'
'Oh!' the man said turning a deeper shade of red. 'Yes, yes of course. Well… you ought to have said something! Good day to you.' He skittered off down the road.
'Perhaps you shouldn't have said anything,' Veron muttered. He sometimes wondered if it wouldn't be less scandalous to make up a story about a pillaged farmstead and a roving tribe of berserker orcs. At least the man had had the grace to be embarrassed at his mistake.
He bought a fishcake from the vendor and pondered his next move.
'Coins bright, there?' Veron looked up from his slake to see a red-haired half-elf standing in front of him and holding one of his leaflets. 'You're looking for this one?'
'Yes,' Veron said, wiping the crumbs from his hands 'Have you seen her?' 'Maybe,' she said. 'What's it get me if I have?'
Veron stifled another sigh. 'A percentage,' he said vaguely. 'The goodwill of Cormyr. And I won't tell anyone you're harboring a fugitive.'
She gave him a withering look. 'Not much of a bargain that. And I haven't said I was harboring her. Just that I might have seen her.' She leaned a little closer. 'And for what it's worth, the Watch and more might be interested in her too. Her and some little blonde birdie. Know anything about that?'
Veron narrowed his eyes. 'I'm only interested in the murder.'
She smiled at him. 'Pity. Thought we might have had something to talk about.'
'Goodwoman,' he said, 'I'm not leaving this city without my quarry. If you don't-'
'Will you take her dead?'
Veron paused. Dead was not what the Nagaenils had asked for. Dead would not get him his full bounty.
It would get him off of this trail and onto something new.
'It's not ideal,' he said, 'and I don't recommend you try it.'
'That's my problem,' she said with a winning smile. 'I'll let you know what I find out.' Before Veron could ask her name or tell her where to find him, she turned on her heel and disappeared quickly into the crowd.
Tennora startled awake, her thoughts heavy with dreams of knives, blood coming up out of her mouth, and the sound of Nestrix laughing as she held Tennora down with a log of wood across her chest until she couldn't breathe.
The Timehands started chiming tharsun. Tennora rubbed her eyes.
'Hells,' she said. She'd been asleep for nearly twelve hours. She glanced back at the door as she sat up. Still locked.
A sharp pain seized her just below the ribs, and she remembered the axe and the cut to her side. She stripped off her clothes and dampened a rag in the remnants of Nestrix's bathwater. She gently scrubbed the blood from the cut on her side. It wasn't deep-the axe had bitten in just enough to peel back her skin in a strip as long as her index finger-but it had turned an angry red and burned, and the flesh beneath was tender and purpled. She frowned at it and smeared a good dollop of ointment over the cut before binding it up with rags.
Blood-hers and perhaps the two men's-was drying brown and clotty on her blouse and the belt of her trousers. Shuddering, she balled the clothing up and threw it in the corner. She unfolded fresh clothes from the drawers that lined her sleeping loft, and dressed-the memory of the big man being beaten to death threatening to overwhelm her.
Never, never in Tennora's life had she ever witnessed anything so shocking to her understanding of the way the world worked. People died. She knew that, she accepted that-she had watched first her father, then her mother fall to the featherlung epidemic, their lungs day by day failing, seizing, until they couldn't draw another breath without aid-and soon they could draw no breath at all. The epidemic had killed at least three hundred people besides her parents, and the few score who had survived the illness-including herself-still fought for a good deep breath when the weather was dry. She did not like to dwell on it.
But with those deaths, she did not have to look the featherlung epidemic in the eye. She did not have to watch its eyes light up as it drove the life out of her parents' bodies. She did not end up wondering if the featherlung had enjoyed taking her mother and father, if she did let herself dwell on it.
He would have killed you, a small voice in the back of her thoughts said. She imagined how it would have felt if the axe had buried itself in her chest rather than nicking her waist. She closed her eyes-it would probably not be too dissimilar from the end of featherlung.
In the Hedare family, she'd caught the featherlung first, from a serving girl who had later died. Tennora had spent a long tenday wheezing and trying to get her dry, weak lungs to take the air she was squeezing into them. They hung damp cloths over her face, hoping to moisten her breath, and it made it even harder to breathe. Her chest did not merely ache; the sharp pains that seized her and shook her with spasmodic coughing felt like a hundred knives stabbing up through her diaphragm. The disease desiccated her lungs, and toward the end the tissue had cracked and bled. When she coughed, rusty clumps of dried blood came up.
For a tenday, she felt sure she was going to die.
Then, blessedly, she began to recover. The air came into her lungs in cautious and increasing gasps, and soon after she could sit up. Her breath grew deeper, her stamina improved. She was allowed to go on short walks and visit her parents, sitting by their bedsides. She could not, the healers said, be infected again, and it would do Liferna and Mesial good to have their daughter near.
The healers had been wrong.
As they worsened and weakened and the treatments and prayers failed, Tennora was sent away so that she wouldn't witness the disease's final blow.
But Tennora knew all too well what it would be like. Some nights that was what she dreamed of-the pain in her chest and the blood in her dry, aching lungs.
The last thing her father had said to her was, 'Never forget I love you. Never forget your mother loves you. I know you will make the best path of your life.'
The last thing her mother had said to her was, 'My darling, do not cry when they bury me. Don't give Aowena and the old lord something to hang you on.'
She sat down and pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her knees, and laid her head on her elbows. She didn't want to think about her parents. Neither of them would have been too happy with her, but right then, she wasn't too happy with them either. As devastated as she'd been when she'd lost her mother, the realization that the woman who lay beside Tennora's father in the Hedare family tomb was as good as a stranger left her aching anew.
And still, there was the problem of Nestrix.
Tennora thought about alerting the Watch-but what good would that do? She was as much a criminal, as far as they knew, as Nestrix. She'd make Nestrix angry, she'd tip off the men from the antiquary's shop, and she'd be under the Watch's suspicion to boot. And maybe she should be…
She dug her fingers into her hair. The day was growing long, and she had to make up her mind. She went to stand by the window. Nestrix was not in the square, and neither were the Watch. The clouds shifted for a moment, and a ray of sun reflecting off the sphere of the God Catcher struck Tennora's sill.
Aundra.
Tennora looked up at her landlady's abode. Aundra would return tonight to pick up the mask. Tennora could explain what happened. Aundra would understand and explain to the Watch that hers were extraordinary circumstances.
She hoped. There was still the matter that Aundra had been the one to orchestrate the theft in the first place.
Sitting there thinking and thinking and thinking wasn't going to do her a scrap of good though. She had to get
