Dareun fired another bolt just as his minion stepped into its path. The man stumbled into her as she surged out the door. Breaking his neck was a matter of instinct, the way she might have snapped a camel or a marlin to stop it from flailing. Her blood pounded like thunder.
Dareun looked up at her, astonished and angry.
'Come now, wyrmling. Throwing away a piece? That was just foolish.' She glanced over at Tennora, still on one knee, and at the assassin, who had regained himself and had both knives out and ready. 'Ah-ah, lovac,' she said in a taunting tone. 'Step aside. You don't want to be caught in the middle of this.'
'She bluffs,' Dareun said.
'Of course not,' Nestrix said. 'I'm mad, remember? Mad enough to use everything in my power to make you two suffer. And I warned you I don't play xorvintaal.'
Dareun stepped back, building up another spell, waiting for her to attack him with the gods only knew what. Nestrix smiled; as she wasn't a taaldarax, she hadn't lost her powers. Ferremo eyed her with a tense curiosity, flipping a knife over and over in his hand.
Tennora sprang up, still clutching her wound with one hand, and slashed Ferremo behind the knee. He shouted as his leg buckled under him and the knife he had been playing with flew loose and clattered to the floor.
Dareun's attention turned to his wounded lovac just long enough for Nestrix to bolt across the room and tackle him, her cape fluttering behind her. Whatever spell he had planned fizzled and vanished, and he fought to force her off him.
But Nestrix was stronger. With her battered fists, she cracked the fallen taaldarax across the jaw, over and over. In a way, she was mad-mad and wild and fighting like a beast and not a dokaal. Gleeful at the chance to harm Dareun, to humiliate him-with his spells and his minions-begging to be released from a weapon as presumably weak as her two fists.
He cried out, and layered beneath the cry was a green dragon's fluty roar. He seized her wrists again and twisted. Nestrix pulled back, and he was suddenly twisting on top of her, slamming her back into the ground. As they fell, she pulled her knee up and punched it into his ribs. He pinned her legs and held them so she could not kick again.
'Ferremo!' he cried. 'To me!'
His face contorted with pain. He released Nestrix's left wrist and reached behind himself. With a grunt of pain he pulled a crossbow bolt from his ribs. Nestrix looked over his shoulder.
Mucky and bleeding from a gash to the forehead, the bounty hunter wound the crossbow once more and dropped another bolt into place. 'In the name of the crown of Cormyr and the Lords of Waterdeep, lay down your arms.' He hesitated for a moment, then added, 'Andareunarthex.'
EIGHTEEN
Jorik surveyed the wreckage of the apartment once occupied by Tennora Hedare. Papers lay burnt and torn everywhere, not a piece of furniture upright and whole. A fight between two parties had done it, he was certain. Its traces lay in the blast patterns that smeared the opposing walls, the layer stripped away from the tabletop someone had hidden behind. The wizard boy said it had looked like that when he'd seen it last.
'There was a man,' he said. 'Actually three men and a woman, and the Tethyrian. She was unconscious. The others were attacking Tennora, I think.'
Jorik eyed him. 'And you didn't think to mention that?' Cassian shook his head. 'It's been a very hectic day.'
'What did the attackers look like?'
Cassian screwed up his face. 'A half-elf woman, rather fetching. She's the one the Watch charged. A blond man with copper eye-teeth. The third fellow-'
'Copper eyeteeth?' Jorik said. 'Hrast.' He pulled an amulet out from under his shirt and murmured the spell to activate it. 'Nazra,' he said.
Have you found them?
'Not yet, but we may have found how the kidnappers got in. There's a letter on your desk somewhere. Agnea dropped it off two nights before the party; she'll find it. Don't recall who it's from, but the messenger who dropped it off is the same one who made a mess of Tennora Hedare's apartments.'
You think they used it to get in? The wards should have rejected it.
'I hope it isn't, Nazra,' he said. 'But the wards wouldn't have noticed anything wrong. We brought it in. I'm so sorry.'
Nazra said nothing for a long moment. It doesn't mean the Hedare girl is innocent.
'We can pull the half-elf from the Watch's dungeons,' he said. 'She can tell us who she's working for. Maybe-'
'Oh dear,' Cassian said. He was standing in the middle of the room, staring at a spot on the floor. He looked up at Jorik. 'I may have forgotten something.'
Jorik lowered the amulet. 'What?'
'The man who was unconscious wore green velvet. Not a cape, but
… Do you think that might be important?'
'One moment, saer,' he said, and tucked the amulet back into his shirt. 'Sit,' he ordered, pointing at the remaining chair. Cassian backed into it and sat down. Jorik leaned in close.
'Now is not the time to forget things,' he said. 'There is a life at stake. You said there were four people and the Tethyrian. The man with the copper eyeteeth and a man in green velvet who was unconscious. What. Else. Did. You. See?'
Cassian licked his lips nervously. 'The, um, the man with the copper eyeteeth, Tennora threw a little blade at him and caught him in the leg. He shouted to the half-elf that she… Her name… Alina? Alita? He said she should use the favor and she took out a coin of some sort. Then, ah… then Tennora jumped on her. She doesn't usually do things like that. Anyway, the man caught the coin and dropped it. Then they all vanished.'
'And that's it?'
'Yes,' he said, then added, 'Well, Tennora was upset afterward, saying they'd kidnapped the Tethyrian- Nester, I think she said, or maybe Nestrix? She said that one of them-one of the men, I don't know which-was a dragon. 'A dragon too,' actually. The bounty hunter-'
'Hrast it, boy. When did the bounty hunter come in?'
'During the fight. He and Tennora argued about it. I went for the Watch and for… I think he's an uncle of Tennora's perhaps. Then Goodwoman Blacklock-she's the landlady-came in. Said the plan had worked and that was the best way to get rid of a dragon. She has strange ideas about the proper use of spells, I think.'
Jorik shot to his feet. He pulled out the amulet and activated it again, telling Nazra what Cassian had related.
The plot thickens, she said.
'I don't think the girl is a part of the kidnapper's plans.'
Whatever she is, she knows more than we do. Find her. 'You will not find her,' a new voice said.
Jorik startled and turned to the window where a creature half woman and half raptor crouched watching him, a pair of enormous wings arched over her head. She bobbed her head at him the way the falcons in the mews did when presented with a lure.
'You will not find her,' she said again, 'because she changed the paths.' 'I beg your pardon?'
Jorik? Nazra's voice asked. What's going on? Who's there?
'Tell her I am called Aundra Blacklock,' the creature said. 'Tennora read it differently. She will fail or she will come back in her own time-but that doesn't stop the storm.' She bobbed her head again, more quickly, as if he agitated her and she wanted to chase him off.
'I'm sorry,' Jorik said. 'Goodwoman Blacklock, we don't mean to trespass. But it's imperative we find Tennora right away.'
She stopped and turned her head to the side. She blinked slowly. 'I will help you, I suppose, but you cannot
