door.
Nothing.
'Get it open,' she whispered.
The lock was heavy and made of the same ornate, layered brass as the doors. Tennora maneuvered herself underneath it and slid the picks up into the mechanism. The pins lay in a far more complicated pattern, and after a moment she pulled out another pick. 'Hold this,' she said to Veron, indicating the turning bar. 'And twist it gently.'
The delicate wires slid over one another, moving pins in tandem. A lock within a lock-but they were moving, slipping into their homes.
Something in the cabinet rustled. Veron gave her an alarmed look.
'You see!' Nestrix snapped.
'Hurry,' he said.
Tennora ignored him, focusing on the mechanism, opening bit by meticulous bit with each fragile motion. Time seemed to stretch, seconds became hours or perhaps days, but eventually the last pin balanced on the end of her wire.
'Turn,' she ordered Veron.
The lock popped and slid out of its latch, landing on the floor with a crack.
Antoum Mrays tumbled out of the cabinet-flushed, and damp with tears and sweat-and into Nestrix's arms. Nestrix grasped him fiercely and lowered him to the floor, smoothing back his damp hair.
Tennora made quick work of the shackles, and after a few songs, Antoum Mrays's eyes fluttered and opened.
'Mama?' he said. His eyes regained focus and grew fearful again as he realized that neither Nestrix not Tennora-nor certainly Veron-were his mother. His whole body went tense.
'It's all right, little man,' Nestrix said, in what Tennora suspected was a soothing tone for her. 'You're safe.'
Antoum's wide-eyed stare didn't fade. 'You said we were going to escape.'
'And now we shall,' Nestrix said. 'We're out of the sewers, and now you need to tell us where you live.'
'No!' Antoum said, sitting up. 'That's where the dragon-man is going.'
'Indeed,' Nestrix said. 'And we have to save your mama. You've been a very brave little man all this time, and now you have to be brave a little longer.'
'We don't know how to find your mother's home, lad,' Veron said. 'We have to get there before the'-he glared at Nestrix-'dragon-man tricks her.'
Antoum wiped his snotty nose and eyes on the back of his sleeve and looked up, by chance at Tennora. She wished she could tell him everything would be fine-she wished someone would tell her that everything would be fine-and in his terrified face she found a queer sort of kinship. Antoum Mrays was feeling as if his life had stopped.
'And we know how to stop the dragon-man,' she said. A spark of hope lit Antoum's eyes.
Veron raised an eyebrow. 'Do we?'
'Of course,' Nestrix said. 'Do you still doubt your own eyes?'
'All my eyes tell me is that you're just as likely to be what they say you are as what you say.'
'That isn't what I meant,' Tennora said.
'What a fool you are!' Nestrix said. 'What taaldarax would go after a plague-addled wretch?'
'Well, we've already seen he's not the most stable-'
'What does that matter?'
'It matters-' 'Listen to me!' Tennora shouted. Veron and Nestrix turned to her.
'I gave him the gorget on purpose,' she said. 'That collar protects him from the dragonward, but it's very hard to enchant something with that powerful a spell without causing additional effects, especially when it was made in the days after the Spellplague. It has a drawback we can use against him.'
'What sort of drawback?' Veron said.
Tennora smiled, very pleased with herself. 'As long has he wears the gorget, he cannot protect himself against lightning.'
NINETEEN
Far from the House of the Laughing Star, the Timehands and temple bells were pealing the fourth hour after deepnight. Her wand high and tracing the magic of the wards, Shava yawned so hard her jaw looked ready to split. Agnea gave Nazra a pointed look, which she ignored. She was tired as any of them, but sleep could wait until Antoum was found.
After much argument, Lord Neverember had softened and agreed to lend her the aid of the guard. Now two dozen low-ranked officers were stationed in places around her house, full of whatever story Dagult had fed them to make them pliable and alert. Nazra didn't ask. Whatever it took.
Shava lowered her wand. 'Your wards have been compromised for certain,' she said. 'There's nothing to stop someone from teleporting right in.'
After Jorik's message, Agnea had shuffled through the papers on her desk, finding a gold-bordered envelope with an illegible name scrawled across the back and a seal of wax stamped with a strange rune. Nazra had tilted the envelope, shifting the reflection of the candles across the gilt edges. The reflection did not show her face but a room full of strange, bulky furniture. If she squinted, she could make out curios in cases among the lumps.
'It's certainly enchanted. They probably used the envelope to see in,' Shava said. 'Get an idea of what your house looks like and who's inside.'
Agnea had taken the envelope from Nazra and shut it inside a desk drawer with a half-empty bottle of zzar. 'I know that look,' she'd said. 'You can't tear it to shreds and burn it yet. We might need it.'
She watched Nazra as Shava pronounced the wards useless. 'At least now we know he's not working for someone you know already,' she said. 'If they could teleport into the house, they wouldn't have needed the envelope to see in.'
Nazra glared at the closed drawer. 'A good point. But where does that leave us? I…' Her throat closed and threatened to overflow with emotion. 'I cannot very well search over all Faerun.'
'No,' Agnea said. 'But we have time to look a bit farther afield. Three days, he said.'
Nazra nodded, but in her thoughts she was very far away. For the space between the last two bells, she had been running through what she would do if by the third day she could not find her son.
And if that happened, she could not bring herself to deny his kidnapper the dragonstaff. Get Antoum back, she thought, and then deal with the aftermath.
After all, what could one man do with the dragonstaff?
For years, no one had known the dragonstaff even existed. A single mage had kept it and used it for his own benefit, allowing dragons to enter the city as it served his purposes. After the Spellplague, the mage disappeared and the staff had passed from wizard to wizard until it had reached the hands of the Blackstaff, who had decided that its powers belonged to the Lords of Waterdeep and turned it over to be hidden in Nazra's care.
To hand it over like some silly bauble would be betraying the city and her station. No justifications or circumlocutions would change that.
'Perhaps-' she started to say, when something scratched at the window. Nazra jumped back and set her hand on the hilt of her borrowed sword. The scrabbling came again, as heavy booted feet ran up the stairs.
'Open the window,' Jorik said as he came into the room, panting. 'She wouldn't walk.'
'Who?' Nazra asked. Agnea moved to the window and threw it open.
A pair of clawed feet grasped the windowsill, followed by long-nailed hands on the sash. A female raptoran pulled herself in and stepped down, her wings held high as if she might fly back out the window.
'Goodwoman Mrays,' Jorik said. 'Allow me to introduce Aundra Blacklock, Tennora Hedare's landlady. She says she can help.'
'Well met,' Nazra said, approaching the raptoran. 'Has Jorik told you what we're looking for?'
