Dareun's wings flapped harder. Damaged though they were, he was gaining height. Tennora let go of the spike, hanging all her weight on the clasp. It slipped partway. She pulled against it, throwing all her strength against the metal latch.
Another blast of scintillating light from Aundra rained down. Dareun threw back his head and blew a stream of the poisonous gas into her path. Her wings went stiff, and she tumbled several feet before catching the wind again.
Then the clasp gave. The gorget opened and slid from Dareun's neck. There was no sound, no flash of magical light, but the change was palpable as the protection of the gorget ran off Dareun's scales like rain off roof shingles.
Tennora fell, accompanied by a shrill, pained roar more deafening than thunder. Racked by the renewed power of the dragonward, Andareunarthex twisted in its grip. For a moment, it seemed he too would fall. Then-his wings flapping uncoordinated and loose-he gained the air and took off, still roaring, toward the south, chased by a hail of arrows.
Tennora landed with a bone-shaking thud in a bough of a shadowtop tree. She felt her ribs crack with the impact, and she nearly fell again as she slid from her landing place. She caught herself and nearly screamed at the pain that burst across her chest. Biting her lip, she lowered herself down and collapsed on her bruised and aching legs.
They had done it.
Between the destroyed garden beds and scorched paths, bodies lay broken. A dozen guardsmen were dead. Nestrix lay still and unmoving. Limping, Tennora ran to her. Her pulse was faint but present. Veron, too, lay unmoving, but for the twitch of his eyelids.
Nazra Mrays, disheveled and marked by blood, mud, and char, climbed to her feet and surveyed her garden, her eyes wide. She met Tennora's gaze, and the shock in them faded into a cautious relief. Andareunarthex was gone.
'Antoum!' she shouted. She threw down the bloodied sword. 'Antoum! Antoum! My boy, my darling, come out! It's safe now! Antoum!' She raced inside, and Tennora followed in time to see the boy creeping cautiously down the stairs. At the sight of his mother, all the fear fled his features and he ran to her.
Nazra Mrays enfolded her son in her arms, rested her head against his, and wept as if the world had nearly ended.
Both Veron and Nestrix were beating down the gates to the Fugue Plane and the world of the dead beyond by the time Dareun fled. The half-orc guard was badly wounded as well. Tennora and Shava helped the remaining guardsmen bind wounds and pass out tinctures. Tennora found that she moved without thought or focus, her hands twisting cloth while her mind worried about her compatriots, taken away to recover in another room. She had asked whether it was likely either would live, and no one seemed to want to say-only that she had to wait for the cleric.
How strange it was, she thought, that these two, utter strangers to her in so many ways even still, had become so dear to her in the span of mere days. They had saved her life, and she had saved theirs in turn. She supposed that was a bond that wouldn't break easily.
She shook her head. It sounded like something Mardin would say.
Tennora was so distracted that the hand of Agnea on her shoulder made her jump.
'Goodwoman Mrays wants to see you,' the chamberlain said. She led Tennora up the sweeping stair and down a long hallway to the office of Nazra Mrays. The Masked Lord was sitting on a settee, looking exhausted and as if she meant to never sleep again.
'Do you want me to take him?' the woman asked, nodding at the sleeping form of Antoum beside Nazra. Nazra laid a protective hand on his shoulder.
'He's fine,' she said. 'Leave us.'
The gray-robed woman shut the door. Tennora folded her hands neatly in her lap, as if she were wearing a gown and not bloodied, scorched leathers. Nazra Mrays watched her, her face tired, but all signs she had ever had a moment's discomfort were erased for the present.
'So you,' Nazra Mrays said, 'are the infamous Tennora Hedare.'
'Infamous?' Tennora asked.
'A great deal of misfortune seems to have gone on around your person,' Nazra said. 'A great deal of good fortune too. I thank you for saving my son. We will, of course, keep it quiet.'
'Thank you… lord.'
Nazra held a hand up. 'Not out loud, my dear. I like to pretend that's a secret I still keep.'
'My apologies.' Tennora wet her lips. 'And it's Nestrix you should thank.'
Nazra fell silent and regarded Tennora as if she were being intentionally difficult. Tennora returned the gaze with a firm, placid expression. She wasn't going to ignore the thorny issue of Nestrix.
'I am beginning to suspect,' Nazra said eventually, 'that we should reexamine whether Ahghairon's dragonward is still functional at all. She is a dragon as well?'
'Of sorts,' Tennora said carefully. 'She is plaguechanged, it seems, and unable to return to her original form. It is why she came to Waterdeep. But I must say, saer, that not only did she save my life and your son's, but it was she who comforted him in Dareun's captivity. She is, one could say, reformed.'
'Yet it seems she has quite an effect on you, lady,' Nazra said.
'Please don't call me that,' Tennora interjected. 'I make a terrible noblewoman.'
'Yes, I'd noticed that as well.'
Tennora bit her lip as Nazra continued.
'Two priceless artifacts-albeit one from that villain's hoard-stolen from two relatively secure buildings in as many days. Property damage. Trespassing in the sewers.' She wrinkled her nose. 'How did you find your way down there?'
'Luck,' Tennora said truthfully, 'and, to a very minor degree, a very dull conversation with a young guardsman.'
'You hoodwinked a member of the guard?'
'Oh, nothing of the sort. It was his attempt at gaining my attention. One of my aunt's garden parties. While that certainly did not give me a map, the perils of the sewers are not… completely localized.'
A smile crept over Nazra's mouth. 'So will you return to that now?' she asked, lightly. 'Engaging in conversations with young men who bore you?' She leaned forward. 'How would you like to try something else?'
Tennora swallowed. 'That depends entirely on what you have in mind.'
'After so many stories-a wizard, a thief, a cohort of dragons and uprooter of gangs-I am impressed to see that your fledgling reputation is as deserved as it is unknown. I want you to work for me. Not in an official capacity, of course-people will talk if I pay wages to a noble girl. We'll probably say I am teaching you to invest your inheritance. But I would very much like someone with a sharp mind, an innocent face, and a younger body than mine to assist me in… matters of importance to the city. And to me.' She looked down at her sleeping son. 'I love this city almost as much as I love this boy. No one must ever exploit that again.'
'What would I do?'
'Whatever I and Waterdeep need,' Nazra answered. 'It would be… a more unusual job than most. But one I suspect you are eminently suited to.'
Tennora flushed with pleasure. It would certainly be better than returning home or begging for a new tutor or trying to make a living thieving Her smile fell. 'Oh. But there's the Watch. Do you suppose they'll let me go?'
Nazra waved her hand, as if Tennora's worries were but a gnat. 'To begin, I won't report you to the Watch. We'll give the gorget back to the House of Wonder with the usual explanations-you saved it from the collapsing tower and were then robbed. And we point them to the seed hoard of Andareunarthex if they start to complain. Give them their choice of anything enchanted.'
'Will that work?'
'Of course! Even wizards are greedy, my dear. The rest… well, it's not as if a dragon can press charges, and we shall simply accept that these were necessary crimes committed in the greater effort of saving the city. I doubt anyone will even notice you were in the sewers unescorted.' She stroked her son's hair. 'We are not a tyranny after all. It might be easier to determine black from white, but the gray middle ground has its purposes.'
Tennora frowned. 'Is that a common position for a lord of Waterdeep?'
