Where the Silken Shadow ducked into an alley and raced along, crouching low and coming to a cautious, creeping halt at its far end, which—as she'd correctly guessed—was also the other side of the isle. The bridge onward, to a much larger island that would give her a choice of routes toward the true shore, was only a few running paces away, but it would be guarded—and one or perhaps two warriors she could burst past, but more, or sentinels who had handbows or spells, would be quite another matter.
She crouched tensely, knowing she hadn't much time before the pursuit caught up with her. Mantle of Mystra, but she couldn't even count how many teleporting War Wizards and as-good-as-she-was-probably-better Harpers were down there—what if that Mage Royal sent them all after her?
Ironically, it was Glarasteer Rhauligan himself who saved her. He came bounding up to the top of the steps, puffing a little, and called an alarm to the guard, asking if he'd seen a lone lass in dark leathers and a mask running his way.
The startled guard stepped out to make reply. Narnra darted from behind him like an eager arrow and was halfway across the bridge before Rhauligan saw her and roared a warning in earnest.
A lantern glimmered as it was raised at the far end of the bridge—a simple, mist-slick stone arch—in the gloved hand of an armored guard who seemed to have brought several dozen of his fellows along with him. Narna cursed and sprang over the side of the bridge without slowing.
The water was as icy as it was filthy, and she came up clawing her way free of floating debris better not seen, and hauled herself around the bow of a barge that had been moored so long that weeds had grown themselves a curtain on its chains. Something nosed against and nibbled at her boot underwater. She kicked out in fear and revulsion, felt something solid flinch away, and clambered up out onto another dock as if all the gods themselves were clutching at her.
A guard called out to his fellows, somewhere nearby in the mist-curling darkness. Narnra cursed savagely and silently—and swarmed up the nearest crumbling wall, moments before a spear-point came jabbing after her.
Loose, rotting shingles slipped and slid under her feet, pulling something in her thigh with a sickening jolt of pain, then she was away through an exhausting and seemingly endless labyrinth of slick rooftops, mist, more rooftops, more crumbling walls, and desperate leaps across narrow, stinking canals.
When a particularly long leap drove her breath from her and left her curled and gasping around an ornamental stone spire someone had thoughtfully carved jutting up from a roof-edge, Narnra Shalace took the time to catch her breath, rub at her leg, wince, and turn to notice two things.
At some point in her frantic flight, she'd well and truly reached the mainland, crossing several streets of what must be the city of Marsember. More importantly, the Harper who'd dared to bandy words with that fearsome Queen of Aglarond—Glar-something Rhauligan, that was his name—had followed her in her mad leaps and sprints all this way across the rooftops and was in sight of her now, jumping easily across an alley not three rooftops back!
"Mask and Tymora, aid me!" Narnra hurled that snarled prayer up at the few stars she could see glimmering through the chill, thickening mists, and ran on, kicking her leg to loosen the muscles, within, that were giving her pain. Yes, it was hurting less, but . . .
She scaled a roofpeak and slid down the far side, noting grimly just how far she'd have to leap to avoid a bone-shattering fall into the street below.
In mid-leap she had a momentary glimpse of a sleepy apprentice reaching out to fasten the shutters of his high window, seeing her, and freezing the moment he got his mouth open to gape at her—then she was past, slamming into the roof above the dumbstruck apprentice with her knees and elbows. Tiles broke and skittered away down the roof under her as she slid a little way, got her boot onto the dormer root just above the apprentice, stopped her fall, and doggedly climbed back up and over this roofpeak. As she went over, she risked a glance back over her shoulder.
There was Rhauligan, their eyes meeting for a brief, thoughtful moment ere she dropped out of view and slid down the far side of her roof toward a lower one, beyond. Belonging to a small building, it was narrow, relatively flat, and of wooden shingles streaked with thick and probably slippery moss—but it led to another steep roof, not far away, and the short distance between the two peaks gave Narnra an idea.
She could spare a dagger—a dagger. If she could get to that second roof in time . . .
She could, and—thank you, Mask and Tymora both!—the far side of this Marsemban mansion sprouted a side-wing whose lower roofpeak gave her something to stand on, below the one that looked back at the way her pursuer should be coming. And high-ranked Harper in the service of Cormyr or not—what'd the Simbul called him? "Highknight"?—he'd not chase her half so well once he'd stopped a steel fang in the face!
Rhauligan's head was suddenly there, bobbing up over the edge of his roof—and she set her teeth, rose up, and threw her second-best belt knife as hard and as fast as she could.
It bit home and stuck, quillons-deep in ... well, he must have slipped on a hood, or a mask. His head—if it was his head—sank down out of view, leaving the Silken Shadow to stare across at the rooftop, briefly moonlit, now, as the mists parted momentarily . . . and breathe heavily . . . and wonder if she'd just killed the man.
When the mists came back and returned the rooftops to smoke-like shadow, several long breaths later, Narnra drew in a deep, shuddering breath, turned, and went on.
* * * * *
"Starmara? Starmara, my love, are you awake?"
Her husband's voice was a throaty growl—the tone he fondly believed was some sort of irresistible amorous purr—and Starmara Dagohnlar stared drowsily at the luxurious rubyweave draperies of their bed-canopy, high overhead, and managed not to sigh.
Durexter Dagohnlar could certainly rake in the coins when she urged him on. He might be a thoroughly dishonest, ill-smelling brute and boor of a mightily successful—and widely hated— Marsemban merchant . . . but before all the gods, he was her thoroughly dishonest, ill-smelling brute and boor.
And there were times when beasts must be sated, no matter how distasteful the process. Sleepily Starmara shed her shimmer-weave robe so he wouldn't tear it apart like he had the last one, elbowed a cushion aside so she'd be comfortable, and whispered back as alluringly as she knew how, "Awake and aching for you, my lord."
Durexter chuckled and rolled across the substantial acreage of silken sheeting between them, scattering cushions and breathing the garlic and Thayan pepper sauce she fervently wished he wouldn't douse his meat so heavily with, all over her.
"Well, now, my proud beauty—so smooth and warm and, heh-heh, handy—know the love of the most grasping, deceitful, law-shattering, tax-evading, and just gods-kissed successful merchant in all Marsember!"
Starmara gently bit her husband's chest to keep from having to kiss the stinking mouth that was so enthusiastically delivering his usual modest little speech, as he bruisingly maneuvered himself into what he imagined was a heroic stance. She entertained a brief fantasy of just sliding right down the bed and out from under whilst he was still chest-beating and crowing his exploits, so that he'd ultimately crash down onto—nothing.
Then he was ... he was . . .
Choking and gurgling strangely above her, awakening Starmara to the sudden apprehension that his heart might have given out at blessed last and he was now going to slam down and crush her into the bed, suffocating her with his dead weight long before any servant could find them! Frantically, she clambered and slid toward the foot of the bed, her perfumed robe tangling—and emitted a brief shriek as Durexter toppled over suddenly onto her left elbow.
With a frantic twist and kick she freed herself and wormed past, wriggling—
Hard into an unfamiliar knee, that was clad in black leather and attached to someone who wheezed and smelled quite differently from her husband . . . and who now reached down to discover what had fetched up against him, felt it thoroughly as Starmara gave in to a sudden impulse to scream—as loudly and as throat-strippingly as she knew how—and roared, "Ho, Mai! I've found the wench! And she's—heh-heh—she's . . ."
"All right, all right," hissed another, vaguely familiar and much sharper man's voice. "Stop leering. Have you done strangling him yet?"
"Uh, well, he's not dead, but I thought y'said—"
"Tie him up? the thin voice snarled. "Back of neck to bedpost, so he doesn't get any ideas about escaping or fighting, then his little fingers together because no one enjoys breaking their own fingers—both on the same side of the bedpost rather than around behind it, mind—and leave the rest to me. I'll be finished with Haughty Lady Starmara here by then."
Head enveloped in her own silks, the wife of the most grasping, deceitful, law-shattering, tax-evading, and successful merchant in all Marsember threw herself up and over the ornately rolled scrollwork end of the bed, kicking wildly, and succeeded only in hurling herself into the cold and exceedingly efficient hands of the unseen owner of the thin voice. He threw her across her own footstool with force enough to leave her helplessly sobbing for breath and had her ankles, knees, wrists, and elbows trussed before she even had enough wind back to protest.
When she did, of course, he fed silken robe into her mouth until she choked then bound it there with the robe's belt, leaving the rest of the material across her face. He bent with a grunt—almost inaudible amid louder growls, grunts, and scufflings from the bed—and the next thing Lady Starmara Dagohnlar knew, a cold, hard, and very heavy weight was lying across her stomach and hips, and she could have no more struggled or moved than flapped her arms and flown across the Sea of Fallen Stars to that lovely house-of-baths in Westgate. The smell of moth-powder told her she was probably pinioned under her own blanket-chest.
"Done," the voice of the owner of the knee said triumphantly from the bed. "Trussed like a feasting-fowl."
"Then we'll have him down here on the floor next to his blushing lady—at least she should be blushing; just look at that tattoo!—and the fun can begin."
"Oh? What tattoo?"
"Later, Bez. Relocation of doomed merchants first, hmm?'
* * * * *
Glarasteer Rhauligan winced as he drew Narnra's razor-sharp blade out of his capture hood and one of his spread fingers inside it. He bound his sliced digit tightly with one of the strips of cloth he always kept ready in one of his belt pouches.
So his little fleeing vixen was down one dagger but bound to have at least two—and probably twice that many—more. Next time one might bite his real head and not a hasty counterfeit. The capture hood had one much enlarged eyehole now and would bear replacing when he ...
He scrambled up, ran along the roof-gutter—thank the gods for Marsember's filthy-wet weather; it meant every house was covered with copious and sturdy troughs and spouts—and sprang onto the next roof along, rather than going over the roofpeak again to greet a second dagger.
If Tymora was with him, she'd run where he was anticipating she would, which was—yes! There!
A slender hip in dark leathers hastily ducking away around the edge of another roof . . . she knew he was still on her heels—but he knew just how little city she had left to run through in that direction before the wall would hedge her in and force her to either go west and south and down to the streets ... or turn back toward him.
Breathing easily, Glarasteer Rhauligan trotted through the mist that seemed now to be threatening to turn to a dawn rain and grinned. This was fun, and—whoalaho! She'd doubled back already and—a dark form spun across a street below him, just above a guard-lamp—was really putting wings to her boots!
His fierce grin widened. Well, now . . .
* * * * *