Narnra frowned. Obarskyrs? They were the royal family of some realm way east of Waterdeep—a good, trustworthy, law-abiding place. Some place with a strange name . . . Cromyar? Cromeer? Cormeer—Cormyr, that was it!
Gods, she was halfway across the world!
Well, that'll teach you to follow wizards through glowing archways, she told herself savagely. Idiot.
Dagger in hand, Narnra joined the men climbing the stairs. No one paid her the slightest attention, as they wallowed in their own excited schemes and conclusions and get-even-richer dreams. Twice men stopped to strike dramatic poses and declaim things to their fellows, only to get shoved from below with calls of, "Move along!" and "Stand aside!" and "Don't hold up the Conspiracy!"
The steps were old, broad, and well-worn, but there were a lot of them, in little short flights that led to landings that gave onto more little runs of worn steps. As she ascended, Narnra felt the dampness increase, and tendrils of mist started to drift in around the busy stair.
Quite suddenly, she was in a many-pillared portico, on a dock that looked at the glittering lights and darkened spires of a sizable city—across mist-wreathed waters that stank. Skiffs and lantern-hung pleasure-barges bobbed against the dock, anchored to metal struts of many rings that were nothing like the great bollards of Waterdeep Harbor. This was the sea, all right—a sea—but. . . oh, so different from the City of Splendors.
A stone arch bridge linked the land she stood on to a small islet crowded with rotting, leaking buildings with slate-tile roofs that sagged alarmingly and railings that were fire-brown with rust. No lamps were lit anywhere on it or on what seemed to be a second island beyond the first, where half-sunken barges lined crumbling, bird-dung-streaked wharves.
Instinctively, Narnra stepped away from the rush of chattering men proceeding over the bridge or strolling to barges where the patient faces of crewmen could be seen surveying the arrivals. Along the covered dock she went, seeking to be alone. There must be some way up to a vantage point where she could look around and see more of this new place . . . but where?
Behind her, someone fell into the water with a splash, and there were shouts of drunken merriment. Someone else on a nearby barge took advantage of the tumult to slit a throat and shove the body over the side. Narnra watched it slip head-first beneath the inky waters without a sound.
A third someone lit a hand-lamp and hauled the drunken man roughly aboard another barge, and by its light Narnra got her first look at the water, as the man's pale robes burst up through it: peat-brown and reeking even more strongly now that it had been disturbed. She curled her lip, turned away, and froze.
At the end of the dock a quiet company of men was standing, eyeing her steadily. All of them wore dark leathers, and some held blades and capture-nets ready in their hands, others hand crossbows of the sort Narnra had seen all too many of in Waterdeep. Still others held delicate sticks of wood: wands!
It had been a wave of one of the wands that had rolled back a thick bank of mist to reveal these men—and women, too, Narnra noticed—and now they were starting purposefully forward, keeping together in a menacing band.
From behind her came more laughter, new splashings—and a shout of alarm.
There was a clang of steel aboard a drifting barge, the ring of blades crossed in anger, and a sudden cry: "Betrayed! The War Wizards are here!" That shout ended in an ugly, wet gurgle, which was followed by another clash of swords—and a scream.
One of the men striding along the dock toward Narnra had his head cocked to one side, as though listening to someone who wasn't there, and was muttering a steady stream of orders as he came.
"Horngentle, Lord Blackwinter's been seen here: arrest him. Th-oaburr: one of us, the novice Beltrar Morgrin—yes, a War Wizard, everyone; keep clear!—has turned traitor and is still down-cellar ... he mustn't live to see the morning, but take him quietly. Constal? Constal, it seems the Regal Lady Mistwind turned her nightly manhunt hither. Put a scare into her, but let her win free. Bereldyn, I'll need you to find me that wizard someone saw arriving—Khornadar of Westgate, he's calling himself, but Laspeera thinks he may be someone more powerful posing as an ambitious lackspell. He's . . ."
This flood of—gods, they looked like Harpers, and. yes! That one was wearing a little silver harp pin at his throat, and that one sported an identical pin on an eyepatch—grim folk was only paces away, now, and Narnra was standing right in their path. It just wasn't possible that they'd failed to see her, though as yet no one had aimed a handbow or drawn back a blade in menace.
The Silken Shadow stood stock-still. Whirling and running now would probably earn her swift death in a volley of quarrels. "The Cormaerils all seem to be here," she announced calmly. "Beware also Mathanter of Sembia."
She wouldn't know a Cormaeril if she fell over one, and she'd never seen or heard of this Mathanter before tonight—but he'd brought along more than a dozen fully armored bodyguards and impressed her.
The nearest Harper gave her a sharp look and without turning his head or taking his eyes off her asked, "Armeld?"
The man snapping orders swivelled an eye to scrutinize the masked Silken Shadow as he strode past—they were all streaming past her now, on both sides, save for the one Harper facing her—and replied, "Never seen her before. Not one of yours?"
"Remember," an earnest man in dark robes was saying on Narnra's other side to an elderly man holding two wands, "some we arrest, some we slay as quietly as possible, and some we just scare—so don't go blasting anyone you see! For once? Please?"
"No," the Harper said slowly, shaking his head and raising his blade. Its blackened point hung just below her breasts. Narnra swallowed and tried not to look at it again.
"I am not," she told him almost severely, "a member of this 'Rightful Conspiracy.' I abhor conspiracies." She'd heard an old, wrinkled noble matriarch dressing down a captain of the Watch once, and she tried to make her voice .sound just like that old, highborn Waterdhavian's: imperious, disgusted, and somehow pitying.
The Harper's eyes flickered, and he asked quietly, "Caladnei?"
"No," Narnra told him in the same tones, not knowing what else to say, "I am not she."
"That's good," said a dry voice from behind the Harper, "considering that the last time I looked at myself in a mirror, I remained fairly certain that I was Caladnei."
A wryly smiling, dusky face came into view behind the Harper's shoulder. Dark eyes surveyed Narnra coolly from under startlingly dark brows. "So . . . have you a name of your own, Hooded One?"
A tingling of magic washed over Narnra before Caladnei was even finished speaking, and without thinking the thief from Wa-terdeep crouched tensely, as if facing battle.
"I am the Mage Royal of Cormyr," the woman behind the Harper said gently, "and that was a truth-reading spell—nothing more. My word here is law—'tis a crime to evade or deny me. Please answer fully."
Narnra trembled, eyeing the Harper's steady blade and the purposeful look in Caladnei's eyes. The Mage Royal stepped to one side, gesturing to Narnra to keep looking at her—and forcing her to take her eyes off the Harper menacing her.
Narnra sighed, drew herself up, and turned smartly to do as she was bidden. The Mage Royal wore boots and a warrior's leathers, and her long black hair was gathered behind her shoulders with a ribbon. Her belt was crowded with pouches interspersed with daggers, and she wore no proud insignia or touches of wealth.
"Look at me." That gentle voice came again, and Narnra knew what was meant. She lifted her gaze to meet Caladnei's eyes directly and found herself caught and held, staring into two dark flames.
There was a high scream, a thunder of hard-running booted feet, and another splash, but none of the trio standing at this end of the pier paid the slightest attention.
"I asked you a question. Surrender to me your full name."
"I ... I am called Narnra. Narnra Shalace, of Waterdeep."
"Are you conspiring against the Crown of Cormyr?"
"Lady, I don't even know who the Crown of Cormyr is—and until you just said that to me, wasn't even certain I was in Cormyr. I—I've never been in your land before tonight."
"So how came you to be on this island?"
Narnra sighed. "Well, there was a wizard . . ." She hesitated, not knowing how best to say things. In Waterdeep, to openly admit one was a thief was to be punished regardless of what one might or might not have done.
That was when the Harper standing beside her made a queer sort of grunt—and was suddenly slamming into a distant pillar, his body aflame. Caladnei staggered and clutched at her head as if someone had shrieked in her ears, and the dock-stones under Narnra's boots rippled as if some gigantic bulk was swimming past in the solid stone, close beneath her feet. She saw stones heaving and falling all over the dock and spun around and was running hard away from her interrogators even before the ceiling above her cracked, a pillar toppled far ahead and the bridge of shouting, shoving men that linked the dock and the next island broke in a dozen places . . . and slumped into the harbor with a crash that sent walls of reeking water crashing across the dock. Narnra dived to a pillar and clung to it to keep from being washed away.
The waters were still roiling around her when blinding-bright lightning cracked through the mists, heralding many screams. Someone blew what sounded like a war-horn, and from here and there crossbow quarrels started to hum out of the night, snarling across the docks like hunting hornets.
Cursing, Narnra ran away—she knew not where, just away.
Small armed bands of Harpers and War Wizards were everywhere, and many of the pillars along the dock were festooned with slumped, sleeping folk in torn and now drenched finery, who'd been tied to the pillar and each other at the wrists, ankles, and throats—presumably by the Harpers who stood watchfully by.
One such challenged Narnra with a shout, gliding to intercept her with his blade held ready, but she snarled, "Caladnei sent me! Out of my way!" and he put up his steel to let her run past.
There was little dock left to her, and several Harpers watching. She had to enter one of the darkened archways. These must lead into cargo-rooms, and what urgent business could she have there? No, it must be back to the cellars she headed. Not only did she not like the look of the stinking harbor-water at all, but with so many crossbows and hurlers-of-lightning about, that way would be almost sure death. That stair to the cellars was directly in line with the bridge that was no more, so despite the fact that no water seemed to have splashed hereabouts, this archway would be the right one. . . .
"Hah! Another rat scurrying back to the bolt-hole!"
More than a dozen men were crowded around the stair-head, conferring—and two of them already had blades almost into her.
Narnra spun aside rather than slowing. "Caladnei's orders!" she snapped, trying for her Waterdhavian matriarch's voice. "Out of my way!"