"Good idea, dearie," the cook agreed. "Furkin might be in a bit of temper later on."
"When he gets loose," giggled the pot girl and was immediately shushed by the other women.
With hurried thanks, Sophraea headed upstairs. As she left, she heard the cook remark, "Well, that's a nice polite and helpful girl for you. Look at all the vegetables that she's peeled and chopped. Of course, if anyone asks, we haven't seen her for ages, have we?" npstairs in Stunk's mansion, Gustin made a great show of pacing back and forth, muttering the occasional odd phrase. He knew that true magic was much more than empty gestures, but, from his experience, the servants expected this kind of act.
Stunk's valet, a portly bald man given to wringing his hands and muttering "please don't touch that," met Gustin at the top of the stairs leading to his master's private apartment. The young man supposed that the valet was watching to see that he wouldn't steal anything. Two more of Stunk's bodyguards stood stiffly on either side of the lacquered door leading into their master's bedchamber.
When one thin male servant turned the corner of the hallway and yelped to see a wizard down on his knees drawing cryptic symbols on the carpet with a piece of charcoal, Gustin gained the general impression that the whole household's nerves were badly overset.
He continued with his search, carefully lifting up curtains and peering under tables. The upper hallways were just as cluttered with bric-a-brac and expensive ornaments as the lower rooms. The brocade shoe could be almost anywhere and nearly invisible among all the other trophies that Stunk had displayed. Not for the first time, Gustin wished he had a spell that could reveal a desired object. That would be much more useful than many of the odd bits that his old teacher made him memorize!
As he advanced down a hallway toward the door leading to Stunk's chambers, Gustin noticed a silk cloth covered one enormous picture frame in an alcove just outside Stunk's rooms.
When he started to twitch the coveting aside, the valet moaned and said "Oh do not! I wish the master would just have it destroyed."
The revealed painting showed the wealthy fat man and his aristocratic lady, expensively dressed in the finest materials and jewels, but the faces above the lace collars were the faces of corpses, rotting away.
"Unusual choice for a portrait," said Gustin, quickly letting the cloth fall back over the portrait. "I'm surprised the attist dared to paint him that way."
"It wasn't always like that," said the valet.
"Did it start to change when the haunting began?"
"Oh no, it's been changing for much longer than that, getting worse every day."
"An early warning, one that wasn't heeded," Gustin speculated.
"The master won't have it removed," the valet moaned. "He only covered it after my lady objected to seeing it every time she came up the stairs. My master said that he won't be frightened by such tricks. He was keeping it to feed to whoever was doing this, scrap by canvas scrap until the jokester chokes. At least that was what the master said."
"After my interview with him, I would say that Rampage Stunk has very little sense of humor," Gustin remarked.
The valet shuddered slightly and responded, "Please don't say anything about the master to me." He gave a quick glance over his shoulder to the two guards stationed nearby.
"No, no, of course not," Gustin had no wish to get Stunk's servant into trouble. "I only meant that I was quite impressed by your master's gravity in the face of adversity."
The last was pitched loud enough for the guards to hear and the plump valet gave Gustin a grateful smile. "Secondus Marplate," said the man, bowing slightly and indicating his round person.
"Philious Fornasta," said Gustin Bone, who'd always been fond of this particular persona. Philious had had numerous dubious adventures among the war wizards of Cormyr but, Gustin felt, always exchanged the social pleasantries with exceptional panache.
"Have you been with Stunk long?" asked Gustin as he continued to examine the hall. He rather doubted that the shoe would turn up here or even downstairs where Sophraea was searching. If the curse was directed at Stunk, than the object tied to the curse probably had been placed in the man's personal apartment to draw the dead to him. Which was one of the reasons that he had not objected to Sophraea searching in the basements below. She would be perfectly safe there and unlikely to run into any of Stunk's more dangerous servants.
"I came here following the master's marriage to Lady Ruellyn," explained Marplate as he trailed after Gustin.
"If she's a lady, wouldn't he be a lord?" Gustin asked casually as he opened the doors of a small cupboard. Inside it, he found brushes, a small fire' shovel, and a bucket for carrying out ashes, but no shoe.
"Lady Ruellyn carries her own title by right of birth to a very noble family. They have a mansion in Castle Ward," Marplate said. "I can say no more." And then he proceeded to follow Gustin, gossiping as the wizard sniffed around for the missing brocade shoe.
In the valet's guarded opinion, Stunk was waiting to buy just the right title for himself, one that would increase his influence in Waterdeep. "As close to a mask as he can get," Marplate explained and then looked as if he'd regretted suggesting his master was angling for a position of power in Waterdeep.
"So, you can become a noble here if you have enough money?" queried Gustin.
"You would be shocked at what you can buy in Waterdeep," said Marplate quite sincerely.
"Not after living here for a very short time," replied Gustin cheerfully as he walked up to the guards flanking the door into Stunk's chambers.
"I have your master's permission to set my protections throughout the house," he told the guards, who looked doubtful. "Of course, I can always tell your master that I could not enter his rooms and therefore they are unprotected, a consequence of your actions."
The two guards stepped quickly aside. Gustin swept through the lacquered door, gesturing to Marplate to accompany him.
In the suite of rooms that Marplate called "the master's apartment," Gustin found a dressing chamber filled with racks of luxurious clothing and shelves of shoes, but no dancing slipper. A bathing chamber, a small study, and an even smaller library, filled primarily with ledgers for Stunk's various enterprises, also lacked any evidence of the haunting except the candles burning in every room, necessary because of the tightly drawn curtains concealing each window that they passed.
"There're always things looking in at night," Marplate said as he checked the curtains, making sure the fabric overlapped at the edges, completely shrouding the room from anyone or anything looking in.
A huge bed dominated the center of the last room, swathed in draperies that allowed the occupant to protect himself from the slightest draft. Gigantic feather pillows filled the top of the bed.
Set neatly to one side was a food safe, a neat contraption of wood and perforated tin made to keep certain types of pastries fresh. Gustin had seen such pieces in bakeries and even the larger kitchens of noble houses in Cormyr. But he'd never seen one in a bedroom.
"The master does a great deal of work in this room," said the valet, obviously feeling the need to explain. "He often needs sustenance in the middle of the night."
"You must spend all your time sweeping crumbs out of the sheets," Gustin said, flipping back the covers to peer under the bed. No shoe. He straightened back up, thinking hard. He was sure that the shoe had to be in the house and, most logically, near Stunk or in a room that Stunk occupied a good deal of the time. Of course, it could be downstairs, perhaps even in the room where Stunk held his audiences. The thought of going back there and searching under the fat man's cold gaze made Gustin shudder.
"There is a maid to change the linen every day." Marplate straightened the covers that Gustin had rumpled. "The master is most particular about such things."