Tanalasta was dodging around the altar, dragging behind her a mace she obviously found too heavy to use, with a snarling noble in hot pursuit. Even as Gwennath cried out in alarm and raised her hand to hurl the dagger she still held, someone else-a merchant in battered boots, who was waving the longest knife she’d ever seen-vaulted the altar and crashed solidly into the noble. The knife flashed once as they went down together, and there was a short, wet gurgling sound from behind the holy table. She wasn’t surprised to see that only one man rose again-and that it wasn’t the one who wore the mask and fine clothes.
The last of the nobles-the one Gwennath had struck in a sensitive place-had risen behind the priestess, sword up and red rage for the Tymoran in his eyes. Gwennath did not see him, but Emthrara did. The lady Harper shouted a warning, but nothing was going to be able to stop that blade in time…
And then Emthrara saw another figure rise up behind the noble, the altar stool raised in one trembling hand. White to the lips, Crown Princess Tanalasta of Cormyr brought her improvised weapon down with all her strength.
The noble’s sword went one way and his head snapped to the other, blood spraying from the force of the blow. The impact left the noble’s head no longer round, but it managed to make a rattling noise before plunging heavily to the floor with the noble’s dead body.
The princess stared down at what she’d done, gasped, arid promptly emptied her stomach in revulsion.
Her shoulders were still shaking as more armed men, priests of Tyr and Purple Dragons, all waving ready weapons and glaring around at the carnage, burst into the room.
“What happened?” one of the guards demanded and strode forward with one hand out to roughly grasp and spin about the sobbing woman in front of him.
He stopped abruptly when she turned of her own accord and he recognized her face. White it might be, and blue about the lips, but he could not mistake the face of the heir to the throne. The eyes in that famous face were wet with unshed tears.
“We-I was attacked by these… traitors,” the princess, said, her breathing suddenly fast, “and all of these other folk slew them for me.”
“Other folk, High Lady?”
Tanalasta glanced around. The merchant and the woman with the sword had vanished as suddenly as they had appeared, only the priestess of Tymora stood with her. The grim-looking priestess now stepped forward and said firmly, “Her Highness prevailed against these men, blade to blade and eye to eye. Let word of this travel throughout the realm, that justice and right have made the crown princess victorious in battle against five experienced fighting men… who also happened to be foolish nobles. They found the fate that awaits all traitors.”
The eyes of the guards and priests looked at Gwennath and then turned back to the princess.
“What really befell here?” a grizzled Purple Dragon asked bluntly, rising from the blood-smeared flagstones where he’d been examining the man Emthrara had run through.
Tanalasta gave him a wintry glare. “It was just as the holy lady has said,” she snapped, and she turned away to kneel before the altar. “Now, if you gentle sirs will clear away that carrion, my prayers are unfinished…”
“Well said, Your Highness,” Gwennath whispered as she knelt beside the royal supplicant.
Tanalasta surveyed her with a sidelong glance and whispered back fiercely, “When I rise from here, I’m going to expect some answers! Go nowhere until I give you leave.”
Gwennath smiled and bowed her head. “Of course,” she murmured, and she lifted her voice to sing the first call to the Lady of Fortune.
The eyes behind the azure mask almost seemed to glow with interest. “And what else did Bleth propose?”
Dauneth Marliir shrugged. It had been a long, cramped day for him, skulking in this hiding place or that in the palace, and the mage seemed serenely unconcerned with the palpable villainy of the Royal Magician. “I’ve told you all,” he said, a trifle sharply. “He made it clear he’d not accept an endless regency and warned Vangerdahast that he’d raise the whole country against the wizard if he tried any such thing.” He frowned. “But you seem to be missing my point: The Lord High Wizard was agreeing to all this, it seemed, and fighting only over the details of how this council would operate! Both he and Bleth seem to think of the princess simply as a-a pawn, to sit on the throne and do as either a wizard regent or a council of nobles tells her to do! Vangerdahast is as cold-hearted as all these scheming nobles! He doesn’t care about the Obarskyrs at all, any of them! He claims he serves the crown, but that seems to mean that he just wants the realm to stay stable while he goes on wielding the power he has now, no matter who is-in name-ruler of Cormyr!”
The woman in azure robes nodded almost absently. “Many have said such things, through the reigns of a host of Obarskyr monarchs and the service of more than one of the faithful mages this realm has been blessed with-and yet time and time again, the wizards have served Cormyr with staunch and shrewd deeds when it was required. Vangerdahast seems quite capable of looking after himself and Cormyr for the time being. I’m more interested in what Aunadar Bleth said to Tanalasta-and his tone of voice and facial expressions as he uttered those words. Let’s go over it again-slowly, and in as much detail as you can recall. Don’t invent or embellish just to please me. I know that I’m asking for more than you can remember. Just give me all you can.”
Dauneth did, and it took a long time. More than time enough for the young noble to begin to wonder just who this woman who hid herself behind an azure mask was, and what she was really hoping would happen in the days ahead. It was easy to claim that one loved Cormyr and was working in loyal service to, or in the best interests of, the realm, but who judged such things? And why wear a mask to do them?
That last question stayed with him, and he grew quiet enough that the mysterious lady in the blue mask told him to go to wherever his lodgings were and get some sleep for as long as his body needed. If he were reeling with weariness when something important did happen in the hours or days ahead, he’d hardly be able to do anything useful about it.
Dauneth nodded curtly, agreed, with every appearance of weariness, and took his leave. He was careful to stumble along the street in case she was watching. When he turned the corner, the scion of House Marliir promptly sprang onto a rain barrel, used it to reach a balcony, and from there took a perilous leap onto a roof by way of a carved gargoyle rainspout. She might leave by a spell or another of those mysterious tunnels that these northerly reaches of Suzail seemed to be positively riddled with, but… he shrugged. She might also simply walk out of the place. If he could only get to its roof so that he could watch both its front entry and the back way.
Dauneth hurried and, just in time, fetched up at his destination in panting haste. She went out the back way, of course. He watched which way she was heading, keeping low and immobile until she was out of sight, and then moved. He was going to have to be very careful if he hoped to keep her in view and escape being spotted. Whoever this blue-masked mage was, she was certainly no fool.
He’d suspected all along that she was noble-born or connected with nobility or the court itself and that she’d get to the Promenade before long, and he was right. Crouched in the lee of a potted pricklethorn bush that was decorating the steps of some grand townhouse or other, Dauneth saw the lady in blue turn out of the side street he was watching and walk briskly along the Promenade toward Eastgate.
She wasn’t going out of town. No, she’d turn off westward before the gate and head back into the Nobles’ Quarter on the pleasant hedge-lined street that crossed Lake Azoun by that beautiful arched bridge… yes! There she was! Dauneth raced along the top of the ornamental wall that separated the holy ground of Deneir from the meadows of the rich merchants next door, down to the edge of the lake. He just had time to crouch down behind the last sculpted stone book, spread open forever on its wall-top pedestal, when she stopped on the bridge and looked back and down the lake, scanning the gardens… for him?