Geran raised an eyebrow. Was that a jest from the straitlaced tiefling? He wouldn’t have expected it from Sarth. “If we learn nothing new here, we’ll give up for the night,” he said. “Come on, we might as well get it over with.”
He went to the storehouse door and knocked sharply. There was no answer at first, but then voices muttered and floorboards creaked inside. Someone drew back a bolt with a rasp of metal, and Geran found himself looking at a pair of sullen Mulmasterites in dirty workman’s garb, standing in a small clear space at the front of cluttered stacks of crates and casks. Both men wore long knives at their belts. “What d’you want?” one growled.
“We’re here to speak with Harask. Is he here?”
The two men looked at each other then stepped back from the door. “He’s here. Come in.”
The three companions entered. Their sullen guides led them through the leaning stacks of cargo to a clear space near the back of the storehouse, where a small crowd of dirty humans and half-orcs lounged on rough-hewn benches or sat on old barrels. The ruffians glared at the three of them suspiciously. In the middle of the room stood a ham-fisted, round-bodied, black-bearded man who wore an ill-fitting jerkin of leather studded with steel rivets.
“Well, well,” the fat man rumbled. His voice carried the thick, throaty accent of Damara or Vaasa. “A human, a halfling, and a devilkin walk into a room. I’m waiting for the rest of the joke.”
“Are you Harask?” Hamil asked. “We may have a business proposition for you.”
Harask spread his hands. “I am listening.”
Geran spoke next. “We’re looking for a ship that sails under a black banner-a banner with a crossed crescent moon-and-cut-lass design. Have you ever seen such a ship or such a banner?”
“I might have,” Harask answered. “What’s it to you?”
“We’ll pay well for news of her whereabouts,” Geran answered.
“Ah, so you are a man of means,” Harask observed. His eyes darted to the ruffians lounging behind Geran. Geran whirled and reached for his sword, just in time. Without a word the smugglers waiting in the storehouse threw themselves at the three companions, producing knives and cudgels hidden under their cloaks and tunics. For a furious instant, Geran feared that they might be overwhelmed. He dodged back from a knife slash, parried the fall of a club with his blade then slashed the truncheon out of his enemy’s hand with a cut that also removed two fingers. Behind him, Hamil put a man on the floor with a cut to the hamstring then threw himself at the shins of another ruffian to send him crashing to the floor. Geran knocked that one unconscious with a kick to the face while he was on the ground. Then a brilliant, blue flare seared the room, and lightning crackled across the space. Several of the ruffians shrieked and fell convulsing. As quickly as it had started, the brief assault fell to pieces.
Sarth held up his rod that was glowing with a dangerous blue light. “I do not care to be accosted by the likes of you!” he snarled. The ruffians still on their feet stared at him then bolted for the door.
Geran turned back to Harask and found the fellow halfway out a small, concealed door. He lunged after him and dragged him back into the room, throwing him into his seat. Then he tapped his sword point on the man’s chest. “Now where were you going?” he asked.
The fat man glared at him. “You’ll be sorry for this,” he said. “I have powerful friends in this city! They’ll see to you soon enough.”
“I don’t much care about your friends,” Geran replied. He reached down and seized Harask by the collar, giving him a good shake. “Now tell me, what do you know about the Black Moon?”
“To the Nine Hells with you!”
Geran was out of patience. Some of the ruffians might already be on their way to summon more help or even find the local Watch, and he had no particular desire to explain himself to the lawkeepers in Mulmaster. He cracked the flat of his blade across Harask’s left ear, a stinging blow that elicited a howl of pain and raised a bright welt on the side of Harask’s face. “Mind your manners,” he said. “Now, tell me: Have you seen a ship with that banner? Where did you see her?”
“Zhentil Keep,” the man replied. “Damn it all, she was in Zhentil Keep! Now leave me be!”
“You’re lying. No one goes to Zhentil Keep. It’s a monster-haunted ruin.”
“Cyric take my tongue if I am lying!” the man snarled. “Outlaws and smugglers from the cities nearby hide in the ruins along the Tesh. No one troubles them, and there’s always a ship or two there looking for a few hands.”
The swordmage narrowed his eyes, studying Harask, who sat glaring at him with a hand clapped up against his ear. If he’d been in the ruffian’s place, Zhentil Keep was exactly the place he might have told his interrogator to go to. The ruins happened to lie all the way at the other end of the Moonsea, and they were infested with monsters. But Zhentil Keep was about the only place in the western Moonsea that he hadn’t looked already. Merchant ships had no reason to go any farther west than Hillsfar and Phlan, so he’d turned Seadrake back to the east without working his way another hundred miles into the prevailing wind to search deserted coasts and ruined cities. The prospects for a pirate lair in the ruins seemed almost as dim as those for a base in the Galennar … but Geran had heard stories that brigands and such outlaws occasionally laired in Zhentil Keep. It was at least plausible that pirate ships might lurk there too.
I believe he’s telling the truth, Hamil said to him.
Geran knew that the talent of the ghostwise for speaking mind-to-mind didn’t allow Hamil to read the thoughts of others, but it did mean that the halfling had a better sense for truthfulness than most. I think so too, he answered Hamil. To Harask he said, “If I find that you’ve lied to me, I will come back for you.” He jerked his head toward Sarth. “My friend the sorcerer here will invert you with his magic. You’ll walk on your tongue and carry your eyes on your arse, so you’d better hope that we find what we’re looking for in Zhentil Keep.”
Sarth gave Geran a startled look, but Harask didn’t see it; he was cringing. “I’ve told you what I know!” he said.
The swordmage looked at his companions and nodded toward the door. They filed into the fogbound street outside. None of the men who’d fled the storehouse were in the vicinity; Sarth’s magic had well and truly put them to flight.
“So it’s off to Zhentil Keep, then?” Hamil asked in a low voice.
“So it seems,” Geran answered. A shrill whistle rang through the night, piercing the fog. Apparently some of the ruffians had run straight for the Watch to report dangerous sorcery on the loose. Geran winced then exchanged looks with Sarth and Hamil. “Let’s be on our way. I think we’ve worn out our welcome in Mulmaster.”
SIX
29 Eleint, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)
A foul night,” Sergen Hulmaster muttered. From the gate of the Five Crown Coster’s tradeyard, he frowned at the murk gathering around the streetlamps outside. He detested the evening fog of Melvaunt. On days when the brisk western wind failed, the stink of the city’s smelters and cookfires and sewers covered the town like a great foul blanket. He’d been careful to purchase a villa that overlooked the city from the heights of the headland west of the harbor-a neighborhood that was distinctly upwind of the town itself, at least most of the time-but his storehouses were located in the heart of the commercial districts, and it seemed that if the air started to grow still and foul, it always started here.
“Is everything well, m’lord?” asked his chief armsman Kerth. The sellsword hovered close by Sergen. Magical tattoos covered the man’s brow, part of the elaborate enchantments that made him absolutely incapable of turning against his master. The precaution had cost Sergen a fortune, but he had too many enemies to worry about the loyalty of his bodyguards. They were well compensated for agreeing to undergo the necessary rituals.