"Well, if you're collecting women to come watch you swat Vangerdahast," the High Lady of Arabel spoke up, "I insist on coming along too. I don't want to miss seeing Old Haughty get his-and someone besides magic-crazed wizards should be present, to witness fairly and to report back to the Crown."
Alusair nodded. "Well said, Mreen. Old Mage?"
Elminster smiled. "If Myrmeen Lhal desires to come along, then so she shall, in all the safety I can provide."
Abruptly, his seat was empty. He, Caladnei, and Myrmeen were simply gone from the room.
Crown Princess Alusair Nacacia Obarskyr gaped at their empty seats then sprang to her feet, snatching up her scabbarded sword, and snarled, "Elminster? Caladnei?"
There was no answer but faint birdsong from outside. The Steel Regent threw back her head and let her fury pour out in a wordless roar. No chance to privately confer with Cala or Mreen, no chance for them to prepare gear or make arrangements! The scheming old bastard!
She smashed the nearest door open and strode out into the forest, striding hard. Her scabbard whirled back in her wake, almost slapping handsome young Lord Malask Huntinghorn across the face. He blinked, came out of his doorguard's stance, and started after the Crown Princess.
Ducking around wildly waving branches and swaying saplings, he reached a dense thicket in time to see Alusair hiss out a stream of curses he was glad he couldn't quite catch and reduce a defenseless sapling to kindling with a few furious slashes of her sword.
Throwing back her head to shake the hair out of her eyes, she strode purposefully to the next sapling. Malask Huntinghorn swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and performed the bravest act of his young life, thus far … perhaps his last brave act ever.
"Princess," he said firmly, striding forward to catch at her swor-darm, "that tree deserves to live, just as you or I do. The living green heart of the realm, as Lord Alaphondar often reminds us, is its trees. I don't think you should-"
Princess Alusair spun around far more swiftly than she'd ever done when making love to him-faster than any battle-knight of the realm he'd ever seen-and pounced on the scion of House Huntinghorn, flinging her blade away to punch, kick, and claw.
Malask found himself on his back, winded and with a fierce pain in his shoulder where he'd fetched up against a tree-root-and even sharper pains erupting in his gut and ribs as the Regent of Cormyr slammed her fists home, snarling and shouting in fury.
He was suddenly very glad indeed that he'd donned full forest-leathers, codpiece in particular, to take his turn at guard-as knees and knife-edged hands thrust home, slaps made his ears ring and his face burn, and the woman he was sworn to defend thrust her nose almost into his eye and shouted, "Defend yourself, you great rothe, damn you! Fight, Malask!"
"M-my Queen, I-"
"I'm not your damn queen or anyone's queen, Lord Lummox! I'm a warrior who feels great need of a sparring partner, right now! Hit me, you great lump of cowering man-flesh!"
Malask swallowed, closed his eyes against a punch that almost closed one of them for him, and reluctantly thrust one arm up and out. She swatted it aside, bruisingly, and belted him across the nose.
"Aaargh!" he roared, eyes streaming as the pain stung him into trying to twist and roll out from under her. "Gods, you've probably broken it, Luse! I'll look like some sort of country straw-butt lout for the rest of my life!" He shielded his dripping nose with one hand, wincing and blinded by tears.
"Well, why not? You are a country straw-butt lout!"
With a roar, Malask Huntinghorn forgot all about duty, princesses, treason, royal persons, and how soft and ardent this particular royal person had felt on occasion-and lashed out with a roundhouse swing that had all of his pain and anger behind it.
There was a grunt, a sudden loss of weight atop his hip, and silence.
He blinked, swallowed, and knuckled his eyes feverishly to clear them. "Luse? Luse?"
"That's more like it," she snarled into his ear, as both of her fists struck home, low in his ribs, driving the wind right out of him. Groaning and flailing out, he punched, clawed, and punched again-and somehow found himself staggering to his feet, under a welter of blows, tearing a fluffy nightrobe clean off the Crown Princess of the realm as he spun her off-balance so as to plant a solid blow to her breast that sent her over backward to the ground, doubled up and spitting curses.
Glowering, he strode toward her, fists balled. She launched herself up and into his gut, headfirst, hurling him backward.
He greeted the ground with a crash, a snapping of ferns and dry dead branches, and a Crown Princess of the realm on his pelvis, punching at him. Malask got in an uppercut that snapped Alusair's jaw up and back, and she collapsed onto him with a groan, rocking back and forth.
"Oh, my jaw aches," she muttered, as she crawled up the body of her battered guard, both of them wincing at their bruises, and kissed him.
"Gods above, Luse," he whispered, "is this one more way of hurting me? My nose . . ."
"I'll help you forget your nose," she said huskily, finding and tugging at his laces. Malask Huntinghorn groaned and shook his head. Oh, Alusair. Ah, fortunate Cormyr . . . and lucky me, too.
Ten
Beware all schemes, O king, for such beasts have a way of shedding blood on the floors of this kingdom like poured-out sacks of rubies.
Rhauligan was barely out of the turret when Narnra cast a glance back over her shoulder and saw him.
She gave him a glare, ran on a few paces, stopped, peered off to the left where the balconies and turrets of Haelithtorntowers jutted closest to the wall-then took a few racing steps and launched herself between the leaf-cloaked boughs of the great trees of the mansion gardens, in a daring leap that . . .
. . . took her safely to a clinging landing on the head of a brooding gargoyle, chin in hand, holding up one corner of a balcony.
Rhauligan hoped it was rock-solid carved stone and not of one those stonelike monsters that would suddenly move to bite and claw-probably when she was safely gone, but he was trying to land in the same spot.
Keeping his eyes on her to make sure she set no traps behind, Rhauligan trotted along the wall, looking for the right place to make his running jump.
He sighed, once.
Caladnei and Narnra, I'm keeping a tally here. And if the gods grant me more luck than any man in the kingdom has enjoyed for the last century or so, I just might live to collect it.
Rhauligan took his last two running steps with the wind in his face and launched himself into the air. The balcony was enough lower than the top of the wall that he'd been able to clearly see through the windows of the room it opened into. No one was moving therein. He'd paced off the run calmly enough, and now he'd just have to hope he'd been . . .
. . . right. He landed hard, numbing his elbows on the lichen-splotched old gargoyle and losing a lot of breath-but his first surge of angry strength took him safely up and over the intricately carved stone rail onto a balcony that seemed far too spattered with bird dung to belong to a house that held caring servants. The Harper took but an instant to safely plant his feet ere he looked up.
The long legs and trim behind of Narnra Shalace were just vanishing through an open window, high above.