Ed Greenwood
ELMINSTER'S DAUGHTER
Sons, sons—always you boast of what your tall sons will do, with their sharp new wits and sharper new swords! Remember, O Prince, that you have also daughters! You're not the first man, great or low, to forget the shes he's sired, but mark this wisdom, Lord (not mine, but from the pen of a loremaster who was dust before dragons were ever driven from this land): The sages who turn the pages of history have a word for men who overlook their daughters . . . and that word is "fools."
Astramas Revendimar,
Court Sage of Cormyr
Letters To A Man To Be King
Year of the Smiling Flame
One
A MURDEROUS MEETING OF MERCHANTS
A wizard, a merchant, a lord among merchants—I see no shortage of fools here.
The character Turst Sharptongue in Scene the First
of the play Windbag of Waterdeep
by Tholdomor "the Wise" Rammarask
first performed in the Year of the Harp
It was a moonfleet night, the silvery Orb of Selune scudding amid racing tatters of glowing cloud high above the proud spires of Waterdeep. Wizards in their towers and grim guards on battlements alike stared up and shivered, each thinking how small he was against the uncaring, speeding fire of the gods.
Far fewer merchants bothered to lift their gazes above the coins and goods—or softer temptations—under their hands at that hour, for such is the way of merchants. Hundreds were snoring, exhausted by the rigors of the day, but many were still awake and embracing—even if the hands of most of them were wrapped only around swiftly emptying tankards.
There were no tankards, no embraces, and no soft temptations in a certain shuttered upper room overlooking Jembril Street in Trades Ward. Instead, it held a cold, bare minimum of furniture—a table and six high-backed chairs—and an even colder company of men.
Six merchants sat in those chairs on this chill night in the early spring of the Year of Rogue Dragons, staring stonily at each other. The glittering glances of five of them suggested that the health of the sixth man, who sat alone at one end of the table, would not continue to flourish for more than a few breaths longer had it not been for the presence of the two impassive bodyguards who stood watchfully by his chair, cocked and loaded hand-crossbows held ready and free hands hovering near sword-hilts.
That sixth man said something, slowly and bitingly.
Outside, in the night, a shadow moved. An unseen witness to the merchants' meeting leaned closer to the only gap in the shutters across the windows of that upper room. Clinging head-downward to the carved stone harpy roof-truss nearest to the shutter, the shadow sacrificed as much balance as she dared, and strained to hear. Her slender arms were already quivering in the struggle to keep herself from plunging to the dark, cobbled street below.
"There are really no more excuses left to you, sirs," the man who sat apart told the others, smirking. "I will have my coins this night—or the deeds to your shops."
"But—" one of the men burst out, and then bit off whatever else he'd been going to say and looked helplessly down at the bare table before him, face dark with anger.
"So you'll ruin us, Caethur?" the next man man asked, his voice trembling. "You'd rather turn us out onto the streets than bleed us for another season? When you could set your hook at a higher rate, grant us more time, and keep us in debt forever, paying you all our days and yielding you far more coin than our stones are worth?"
Secure in the strength of the two murderous bodyguards at his back, Caethur leaned forward with a widening—and not very nice—smile on his face and replied triumphantly, "Yes."
He leaned back in his chair, very much at his ease, steepled his hands, and murmured over the resulting line of fingertips, "It will give me great pleasure, Hammuras, to ruin you. And you too, Nael. And especially you, Kamburan."
He moved his eyes in his motionless, smiling face to the other pair of seated merchants and added with a sigh, "Yet it almost pains me to visit the same fate upon you two gentlesirs. Why, I'd almost be inclined to give you that extra season Hammuras speaks of, if, say, something happened to still Kamburan's oversharp tongue forever. Why—"
One of that last pair of merchants slapped his hand down on the table. Wo, Caethur. You'll not turn us to savaging each other whilst you gloat. We'll sink or stand together."
The other merchant of the two nodded balefully.
Caethur gave them both a brittle smile, wiggling his ring-bedecked fingers so the gem-studded gold bands adorning them flashed in the lamplight like glasses of the new vintage Waterd-havian nobles had dubbed "sparkling stars," and said airily, "Well, then, we've come to that moment, sirs, when the wagging of tongues must give way to making good, one way or another. Kamburan, why don't you begin?"
Reluctantly, the white-bearded merchant reached a hand into the breast of his flame-silk overtunic and drew forth—slowly and carefully, as two crossbows lifted warningly—a glossy-polished wooden coffer only a shade larger than his palm. Wordlessly he flipped it open, displaying the frozen fire of the line of gems within for all to see. Seven beljurils, sea-green and shimmering, their flash-fires building.
Kamburan set the coffer gently on the table and slid it toward Caethur.
Halfway to the moneylender it stopped. Caethur lifted a finger, and one of his guards stepped smoothly forward to close the coffer and slide it the rest of the way down the table. The moneylender made no move to touch it.
"We should have gone to Mirt," Hammuras muttered. Caethur gave the spice dealer a shark-like grin. "Life is filled with 'should-haves,' isn't it, Hammuras? I should have chosen to deal with more astute and harder-working tradesmen and never come to this regrettable salvaging of scraps from the wrack of what should have been five flourishing businesses."
"None of that!" Nael snarled. "You know as well as the rest of us that times have been hard! The beasts from the sea, a season's shipping shattered, wars in Amn and Tethyr and the fall in trade with both those lands. . . ."
Caethur spread his hands and lifted his eyebrows at the same time, to ask mildly, "And did not every merchant of Waterdeep face these troubles? Yet—behold—they're not all here, sitting around this table. Only you five." Turning his gaze to Hammuras, he held out a beckoning hand.
Grimly, the spice merchant produced a small coffer of his own, displayed the rubies it held, and slid it along the table.
It stopped within reach of the moneylender, but Caethur made no move to take it up. Instead, he turned his expectant gaze to Nael. Who sat as still as stone and as pale as snow-marble. "Well?" Caethur asked softly, into a silence that was suddenly very deep and yet as singingly tight as a drawn bowstring.
Nael swallowed, lifted his chin, swallowed again, then said, "I've brought neither gems nor my deed here with me, but—"
Without waiting for a signal, one of the crossbowmen fired, and Aldurl Nael's left eye was suddenly a bloody profusion of sprouting wood and flight-feathers. The brass-merchant reeled in his seat, head flopping back and mouth gaping, and did not move again. Crimson rivulets of blood spilled from his mouth, seeking the floor.
"—but how unfortunate," Caethur said mildly, finishing Nael's sentence for him. "For Nael, and for all of you. After all, we can't have any witnesses to such wanton butchery, can we?"