Now, of course, he was beyond questioning. Marlel looked around his wagon of clanking pots and smiled. The fat merchant had terrible taste in clothes-but oh, the food and wine the man enjoyed! None of your usual overbrewed thrusk and handfuls of stale nuts but pickled rock beetles from the Tashalar, spiced firestorm wine from Elturel, and keg after keg of roast bustard marinated in zzar!
'Twas a good thing Waterdeep wasn't all that far off, or Olimer's wardrobe of voluminous robes would soon be all Marlel would be able to fit into!
There was just time for a skewer of fried arnhake and jellied eel ere he tied the bell-cords across the wagon-flaps and took his rest for the night. Being searched was such hungry work.
"Lady," said the softly menacing voice behind the knife that gleamed in front of her throat, "am I glad to see you!"
"Not half so much," Sharantyr replied with a smile, seizing the thief's wrist and jerking hard down and toward her, so that his deadly blade plunged hilt-deep into her breast-without sound or resistance, as if she was a ghost, or a woman made of smoke-and slipping a noose of her stonemaiden around his neck, "as I am gladdened, sirrah, to see you".
Startled eyes stared at her, eyes bulged, and lingers clawed at the tightening cord. A knee shot up desperately between her legs to strike her armored codpiece with numbing force. Numbing for the thief, that is. A loop of her cord captured his knife-wrist even more tightly than it held his throat, and after a moment of frenzied and futile struggle, he sagged limply in her grasp. He was helpless, and they both knew it.
"My delight is so sharp and swift, good sir," the lady ranger continued sweetly, "because you're going to take me to see Belgon Bradraskor-or the Master of the Shadows, if you prefer his, ah, professional title."
The thief s pleading eyes managed to convey even deeper desperation, and he clawed and wrenched at her arms in vain. This shapely woman was much stronger than she looked… and much stronger than he was.
Sharantyr gave him another, almost impish smile and tweaked the cord she was holding to remind him wordlessly that she knew just how much air he was getting and could cut off his supply-and his life with it-at any time.
"I don't want to hurt you," she told the strangling man, "and I don't want to harm Belgon. In fact, if you give him my name, I believe he'll be pleased indeed to see me. Now, can you take me to him, or are you… expendable?"
By a swift and rising series of panting sobs and nods the thief managed to convey his ability and deeply earnest willingness to guide this woman, whom blades couldn't touch, anywhere she pleased, this very moment, and to any number of Masters of Shadows she might care to see.
Sharantyr smiled still more broadly and did something to his wrist that made his fingers burn and his knife clatter to the ground. "Remember," she purred, making it clink on the cobblestones with the toe of her boot, "that I could have slain you and did not. I want no further unpleasantness between us. Consider me a mistake who decided to be merciful to you."
He nodded, eyes very wide, and she slipped around behind him like a graceful ghost and tightened the stonemaiden around his throat in a slip-knot, so that it made a leash. She slipped another of its cords around one of his legs below the knee and let it hang loose. If he tried to run, it could be pulled tight to trip him in an instant.
"My name is Tessaril Winter," she purred. "What's yours?"
"Ta-Taber, 1-lady."
The cord around his neck tightened suddenly, leaving him with no air at all. He sobbed, reeled as the night grew darker around him… then the cord loosened, and he could breathe again.
"No, no," that gentle voice said, deep with sadness and disappointment, "I want your real name."
"B-Besmer, lady."
"Lady-?"The cord twitched, warningly.
"Lady Winter!" he said hastily. "Lady Tessaril Winter."
"That's much better, Besmer," the lady behind him said approvingly. "We both grow older, though, and so doth the night-a night I could be spending with my friend Belgon."
"Y-yes?"
"Guide me," she breathed into his ear, and the thief shivered, swallowed, then started to walk, slowly and carefully, down the alley-only to be brought to choking heel.
"No," the purring voice of the ghost-lady said into his ear, "take me another way. I don't fancy this particular alley."
Slowly and very carefully, Besmer turned around, his captor turning with him like a soft-footed shadow, and asked in a tremulous voice, "Did you want to go by Rat Stair, Lady Winter, or Baluth's Hole-or do you know some other way?"
"The Hole, I think," Sharantyr told him pleasantly. "Rat Stair reminds me of all the rats I've eaten, some of them alive and uncooked, and almost all of them without sauce."
The thief caught in her cords shivered again, and started to walk very slowly and carefully across Scornubel.
Seeing Folk Who Are Hard To Get To See
When dealing with trade-rivals or slaughtering ruling dynasties, start at the top. "Tis more dangerous, but a lot more entertaining for bystanders-and will earn you an enviable reputation. Remember: Men stand back to gaze at those they admire but leap forward to aid those they respect (or, to use a more blunt word, those they fear).
Brathmur Engelstone, Sage of Saerloon
One Trail Chosen: A Path Through Life
Year of the Highmantle wS-she wants to see the Master," Besmer quavered to the man who'd stepped suddenly into their path with a drawn sword in his hand, in this narrowest of dark and dripping passages. Most of Scornubel was dusty and dry, above and below ground, but this underway ran very deep, doubtless skirting an underground spring. Sharantyr had begun to think her unwilling guide just might be leading her on a needlessly extended tour of Scornubel's darker ways-but the smell of fear was strong on him, and he seemed almost as terrified of the man now standing in front of him as of the lady behind who could strangle him in a moment or on a whim.
The sentinel said nothing and evidently needed no light to see. His response to Besmer's words was to thrust his blade, lightning-swift, under the thief's arm-straight into the woman standing behind him, who presumably held the other end of the strangling-cord that was around Besmer's throat.
Into and through her it went, as if she was made of smoke. The sentinel uttered a startled grunt and slashed about in her with his steel, just to make sure, but he might have been cleaving empty air.
"When you're finished," Sharantyr told him pleasantly, "I'd like to see Belgon. Perhaps I'll have time to play at blades with you later."
The man with the sword frowned at her over Besmer's shoulder, then asked, in a voice rough with disuse, "You know him?"
"For an answer to that, why don't you give him my name and see his reaction?"
"And what," that rough voice asked heavily, "might that name be?"
The cord twitched around Besmer's neck, and he squeaked hastily, "Winter! The Lady Tessaril Winter!"
The man gave the thief a hard look and the woman behind him an even harder one. Then he stepped back into the side-passage he'd erupted from. Behind he left the flat words, "Wait here-or die."
"Well, Besmer," Sharantyr said brightly, "we've been left with a choice. Would you prefer to tarry? Or choose death?"