Nothing would ruin her discovery.
Tarchamus the Unyielding. A figure so vague and difficult to pin down that most insisted he was only a legend, or some error of translation-several arcanists of Old Netheril spliced together in the intervening centuries like one of those wizards’ terrifying creations. It was said he’d crafted a spell so powerful, it burned the floating city of Tenish right out of the air, stone and citizens and all. It was said he had done so while spurning the mythallars, the concentrations of magic that the Netherese arcanists had perfected. If the fragment led to the lost enclave-or tomb or hoard or even midden heap-of Tarchamus the Unyielding, Mira thought, she could make her name-her own name-as a historian. She could get out from under petty patrons and other people’s conflicts.
She could spend a whole lifetime studying the secrets of Tarchamus.
Mira sighed, and imagined what Tam would say. “Do you really want to study the secrets of someone who destroyed whole cities?” Fury squeezed at her chest and throat even at that imagined comment. He would, he would say something exactly like that-he knew best, after all. Her life was precisely like his, wasn’t it?
Enough, she told herself, with another great sigh. At least her father was predictable. She could manage this.
She stepped into the alleyway and withdrew from the pouch around her neck, one of the small glass eggs she carried there. Looking around to be sure she hadn’t been followed, she shook the egg and sent a swirl of white smoke spinning through the center. She smashed it against the wall.
“Plans changed,” she said quickly, as the smoke eddied over the brickwork. “We’ll need supplies in Everlund. Extra hands too. Be there quicker than expected. Should have location deciphered before you arrive.” She hesitated. “Harpers involved.”
The smoke whirled around one more time before catching a breeze and streaking eastward, and Mira heard the faint echo of her words hissing along with it. She brushed the broken glass off the edges of the brick, wondering if she should have mentioned that the Harper involved was her storied father and not the untrained young hirelings they were promised.
No, she thought, stepping from the alley. Maspero might well have called off the whole endeavor. And she could manage her father.
She was within sight of the inn when a pair of wiry men stepped into her path. Mira stopped and looked the two of them over, hands resting on the hilts of her knives. “May I help you?” she said dryly.
“Master Rhand would like to speak with you,” the one on the left said, jerking his head toward a carriage waiting across the road. “At once.”
Mira peered at him for a long moment, long enough so that the man started to tense. There was something about his face. Something … off. A disguise, she decided. Interesting. She smiled, “Lead on.”
The man in the carriage did not descend, but beckoned her into the plush, dark space. He watched her settle with piercing eyes.
“You are Goodman Chansom’s guard, yes?” he said, both hands resting on the silver knob of a cane. “The one who killed those thieves.”
“I am. Are you looking for a guard?”
“No,” he said. “I’m looking to … clarify some things. Does your Goodman Chansom know you have more than one allegiance?”
Mira kept smiling and shook her head. “He knows so long as he’s paying me, my allegiances are all his.”
“Truly?” Master Rhand smiled back at her and she found herself wishing he wouldn’t. “I find myself unconvinced. Your thieves were Zhentarim, my sources say. Cyricist Zhentarim. And so I must ask how it is that the Black Network has found out about my little treasure. How they have come to decide it’s dear enough to go toe-to-toe with such a pair as was guarding it.”
Mira knew none of her surprise would show-not even for Master Rhand. She was too practiced for that. “My, Master Rhand, your sources are quick. But my father’s presence was a happy accident. As for me, you can well imagine the likes of the Zhentarim … they would be inclined to underestimate a mere guard.”
He chuckled. “As the bodies prove, yes? Convenient, that. I suppose you’ll tell me I’m being overcautious. Paranoid.”
She gave him a patient look. “My livelihood, goodsir, is based entirely on meeting a need for caution. I would never gainsay it. But in this case, it seems I cannot do much for you but offer my unneeded services and assure you, on my word, I had nothing to do with the thieves.”
“I suppose that’s all I can ask for,” Master Rhand said. She started to excuse herself. “But,” he added, “should you know anyone who might have had something to do with those thieves-who might have anything to do with future thieves, future attempts to take the artifacts-let me give you a word of caution. To pass along.”
Rhand beckoned the guard who’d stared down Mira earlier to the carriage door. He pulled an amulet from inside his robes and held it up near the man’s face. The mask of magic that had obscured the man’s face shivered and dissolved. He looked over at Mira with cold, black eyes and a wicked sneer, twisted by a row of rings in his lips chained to larger rings in the cords of his neck.
It took a great deal more effort to master her surprise this time. “Your guards are shadar-kai,” she said, naming it to nail it down, to make the fact more palatable. It didn’t work.
Rhand lowered the amulet, and the man’s disguise returned. “Mortals born infused with the promise and peril of shadow-isn’t that what they say? So poetic. I assure you, though, anyone who crosses me will not enjoy the sorts of things they find poetry in.”
“So I’ve heard.” Mira didn’t have to have fought shadar-kai to know they’d relish every strike they took, shocked by the pain away from fading into the Shadowfell. Gods knew what he sent them to do to sate that need when people weren’t stealing his things. She thought back to her father’s note, his half-cobbled plan. Piss and hrast. “I see why you say you don’t need guards,” she said as pleasantly as she could.
Master Rhand leaned forward, the cane in his hands more of a staff, a bludgeon perhaps. “You’ll be sure, I trust, to let anyone who might require such information know that Garek isn’t alone. That I’m well protected, and-if need be-that my … betters are keen to keep hold of this pair of artifacts.”
He didn’t have to say Shade. With shadar-kai guards he could mean no one else. Mira nodded, shaken-let him see you’re shaken, she thought, he wants you shaken-and scrambling for a new plan.
Leaving the artifacts-and the possible treasures of Tarchamus-to Rhand and Shade was not an option, not in her father’s eyes and not in Maspero’s. She’d sold them both on the promise of precious history and of thwarting Shade: they’d both be prepared to deal with the pressures of Adolican Rhand. But to get the page and stone in the first place … that would require far more than her father’s quick thinking and lockpicks. She needed time to reconsider her options.
“I’ll do what I can,” she said as she stepped from the carriage.
The next day, Farideh slipped out after an early morningfeast and returned to the inn just before midday, footsore and frustrated, with no better idea of where she could learn the rituals she needed. Waterdeep seemed to grow daily, sprouting all manner of shops which sold rituals to copy for more coin than she had, and offered to buy the few things she owned for far less than they were worth. But at least she was one tattered cloak richer. Mehen wouldn’t be able to scold her over that.
She refolded it nervously as she crossed the empty taproom and approached the innkeeper. “Have there been any messages?” she asked. “Anything from a Mehen?” And she braced for the inevitable brief chuckle and “Not today,” only slowing as she passed him.