But a rash night led to an accident led to Mira’s mother deciding she wanted to be Mira’s mother, led to Tam realizing he didn’t want to cut out all entanglements.
“Something’s bothering you,” Viridi had noted almost immediately. And he’d denied it and denied it and denied it-but once the sending came, he admitted everything.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “I knew the rules. I know why they’re there.” He shook his head. “I’m no one’s father.”
Viridi sighed in that way she had, that said he was so painfully young and if she remembered feeling as lost and unsure, she knew better than to try and explain it. She’d pointed out the fastest horse to him and told him not to come back to her compound in Athkatla for a month.
“At least,” she said. “But once you’ve sorted yourself out, I expect you to return.”
Near deepnight, he’d had to stop and change horses again, and he made his vespers to Selune, going through the prayers as carefully and quickly as he could, as if a single misspoken word would make everything fall apart. But when he’d finished, he’d sat there, alone in the grove. Listening to the sound of his horse clipping the spring grass. Afraid to move.
Please, he prayed, let it look a little like me.
He trusted Laeyla-the babe was his-but somewhere in the frightened center of his heart, he was sure she would be only Laeyla’s. She would have her mother’s eyes and nose and chin and cheeks, her mother’s barking laugh and her mother’s calculating mind. Her pointed feet, her tapered fingers, and nothing at all of Tam Zawad.
Please, he prayed, because it seemed as if it would make everything turn out all right.
Please, and I will never ask for another selfish thing again.
Please.
And the moon goddess’s regard fell fully on him.
For a moment, it felt as if there was no Tam, no Laeyla, no babe. There was no grove or horse or time or place-nothing except the silvery light and a sureness he had never felt in himself. Instead of his shut eyelids, he saw a face of Selune, a kind-faced elf woman with silvery hair. She smiled gently at him.
Go. The thought might have been his, and it might have been the voice of the god, and it might have been both. Go. Because this is happening whether you’re ready or not. Go. Because you will be more ready by the moment and sitting here won’t change that. Go. Because you’ll quickly realize now that you have a daughter that there are a thousand more prayers in you that you would have called selfish-for her safety, for yours, for her happiness, for yours. Go.
Because she’d already been born and she already had his eyes.
On the rooftop, Tam sighed and sat up. He climbed back into the room he was keeping by the window and changed into a suit of dark grays and blacks, perfect for blending into the shadows. He took his chain and the haversack with his lockpicks and a variety of deterrents in case he was cornered. Secured the daggers in his boot and belt. Pinned the holy symbol to his chest where he could reach it easily. Cast a quick healing on his achy knee. Ready.
He slid by rope out the window into the alley below. And found himself facing a waiting Mira. Despite himself, he startled.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You’re supposed to be with the chest.”
“There’s a problem,” Mira said. “Rhand knows you’re going to try and steal it. He pulled me aside and made some … insinuations.”
“Insinuations?”
“His guards are all shadar-kai,” she admitted. “Loyal shadar-kai. And bored, too.”
Without warning, Tam’s thoughts flitted back to that night in the Akanamere, to the shadar-kai and their brutal blades and the sheer, horrible range of sounds a tortured body could be made to make. He shut his eyes. “Shar and hrast.”
Mira hesitated. “Are you going to let it go?”
“How can I do that?” he demanded. “If you’re right, and this page is the key to untold dangers? We don’t have a choice-we have to get it free.” He ran a hand over his beard. “But out of a nest of shadar-kai.”
She nodded. “But I’ve had a thought,” she said. “If you try and steal it beforehand, they’ll be ready for you. If you wait …”
“For what? For the middle of the revel? For a score of innocents to screen me? No, many thanks.”
“For a moment during which no one thinks you’d be mad enough to strike,” Mira said. “Rhand thinks there are other players-those Zhentarim.”
Tam shook his head. “And I should pretend to be one?”
“I think they may return,” Mira said. “We just have to watch and wait.”
“It’s too risky,” Tam said. “What if they don’t come?”
Mira pursed her lips. “Then we are exactly where we are now-debating the merits of rolling against Beshaba with a score of shadar-kai.” She took him by the arm. “But as it stands, I did get you invited to the revel. So we’ll be able to decide in the moment which die we ought to throw.”
I do not want to be here, Farideh thought, looking up at the brown stone manse looming just behind a pair of ivory-spangled gates.
If you don’t do this, a little voice replied, then Lorcan is doomed.
I don’t want to be here.
If you don’t do this, then Lorcan is doomed.
The two thoughts chased each other into a maelstrom of competing worries, each as forceful as the other, each as heavy. I do not want to be here. If you don’t do this, then Lorcan is doomed. Each had all of her attention, all of her heart tangled in them. They twisted together, fighting to shove the other out. It squeezed the breath from her lungs.
It took all her concentration just to get herself into the too-short green gown Dahl had found her and out the door.
“If your hem had to be so short,” Havilar said, “he could have at least found you slippers. Everyone can see your boots.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should care a little.” Havilar’s borrowed gown was murky blue and too loose in the bodice. She’d pinned it haphazardly snugger, and left her unbraided hair hanging in loose waves. “How often do we get to go to a revel in dresses?”
“I don’t know,” Farideh said, concentrating on the fear her dream of Lorcan left with her so she wouldn’t think of what lay inside the manor doors. “I hope not too often.”
“Don’t even say that! Even if your dress is ugly … Wait, are you wearing your armor underneath?”
Farideh wrapped her arms around her chest. “The dress was too big. And you took all the pins.” And the brigandine gave her an extra layer between herself and anyone else-a small difference, but she would take anything she could get. Especially when she couldn’t be sure of her promised guards.
Ahead of them, Dahl pressed forward, as if Farideh’s purpose were already served. The idea of perhaps turning around, going back to the inn and letting him storm Adolican Rhand’s manor on his own kept surfacing in Farideh’s thoughts. But he’d never hold up his end of the deal if she didn’t make certain to get him inside.
Which meant she had to go inside too.
“Well at least it makes your figure look better.” Havilar said, which had Farideh wishing for her new cloak. Brin came up behind them. A new suit of a cream-colored fabric hung off Brin’s shoulders a little loose-when Havilar had insisted Brin come too, Dahl had pointed out Brin dressed like someone’s apprentice playing truant; at which point Brin had stormed off and reappeared with a new-bought outfit that he hadn’t had time to have tailored.