When he was alone, Daerovus Tallmantle spoke to the empty air. "You heard, I expect."
A figure stepped into view from nowhere and crossed the room. The train of her fine crimson cloak was last to appear from the empty air.
She had gray hair to match the Watch Warden, but hers was a frizzy mass gathered into a hasty tail at the back of her neck.
Her spectacles rode low on her narrow nose, held in place by a sharp upturn at its end.
"Will you want me to contact Morleth?" his assistant asked.
No one in the Watch or the Guard knew that the Warden employed the small woman as his spell guatd. Tesleena had been with him for years. She never seemed to mind staying in the shadows while he conducted the affairs of his post.
"Yes. See if the girl has made contact," Daerovus instructed. "If she has, we'll have to move carefully. We don't want to lose her. If all goes well-and I expect nothing less-she'll be brought in safely. I want this Cerest Elenithil summoned as well. Then we can determine guilt and innocence."
"And if Ruen Morleth is forced to aid us in this, you'll have the opportunity for a clear test of his loyalty," Tesleena pointed out.
"He will honor his end of the agreement," the Warden said, "or he knows we will hunt him down. But," he conceded, "I would just as soon know for certain that our contact in Mistshore is secure."
"Then I will leave you." The gray haired woman bowed briefly and vanished into the invisible world all wizards seemed to gravitate to.
Daerovus sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Where are you tonight, Morleth?" he said aloud, and chuckled. "You have no idea what interesting encounters you have in your future."
CHAPTER 5
Icelin had seen jaw-dropping wonders throughout her youth in the City of Splendors, and just as many sights that had convinced her of the worthlessness of some folk. She had never seen anything that inspired such measures of both emotions as when she first set eyes on Mistshore.
Adjusting the hood of her long cloak so that she could see a farther distance, Icelin took in the sprawling mass of wood, rigging, and moving bodies that swelled the harbor.
The place reminded her a little of Blacklock Alley: twisting, narrow corridors, broken here and there by the half-exposed bellies of ships that had been turned into living quarters or hawking grounds for vendors selling food and ale, or drugs and flesh. Torches lined the walkways. Small boys pushed past her with buckets of water, which they emptied onto the path. The saturated wood kept the torches' sparks from erupting into fire.
The wind blowing in from the sea was cold, and plucked uncomfortable holes in Icelin's cloak. The ait reeked of fish, stale sweat, and a prevailing, sunk-in pollution that arose from the harbor itself. Tainted forever, the brown, salty sludge clung out of stubbornness and spite to the wreckages of Mistshore, determined in time to drag the structures down into the depths.
Icelin stopped to make way for a grizzled man in a tattered cloak hauling a hissing, spitting cat under one of his arms. He paused long enough to offer her an open bag of half-rotted fruit that had obviously come from a refuse pile. Flies buzzed around the brown apples and pears.
"Copper a dozen," he hissed, sounding just like the cat.
He smiled at her, exposing an empty mouth and a scar across his gums.
Icelin started to shake her head, but the man was already moving off, a look of fear crossing his face. Icelin turned around to see Sull towering over her. His own cloak did little to hide his bulk, but the hood kept his bright red hair under wraps.
"You're going to draw more attention to us with that scowl than you would if we were both running around here stark naked," she said.
"I don't like this place," Sull said. He kept a hand on her shoulder, his eyes constantly moving among the crowd. "Shifts under my feet."
Icelin looked down. The rough walkway, reinforced to hold large numbers of plodding feet, was still a slanted, groaning mess. The wood had rotted or broken in places, allowing brown water to seep through when the wake kicked up. Anyone not minding his feet ran the risk, of tripping and falling into the polluted harbor. Sull's weight made the rotting planks creak and bow.
"We'll find better footing closer to shore," Icelin said. "We only have to be out here long enough to find the Dusk and Dawn."
The structure they stood on now was at least a hundred yards across and roughly the shape of an octopus. The central head was marked by smoke plumes rising in massive clouds to the sky. The largest concentration of people gathered around an immense, controlled bonfire. Wooden paths branched off at odd angles from this single head, ending at other wrecks and sail-covered remains of ships that would no longer be recognizable to their former owners.
"Should never have come here," Sull muttered. He eyed the controlled devastation like a fish that had suddenly flopped onto the dock. Icelin knew she wore a similar, gaping expression.
They moved through the crowd slowly. Sull's presence soon warned away any eyes that lingered on Icelin, so they stayed unhindered except for the occasional vendor.
A woman carrying a tray of brown glass bottles stepped into Icelin's path. Each small vial had a cork stopper and a crudely inked label. She brandished them like a barmaid passing out ale mugs. Icelin could see down the cleavage of her low-cut dress. Water stains blotted the peaks and valleys of its hem.
"Need a pleasure draught, young one?" the woman said, "or something a little more fatal?"
Sheer curiosity drove Icelin to pick up one of the bottles. She ignored Sull's disapproving grunt.
"That's a good choice, that is." The woman took the vial from Icelin and popped the cork. "My own special brew. Call it Grim Tidings." Her laughter boomed over the crowd. "Completely odorless," she said, holding it under Icelin's nose, "unaffected by alcohol or sugar, so you can put it in your lord's tea or strong drink, whatever his pleasure. Course, it won't be pleasurable for very long!"
"So it's poison," Icelin said.
"Should bottle the harbor water," Sull said. "It'll get you the same effect."
The woman laughed again. "Oh, you've got a nasty one here, don't you? He your bodyguard?"
"You could say that," Icelin said. A gust of wind kicked up. Icelin buried her freezing hands inside her cloak. "Why aren't there more fires?" she asked. "You'll freeze to death out here in the winter."
"Some do," the woman said, and shrugged. "You won't find much heat on the fringes, cept from the torches on the paths. Didn't used to be that way, and whole ships'd go up when some poor drudge was careless with the cooking embers. Only fire allowed now comes from the path torches and the Hearth," she said, pointing to the thick smoke plumes. "Largest fire pit offshore anywhere in Faerun."
Icelin heard the unmistakable note of pride in the woman's voice and marveled at it. "Who built the Hearth?" she asked.
"Same person who pays the boys to empty water buckets on the walkways, I expect," Sull said.
The woman nodded. "The gangs do it. The children are their children. The ones that enforce the rules are their enforcers."
"The gangs rule here?" Icelin said.
The woman chuckled. "You're round as a newborn babe, aren't you? No one 'rules' Mistshore. We're lucky to keep it floating. Everyone takes a little chunk of power, but no one wants it all. Who wants to be king of a rat heap? The ship's already sunk; we just haven't got the sense to get off. So we keep it floating, make coin, and everyone's happy." She smiled sardonically. "My power is bottles. So buy one or don't. But every breath I spend flapping with you, I lose coin. So what'll it be?"
Icelin took out a handful of coins. "Is this enough for the vial?"
"Not by my measure, nor any self-respecting poisoner." The woman sniffed and raised her nose a notch in the air. "More silver, young one."