He laid them side by side, scowl and smile.
None of them, not even Tobin, responded.
Eventually, the maskmaker inhaled deeply, then sighed long and loud. “You were right earlier. When you said I’d think you a fool and that I’d heard all kinds of crazy escape talk before. Half right, anyway. I never met a fool quite so big, or heard talk quite so crazy.”
It was Tobin who answered. “We will do it without you, then,” he said.
The halfling looked at his companions. Again, he shrugged.
The dwarf woman next to Tobin leaned in and tapped her split fingernail on Shan’s mask. “This one is with the dressers-has been all afternoon. They’re measuring her for leathers and laying out blades for her to choose from. She doesn’t talk, like the first one, but she hasn’t killed any of the overseers. The stablemasters think they’ve been given a second shot at glory-this one is more like a gladiator than her sister. There are a lot of windsouled around her. Difficult to spring, but perhaps not impossible.”
The firesouled man said, “I can get a message to the heir and the Akanulan woman, but little more. The master of games has allowed them their weapons, though, and they seem capable. Perhaps if there was a coordinated effort.”
Corvus clicked his tongue. “But this is excellent news!” he said. He pointed to the other mask. “What about Cynda?”
Tobin sniffed. “That is why I was here talking to them, Cor-bird-head man. I have come every day for five days. They will not help me find her, because they believe she is dead.”
The maskmaker looked at Tobin, the expression of sympathy on his face the first sign of anything but artful distance Corvus had noted there. “The ones that get taken up to the Spiritbreaker always come back in a few turns of the glass, Hammer, a day at most. When did she kill that last overseer? Six days ago? Seven?”
Unaccountably, Tobin grinned at Corvus. “See, this is the sticking point, and they will not budge on it. You will be very impressed with me, Ringmaster. I have spotted a flaw in their logic.”
Corvus had as well. “I’m guessing that recalcitrant fighters are taken to some arcanist or dark priest who charms them,” he said. “The strongest of them last little time before they are returned and take up arms on the sand, but our friend never came back. You believe this means she did not survive whatever spells were laid on her.”
The Ilmatari priest spoke for the first time. “Or they killed her when her resistances proved too expensive to overcome. They would have measured her value in the arena against the cost of forcing her to fight. I am sorry, kenku. The Hammer That Falls has spoken of your friend at great length, and it is clear that hers was a rare and gentle soul.”
Corvus nodded. “Rare and gentle and possessed of a greater strength of will than all of us in this room combined. You believe she set a precedent in resisting them until she died. I tell you the precedent is something more than that. She resists them still. El Arhapan is a sadist and an obsessive, and probably the finest judge of fighters in all Faerun. He will go to any length to break Cynda’s will, and she will go to any length to resist. And survive. She lives. I assure you, she lives.”
The maskmaker spread his hands. He asked, “What do you want us to do?”
Cephas and Ariella quickly established the boundaries of their luxurious prison. They were confined to one wing of the el Arhapan manor, but they soon learned that left a lot of room to cover.
“Four suites of private rooms, including our two,” said Cephas. “The dining chamber, two or three rooms full of couches and cushions, a half-dozen verandas and balconies. And whatever this place is.”
Ariella did not turn from her careful study of the map that made up the floor in the final room they had explored. It showed the city and its environs as far east as the Plain of Stone Spiders and as far west as a wavering line running from the Marching Mountains in the North all the way to the sea in the South. “The disputed boundary between Calimien and Memnonar influence,” she said.
At least they were no longer troubled by the slaves and servants who had initially followed their every step, offering refreshments, baths, or intimate companionship. These men and women greeted Cephas’s attempt to recruit them in an escape attempt with confusion that turned to anger when he persisted. Finally, he himself grew angry enough to chase the staff through a door he and Ariella were denied passage through by an implacable djinni sorcerer who, Ariella advised, was better ignored than engaged.
Now, once again wearing their armor over the simplest clothes they could find, they studied the contents of el Arhapan’s map room.
“I see where Manshaka is meant to be,” said Ariella. “And I suppose this glyph indicates the ruins of Schamedar. But what are these numbers in the deep desert east of the Calim River, beyond the Crying God’s Redoubt at Kelter?”
“I believe I know,” said Cephas. “Corvus said el Arhapan leaves the city only to travel to Manshaka or to training camps in the desert. And see, the glyphs for that city are the only ones besides the numbers picked out in gemstones. They look like the symbols around Corvus’s platform.”
“Of course!” said Ariella. “This is not a map. It’s a teleportation circle. An ornate one, designed for just a few locative combinations. That is, if we’re to believe what the kenku said about those camps.”
Before Cephas could answer, a windsouled courtier flew through the open window. Cephas brought his flail up into a ready position, but, to his shock, the man appeared to catch fire.
“He’s transitioning to firesouled!” said Ariella.
“Cephas Earthsouled,” the man said. “Listen. If you are your mother’s son and not your father’s, the house of el Arhapan must fall. Find the foundation stone, and remember the fire at Argentor.”
The man’s skin shifted from silver to burnished copper, and his crystalline hair burned away in flames that persisted around his scalp. “Ariella Kulmina. I am not the only firesouled hidden in this house.”
Those were his last words before Shahrokh flew into the room on a cyclone that flashed lightning. He gestured and the stranger rose into the air, struggling against unseen attackers.
“The kenku’s last words puzzled me,” the djinni said to the trapped man, ignoring Cephas and Ariella. “But the message they hid is now found out. You will show me where your pathetic conspiracy has hidden him in the sewers.” With that, the djinni swept the firesouled genasi back through the window.
Unable to intercede, Ariella and Cephas watched Shahrokh and his captive vanish into the distance.
Cephas turned to her. “I believe the ringmaster has just cued the last act.”
Far below, Marod el Arhapan paced back and forth in the luxurious box of the master of games. He was impatient at the slow pace of the crowds filing in, but exultant to be at his rightful place behind the lectern. This was his place; this was his role. Playing Shahrokh’s political games, parrying with his hopeless son, even warring against the cursed WeavePasha … All of it paled next to the exhilaration of the arena.
An aide approached with a slate covered in chalked figures. After a quick glance, he dashed it onto the ground, the shattered pieces crunching beneath his boots. “No, fool! There will be no other matches on the card. The fight we witness tonight is a fight for the ages! No one will need to be warmed up for this!”
He took his seat, eager for the night to truly begin. He had forced twins to fight one another before, of course.
But never twins who also happened to be Arvoreeni adepts.
Inside the hidden chamber tucked away in Calimport Below, the priest raised his head. “Shahrokh comes,” he said. Then he added, “I fear our friend did not survive the task we set him.” He looked at the others, then at Corvus. “His name was Ravin. He was an excellent chess player.”