"No!" Daerdatha snapped. "The decree was clear. No more dark elf blood shall be spilled in this city."
"What? We let her live?"
"Her death might bring forth magics that slay us," the drow sorceress replied icily. "Break her wrists to stop her casting spells, bind her, and throw her in the river. Nothing was said against drowning … or fish bites."
Qilue twisted under the hands that held her, arching and rolling and struggling furiously to spit out her gag and hiss the words she needed to say to awaken several ready spells. She bit viciously at the hands that tried to muzzle her, but could do nothing to stop cords being tied tightly around her wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles. She felt herself being plucked up into the air, carried a little way, and dumped onto a table. Her arms were stretched over her head so that her hands were beyond a table edge, while heavy bodies sat on them. As if from a distance she felt sharp, rending pain in her wrists and heard splintering, dull cracking sounds as she lost all feeling in her fingers. Cruel hands struck her head, slamming it back and forth until her ears rang and her senses swam.
"Enough amusing yourselves. Bring her," Daerdatha purred, clear triumph in her voice. "Khlemmer's dock has anchor weights for his nets. We'll need four or five to make sure she goes to the bottom and stays there."
"Hurrmph-she's heavy enough," Nuelvar complained, as brisk drow footfalls sent pain shooting up Qilue's arms. "Anything else we should do to her?"
"Not what you and Quztyr were thinking of," Daer shy;datha said calmly, "unless you want to die screaming while she takes over your body for her own. Just tie the weights to her throat, waist, knees, and elbows, gag and blindfold her so Mystra's curse can't strike at us when she dies, and give her to the river."
With surprisingly deft haste, these things were done, the drow lifting the bound and mute body over their heads to hurl her far out into the cold and muddy waters of the Chionthar. The splash she made almost drowned out their collective gasp of relief, but none of them quite dared to turn their backs on the river for a long time. Only a handful of bubbles came up, and didn't persist for long.
Nuelvar Faeroenel wasn't the only one to turn away from the dock with a surprising sense of loss, but he was the only one to sigh aloud. This earned him a sharp look of suspicion from Daerdatha.
Three paces later she did something that made only two of the others so much as hesitate or look up at her. She blew Nuelvar's head to bloody spatters with a spell, just to ensure the safety of the drow of Scornubel. To say nothing of the safety of one Daerdatha "Dark-spells."
The Chionthar runs slow, cold, and foul past the mud-choked pilings and wharves of the Caravan City. If she'd still needed to breathe, its muddy bottom would have been Qilue's grave. As it was, she gave herself over to waiting in the numbing cold until all of her slayers would have turned away. She knew well the impatience that ruled most dark elves. That impatience had once governed her as well-before she'd truly come to know and embrace Mystra. She gave the goddess wry thanks, now, for this highlight of her career, and concentrated on ensuring that one of the spells she'd awakened in her last struggle was working properly.
Yes, there: the faintest, most blurred of touches told her she was linked to Brelma, through the bites she'd landed a time or two. Right now the lady drow was striding rather grimly through the disarray of the grandest room in the Eldeglut mansion, looking rather urgently for the glass of wine she'd been in the middle of when all the trouble with the spy had started. Good; that was a link Qilue would follow in the days to come.
It was probably time to call on one of her other active spells, and end her drifting in mud that was rather too rich in dead, rotting fish-and hungry, very much alive lampreys with a taste for recently delivered bodies-for her liking. Being dead, Qilue judged, was decidedly undignified, chilly, and boring.
It was the practice of the barge merchant Welver Thauburn to shift his most valuable cargoes a little way downstream, and across the Chionthar, early in the dark hours of a night. It was a little thing, but it baffled a surprising number of thieves into spending fruitless, cursing hours groping blindly up and down the wrong riverbank. Welver kept an eye and ear out for such nuisances as crossbow bolts and strong swim shy;mers at such times, but he was entirely unprepared for the sudden eruption from the waters not an arm's reach away from where he sat against the rail of his best barge, of a bound and blindfolded woman.
She burst up into the air, hung almost above him for one terrifying moment, dripping as she blotted out the stars, then flew rapidly and silently away to the north shy;west. Welver stared after the apparition, hastily drained his hip flask of Old Raw Comfort, then hurled the flask into the river, vowing to forever give up strong drink.
Well, perhaps after he'd drunk dry the keg waiting for him in his cellar. .
"Simylra," Cathlona Tabbartan asked archly, shifting her peacock feather fan to better display the dusting of diamonds in her upswept hair, "tell me, pray, who is that vision of manliness below? In the silver and green scales?"
Her companion leaned forward over the balcony rail in a gesture designed to display her diamond-dusted, fur-supported breastworks to all of reveling Waterdeep, and said, "That, I declare, must be Lord Emveolstone." She gave a little shriek of excitement-not the only one to rise just then from an otherwise breathless female throat-and gasped, "Oh, but cousin Cat, look you now upon a dragon incarnate! Could it be that Danilo Thann?"
Cathlona bent forward over the rail in a near plunge that sent the spindle shaped, rose hued crystals of her pectoral dancing against her heavily rouged chin, and said, "I–I can't tell who it is. That dragon head entirely covers him … he must be looking out of its jaws!"
The lord in question was wearing a splendid silver specimen of what by now was over two dozen ridiculous dragon suits that the two cousins from Amn had seen grandly entering the festivities at their first Waterdhavian nobles' revel. They couldn't even recall the name of the noble family hosting this costume ball, but it was certainly grand. Servants were plying all of the guests with decanters of drink and silver pyramids of sugar dusted pastries. Cathlona, for one, was already feeling rather sick. She righted herself hastily, looking a little green, gave her cousin a weak smile, and sat back to fan herself with rather more enthusiasm than grace.
"My word, Simmy, how're they going to dance in such arrays, do you think?"
"The costumes do come off," her cousin said testily, "and I'll thank you not to call me by that-that dis shy;gustingly silly nickname!"
"There are no silly names," a glorious voice drawled near at hand, "in the presence of such beauty."
The cousins turned as one to stare at the speaker-and emitted identical gasps of hungry awe. The object of their attention was a man whose fine features were adorned rather than ruined by a finely upswept mus shy;tache, its chestnut magnificence overwhelmed by the curly sweep of hair that must have reached to the man's waist, but was bound up in a scarlet ribbon to keep it clear of the spotless green shoulders of his ele shy;gant, festive jacket. He was lean and lithe beneath the devastatingly simple lines of his garb. From the lace at his wrists to that at his throat, every curve of his form betrayed sleek strength and flaring, ready muscle. As for his gray silken breeches, with their discreet codpiece-why, the tight bottom they displayed to the world as he bowed and turned to leave them made both cousins gasp again, then swallow.. then turn to each other to share an incredulously delighted squeal. As he glided swiftly away down carpeted steps, the man in the dark green jacket managed to sufficiently suppress his shudder that neither of the overly plump Amman ladies noticed.