Nonetheless, when the serving wench returned with a tray and a face of unchanged blankness, the peddler's seat was empty. There was no sign of him anywhere in the taproom. The girl stood for a moment in silent inde shy;cision, then set the tray down in front of the empty seat and glided away again. There was a thin layer of dust on the tray and the tankard, but no one seemed to notice.
"A quiet night," the peddler observed, leaning on his elbow. He was the only patron of The Moonshot Tankard, it seemed, but the bar master was diligently polishing boards that already gleamed glassy smooth under the lamplight.
"Indeed, sir," came the quiet, distant reply, as the bar master turned away to wipe a row of shining, unused glasses behind the bar.
Tarthan sipped soured beer from his tankard, keep shy;ing his face carefully expressionless despite the taste, and asked casually, "Any news?"
"News, sir?"
"What's befalling in the Caravan City these days? Any new talk of the drow coming up from the depths to kill us all in our beds?"
The bar master's shoulders stiffened for the space of a long breath ere he turned and said quietly, "Not that I've heard, sir. Some bad storms this past month. . fewer caravans running into town. That's about it, sir."
"Ah, well, then, I'd best get to my bed," the peddler replied, draining his tankard with a loud sigh and set shy;ting it carefully back down on the bar. "Good ale," he said, rising to go.
"Finest in the city, sir," the bar master murmured, turning to watch Tarthan lurch toward the door. His eyes never left the peddler's dusty back until the dwin shy;dling, dusty figure turned a corner at the end of the street. Then he turned with the speed of a striking snake, thrust his head back through the curtains that led into the kitchen, and hissed something soft and quick to someone unseen.
It came to pass that four furtive figures met under the cool, clear starlight of Scornubel that night. One had darted out of the Moonshot Tankard not long after its last guest of the night, another had patiently followed a man who'd left Cata's Pump earlier in the evening without a single taste of the meal he'd ordered, and two more had but recently stepped out of other establishments where a dusty peddler had asked for fresh news of the drow.
The four hadn't planned to meet. They converged separately on the same alley in the wake of a dusty man who now stumbled a little, and whistled a few tuneless notes from time to time. When they came together, four pairs of eyes flickered, one hand lifted in an intricate gesture, and four figures moved on as one. If all deals were so simple, swift, and quiet, Faerun might be a more efficient place. Then again, it might well also be a more deadly one.
The alley ended in a cluster of burned out, roofless warehouses, homes for rats and occasional beggars-though beggars didn't seem to linger long in the Cara shy;van City these days. The four silent, graceful men gathered speed, heading for the doorway the peddler had disappeared through. They knew it led into a fire-blackened stone foundation and cellar beneath, now lacking upper floors or a roof. If a certain peddler couldn't climb walls right smartly, they'd have him-a sheep backed into one corner of a shearing pen.
The foremost blank-faced man was still two swift strides from that gaping doorway when someone stepped out of it-someone small, slender, and obsidian skinned, who moved with catlike grace on spike heeled boots. Four hands had already dipped to the hilts of throwing knives and slender long swords. . and all of them froze now in astonishment as the drow who'd stepped out of the doorway drew her dark cloak up around her, gave them all a knowing smile, and slipped down the alley like a graceful shadow.
Four heads turned to watch her go, and four throats were longingly cleared in unison before the foremost man drew his sword and his knife and stepped through the doorway.
He was gone only a short time. When he returned his face was still blank and his weapons were clean and dry, but his gliding movements now showed unease rather than anticipation.
"Did she kill him?" one of the others asked.
The man who'd just come out of the burned ruin replied, "There's no sign of him. It's empty." They exchanged puzzled glances, then turned as one to look back down the empty alley.
Seemingly sleepy folk stiffened all over the taproom of Cata's Pump as a black-cloaked figure strolled in from the street straight up to the bar, and gave the room at large a cold smile.
The she-drow let her cloak fall away from her bare shoulders, and lamplight flashed back from the cluster of gems she wore at her throat; wealth that marked her as no outcast or lone runaway. Tracing a symbol idly on the bar with one sharp-nailed fingertip, she asked the bartender and the two serving wenches flanking him, "Any of you in the mood for a little trading? Homesick for any Underdark wines or fresh glowcap mushrooms?"
Folk blinked all over the room and leaned forward. "Ah, I don't-" the bartender began, his eyes dark pits of confusion.
The she-drow facing him raised an eyebrow and purred, "Well then, do you know someone who does? There's demand below for Calishite-or Tashlutan-silk, pitted dates, and metalwork: gates, bars, gratings, filigree. . and I've wine and 'shrooms to trade, but not much time to waste." She shifted perfect obsidian shoulders and murmured, "Are you sure you don't? By the looks of things, everyone here could use some real wine."
No one smiled or looked angered; folk with blank faces drifted a little nearer as the bartender stam shy;mered, "S-sarltan. Speak to Sarltan."
"And where might I find …?" the she-drow murmured, watching furtive movements in the tightening crowd that marked the journeys of hands to weapons. She shrugged back her cloak still more, and from the glistening black garment she wore beneath it, four slender black-bladed knives rose slowly up into the air. There was a momentary murmur that might have been alarm, or might have been recognition, and patrons began to drift back to their seats to resume looking as sleepy as before. The knives hung in the air around the she-draw's shoulders, points menacing the floor, as the bartender pointed wordlessly out the door.
"You keep this Sarltan out in the street. ." the she-drow asked, eyebrows raised, in a voice that did not-quite-hold open sarcasm.". . or as one of your doorswords?"
The bartender shook his head, then spread his hands in a wordless gesture of helplessness before waving again at the street.
His visitor shook her head, smiled, and said, "Well, think on my offer. I'll be back later to see if anyone has developed a taste for the finer things of home."
There was already astonishment in the stares of the doorswords as the she-drow in the cloak whom they'd watched striding openly down the street glided up to them and asked, "I suppose neither of you knows the present whereabouts of Sarltan?"
The guards stiffened as if they'd been kicked in tender places, exchanged baffled glances, then silently backed away from their questioner, waving gloved hands in gestures of denial. The she-drow shrugged, smiled, and strode between them into the cluttered and dusty labyrinth of Chasper's Trading Tower.
Chasper's never closed, no matter what the hour or weather. Its lobby was crowded with the usual badly-mended array of life-sized wooden shop figurines, and the obsidian-skinned visitor passed through them without delay to push wide the inner doors and step into the warm lamplight beyond.
She was greeted by the same sight that had met the eyes of a decade of patrons: a welter of nets, ropes, boats, cartwheels, coach-harnesses, mended lances and armor hanging from the rafters, and heaps of well-used boots, belts, gloves, and scabbards on tables before her. Beyond these mountains of gear, aisles snaked away through piles of animal cages, battered traveling strongchests, and moldering books to sagging tables that stretched away into a warren of shelving whose far reaches were lost in dimness. From their crannies two startled men were hastening forward to serve this unexpected client.