The sooner she and Demascus accomplished Queen Arathane’s little job, the sooner the message would be dispatched. Riltana had volunteered to investigate the warehouse while Demascus chartered a ship in the dock district. Demascus had wanted them to stick together, but she’d insisted they split their efforts to save time. Patience wasn’t one of her strengths. Besides, she wanted to distract herself from thinking about the near disaster of last evening. I was so close! she thought. That damned painting was supposed to have been in the House Norjah gallery. Her black market inquiry, courtesy of Chant’s connections, had finally produced a lead. The odd woman who’d responded had seemed so legitimate, knowledgeable, and convincing. She’d known things only someone familiar with the painting of Queen Cyndra could’ve described. Why had a stranger pretended the missing painting was in that shadowy gallery?
Riltana frowned. Eventually she’d get that painting back, oh yes. And Hells help anyone who stood in her way. Or maybe not. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore. Having Carmenere’s queenly aunt on Riltana’s side was a surer road to reconciliation than anything Riltana could hope to accomplish on her own. Maybe she didn’t need the royal painting to impress Carmenere …
Frankly, given what’d gone down at Demascus’s apartment the previous evening, it was lucky things had turned out as well as they had. The goddess Tymora must be smiling down on Riltana. So why do I feel so guilty?
She knew why, of course. Because of her own damnable impulsiveness. She couldn’t help herself when certain situations reared their heads. Like finding herself alone with a surfeit of valuable and easily transportable goodies. Riltana smacked a fist into her palm. The pigeon on the suspension cable startled and winged off. She hadn’t been completely honest with Demascus. The Norjah vampires were right to call her a thief. When she’d slipped into their gallery and found no sign of the painting she’d sought, well, she helped herself to one hanging there instead. As compensation, of course; she’d paid a pretty sum to the woman who’d given her the tip. Riltana couldn’t be expected just to eat that coin, right? She’d only realized that she might be diving off a higher cliff than she’d reckoned when she lifted one of the paintings from its hook. The illustrated figure began whispering to her secrets of thievery and concealment-
Reflexively, in the moment of surprise, she transferred the framed canvas to the nonspace her gloves accessed. Then, while still wondering if she’d merely imagined a talking canvas, an alarm tripped. Probably an alarm wired into the hook on which the painting had rested. A horde of pig-straddling vampires roared into the gallery. She’d fled, and they gave chase. Even through the empty air! When Riltana realized she wasn’t going to lose them, she headed to Demascus’s home. The deva had helped her out of binds before, though never one so serious. She blinked. It was too late to change what’d happened. All she could do was deal with any consequences from House Norjah. Later. After she and Demascus handled the arambarium situation and Riltana received her reward from Queen Arathane. It might not even be too much to imagine that Carmenere could receive Arathane’s letter within just a couple of tendays!
She pitched forward off the cable and dove past an entire cliffside neighborhood in mere heartbeats, braking on wings of wind at the last instant. She came down like a honeybee on a petal, her boot heels barely clicking the shingles of a warehouse roof.
The queen had identified this warehouse. Thanks to her dawdling on the bridge, Demascus was probably already down along the wharf talking to potential ship owners about a charter. She’d have to make up for lost time.
Riltana dropped from the rooftop into the middle of the busy street. A gaggle of dockworkers glanced at her. Most likely they saw just one more courier wearing Airstepper Guild robes on her way to deliver a package to a captain or merchant in the dock district. The robes perfectly concealed her newly enchanted leather armor. Pricy, but paid for with the reward she’d earned when helping the queen with the plague demon hiding beneath the Firestorm Cabal several months earlier. She sauntered through the open front door of the warehouse. Sweat-soaked workers were wrestling crates into compact rows that stretched back to the far wall and halfway to the ceiling.
A genasi with a quill and scroll noticed her. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a message to deliver.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s a document. I’m supposed to deliver it directly to the owner of this place.”
The genasi shrugged and pointed at a short flight of stairs leading up to a landing halfway up one interior wall. “Lord Pashra isn’t here.”
“Mind if I wait?”
“Fine. But stay out of the way.” The genasi returned his attention to the workers.
Riltana sidled up to the foreman. He was totaling cargo manifests. Apparently this Lord Pashra did a mean business in turnips, potatoes, and onions. That explained the pungent odor. Nothing mineral related. Not that she had expected it to be so easy.
“Yes?” the genasi said, noticing her still standing next to him and ogling his tallies.
“You know what? The smell of all these onions is making me sick to my stomach. Mind if I go wait up by the office?”
The genasi waved a hand. “If that will get you out from under my feet.”
Riltana took the stairs. When she reached the landing at the top and peered back, neither the foreman nor the workers spared her so much as a glance. They were absorbed in their task of finding a more efficient packing configuration to make room for a “mess of beets” from Turmish. If they were acting unconcerned to throw off suspicion, they were doing a damn fine job … Too good. Riltana had the sinking feeling she was on the wrong track and wasting time. Well, she was here. She should at least take a quick look around to make certain.
She faded back from the railing until she was right next to the office door. She tried the handle. Locked. But not for long. Riltana pulled a thin wire and a couple of other oddments from the cuff of her robe. With her back to the door and her eyes on the warehouse floor, she tried to give the impression that moving crates was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. She inserted the pick into the lock by touch. It was an exploratory poke, to see how many pins she was dealing with … and whether or not Lord Pashra had fortified the lock with a trap. But the telltale tightness of a mechanical trigger connected to something nasty, or the faint tingle that usually warned her of a hex, was absent. All she needed for the simple mechanism was a tension wrench, a slight turn, a few taps with the wire used like a pick … and click.
She opened the door just enough to slip through, and entered. She didn’t quite shut it behind her; she wanted to hear if anyone came up the stairs-
A flicker of movement by her boots made her freeze. She let out her breath as she watched a spider scuttle away across the scratched plank floor, probably terrified she would stomp it flat.
The space was too big to have originally been an office. Pashra must have converted an ancillary storage room. A ramshackle table squatted in the center of the chamber, surrounded by stools. Another table was shoved into the far corner, creating a makeshift desk. It was layered with a mess of open scrolls and parchment pages. A lantern bolted to the wall over the desk bathed the room in yellowish light. Shelves in one corner held a litter of colored stones, books, scroll cases, and what apparently was a collection of dining plates from all over Toril. Then Riltana caught sight of a map on the wall between the desk and shelves that showed both the continent of Faerun and a land mass to the west labeled “Returned Abeir.” The word “Menzoberranzan” was written in red ink on the map some miles northeast of Waterdeep. The name seemed vaguely familiar, but Riltana couldn’t place it. Something to do with elves, maybe?