“So why don’t we all act together?”
“Lad, have you ever known more than three nobles to agree on anything?”
“Yes: that the king’s rule is bad! So the Obarskyrs are few, and I’ve heard the war wizards really serve Vangerdahast, not the king-”
“Correct.”
“-so if enough of us make common cause, and call on our house wizards…”
“To do what? Blast the palace in Suzail to smoking rubble? Torch cows in the fields? Melt the banners of Purple Dragons as they come riding to arrest us? Talk sense, boy!”
Nettled, Torsard Spurbright slapped the balcony rail, stared away into the night, and said petulantly, “Well, I don’t see why we don’t just use the spells of our house wizard to get what we want! I’ve seen Thaelder-”
Lord Elvarr rolled exasperated eyes. “Know you nothing but hunting and hawking, Torsard? Every titled family in Cormyr has a house wizard-and every last spellhurler of that sort in all the realm is a war wizard, or has their minds reamed by the war wizards nightly. House wizards are here to keep us in line, and report back all talk of treason, and everything else interesting we do, to old Vangerdahast. Remember that, if you’d like to keep your head a while longer.” He raised his hand and rattled the fine chain meaningfully. Its magic glowed obligingly.
“So we can do nothing to stop the Obarskyrs? And old Thunderhast? While they do just as they please to us?”
“Gently, son, gently. I did not say that.”
“Well, then?”
“Well, then, you’ll learn in good time. News will spread at revels and in marketplaces and taverns-news that comes as great astonishment to all of us, who know nothing and had no part in what befell.”
“No part in it all? We’re noble! ”
“Precisely. And the essence of being noble is getting what you want without seeming to take any direct action to get it. Leaving your reputation unstained and your hands clean. Remember that, if you remember nothing else.”
Florin smiled.
Yon hillside was familiar; they were right where he’d planned to be. They’d already passed Espar well to the west, and must now circle back north and east to strike the road at Hunter’s Hollow where he’d agreed to meet Delbossan. It was time to slow their pace, so they’d not reach the road until that third day.
Behind him, trudging up to join him, Narantha groaned. Florin turned, lifting an eyebrow in silent question.
“My feet hurt!” Narantha hissed. “These stlarning boots!”
Florin nodded. “You can do them off now; we’ll halt here awhile. ’Tis past time we bathed.”
The Lady Crownsilver lifted her head to give him a startled glare. “Bathe? Where? ”
Florin pointed at the stream. Just here, the waters of the Dathyl looked placid-and green, as they slid lazily over scum-covered rocks. Narantha regarded the water with disgust, and rather predictably hissed, “I’m not getting myself wet in that!”
Florin turned and pointed through the trees in another direction, to where a swarm of tiny insects danced above a muddy patch of leaves. “There’s the alternative.”
The Lady Narantha Crownsilver drew herself up and said in her most frigidly haughty manner: “Falconhand, if you think I’m bathing here at all…”
“We’ll both be washing,” Florin said flatly. “One at a time, while the other stands beastwatch. We both stink enough that beasts can readily scent us, now, from a good distance away. Your long hair and reluctance to get wet have left you smelling a lot worse than I do, and if we wait much longer, so much of our reek will be in our clothes that we’ll attract beasts-and stingflies-just as readily as if we blew war horns with our every step.”
“I stink? ”
“Yes.”
“I see,” Narantha said icily. “And just how do you expect me to wash in… that?”
“Take off your clothes, sit down there-there’s a sandbar under the water, see? — to scoop up sand, and scrub yourself with it. Stings a bit, but you’ll be done soon enough, and I’ll crush some ardanthe sap into your hair. It has a nice smell.”
“And how will I dry myself?”
Florin pointed up at the sun then through the trees at a large boulder. “Lie down on that and bake until you’re dry enough to get dressed.”
“While you leer and look. And you seriously expect me to do that?”
“I hold no expectations, Lady, but I’ve been given to understand that many nobles of our realm are from time to time sensible. I’m hoping you’re one of them.”
Eyes flaming, Narantha clenched her fists and stepped up nose to nose with him-she had to look up to do it, which made her even more furious, and she was already seething. “Do you know who I am, knave? Do you know who I am? ”
Florin’s blue-gray eyes bored into hers. “Lady, increasingly I am learning what you are: a bone-idle, arrogant, spoiled chit of a girl. You seem to spend most of your labor in tirades and cursings, berating me because you find fault with my service-the service I tender out of kindness and my duty to the realm, not out of any obligation to you, or coin-hire. There’s an expression about ‘only a leucrotta being crazed enough to bite the hand that feeds it.’ Well, Lady, you’re a leucrotta.”
“How dare you speak to me so! Why, if it weren’t for the nobility-nobles like me-Cormyr would be all backcountry louts starving and grubbing in the dirt, bedding their sisters and mothers and having no law but that of the fist, and no tongue but gruntings! How dare you!?”
“Someone should have dared, long ago, and done so as often as it took to break you of this serenely wrong view of the ways of the world. Hear this, Narantha, and hear it welclass="underline" Faerun is not going to change to your will. Either you must change to dwell in it, or it will break you.”
Florin slid his pack off his shoulder and added, “You’ve been doing this for so long that your tirades are almost a habit: the way you always deal with anything that displeases you. Count yourself favored of Tymora that I’m not the backcountry lout you see all of us common folk as-or I’d have silenced you forever with the back of my hand, or at least until you woke up with your head still ringing, and started crawling around looking for your lost teeth. We are schooled and taught courtesies, we commoners, and one of them is never to hit a woman-for women are the nurturers who keep families strong and therefore the realm strong. However, just now, my schooling is on the very sword-edge of slipping.”
Falling abruptly silent, Florin whirled around and stalked away to the stream, tearing off his clothes as he went.
Leaving Narantha staring at his back, open-mouthed.
His bare back. She blinked.
She closed her mouth, firmly, and turned her head away. How dare he speak thus! Why did he refuse to know his place, and keep to it? Why She looked toward the stream, and hastily turned away again. Gods, he was using sand.
She shuddered, tramped to the high boulder, and started watching for beasts. Ones that weren’t wet and hairy, and cheerfully sporting right over there in the stream.
Chapter 7
Far from being a traitor, I do love Cormyr. Deeply. Which is why I intend to raise an army and go back to the fair Forest Kingdom, slaughter every last Obarskyr, war wizard, king’s lord, and Purple Dragon in it, and claim every stride of its soil as my own.
Sorn Merendil
The Obarsk yrs Must Die (pamphlet) published in the Year of Moonfall
R eady?”
Jhessail nodded, and Islif brought the cudgel forward from her shoulder in a hard, fast throw that sent it end-over-end across the meadow, to crash down into the midst of the tangle of briars.
As expected, a rabbit shot forth, racing like the wind. Jhessail murmured, pointed, and a vivid blue bolt of magic lashed out, racing arrow-swift The rabbit changed direction, very swiftly. In a few moments it would zag again, then stop to Just as sharply, the magic missile turned in the air to follow its racing quarry-and lanced home.