Guards were crowding in around them all, now, pushing past the servants and noble guests. “Lord,” one of them asked hesitantly, waving a gauntleted hand at Rhauligan, “shouldn’t we be arresting this one too?”
The War Wizard raised one cold eyebrow. “When, Brussgurt, did you adopt the habit of deciding for me who is guilty and who innocent? I’ve had a watching spell on this man for most of the evening: He’s most certainly innocent of the charge of fire-setting. I suspect his only crime was learning too much … for the seneschal to want him to go on living.”
“So who slew my daughter?” a darkly furious voice demanded. Its owner came shouldering through the last rushing smokes of the dying fire with the other two noble lords and their white-faced, staring daughters in tow. Lord Hornsar Farrowbrace’s eyes were like two chips of bright steel, and his hand was on the hilt of a heavy warsword that had not been on his hip before.
“Master Rhauligan?” the War Wizard asked. “You tell him.”
The merchant met the eyes of the Scepter of Justice for a long, sober moment, nodded, then turned to the angry noble.
“The seneschal,” he said simply, pointing down at the helpless, waking man who was being securely bound with wire, under the knees of three burly guards.
“The Paertrover gold is almost all gone and Greiryn was the only longtime family servant with access to it. Lord, I fear your daughter lies dead this night solely because Greiryn’s a poor shot. He’d accounted for the coins flowing out with bills and ledger-entries that only one man could be certain were false: his lord and master. He meant to slay Lord Eskult while Shamril’s attentions kept him standing more or less in one place: a clear target that an old veteran missed.”
Lord Farrowbrace growled wordlessly as he looked down at Immult Greiryn, who cowered away despite the burly guards between them.
“But what of the ghost?” Lady Lathdue Huntingdown protested. “It’s not just some tall tale from Crimmon! The servants have all been saying..
Rhauligan held up a hand to stop her speaking, went to where the horse lay, and tore open the laces of a saddlebag.
Gold coins glittered in the hand he held out to her. “The last of Lord Eskult’s wealth,” he explained. “This wretch at our feet has already spent or stolen the rest. He had help from at least one man, the castellan of the vault—whose bones are no doubt yonder in the heart of the blaze, wearing the seneschal’s armor or chain of office or something to make us think the flames have claimed poor, faithful old Greiryn.”
Coins clinked as he tossed a second saddlebag down beside the first, then a third. The last yielded up a plumed helm and ajar of white powder.
“The grinning ghost of Taverton Hall,” Rhauligan announced to the gathered, peering folk, holding them up. “You were all supposed to flee, you see, not rush to see who’d fired the bolt…”
Someone screamed. Someone else cursed, slowly and in trembling tones. Folk were backing away, their faces pale and their fearful stares directed past Rhauligan’s shoulder.
The turret merchant turned slowly, already knowing what he’d see. He swallowed, just once, when he found that he’d been dead right.
A breeze he did not feel was stirring the plumes of the helm worn by the grinning face of the head that was floating almost nose to nose with him. Lord Farrowbrace started calling hoarsely on god after god, somewhere nearby, and Rhauligan could hear the sounds of boots whose owners were enthusiastically running away.
The dark eyes of the Grinning Ghost of Taverton Hall were like endless, lightless pits, but somehow they were meeting his own gaze with an approving look, so Rhauligan stood his ground when ghostly shadows spilled out from the helm, flickered bone-white, and seemed to struggle and convulse. After long moments, some of those shifting shadows became a ghostly hand, reaching out for the Harper.
Scalp crawling, Glarasteer Rhauligan did the bravest, and possibly the most foolhardy thing in his life: He stood his ground as that spectral arm clapped his own arm firmly.
The cold was instant and bone-chilling. Rhauligan grunted and staggered back involuntarily, his face going gray. There was a loud, solid thump beside him, and when he looked down, he discovered Lord Justice Jalanus Westerbotham sprawled on his back in the mud, fallen in a dead faint.
Trembling just a trifle, Rhauligan looked back at the ghost—but it was gone. Empty air swirled and flickered in front of him; he was standing alone in the moonlight.
The Lady Lathdue and the Lady Chalass were approaching him hesitantly, their eyes dark and apprehensive, the blades borne by their fathers thrusting out protectively between their slim arms. Lord Farrowbrace, his eyes haunted with wonder, stood a little apart, his own sword dangling toward the trampled ground.
“Sir? Are you well?” the Lady Lathdue asked.
As she spoke, a throng of ghostly figures in finery and armor seemed to melt into solidity all around the nobles, all of them nodding approvingly or sketching salutes with spectral hands or blades. Rhauligan blinked, staggering under the sheer weight of so much ghostly regard—and when he could see again, they were all gone.
Wondering, the turret merchant looked down at his arm, which still felt encased in bone-searing ice. His leather jerkin had melted away in three deep gouges, where three bone-white marks were burned into his bronzed skin. Like old scars they seemed: the parallel stripes of three gripping fingers.
Glarasteer Rhauligan looked up at them all, drew in a deep breath, and said in a voice that was almost steady, “I’ll live. Smoke can kill those who can’t move out of it: we must find and free Lord Crimmon Paertrover. Let us be about it.”
* * * * *
But from that night until the day he died, those three white marks never left Rhauligan’s arm.
THE PLACE WHERE GUARDS SNORE AT THEIR POSTS
Their jaws were clamped shut, forefin muscles pulsing in the tightening that signified irritation or disapproval. The orders and judgment of Iakhovas evidently weren’t good enough for sahuagin. Bloody-minded idiots.
Sardinakh uncoiled his tentacles from the halberds and harpoons he’d been oh-so-absently caressing since their arrival and settled himself a little closer to the map on the chartroom table. He did this slowly, to show the fish-heads just how little he feared them, and tapped the lord’s seal on the dryland map of Mintarn—the seal of the sahuagin lord Rrakulnar—to remind them that their superiors, at least, respected the authority of a “mere squid.”
“The orders I was personally given by Iakhovas,” he said gently, driving the point home a little deeper,
“were to blockade Mintarn, allowing nothing into, or more importantly, out of, its harbors. Taking the island would be a bold stroke—and I frankly find it an attractive one—but it cannot be our main concern. Before all else, we must prevent ships from leaving Mintarn to go to the aid of Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate, and the other coastal cities.”
“And that isss bessst done,” the larger and burlier of the sahuagin hissed, affecting the invented accent of Crowndeep, the fabled—and perhaps mythical—cradle-city of Sword Coast sahuagin, “by capturing the entire isle.” He spoke as if explaining bald facts to a simple child, not his commanding officer.
Fleetingly, but not for the first time, Sardinakh wondered if Iakhovas derived some dark and private amusement from putting seafolk who hated each other together, one commanding the other. Perhaps it was merely to make treachery unlikely, but it certainly made for some sharp-toothed moments.
The tako slid a lazily dismissive tentacle across the map to let the fish-heads know he was no more frightened now than when they’d begun drifting forward from the other side of the table to loom close in beside him, fingering their spears and daggers, and told them, “We’ll discuss this at greater length as the brightwater unfolds. I see that Mlavverlath approaches.”