She faded back from the rail with the air of someone killing time in casual boredom toward the flight of steps up to the second level. She was almost underneath the study now, if she was right about which room it was. Ribbed vaulting soared from spindles to carved bosses and supporting statues. Lark spared their shadowed beauties no more than a passing glance, because no bored young noblewoman would have done any differently.
She strolled along the promenade and oh-so-casually ascended the second stair. The reign of darkness and silence continued.
Fur rugs covered the landing at the top of the stair, and their whiteness glowed slightly in a faint blue radiance issuing from the open door of the study, immediately to her right.
Lark swallowed. Could things be this easy? Surely not.
It was hard to maintain her casual air, and harder still to stroll on thick furs, but she thought she managed it, passing the door and glancing in as she did so.
The glow was coming from a large map or chart spread out on a desk, and was strong enough to show her a chair and a crammed bookshelf beyond. There was overstuffed seating on the far side of the desk, some sort of large but tidy potted plant, and so far as she could tell in the gloom, no one in the room.
Raising her eyebrows in what she hoped was a look of languid interest, Lark went to the doorway. If that desk had a carved ship-under-sail medallion on its far side, it was the place Texter wanted the report left. She smoothed her gown and felt beneath it the reassuring stiffness of the message written in Naoni's neat, careful hand.
Lark slipped through the door and walked boldly across the soft, deep rugs. As she neared the desk, she noted that the parchment on the table was creased with many rectangular folds-too creased to be parchment, come to think of it, because it hadn't cracked. It showed a finely drawn labyrinth of chambers and passages-more of the latter than the former-like some vast dungeon. Fascinating, but she dare not spend the time to look at it properly. Maps were valuable, dangerous things. She'd seen sailors and treasure-seekers alike kill each other over the possession of an ink-scrawled canvas scrap. If she were caught here studying a map, no explanation would suffice.
She strolled past the desk to the window overlooking the grand hall. "Well," she announced idly, "this is quite a view. Not that it makes those tail feathers on Lady Eirontalar's hat any more attractive, seen from above."
She turned back to face the desk. Yes! There was the ship medallion. A quick glance assured her she was alone.
Lark went to her knees in a flash, touched the sail of the ship, felt the medallion drop open like a flap, and ran her hand up under her gown and snatched out the report. Slipping it behind the medallion, she closed the little panel again and straightened up To stare straight into the coldly amused eyes of a slender moon elf in a dark, jeweled doublet and hose, who was leaning against the doorframe with one hand resting comfortably on the hilt of a long, slender sword. His other hand toyed with a drawn dagger whose blade was little more than a needle.
A needle as long and glittering as Lark's forearm.
"Lady Eirontalar's headwear is indeed quite gaudy," Elaith Craulnober said in singularly rich, musical tones, "but her presumption is more than matched by other ladies here in my house this night. Wouldn't you agree?"
The Slow Cheese was neither the grandest festhall in Waterdeep nor the largest, and even a blind and none too choosy man would not have deemed its dancers as anywhere near the best, but it was all the rage at the moment for the very novelty of its newness and for its hanging balconies.
The Gemcloaks were crowded into one of them now, overlooking the oval stage where dancers were disrobing in a succession of little mime-plays of true love, roguery, and elopement, to the accompaniment of some pleasant but rather wandering airs performed on lute, harp, and string-of-bells.
Not that anyone could hear much of it through the lusty roars of inebriated patrons shouting bawdy suggestions down at the stage, the rumble of converse, and the groaning of overloaded balconies. The Cheese was packed this night.
Malark helped himself to another generous slice of peppered Tharsultan cheese from the little "castle" of cheeses on the table in their midst. Exotic cheeses were the house gimmick, all of them strongly seasoned enough to make even iron-throated patrons order more drink.
"Thirsty?" Beldar inquired mockingly, watching Malark's eyes fasten in amazement on a particular display of bulbous flesh below.
Their own prized perch was one of dozens of small, elaborately filigreed and obscenely carved balconies that jutted so far out over the stage that they were barely a man's height above the heads of the dancers. All around the Gemcloaks, it was raining, a constant flashing fall of coins being dropped from balconies, aimed with greater or lesser degrees of lubricated skill to plunge down bosoms below. Wise dancers at the Cheese kept their mouths shut when on stage; one could choke on a freshly minted silver shard.
Malark delightedly watched some of those coins find their plunging destinations and others just miss and bounce, ricocheting most amusingly. One of them stuck, just for a moment, half-up a dancer's nose-and the roar of laughter that swept through the Cheese was deafening.
The balconies shook and quivered under the Gemcloaks-and under everyone else, by the feel of it, as drunken patrons started to clap rhythmically. The dancers obliged by hiking what little skirts they wore to kick in time, and the very stage swayed.
"Magic?" Beldar muttered. "'Tis like being on a ship fighting high seas in the harbor!"
"Hoy!" Taeros exclaimed suddenly, slapping his friend's arm. "Look! Isn't that Jessra Belabranta?"
He was pointing at the next balcony, barely the stretch of two long arms away. His gesture was noticed by its occupants, who waved and grinned back.
Beldar and Malark looked, and momentarily forgot the balcony-shaking dancers below.
Jessra Belabranta was widely held to be the silliest and most slow-witted of the Belabranta sisters-as well as the fattest. Her natural endowments were ample in all directions, and she was proudly displaying a pair of them to everyone in the festhall at the moment.
Jessra had evidently just acquired a mer-scale bustier-a garment simply dripping with thumb-sized, teardrop-shaped deep sea pearls of the sort reputed to be the exclusive "catch" of certain pirates of the Nelanther. She obviously wanted all Waterdeep to see those pearls, and the designer of her new garment understood that teardrop sea pearls are best displayed dangling from something and so designed the bustier to reveal to all the watching world the magnificent frontage of the wearer.
Jessra's frontage was… expansive, and the gems she'd glued all over them in a random array did nothing to detract from this.
She was also obviously of the school of taste that believes too much is better and had just tossed a pinch of glow-dust over her bosom. The effect was very much as if a lantern had been lit atop two… two…
Taeros whirled around to face Beldar, swept a flurry of cheeses off the little table, and with a finger wrote in the revealed dust beneath: Two blind whales trying to out-leap each other!
Beldar stared down at the symbols-a code they'd not used since they were young boys together, bored beyond yawns at the same revels. Then it all came back to him. He looked up again at Jessra Belabranta and whooped with helpless laughter.
Taeros promptly joined in, almost choking with mirth, as Malark sat there grinning at them and rolling his eyes.
Jessra cast them a slightly annoyed look through the trembling din of the sort that asks, "And just what do you find so amusing?"
That, of course, only made Beldar laugh all the harder, slapping the table hard.
As if that had been the proverbial last stroke of a woodsman's axe, the table fell through the balcony floor. The slowly building groan of wood that followed was almost deafening, and a startled Taeros stood and spun around in time to see…