“Harp!”
Harp didn’t turn toward Boult’s voice. His hand was resting on the tree, and his thoughts were firmly elsewhere.
“Harp!” Boult marched up beside him and glared up at him. “Stop daydreaming,” he ordered. “It’s not her. Unless she shrunk to dwarf size and gained a substantial amount of weight.”
That snapped Harp back to the present. “It’s a dwarf?”
“Didn’t I just say that?”
“No, you said she shrunk to dwarf size.”
“The corpse is a dwarf. It’s not Liel.”
“How do you know?”
Boult stared at Harp in frustration. “Because it’s dwarf-sized,” he sputtered. “She’s got dwarf-sized bones and a dwarf-sized head, and it’s a dwarf’s corpse. This is the stupidest conversation we’ve had with each other in a decade of stupid conversations.”
“Couldn’t it be a small human?”
Boult rolled his eyes. “I’m going to forgive you for asking such a ridiculous question because you’re distracted by thoughts of your long lost love.”
“She’s not my long lost-”
“Blah, blah, blah. You’re only lying to yourself.”
“Where in the realms did a dwarf come from?” Harp said ignoring Boult’s comment. “There weren’t any in the colony.”
Boult shook his head. “They live here.”
“In the jungle?”
“You think we all live in mountains digging for gem stones?”
“Well … yes.”
Boult glared at him. “Shows what you know. We live everywhere. We live in the mountains. We live in the cities. We live in the jungles. We sail the oceans.”
“No, you don’t. You’re the only dwarf in Faerun who’ll set foot on a ship, and you do a piss poor job of it.”
“Well at least I can tell a dwarf from a human. You’re dumber than a starving ship rat.”
Harp’s demeanor softened. “It’s not Liel,” he said, as if he finally believed it. “It’s not Liel. Which means we haven’t actually found what we’re looking for.”
CHAPTER NINE
30 Hammer, Year of Splendors Burning
(1479 DR)
Winter Palace, Tethyr
Tresco Maynard had seen the dense fog roll across the courtyard and cover the earth like a shroud. He hoped Evonne was safe within the walls of the Winter Palace, but couldn’t take time to find her because he was obligated to search for his student Daviel, who had disappeared for the third time in a tenday. Tresco wasn’t worried about Daviel, who was probably sneaking off to see a village girl, but he had to keep up the appearance of concerned tutor or risk losing his position entirely through rumors.
Outside the door of the kitchen, Tresco adjusted the brown cape on his shoulders and tucked it over the crook of one arm. If the cooks gave him any lip, he would have them all sent packing, he thought angrily as he shoved open the door.
But the warm, sweet-smelling room was deserted. Puzzled, Tresco walked past long tables laden with steaming dishes full of meat, soups, and spiced fruit. There were loaves of soft bread cooling on wooden racks, and the fires were stoked high in the massive ovens. But where were the cooks? Dinner was slated to begin despite Queen Anais’s absence, and the servants should have been loading the silver serving carts. Suddenly, a cold breeze swept across the room, making Tresco’s hands ache and putting a chill in his bones.
A door had been left open somewhere. Tresco pulled his woolen hood over his graying hair and flexed his stiff fingers. He was twenty years past his youth but still a powerfully built man and handsome despite his years. The infirmity in his hands was the first thing that truly made him feel old.
Tresco pulled a red leather pouch embossed with the circular crest of Kinnard Keep, his ancestral house, from under his cloak and took a pinch of black leaf. He placed it between his gums and cheek and waited until the tingling spread into his fingers. There were many things he didn’t like about getting old, but that was no matter. He must find Daviel before dinner, if indeed there would be a dinner that night. Tresco was supposed to be a tutor, not a nanny. Keeping up with an active prince was a job for a younger man.
Tresco left the kitchen area and moved into the workshop where the blacksmith and coopers worked during the day. The forges were dampened, and only a few lanterns cast light on the sawdust floor. He left the workshop and continued down a narrow corridor. The air seemed wetter the farther he walked down the passageway, so the open door must be somewhere up ahead. Tresco had been to the Winter Palace many times and had a vague recollection of the haphazard floor plan-each generation built new additions to the sprawling palace without anything but temporary functionality in mind. The result was a maze of low-ceilinged walkways and dank storage rooms with mossy walls.
He’d been to the lower levels of the palace on several occasions in years past when he had been tutor for one of Daviel’s uncles. In fact, Tresco had been a tutor for young men of the noble bloodlines for years. Yet even as one of the most sought-after tutors for royalty in Tethyr, he was underestimated by his peers.
Tresco remembered the days of his youth when ideas used to catch his mind and hold it like a vice. The hours of study would pass from day into night before Tresco looked up from a book or noticed the gripping pain of hunger in his belly. Unfortunately, those days were long past. Tresco’s mind wandered aimlessly, like a lost traveler in an inhospitable land. Except for a few personal projects, Tresco had given up study altogether. Teaching had simply become a necessary, if unwanted, pastime. Daviel was bright enough, but unfocused, and Tresco barely had the will to keep him at his books.
Besides, he had more important things to think about. Like Evonne and all her talk of death, the jungle, and those disturbing tales of the sarrukh and their penchant for eating the flesh of the lesser races. Evonne had a vivid way of expressing herself, which was not appropriate for a woman of her stature, in Tresco’s opinion. She was strong-willed, a quality that intrigued Tresco, almost despite himself. But she was the woman who should be queen! Evonne shouldn’t concern herself with such disturbing things.
The last time he saw Evonne was a month before, when they had spent a few days together at Lindenhall, north of the Skyhart Waterfall. One night after dinner, she had begun talking about her impending death and how there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. It was the first time he’d ever seen Evonne cry, and it made him want to take her someplace far away-a place with thick walls and towers to the sky and locks no one could ever breach-and keep her safe forever.
After the emotional tenor of the evening, Tresco had felt closer to Evonne than ever before; it may well have been the most intense moment of his life-outside of the violent brawls of his youth. He and Evonne had been lovers for almost a year, but it had been sporadic, and at her insistence, secret. Before those days at Lindenhall, an afternoon was the longest he’d ever spent with her. Whenever they were together, it was always brief and always at her convenience, leaving Tresco with the unfortunate impression that Evonne saw their companionship as a token of her generosity.
But the night he’d held Evonne while she confessed her fear of death, everything had changed. Since his youth, Tresco had viewed women with little more than disdain. As soon as a woman fancied herself irreplaceable, he invariably grew weary of her company. He thought he was happily committed to an uncommitted life. But Evonne was unique. For the first time, he wanted a woman with a lasting, perhaps unceasing, desire.