She went back into the sitting room. Even though she'd managed to doze off, she didn't feel tired. Her thoughts kept returning to the cryptic notions of the dream-a puzzle she wanted to piece together, but could not. And then another puzzle-her mother's trunk. She glanced up at Nestrix, still sleeping in the loft.
"To the Hells with it," she said. She stomped, heavy on her heel, into the false bottom. The wood cracked. Nestrix stirred and grumbled, but did not wake.
As she peeled the splintered wood away, the candlelight caught the gleam of gold.
Tennora reached into the false bottom and drew out a long chain, gold with tiny perfect pearls strung on every third link. A trio of pendants hung from it-two intricate cameos of a man and a woman facing a clear, buttery-colored gem ringed by still more pearls. Tennora forgot to breathe a moment. Between the piece's artistry and the fact that the man's profile had a decidedly Adarbrent family nose-long and pointed-it should not have been where it was.
She laid it on the blankets beside her and reached back in. Treasure after treasure came up from the trunk, each one bubbling with pearls. A coronet of hundreds of bright, tiny diamonds with fat pearls on its points. A collar of emeralds dripping a swag of seed pearls. A brooch of cinnabar carved into the shape of a copulating couple-the pearls were very creative there, Tennora thought with a blush. A man's signet ring with an unfamiliar crest-a horse and anchor-old and well worn and banded by flat squares of nacre. A rope of pearls, enough to wrap her neck from skull to collarbone. She pulled all those and more from the trunk and laid them on the blanket.
At the bottom, beneath all the jewels, were three folded pieces of parchment. Tennora opened them, greedy for information.
Watch postings. Three of them, looking for a thief. A very prolific thief with a penchant for pearls.
The date stamped across the latest one had been a tenday before Liferna wed Mesial Hedare.
Her breath stuck in her throat.
There were too many lies in that trunk, too many deceptions that unseated her own life and her own understandings. She couldn't do it.
Blood pounding in Tennora's ears, she folded the sheaf of papers together and put it back in the box followed by all the jewels, the bundles of armor and weapons, the lockpicks, and the tray. She closed the box up and slid it back across the rug to where it had been sitting propping up her feet, and climbed back into her makeshift bed, trying to keep her mind blank and failing.
FOUR
The lint on Rhinzen's robe burned white hot against his eyes like stars against the night. He rubbed his eyes and hoped the redness was fading, even if the headache the morning light gave him was not. The haepthum was still clinging to his senses despite a long and dreamless night.
The students didn't seem to have noticed-which was, Rhinzen thought, both good and bad. Good because it gave them nothing unsavory to report back to the headmaster or their parents. Bad because it had to be obvious that he was riding out something even if they couldn't tell what, and so he was clearly tutoring a bunch of nearsighted morons too easily distracted to notice a damned thing. Infants, he thought, looking out over his students.
A score of children were seated at two long tables-humans and half-elves with spindly legs hardly long enough to touch the ground; a trio of dwarves, still downy-cheeked; a single gnome girl who looked like a very ugly doll; half-orc twins that he expected to fail if they'd just stop passing their exams. Each had a book open in front of him or her, and all twenty foreheads were crinkled in concentration. The susurrations of turned pages and mouthed words grated on the wizard's ears.
"Silent reading, please," he said. The noise stopped, only to begin again a few breaths later.
Rhinzen sighed. When the quarter ended, he would have fulfilled his obligations and could leave these little fools to the next of the House of Wonder's faculty and go back to teaching wizards. Especially now that he'd released the weakest of that bunch.
Still, as tedious as teaching the children of Waterdeep's wealthy-most of them were too young and too untested to show even an inkling of skill with the Art-could be, it wasn't a poor place to firm up connections. In that class alone, he had a handful of patrons' sons and daughters, and a few who could prove more useful still.
His eyes fell on a rather skinny half-elf boy with brown hair and serious eyes, a young man named Antoum Mrays. Rhinzen was terrible at guessing human ages, but the boy was old enough to have gained his first bit of height and lost the paleness of his curls, but not old enough yet to have started growing in earnest. Nothing special in him as far as the Weave was concerned, but his mother was a woman of significant influence.
Nazra Mrays might have been losing what good looks humans claimed she had, but she still knew how to gain a wealthy merchant or lord's ear and purse strings. She was well known for her gregarious nature, and more than once Rhinzen had watched her make a fool of herself and others at parties only to come out of it with a new confidante, a new investor, and a handful of future friends. Appalling, in Rhinzen's opinion, but useful.
Unlike his drunken, nattering mother, Antoum was blessedly quiet and studious. For a roomful of students as quiet as Antoum Mrays, Rhinzen would give his left hand.
He winced at the inopportune thought and rubbed the back of his hand, as if to rub away the memory of the knife.
"Young Master Mrays," he said. The boy's head shot up, with a guilty look on his face. Another appreciable quality in a child: shame. "Come here, please."
The boy shuffled to the front of the room. "Yes, Master Halnian?"
Rhinzen smiled as pleasantly as he could. "I wanted to ask how the warding spells I set up for your mother are working out. How does she find them?"
The boy shifted. "Well, master," he said in a light, unbroken voice.
"No trouble at all?" Rhinzen smiled more broadly. "Nothing that needs to be adjusted? Nothing refreshed?"
"No, master. She says they're very fine indeed."
Rhinzen didn't doubt Nazra had said no such thing to her son. But now the boy would mention it, and later, if anything did happen, it would be in her mind. She would remember Master Halnian had expressed concerns, and the blame would fall a little lighter.
"Well, dear boy, do tell your mother that if anything does not please her, she should let me know at once. Such things often require finessing before they work perfectly-and I wish to be certain they work perfectly."
"Yes, master."
"You may take your seat." Antoum made a little bow and took his place at the end of the table once more.
A very pleasant child, Rhinzen thought. His headache was finally fading and the children were scheduled to study their cantrips for another hour yet. It was as good a time as any to puzzle out Ferremo's counterspell. He drew a sheet of parchment from the sheaf beside him, wet his quill on his tongue, and started the initial calculations.
Whatever the garish assassin and his master were after, it would certainly have to be a great deal of coin to be worth the risks involved. Rhinzen had to admit to himself that his curiosity over Ferremo's mysterious patron drove him mad in the wee hours of the night when the haepthum wouldn't ebb as it once had. A crime lord from Luskan? Or Baldur's Gate? A cleric of some dark and inscrutable god?
There were hints, tantalizing hints. He or she was wealthy, for certain, and Ferremo's master had only entered Waterdeep in the past few days, expecting their plans to be ready-someone who did not want to be in the city. Rhinzen had also seen the way the assassin's face occasionally went ever so slightly slack as they spoke-a sign if Rhinzen had ever seen one that someone was psionically dictating to Ferremo. And their plan, if he had the right of it, was far too complicated for a simple robbery…