"What… what are you then?"
She glowered up at the God Catcher again. "I don't know. But I'm not a dragon. Not anymore."
"How could that happen?" Tennora said.
"Spellplague," she spat, and then drank from her mug as if to rinse the taste of the word from her mouth.
TWO
Veron Angalen had entered Waterdeep by the South Gate, tired and hungry, irritated by the furtive, worried looks he gathered-better, he admitted, than the outright looks of disgust a half-orc walking down the street got in some places, but smugger for their sheen of tolerance. He had been so frustrated that he'd nearly missed the dark-haired woman standing in the middle of the chaos of the gate and looking up at the towers of Waterdeep. A woman he'd been hunting for the last fourteen months.
That had been a day and a half earlier. Sitting in the corner of a hearth-house, cooling his heels and picking the last strings of meat from the bones of his dinner, Veron walked himself through what had gone wrong at the gate and what could easily go wrong when he found her again.
He pushed his plate back, and picked the saltcellar up from the table. If he was the saltcellar, then she had been as close as the knot in the wood grain of the table-in reality, perhaps the length of three carts. There had been plenty of carts to measure against-he laid several squab bones out to represent those. His knife he laid on the edge of the table-the South Gate he'd entered by.
He shifted the saltcellar. He had ducked behind a passing cart and watched her, hardly believing his eyes. The same features, the same height and build. If he called out her name, there was no doubt in his mind she would turn. He had expected she was in Waterdeep, but not that he'd find her as soon as he crossed into the city gates. City of Splendors indeed. She was distracted, staring up at the towers-he could capture her and take her back to Cormyr, collect his payment and move on.
He slid the saltcellar around the knob of a leg bone so that it stood partially shielded by the rib-cage water wagon. Behind the knot that stood for the woman by a bare inch. It had been perhaps five feet. It would have been so simple.
But he had hesitated. The gate had been crowded with scores of hawkers, farmers, pickpockets, servants, and patrolmen. There was nothing on his plate or in his pockets that he could use to represent all the people who had been milling between him and the woman and giving him sideways glances that said they trusted a murderer over a half-orc.
In Cormyr, Veron had seen the body-the wizard on the floor with his throat cut in a jagged line. Not by a knife. A shard of glass the size of his palm with a trim of dried blood lay discarded and cracked beside the dead man. Pieces of arcane equipment had been smashed to pieces. Scorch marks marred a floor littered with the pages of thrown-open tomes.
The servants all attested that the woman had been invited into the wizard Ardusk Nagaenil's study and that he'd asked not to be disturbed. They had been there for the better part of an hour.
Brace, the older hunter who employed Veron, hadn't believed it. "Servants will say a lot of things when their master's dead," he'd said.
But if they had been telling the truth, they had called for the war wizards when they heard their master shouting. Which meant the chaos that had ended with another man dead had taken all of a few minutes.
If she snapped in a crowd of people, who knew how many would end up dead.
Veron was inclined to believe the servants. He'd found the wizard's notes. Ardusk had been interested in her. Spellscarred, the wizard had posited. Loss of memory. Erratic behaviors. Possibly violent.
And thinks she's a dragon of all things, Veron added, studying the knot in the wood. The woman was madder than a mouther, he knew that much.
Veron didn't know why she'd cut the wizard's throat or why the wizard hadn't managed to stop her. He didn't know why the wizard had brought the woman up into his study in the first place-all of which bothered him.
"Don't ask too many questions," Brace had told him. "You aren't a judge, and you aren't the one hiring a hunter. What you don't know doesn't matter."
What Veron did know was that she was dangerous. That if he didn't capture her, his reputation would crumble. That he was very tired of hunting the woman, who had managed for the past year to be a village ahead, a kingdom away. Easier than catching the murderer unawares would be killing her and calling it done with. But the wizard's family wanted her captured alive, and he had agreed.
He'd slipped out from behind the cart intending to trail her until they were out of the rush of the gate. But by then she was gone. He'd missed his chance.
So he had spent the better part of two days wandering the city and looking for a sign of her. Nothing. Everywhere he looked, the crowds offered up dark-haired, tawny-skinned women, none of them the killer from Cormyr.
He dropped the pigeon bones one by one back onto the plate and recognized there was nothing he could do but wait a little longer, listen a little closer.
Verori had toyed with the idea of going to the Watch shortly after he'd lost her. But no. No. It would be a waste of time. As soon as he said, "I'm looking for a woman who thinks she's a dragon," they'd be laughing. Maybe even before. He knew the wizard's family doubted him, eyeing his olive skin and under-bite. He'd had a string of lucky captures-easily attributed to Tymora's blessing instead of his skill-and when he'd heard about the wizard's murder, he'd seen a chance to increase his renown if he could just convince them he was smart enough to do it. With enough of Brace's praise and a careful scrutiny of his cool manners, the Nagaenils-and the war wizards besides-had come around and hired him. No doubt in addition to half a dozen other hunters.
But as far as Veron could tell, no one had tracked her so far or so long.
In the last year of pursuing her, Veron had learned a great deal about the woman, but important questions-Why did she kill the wizard? What might provoke her to lash out again? — still troubled him. He sipped his ale.
When he found her again, he would have to be cautious. Careful. But confident. He would need help, that was certain.
Down by the water, where the dank reek of Mistshore hung heavily on the air and the occasional body in the alley languished until it started to smell, a well-appointed carriage had been sitting in the street for the better part of a day.
The carriage was meant to draw little notice, but in this place, anything not decayed by moisture and hard life stood out like a torch in the night. Even through the pouring rain, it was clear the carriage didn't belong. It had-no doubt-drawn plenty of notice. Standing in the doorway of an establishment he'd rather not be connected to, the carriage's owner, a man in a mask, frowned.
He spent several songs staring at the conveyance, calculating the possibilities that someone was, even now, watching him.
The drug in his system-a rare and special treat imported from the shores of Returned Abeir solely by the establishment behind him-made his already sensitive eyes ache from the lamplight. He pulled the mask a little lower so the eyeholes sat low and the mask shaded his sight. The street was still.
The masked man sighed. The carriage and anyone who'd seen it couldn't be helped. Besides, while it might have stood out in Mistshore, he thought, it did not connect him in any way to the drug den. Provided he wasn't followed. He watched the carriage and the street for several moments, feeling the lethargy in his bones acutely. He was alone.
Blaming his mistrust on the drugs, he strode briskly to his carriage. His groom scrambled down to open the door and help him in.
With a contented sigh, he sank down into the plush seat and pulled the mask from his face, revealing the fine-boned features of an eladrin. He rubbed his solid blue eyes, thankful the magical lamps were shaded and the curtains drawn. Inside, the threatening air of the district was shut away. The dark carriage was warm and smelled faintly of musk and vinestar blossoms.