Well, if she were going to get any sleep at all, the time for crawling was now. She set about it, bare-skinned but pleasantly warmed by the breezes blowing along the shaft from distant hearths and the continuous run of metal plates that was meant to carry their heat. Just a halfling doing what halflings all too often did: quietly going where they shouldn't, just to have a look around, and see what advantages might be revealed.
The shaft had gratings opening into room after room, most of them dark and empty. A row of bedchambers, none of them holding The Masked or anyone else she knew. No one was entertaining anyone abed or sorting through jewels or weapons or doing anything else of much interest, and when the shaft came to a sudden bend, she wondered if she should turn back.
Well, not until I've seen the end of it, at least …
The bend proved to be a dogleg around an older wall of massive fitted stones, like a castle wall. It probably was a castle wall.
Light ahead. More rooms. She almost certainly couldn't do more than look, because the gratings that were so easy to remove from the room sides seemed impossible to shift from inside the shaft with anything short of a smith's hammer or vials of strong acid. But looking was what halflings did.
Someone was talking from the nearest room ahead. Two men, at least, and-
Voices she knew.
With infinite care, Tantaerra crawled forward.
The gratings in her bedchamber and the row it was part of had been down by the floor, but here she was looking down into a room. A small but palatial room.
Lord Telcanor sat at an ornately carved dark wooden table made to seat four, dining alone. There were no nearly nude concubines waiting on him, or anywhere to be seen for that matter, in this bedless room of sideboards and glorious maps and a handwoven carpet the hue of old blood.
Telcanor was being waited on by his formidable bodyguard, Onstal Zreem, who somehow looked even larger and more muscular out of armor. Zreem wore some sort of dark, high-collared jerkin, and was pouring wine and then standing beside his lord with a mouth-cloth held at the ready-but he was talking to Telcanor almost as an equal.
The noble gulped wine like a starving drover, then set his glass down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before Zreem could get the cloth to it, and said dismissively, "You are angry and suspicious-but this is hardly new. You're always suspicious. Particularly of Tartesper. I know the man's a cold and scheming worm, but so is every last sage on all Golarion-odd, every one of them, in one way or another. It's the weight of all that useless knowledge they've crammed between their ears, crushing their brains like soft cheese, I tell you!"
"Lord," the bodyguard replied heavily, "let us pretend I'd never met Tartesper before today, and knew nothing of him. So I confine myself only to what I saw and heard from him when he was in the solar, while you were confronting the two prisoners."
He refilled Telcanor's glass, and the noble swigged from it, set it down, and spread his hands. "Very well. Just what you saw, heard, and sensed in the solar, and have wildly conjectured since. Convince me."
"Lord, Tartesper recognized the man we brought in with the halfling, the one with the masks. I saw that. And he and the one who came through the skylight, too-they know each other, from before tonight. Yet he concealed this from you. For both men. This is some past trickery or unfolding plot of his own. He's using your authority and involving you in it. And it's foolish, lord, a needless risk that weakens your standing among your kin and endangers you personally. Who knows who these fools will talk to, what they'll say when they fall into the wrong hands? They'll name you, sure as-"
"I want them to," Krzonstal Telcanor interrupted firmly, setting down the roast goose he'd been biting into and using that hand to gesture grandly. "How else am I to stand out, among all my posturing and preening uncles? Or rise in the regard of the General Lords? And if they somehow succeed, with the Fearsome Gauntlet I can slay Lord Cole and the Mereirs and anyone else who defies me, and so become Lord of Braganza, in truth if not in name." He shrugged. "Or openly, if I choose to."
"Forgive me, Lord, but how is it that you know so much of this magical gauntlet? I hope you're not trusting overmuch in the details of some tavern tale. Such embellishments-"
"Zreem, Zreem, I have a map showing the location of the tomb-Runstrer's busy making three copies of it for our expendables right now-and I know all about the Fearsome Gauntlet."
"How so, if it's not overbold to ask?"
Rather than being irked at his bodyguard's inquisitiveness, Lord Telcanor sounded gleefully overeager to enlighten the man. "I know what I know, loyal Zreem, because the recovery of that gauntlet from the tomb was a task I was asked to accomplish ten years back, by one of the General Lords, to prove my loyalty and worth."
"What happened to you?"
Telcanor sneered. "I don't gallop to my own suicide because a General Lord orders me to. I never undertook it. I relocated from Korholm to Braganza instead, letting it be known I did so because my latest prayers to Abadar had been answered by a vision showing me dwelling here."
"I see," Zreem said, his voice perfectly neutral as he refilled his lord's glass.
"However," Telcanor said brightly, "no one should be greatly surprised if I take great satisfaction-in the unlikely event that any of our three dolts succeed-in having any survivor who brings me the Fearsome Gauntlet murdered, then claiming the recovery of the Fearsome Gauntlet as my own deed. Redeeming my standing in the eyes of the General Lords."
Zreem let a slow, thin smile cross his face, nodded as if in satisfaction, then asked if his lord had any other orders for him before he retired.
Smooth. Not a hint of contempt, yet Tantaerra could feel it clear across the room and through the grating. On the other side of the metal, Lord Telcanor was now dismissing his bodyguard and taking personal possession of the decanter and all that was left in it. He was well on his way to being too drunk to molest anyone whose bedchamber he got into, thank Cayden Cailean.
Tantaerra decided it was high time she returned to her room before her absence was discovered, and hastened back along the shaft. She scraped the worst of the cobwebs off on the grating, settled it back into place, and dived into bed.
The covers were barely up to her chin before the door opened without knock or warning to reveal a trio of the large women who'd bathed her, all of them warmly gowned. The foremost bore a silver tray.
"A posset for the night, lady? Warm milk from His Lordship's own herd, boiled with the finest from the cellars! No finer to be had in any palace in any land!"
The rearmost pair of women had brought a warming pan to make her toes toasty.
Tantaerra blinked. She could get used to this. And, well, it just might be the last wine she'd ever have, so boiled with milk or not …
Chapter Nine
Braganza looked even more soaringly impressive when you were marching down one of its widest streets amid your very own cohort of guards.
Of course, it would likely be even nicer if they weren't also your very own jailers, but …
At least she had her sense of humor back, Tantaerra reflected. A superb meal and a splendid bed, not to mention something warm and wonderful in the little decanter that was strong enough to drive away all taste of the posset, did wonders for fear, despair, and shame. Leaving her merely doomed.
It was a chill, clear morning, but Tantaerra was dressed in the finest clothes she'd ever possessed. They fit, too, which meant at least one of those overlarge women could judge size shrewdly, though providing footwear at such short notice had evidently defeated them, and she'd been given her own boots back. Freshly soled, shined, and repaired, mind you. Yes, she could get used to being the prisoner of a mad noble …