"Yes? Very well, Strakes, what is it?"
Two more footmen with breeches clasped at the, knees by silver broaches ushered a blonde girl in by the arms. Her face had a sulky snub-nosed beauty, contorted at the moment by angry hauteur. She wore simple white robe. A torque of gold encompassed her slender neck.
"I regret to report that we discovered your daughter rifling Your Grace's purse," Strakes said, holding up a black velvet pouch. He had thinning black hair combed over the dome of his head, long, lugubrious features, a button nose, and a gift of speaking without moving his lips.
"Let me go!" the girl exclaimed, wrenching her el-bows free of the footmen's grasp. She shook back her hair and held her chin high.
"Tatrina, Tatrina," the old duke said in a tone of halfhearted severity, "what am I to do with you?"
"You have more than you need!" she declared. "The poor children of Zazesspur need help. I was merely trying to do the right thing, since you will not!" She had the habit of speaking with almost visible exclamation marks.
"I devote the waking hours of every day to the welfare of the people of Zazesspur," Hembreon said, "especially the children."
"There must be more! Ao must reign triumphant!"
"I will not countenance your stealing from me for whatever purposes, however noble." He held out his hand. Strakes deposited the purse in it. The duke dug inside and produced a gold Zazesspur gulden "Here, my child. Be at peace, and leave me in peace. I am a busy man."
The girl scowled. "This is not-"
"Enough!" the old man snapped. "You've taxed my purse; do not tax my patience. And if I catch you filching from me again, you'll be restricted to your chambers for a month!"
She sniffed, did another hair-flip, pivoted, and stalked from the garden. The servitors followed. Duke Hembreon sighed.
"Or at least a week." He shook his head. "Isn't that ever the way of it? No matter how much power one wields in the world, it's always hardest to rule one's home."
"I wouldn't know, Your Grace," Zaranda said. "I have no children."
"Perhaps you should bear some, Countess Morning-gold. It would greatly enhance your sense of responsibility. Now, if you have no further matters to discuss, I crave your leave. The city's business presses."
There was a blue-and-bronze patrol standing in the street when Zaranda stepped out of the duke's gabled front door. At her appearance the leader swept off a purple velvet bladder hat with a long pheasant tail feather stuck in it and performed a sardonic bow.
"The Countess Morninggold, I presume?" he said with a sneer. He was a man of middle height or a shade beneath, whose expensive doublet-purple velvet slashed to display gold satin lining-and orange pantaloons augmented rather than concealed a bandylegged, ungraceful figure. His face and voice were well suited to sneering, the former being dominated by a large nose with a wart prominent on the side of it, and a ginger-colored goatee surrounding full lips below. An unprepossessing apparition, withal, yet Zaranda marked a lightness on his feet and a fluidity to his bow that belied his unhandy form. His codpiece was wrought in the face of a leering fiend with pointed tongue protruding.
"Indeed you do presume, I think," Zaranda said. "And whom have I the… honor… of addressing?"
The man's head was perfectly bald on top, with tufts of wiry reddish hair jutting to the sides. He made haste to replace his cap. "I am Shaveli, captain of the civic guard, though better known to the admiring multitudes as Shaveli Sword-Master." And he caressed the diamond-inset gold pommel of the swept-hilted rapier hung from a leather baldric.
He was known as a few other things, Zaranda's street contacts had told her over the last few days, including the commander of a well-feared secret detail of the guard known as the Specials. A brutal man, who had been a professional duelist before the reformers had offered him rank in the civic guard, he was rumored to make use of the office to indulge certain dark tastes. Men in such positions, and women also, were always rumored to do so. Looking at the man for the first time, though, Zaranda was minded to give the rumors credence.
"Am I to be arrested, then?" she asked. Behind the Sword-Master, his guardsmen shuffled their feet and shifted grips on their halberds uneasily as they eyed her with a mixture of desire and fear. Zaranda had a reputation of her own.
"The choice is yours, Countess," Shaveli said, saying the title as he might say whore.
"Then I choose not to be arrested. Good day." She started to walk past.
Two guards sprang forward to cross their halberds before her. "Ah, but there's the rub, Countess," Shaveli said. "If you choose not to be arrested, you must choose to come with us."
"Ah," she said with an acid-dipped smile. "I see. Our noble city council has seen fit to reform the language as well as the laws, so that choice means doing what the government compels one to do."
"You have said it," the Sword-Master said with a flourish and a bow. "And now, if you will follow me-"
15
"I have heard much about you, Countess Morning-gold," the tall man said. He placed the dome back on the rotunda of a miniature building in his model city. He turned from the table to face Zaranda. His face was long and heavily handsome, shaven clean and just beginning to show the marks of weathering, age, and care, particularly in the lines around the mouth and the intense brown eyes. His square-cut hair was dark brown, heavily salted with gray. The simple severity of a gold-trimmed green tabard of rich fabric worn over brown blouse and golden hose minimized the visible effects of prolonged inactivity on a once-athletic frame. "I am honored to make your acquaintance."
He took Zaranda's hand, bowed over it, and pressed it to his lips. From below and around them in the vast half-completed Palace of Governance came the woodpecker and cicada sounds of artisans at work. The air in the chamber was still, warm, and charged.
"Your lordship's gallantry is impeccable, but I fear it outstrips your memory," Zaranda said. "We've met before."
He straightened and showed her a grin that stripped years from his countenance. "Ah, but that was Zaranda Star, the dashing war captain, not Countess Morning-gold."
"And I have long been denied the pleasure of meeting either one," a voice said. From an archway a white-robed man emerged into the octagonal hall on the Palace of Governance's uppermost story. Civic guards lurked in the shadows without. Zaranda had not been disarmed before Shaveli bowed her mockingly into the baron's chamber, but Hardisty took few chances. The newcomer was a spry elderly man with marmoset tufts of white hair surrounding a gleaming dome of head, a beak of a nose, bright blue eyes nestled among laughter lines above apple cheeks. A plain white robe hung on a spare frame. Sandals gently slapped the green marble floor as he strode toward Zaranda with hand extended.
"Countess, my chief advisor and friend, Armenides the Compassionate," Baron Hardisty said.
Zaranda presented her hand and was relieved when the cleric settled for shaking it rather than emulating Hardisty. She noted that his neck was bare.
"The honor's mine," she said, "especially considering high priests of Ao are far rarer in this world than captains or countesses. And please, my name is Zaranda Star."
Armenides beamed and nodded. "Just so, just so, good Mistress Star. And, the All-Father willing, his high priests shall not long remain a rarity in Faerun."
"My lifetime has seen the flight of dragons and the death of gods," Zaranda said. "Perhaps it shall be as you say, Excellency."