She slid her legs over the bed's edge and sat all the way up, winding the sheet more carefully about her. "What are you talking about?"
"We have brought you a small present, Countess Morninggold," Armenides said unctuously. The baron nodded. Shaveli opened the sack, thrust his hand in.
It came out holding the head of Artalos the armorer by the topknot.
The Sword-Master's specials caught him attempting commerce with the enemies of Zazesspur and Tethyr," Hardisty said. "We have had a most enlightening conversation."
The severed head opened its eyes. "Zaranda," it croaked. Tm sorry. I thought I could help. Please-"
Armenides clapped his hands. Artalos's eyes rolled upward in their sockets, and his long jaw hung slack.
Gods! Zaranda thought. Simonne! Blood began to seep into the wad of sheet clutched in her right hand, where the nails had bit clean through linen into the palm. "Why have you done this to him? Even if he sought to reach my friends, they're no enemies of Zazesspur."
Shaveli laughed. "I loved the look in your eyes when he opened his. Have you missed me, then, my pretty little countess?"
"Faneuil, silence your cur!" snapped Hembreon. The Sword-Master looked poison at him. Ignoring him, the old duke stepped forward to stand gazing down at Zaranda with pain in his deep-sunk eyes.
"Your Star Protective Services are encamped before the city," he said. "They swear to free you by force. A thousand strong they are-"
Zaranda's laugh rang like a brazen gong of Thay. "A thousand against a city such as Zazesspur? What kind of threat is that? They might as well be a thousand children for all the harm they can do to you behind your walls!"
"-and more march hourly to join them, from all over Tethyr."
She stood. "But that's absurd. If nothing else, Shield of Innocence knows better than to lead such troops against fortifications so strong, manned by regular troops."
"Our intelligence indicates the orog no longer leads," Hardisty said.
"And if we required further proof of your perfidy, consorting with a great-ore of the Thighbone-Splitter tribe would suffice to condemn you," Armenides said.
"He's been accused of treachery in what these miscreants choose to regard as your 'kidnapping,' " the Lord of Zazesspur continued. "He is transported in chains. A mute ranger leads the rebels, and a half-elf bard speaks for him."
Zaranda sank back to the bed and covered her face in her hands.
"We should welcome the advent of all the rebels in Tethyr," Armenides said. "When they have conveniently gathered together in the open country around Zazesspur, Lord Faneuil will muster the civic guard and the knights of the city, and behold!" He held up his hands and flung open his fingers with the air of one unveiling a major miracle. "No more rebellion."
"Zaranda Star," Duke Hembreon declared, "your treason is manifest. Therefore, not without regret, the city council of Zazesspur has decreed that you must pay the penalty. At noon tomorrow-that is, the day following this morning's sunrise-you shall suffer death by breaking upon the great wheel of justice in the midst of the plaza. At the same hour shall the lord of the city be crowned King Faneuil I of all Tethyr."
She looked up. Her eyes gleamed with wetness, but her cheeks were dry.
"Nothing your executioner can do," she said in a low voice, "will cause me half the pain of the tidings you've brought me."
Shaveli's ugly face split in a sunny smile. "Don't count upon that, Countess," he said. "For I'm the one who'll do the honors."
26
"I can't believe they're going to put Countess Morninggold to death tomorrow," the gangly, pimple-faced youth whispered loudly. The stinking water that lapped their ankles and the slimy sewer walls took his words and cast them in all directions, in the faces of the little party and bouncing down the passageway. "Is there nothing we can do?"
A drop fell from the low-groined ceiling onto the back of Simonne's neck and rolled down it like an ice slug. She forced herself not to think of what it was.
"Yes," she said more softly. "We can try to be quiet and not get caught. Beyond that-Gond teaches us to make the best use of what fortune places in our hands. We can but trust to his providence and our own resources."
By jittering torchlight she surveyed her doughty band: gnomes interspersed with youthful humans and even a smattering of half-elves, faces green-tinted at the stench and knowledge of what was gurgling about their boots. Some of the nongnomes were fellow Gond followers, others the priestess's friends. The way they clutched their motley collection of knives, clubs, swords, and short bows showed far too plainly for Simonne's taste that none of them was a fighter by training or experience.
She looked to the figure by her side. It was even shorter than she, clad in a dark brown cloak with hood thrown back to reveal a head of chestnut curls. It held a hoodwinked bull's-eye lantern in one small hand.
"You're sure this is the way, Nikdemane Birdsong?"
The halfling nodded, a trifle impatiently. "Down this path, through the narrow passage that forks off to the left there yonder. It's the back way into a subterranean lagoon that feeds into the Sulduskoon and thence to the sea. There's an ancient stone pier where we used to smuggle goods whose makers didn't care to purchase guild stamps or ask a syndic's leave to do business."
"You'd not steer us wrong?" she asked, wondering what she would do if he did.
He gave her a look of fine halfling disdain. "I'm a thief, tinker priestess. But I steal goods, not children. Not even bigfeet deserve to be served so."
She nodded. She wondered at her own motivation in undertaking this mad caper. She suspected with a touch of chagrin that she and her followers shared a reason: the creed of their red-bearded smith god was Action counts! Yet they all did far more talking than acting.
Here was their chance to take action that would truly count.
Father, she thought, I don't think even you could disapprove. But withal, I do this for you.
She gestured with her three-shot repeating pistol crossbow, recently invented by a fellow priest of Gond Wonderbringer. "Let's go. And please keep it quiet!"
Lying side by side on their bellies, Simonne and Nik Birdsong inched forward up a sloping passage uncomfortably low even for the gnome woman, although the halfling had walked insouciantly upright until both went prone for the final stretch. Gaining the lip first, the little thief gave Simonne a quick grin of vindication. As he turned back, the priestess saw his expression change to disgust. She writhed up beside him.
The tunnel mouth opened twenty feet above the floor of a vast torch-lit chamber. The black galley bobbed gently alongside a mossy stone pier, tied fore and aft to protrusions that might once have been winged statues, but had long since worn to amorphousness – an indication of their age, securely hidden as they were from the erosive forces of wind and weather. The black square-rigged sail hung limp from the yardarm, but there was no mistaking the stylized black nail and Z rune against a white circle – the emblem of the Zhentarim.
Simonne's breath caught in her throat. There was also no mistaking the identities of the men busy herding a coffle of weeping, stumbling children up the gangplank and into the slave ship.
All wore the pure-white robes of the priests of Ao.
Angry murmuring and clatter awoke Zaranda from a fitful but blessedly dreamless sleep. She rose from the bed, feeling as she did so an internal blow to the heart: this is my last morning. She sought to pass the shock off with a joke, murmuring, "Need they make such racket raising the wheel of justice?" as she shuffled to the window.