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.All of them, like the one just ending, saying the same thing.Shadowdale had been hunted high and low for any sign of the legendary Old Mage, but it seemed Elminster couldn’t be found at the moment.Bah.Shared failure was no easier to swallow than a personal failing.Not that sitting exasperated in this stuffy little room was going to mend anything.“Must I do everything myself?” Starbridge growled.“Am I doomed to spend my life surrounded by blundering incompetents?”At least two of the wizards and highknights crowded into the office stiffened, but most grinned wryly, and young Baerengard even dared to jest, “Well, you did choose to dwell in Cormyr, sir.”Starbridge gave the youngling a sour look.When he’d been Baerengard’s age, idiots this callow would never have been considered for the mantle of highknight, but these dozen-some filling his office were almost all the highknights the Forest Kingdom had left.Untrustworthy, insolent puppies.“I will lead an expedition to hunt down Elminster,” he declared.“I’ll take nigh all of you, plus a few of the more competent wizards of war—those with brains enough not to get themselves killed if they try something so difficult as camping, and who’re capable of enough basic civility that we can stomach their company.Those here in this room, for instance.We leave tonight.”Several highknights stirred as if they wanted to speak, but only one plunged into dispute with him.Young Narulph, of course.“I think an expedition is far less than wise—is, in fact, a very bad idea, given that Ganrahast and Vainrence still can’t be found.Is it right and prudent that we depart the palace at this time, when the Obarskyrs may need our aid at any moment, with all the nobles of the realm gathering here for the council?”Highknights had always owned the right to speak bluntly to superiors—even the reigning monarch or regent—without fear of reprisal, and the open debate this fostered had time and again served the realm well, but Starbridge had little time for Narulph’s usual “Do nothing is best” stance.“I’ll have none of that,” he snarled.“If the roof above our heads fell in and killed us all right now, there are still plenty of wizards of war left to defend Cormyr.Some of them—Arbrace, Belandroon, and Hawksar, to name three—are even almost as competent as they themselves think they are.”The handful of mages present all grinned at that.“If we’re not here to save their precious little behinds for them, again,” Starbridge added, before Narulph could think of some other idiocy to spout, “perhaps—just perhaps—they’ll grow some backbone, and we’ll all discover they’re good for something besides strutting around muttering darkly about how the realm would fall every tenday or so, but for their oh-so-secret efforts.”One wizard lost his smile, another snorted back laughter, and the rest winced.“Anyone else?” Starbridge barked.“Speak out now, because once we’re at work, I’ll take a very dim view of anyone trying to confound the results I’m seeking, or deciding on their own to just change things a little.”No one said a word.Not even the sullen-looking Narulph.“Right,” Starbridge said heavily.“Hear then my orders: Everyone is to depart the palace, starting now and leaving by ones and twos.We’ll all meet again—before highsun, if you want to stay a highknight—at the Stone Goat paddock marker out on Jester’s Green.Mounts, provisions, weathercloaks, and all have been gathered ready there long since, under guard.Fetch only the weapons you most want with you, and tell no one where you’re going or what you’re about.If anyone follows you to the Goat, I’ll deal with them.Swift, now! The sooner gone, the sooner back again—whereupon Narulph here will be able to sleep on his bed of fears a little less fitfully.Dismissed.”Everyone broke into chatter and headed for the door, and Sir Starbridge rose from his chair with an air of quiet satisfaction.He’d be in a saddle soon, rather than this gods-stlarned chair behind this triple-be-damned desk, and that was worth any number of urgent all-hands missions.So, where had he put that blasted cloak?Manshoon turned away from both Starbridge’s mind and that scrying, enjoying the same satisfaction that the gruff head highknight was feeling.Another deft manipulation bearing fruit, another piece in the building mosaic …On to the next piece, over there in that scene …Shrouded in the gloom where moonlight was feeble, the muddy midyard was deserted.Or almost deserted.It was furnished with a few small, moving shadows.It was the same city mid-yard where Arclath Delcastle and the Crown messenger Delnor had seen a certain mask dancer carrying her nightsoil bucket to a dung wagon.There were no wagons in the yard at the moment.The prowling shadows belonged to cats out hunting—and a few furtive, smaller, scuttling things that darted from crevices across the yard’s few strips of uneven cobbles to handy heaps of fallen refuse, then on into tangled, thorny clumps of weeds, in hopes none of the cats would manage a successful pounce.High above the midyard, a much larger shadow moved.The size of shadow that would attract the interest of Purple Dragons on Watch duty, had there been any in the midyard.Dark, lithe, and somehow feminine, it swung down from the roof to hang against a stretch of house wall where it could peer at a certain dark, shuttered window.Amarune’s window.After a long, silent time of watching and listening, it slipped silently back up onto the roof again.Where almost immediately there arose a brief disturbance, a choked-off sound of startlement—and a body plunged from that rooftop to splat and bounce heavily on the cobbles, its throat slit.CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENBLOOD ON THE ROOFTOPSI thank you, Lord Delcastle,” Amarune murmured gravely, sliding into Arclath’s arms to look into his eyes from very near, expecting him to want at least a kiss, “and remain mindful of … the debt I owe you.Yet if you have any kind regard for me at all, I would ask that you depart this place now and let me go my own way until at least dusk on the morrow, when—”Arclath was already using the arm that wasn’t around her to push open the Dragonriders’ street doors.Amarune broke off abruptly at what she saw inside.At the look on her face, Arclath spun around to see what was the matter, letting the door start to swing closed again, and in so doing whirled Amarune away from what she was facing.With the briefest of angry growls, Amarune swung him around again and forward into the club.Where amid a quiet cluster of Purple Dragons and servants still cleaning up and a few tables of newly arrived drinkers, Tress was helping a rather tipsy-looking man to his feet.Not one of the nobles who’d brawled so messily in the club earlier, but a rather haughty-looking wizard of war in full palace robes who had evidently just risen from a table and sprawled on his face and was showing signs of doing so again the moment he lost the deft support of the womanly shoulder under one of his armpits.“Thank you, wench,” he was growling rather blearily at Tress.“Know that you have aided a ver’ important wizard of the court, who enjoys the ear and confidence of the king himself! Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake am I, and urkgh … I’m going to be sick, s’what I’m—”He promptly demonstrated the truth of his words, with force and enthusiasm
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