Asper smiled. "I am Asper. Mirt is my man. We came here to warn your father, I fear: two lords of Watercleep, at least, have been slain tonight. The Lady Tamaeril Bladesemmer is dead; she managed a sending to my lord, and we know that one man, masked and able to get somehow within her wards, slew her. Earlier, the wizard Resengar was killed in his own parlor. Do you know of others?"
Aleena shook her head. "I do not even know the full count of who is a lord and who is not. Laeral did tell me that Mirt was, ere she sent me here."
Mirt stared, the decanter already half-empty in his hand. "Laeral sent you? What foolisliness is this?"
Aleena lifted her chin again. "Lord," she said softly," 'tis I my duty to Waterdeep, as your service is yours. The palace throne could not be seen to be empty, else this man or men, and their backers, would know they'd succeeded-and what might befall the City of Splendors then? An army, attacking? Fleets? All slaughter that we might prevent!"
"Men, you say," Mirt said, frowning, ignoring her other words. "How many attacked your sire?"
Aleena shrugged. "None here know. He used a teleport ring Khelben gave him long ago, to come to us in Blackstaff Tower. The Blackstaff is gone walking the planes these nineteen days now, on some work or other he spoke nothing of, to me. Laeral and I nursed him. When we had done what we could, she told me I must wear father's armor and sit the throne here, being of height to do so. I agreed. We washed it up, and she laid a spell upon me, so that"-a smile touched her lips, and slid away again-"I sound like father when I speak. A comical effect, I'm told."
Mirt grinned. "I'd think twice about embracing you, with your visor down, aye. So what now?"
Aleena spread her gauntleted hands. "I-I don't know. I can't sleep for worrying over father, I'm sick at heart over deciding who should hang or who owes who what damages or-all of it! I know not how father or anyone does it, day upon day! I-I can't go like this much longer." She wrinkled her nose. "As well, I stink to the very heavens in this armor, and soon enough those who know father will know that the smell is not right for him."
Mirt and Asper chuckled. "Yes, it grows strong, with your helm off," Asper said. "Let's go to Blackstaff Tower and talk with Laeral, then, or we've reached a trail's end."
Mirt nodded. "Aye, indeed. Put on that helm again, and we'll get you a bath if nothing else."
Aleena smiled. "How did you know, so quickly?"
Mirt shrugged. "The way you sat. The way you waved to the guard. The way you didn't look offended beforehand at the dirty joke you would've known I'd be making as I greeted you-all that on top of what Torgent said."
"Torgent?"
"One of the palace guards. He's on Shyrrhr's tunnel gate, tonight. If you need a friend or protector in the palace, Lady, you could find no better than he. Look for an old man with a white mustache. He said you'd said little and kept to your armor these past days; he knew something was amiss and as good as told me that it wasn't Piergeiron inside the armor. Folk can tell, lass. Folk can always tell." He shrugged. "Besides, if I'd been wrong, your sire owes me a turn or two. 'Tis not my habit to leap upon every lady I meet, you know."
"Lately?" Asper asked him, eyebrow raised. "Is there not a tunnel from here to Blackstaff Tower that we might use?"
“Aye," said Mirt and Aleena together and chuckled. "Come," said the fat moneylender, striding toward a pillar. "This way."
Aleena frowned. "Here? But it's down-"
Mirt grinned at her. "Trust me, Lady." He said. "There're ways and ways, in this place. You'd want to miss a chance at giving that surly grim-chin outside the door a fright, no? When he finds you gone, it'll give him a short breath or two!"
Shaking her head, Aleena joined them. "Father warned me about you, once. But I had no idea-"
"They never do," Mirt purred, as stones parted to open a narrow, secret way. "Mind your heads, ladies...."
A hungry mouse in a corner of the room had time to draw only three breaths after the secret door closed and before a midair flickering filled the chamber.
Cold flames raced outward and around. Out of them leaped a masked figure, blade ready in hand. The room was dark and empty. After a quick and silent look around, it shrugged and stepped within the flames once more. The fire and light dwindled to nothing, and darkness returned.
The mouse scurried out in case the strange visitor had left something edible, but there was nothing. Not like the old days. Tilings were never like the old days, the mouse reflected, slowly and dimly. Perhaps that was the way of the world.
Lord of the pit, wizard, where is the devil-damned magic?
[silence, mindworm burrowing grimly on through vaulted darkness]
"Through here," Mirt wheezed, trotting bent over low. "The way opens out-"
"So it does! All the more danger for someone who's a lord of Waterdeep, but Faerun is a dangerous place!"
The voice was cheerful and unexpected, very close to Mirt's ear. The Old Wolf was faster than he looked. He had his sword raised and ready, in just the right spot, and he ducked back with a snarl.
His would-be slayer hissed out a curse. Slender steel sang out in a vicious thrust that skewered only air.
Mirt's stouter blade lashed in over it, biting hard into leather and flesh beneath. The man sobbed at the sudden pain. Mirt brought his sword back trailing a dark ribbon of blood and batted his attacker's sword down.
They strained, steel against steel. Mirt used his free hand, candle and all, to deliver a punch to where the wound must be. His foe groaned and shuddered, reeling back. For the first time, Mirt dared to scuttle out of the passage into the room.
Asper snapped his name, tense and low, from behind Aleena.
Mirt growled, "Still alive-and dancing with a masked man, for a change."
"My turn," Asper replied. "You killed the last ruthless slayer who attacked us, remember?"
"Huh," Mirt grunted in reply. He swung steel with all his strength to parry another deadly thrust. The blow struck the slender sword. It clanged from stone to stone and must have numbed his foe.
The gloved and masked man waved his sword as if he was fanning flames, staggered backward along the side passage he'd attacked from, spun around, and raced away.
Mirt scrambled after him, thankful that this new passage was full-height.
"Who is it?" Asper called, pelting after him.
Aleena clanked and stumbled along in their wake, clumsy in her armor.
"I know not," Mirt snarled, bounding down a short flight of steps with his wounded attacker stumbling along just out of reach. "Someone who knows what I am and how to find me, obviously-ho! Your name, Sword-for-Brains! A lady demands it!"
Gasping, the slender masked figure scrambled across a chamber and plunged into the stinking darkness of a sewer-arch. Mirt bounded after him with grunting enthusiasm.
Ahead, a flickering light flared. Mirt glimpsed his leather-clad foe lunging through a wheel of cold white flames. The flames blazed in a slowly turning ring, perhaps a handspan from a stone wall. A gate, gods be thanked again.
He came to a lurching halt, ignoring a rat that scurried out to see if his boots might be supper, and peered around the chamber. Reeking pipes let into it. Channels carried sewage along one side of the room. The vaulted ceiling was webbed with old, tiny cracks. There was no way onward that didn't involve cold flames.
Mirt eyed the rat that fearlessly nibbled his boot, and peered at the gate again-ere his blade stabbed down.
Its curving length rose an instant later when Asper burst into the room. She spun away from his steel even as he snatched it back, and skidded to a halt within easy reach of the flames.
"You didn't have to wait," she grinned, nodding at it. "We could hardly have gotten lost with no other way on, hey?"
The Old Wolfs blade barred her way. He held up a warning finger, clipped his sword to transfix the rat, and tossed it lightly into the ring of fire.
There was a flash, a loud sizzle, and a smell that made the armored warrior entering the chamber gag and sag back. Aleena raised a disgusted hand. She winced in the sudden blazing light of the whirling wheel of flames. It flared bright, shrank, flared again... and was gone, leaving nothing but a little smoke behind, and the stink of cooked sewer rat.
"That might have been you," Aleena gasped hollowly, between gulps of nausea.