Erik de Bie - Downshadow

Her patron smiled. He pulled a pink quill and ink bottle from somewhere and was wrote a single word on a scrap of parchmenr. He contemplated his writing plume for a moment, then released it into the air, where it vanished. "Though I must tell you the sum total of this one's powers."

"Yes, yes, give it here," Fayne said. When her patron frowned, Fayne batted her lashes. "Please?"

He slid the parchment over and took up his wine as Fayne read the name. She stared.

"You-you must be hrastingjtsting me." Fayne read it again and blinked at her patron.

He chuckled. "I see the irony is not lost upon that clever mind of yours."

"Oh." A sharp-toothed grin spread across Fayne's face. "Oh, no. Not… not at all." She peered at him, eyes glittering. "Why the interest-I mean, for your friend?"

"For that, I must tell you a story, dear child, of long ago-of this very city."

Fayne leaned forward, chin on her hands. Her whole body was tingling, her mind racing. This would be fun.

"The story of a great mage who wanted to stop the spellplague driving the world mad-only he had one impossible barrier." Her patron took up his wine.

"He was already mad."

"Unexplained magical disaster strikes Sea Ward!" called a broadcrier for the Vigilant Citizen. He was the loudest in the main streets. "Dozens wounded, priests at work."

"Watchful Order baffled as to cause!" shouted another. "Quoth the Blackstaff, 'It could have been worse-much worse.' "

"Watch seeks rogue spellcaster! For his protection, and for ours!" Kalen and Myrin walked south past the criers on Snail Street. She clutched him tighter as they passed the ones who spoke of the spell chaos in Sea Ward yestereve, which seemed to be most of them. Kalen could feel her fingernails even through his glove, which spoke to what a ruin the previous night had left him. He would never tell Myrin that, though-she carried enough guilr already. "You didn't mean it," Kalen murmured. Myrin kept her silence, but Kalen saw tears in her eyes. "Noble daughters kidnapped, ransom demanded!" shouted the broadcrier for the Daily Luck. "Watch following all leads-a dozen knaves in custody." Then, because it was a gambling sheet, the crier added: "Place your bets on the search, win fifty dragons!"

"Roaringhorn heir seeks mystery knight," called the crier for the North Wind. "Avows true love-offers hand in marriage! Lordlings line the streets."

Horns sounded in the dawn, bidding the gates to open and the day's business to begin. Kalen had come to Dock Ward ro search for Fayne. He had treated her unfairly, he knew, and wanted to make amends.

He told himself it was only that-only a matter of honor.

Despite protests for her safery, Myrin had insisted on aiding. Privately, Kalen suspected the girl worried Fayne had been a casualty of yestereve.

"Imposter noble murders Sune priestess!" the broadcrier for the Mocking Minstrel called, startling Kalen. The voice was strangled. "Menagerie Salon ruined! Watch declines comment."

"Boy," Kalen beckoned him over. "Speak."

Tears filled the boy's eyes. "Oh, goodsir and lady," he said, pulling off his hat. "No one was a finer friend of us common-born than the poor lady."

"Lady Lorien, you mean?" Myrin asked.

The boy shook his head. "Lady Ilira," he corrected. "She gave coin to folks like me pa, who's hurt by magic and can't work. It's come out"-he pointed to his wares, to a tale halfway down the page-r "come out that Lady Ilira was the one founded the Scarred Haven, a body of kindly ones who…" He shook his head and pointed to the lead article of the Minstrel. "Don't read this tale, m'lord-'tis cruel to one who did so much for us all."

"We all do what we must." Kalen handed the boy a gold dragon and took the broadsheet.

"As you will, m'lord." The boy smiled at the gold-far more than the broadsheet cost-then wandered down the street, crying his wares.

"What is it?" Myrin asked. "You saw how upset the boy was-why read-?"

"That's Fayne," Kalen said, pointing to the name on the broadsheet.

"Satin Rutshear?" Mytin giggled at the name, but Kalen grimaced. She blushed. "Sorry."

"At least we know she's alive," Kalen said. Myrin smiled hopefully.

"Or at least," Kalen murmured, "she was when she gave this to the Minstrel to print." Myrin's smile faded.

Kalen began to read. The boy had told him true-the gossip-ridden tale was sharp and biting, witty and entirely unfair. Exactly like Fayne.*

Lady Ilira Nathalan, it reported, was a creature of cruel, murderous depravity. A search of her villa by the Watch had revealed-much as

Satin had long suspected it would-evidence that Lady Ilira had been stealing from her competitors and, indeed, was an assassin. Private papers showed she had been in the employ of the Shadovar, under the name Shadowfox, one of their most effective assassins. She'd killed dozens of folk before the rurn of the century-and, possibly, more recently as well-and used the bloody coin to build and support her Menagerie and the dummy organization, the Haven for the Scarred, which masqueraded as a charity. The Watch and mercantile bodies were now working to dismantle those bodies.

"That… that can't be Fayne's writing," said Myrin. "That's horrible! Lies! That can't… that can't be, Kalen."

But Kalen remembered Lady Ilira's hands covered in Lorien's blood-remembered the way she'd lunged at Rath and burned away half his face with her kiss, and the cruel passion in her eyes when she'd dared the Watch to pierce her.

He shivered, and Myrin put her arm in his as though to warm him. He smiled at her, but he didn't feel the slightest comfort.

They spent the day looking for Fayne-to no avail. Aside from the broadsheet that proved she was alive-or at least had been that morn-they found no trace of her.

As dusk fell, Waterdhavians returned home for evenfast-and though Myrin kept silent, Kalen heard her stomach gurgle. They had eaten little: only a simmerstew at dawn and handpies at highsun. They should go to a hearth-house, Kalen decided.

Likely Cellica was cooking even now, but Kalen couldn't yet return ro the tallhouse and face her reproving stare-not after he had been so harsh with Fayne.

He felt every bit as guilty as Myrin did, he realized, but for a different reason-she had simply lost control. What Kalen had said… he'd meant every word, and regretted each one.

Kalen took Myrin to the Bright Bell, just south of Bazaar Streer on Warrior's Way in Castle Ward. He didn't often eat at hearth-houses, but this one he liked. While not elegant or exotic, the food was good and plentiful and the place was frequenred by plain folk-those people of Waterdeep whom he fought every night to defend from shadows they could not see.

Being around these folk let him think and relax, though he did not know any of them. That struck him as odd for the first time: for a defender of the folk of the city, he rarely spent any time with them. Most of his talk and time were spent with the Guard, the Watch, or Cellica, who, like Kalen, was not from the city. Though his looks and speech marked him as blood of the Sword Coast, he was yet a foreigner. Waterdeep, with all its adventures and splendors, was no more home than Westgate had been-or even Luskan, before that. He no longer had a home.

Myrin, for her part, loved the Bell. She stared about its tight labyrinth, crowded nooks, and choked dining alcoves with the innocent wonder of an explorer. She hearkened close to the* loud buzz of chatter and jest that vibrated through the walls, and though the thick, smoky air made her cough, she was smiling as she did it. She seemed to have forgotten her worries with the proximity of folk and the promise of food. She seized Kalen's gloved hand and held it tighter and tighter as a servant led them to a table, deeper in the hearth-house.