Dave Gross: Mistress of the Night

"We need to go," he growled.

"I can't argue with that!" Keph shot back.

The Mantle's hulking peacekeepers were closing on them from one direction while Lyraene's friends were finally emerging from the crowd in the other.

"This way!" he called to Jarull and whirled in a third direction, toward the wall that surrounded the Mantle's terrace and hid the rooftops of the Stiltways from the view of the tavern's patrons.

Slamming Quick back into her scabbard, Keph jumped up on a table, then leaped to hook his arms over the top of the wall. A moment's scrambling and he heaved himself over to drop onto the rooftop beyond.

Jarull simply vaulted the wall with surprising lightness and grace for someone his size.

The commotion on the terrace wasn't going away, though. The peacekeepers might not care about them once they were off the premises, but Keph knew that Lyraene's friendsand Lyraene herself, once she recoveredwould be after them. He grabbed Jamil's arm and dragged him on across the rooftops toward a dark gash of shadow, a rickety stair leading back down into the Stiltways. In only moments, they were out of sight and clambering down to the relative safety of the Stiltways's lower levels.

As soon as they were on an even walkway again, Keph pulled Jarull into a rough embrace and pounded his arm against the big man's back.

"Tymora's own luck!" Keph swore. "Your timing has never been better! Damn it, where have you been for the past five days? Your mother had the city guard pick me up todayshe had them convinced I'd led you off and gotten you killed."

"Trembling old crow! She would think something like that." Jarull shoved Keph away from him, then threw a fist into his shoulder. "As if I'd let you get me killed!"

Even Jamil's playful punches had a tendency to hurt. Keph rubbed his shoulder as he looked his friend over. Jamil's grandmother on his father's side had been an ore and that blood granted him not only size and strength, but coarse, heavy features and a skin tone that carried a slightly grayish cast. That night, however, his skin seemed strangely pale and his dark eyes fever-bright.

"So where have you been, Jarull?" Keph asked. "Everyone's been wondering. For the last few days, you're all anyone's been talking about."

Jarull wrapped his arm around Keph and said, "Sailing a tempest of ale and wine, Keph, sailing a tempest!"

Drunk then. Jamil's human side gave him a turn of wit.

"If you've been drunk for five days," said Keph, "I'd have heard about it. You can't drink for a night without smashing something."

"I didn't say it was in Yhaunn, did I?" Jarull poked him in the ribs. "There are half a dozen festhalls in Ravens Bluff where I'm no longer welcome."

"You went to Ravens Bluff without me?" Keph glanced at his friend and narrowed his eyes. "Who is she?"

Jarull grinned and pinched his fingers together in front of his mouth. "I swore an oath not to say," he said. "But I can tell you this." His voice dropped. "She's dark, beautiful, meaner than my grandmother, and she likes her men big and tough."

He flexed his free arm and something sparkled on his fist. Keph reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling it closer. Jarull wore a ring on his middle finger, a twisted band of age-blackened silver set with a deep purple amethyst. The big man tugged his hand free before he could get a better look. Keph glanced up and raised an eyebrow.

"From your woman of mystery?"

His friend roared with laughter. "And that's not all!" He jingled a pouch at his waist and swung Keph around to face the nearest ramp descending deeper into the Stiltways. "Come on! Down to the Cutter's Dip. I'm buying. You've got a head start on me tonight, but I'll try to catch up. If we're lucky, Lyraene will come looking for you again!" He held out his fist.

After a moment, Keph grinned, then laughed as well. "If we're lucky!" he said, and bashed Jarull's fist with his own.

‹ amp; — It was natural that he and Jarull should have become friends, Keph thought as he staggered home in the gray half-light of pre-dawn. They had met at some party or another, dragged there by their parents. How many years had it been? Not too many. Just as they were both entering the age when rebellion began to be a real possibility, that was for certain.

Jarull was the only son of a merchant who had seen her half-ore husband ride away to meet his death on some outrageous adventure and was determined not to let her son follow in his footsteps.

Keph was the youngest son of Strasus "the Bold" Thingoleira wizard who had once stood toe-to-toe with a red dragon, meeting fire with magic until the monster had been blasted into cindersand Dagnalla Irongard, first Strasus's rival in the Art and later his wife.

Brother of Malia, her proud parents' first apprentice; brother of Roderio, their second; brother-in-law to Krin Foxrun, who had won Malia's love in a mage duel fought over her honor; and uncle to Adrey Foxrun, already mastering cantrips at eight years of age; Keph was a tremendous disappointment to his magic-rich family.

Keph ground his teeth together in a fierce grin. Jarull's mother desperately wanted her son to stay by her side. Keph's parents would have been happy if their

Artless youngest son had just faded into the shadows.

Neither was likely to happen anytime soon.

He stumbled around a corner and across the small courtyard that lay before the Thingoleir family hall, Fourstaves House. Once it had been Twostaves House, named for the mages' staffs carried by Strasus and Dag-nalla, but when Malia and later Roderio had completed their apprenticeships, Strasus had given it a new name. Keph had heard that someone had suggested renaming it again, to Fivestaves House, once Krin had married Malia, but that his parents had refused, believing that it might offend the natural-born fifth member of their family. Keph snorted under his breath. Who had they been trying to fool?

Three black mastiffs with hides that gleamed like onyx rose from their haunches and growled as he approached the door.

"Bah!" he spat. "It's just me, you stupid chunks of rock!"

He strode up to the door guardians and stuck out his hand. Two of the dogs growled louder, but one leaned forward cautiously, touching his skin with its cold stone nose. After a heartbeat, all three dogs moved aside from the door and sat back in silence.

"Stupid…" Keph muttered and kicked at one in passing. He hurt his toe more than he hurt the stone beast.

The door opened easily at his touch and he walked through into the entry hall. The corridors of Fourstaves House were still silent at such an early hour. Keph limped, cursing with every step, across the hall and up the great, polished staircase that dominated it. At its top, he started to turn toward the south wing and the family's chambers, but paused and turned instead to look down the dark hallway of the north wing. Along that hallway, doors opened onto the laboratories and workshops of the five wizards. His hand clenched on the banister.

The amethyst ring and a pouch full of coins weren't the only things Jarull had brought back from Ravens Bluff. As he and Keph had sat at their table in one of the seediest of the Stiltways's seedy taverns, the big man had winked and said, "Don't think I forgot you, Keph."

His hand dipped into his belt pouch and he set a crystal vial on the table. Inside the vial, dark dust glittered like ground glass.

"What is it?" Keph had asked.

"It's called magesbane. Sprinkle a little where a wizard will cast a spell and he's in for a surprise." Jarull had given him a fierce grin, exposing sharp teeth. "Next time any wizard you know gets on your wrong side, you'll have something up your sleeve to turn back on them."

Keph stared, mesmerized, at the sparkling dust. "What does it do?"