Mel Odom - The Lost Library of Cormanthyr

Her copper hued gaze remained on him, weighing the answer she'd received.

"Wherever they are," Baylee said, 'You can be assured that it's a matter of record."

"Why wouldn't Golsway have told you?"

"It wasn't a matter of him not telling me," Baylee said. "I never asked. At that time, I knew everything he did. He had no secret considerations about things we'd found that he didn't share with me."

"It sounds like the two of you were very close," Cordyan said.

"Maybe too close," Baylee agreed. "If there had been space allowed somewhere along the way, maybe I would have been there when he needed me."

If Golsway could not take care of himself at the time, Xuxa interposed, you would only have died with him.

"Do you know what he was working on?" Cordyan asked.

"No. Did anyone find a journal like this one?"

Cordyan shook her head. "Not yet. A team was still investigating the premises when I was told to find you. Maybe they've found it in my absence."

Behind her, Cthulad and Calebaan broke up the conversation after the meal. The members of the Waterdhavian watch group gathered their traveling packs once again.

"Looks like we're about to get back onto the path," Baylee said.

Cordyan nodded. "I'm sorry to have interrupted your work time."

"No need," Baylee replied. "It was an enjoyable talk. I look forward to another."

The watch lieutenant walked away.

Baylee watched her, admiring the sleek roll of hips beneath the tunic's edge. She didn't walk like someone deliberately drawing attention to herself. The swaying gait was a natural part of the woman.

She turned abruptly. "Where did Golsway keep his journal at his home?"

The question almost caught Baylee off guard. He never let his features change. "There's a desk in his study. Did anyone check there?"

"I'll ask when we get back."

Baylee watched her go again. She's good, he told Xuxa. We'll have to be careful around her.

Shell only find out about Golsway's hidden precaution if you let it slip. Xuxa paused. You don't have to worry about that because I won't allow it to happen.

"Do you trust him?"

Cordyan Tsald glanced at Piergeiron, who stood in the wreckage of Fannt Golsway's house beside her. She had seen the Commander of the Watch on a number of occasions, and talked with him at times as well, but he still made her feel like a green recruit.

"No," she replied. "Baylee Arnvold holds to his own agenda of things." She shifted her gaze back up the stairs to the men under her command who were shifting debris again, taking out things Baylee said meant nothing to their investigation. "I would stake my life that he had nothing to do with his mentor's death. However, he will tell us only what he wants us to know."

Piergeiron shook his head. "That is all Golsway's doing. The old mage had a certain way of looking at social responsibility."

"Such as waiting until he was finished thinking over whatever he wanted to think over, then deciding what the best course of action was? For everyone involved."

"Exactly. Golsway was never one to be an oarsman, unless he was pulling his own boat." Piergeiron shifted irritably, anxious to be on with other things.

Cordyan didn't want to mention to her commander that she could handle things at the house quite easily. She covered a yawn with one hand. The last week had been spent nearly nonstop traveling to the warded area in the Dragonspine Mountains where they had used the gateway there to make the jump back to Water-deep. The gateway was a closely guarded secret of Piergeiron's, and the command word they had been given only worked once each way to cut down on the months of travel that would have otherwise been necessary.

"What do you think he knows?" Piergeiron asked.

"He knows where Golsway's journal is," Cordyan replied.

"You're certain?"

"I know what I believe," she answered. "But what I can prove is entirely another matter. What have you found out about Ciwa Cthulad?"

"The man has an excellent reputation," the Commander of the Watch replied. "From all accounts, you have nothing to fear where he is concerned."

"I was worried about him when he volunteered to come with us."

"Cthulad is the type of man who would volunteer immediately after such an event." Piergeiron glanced at the man that appeared in the doorway. "I've got to go to another meeting. If there's anything I need to know, get word to me immediately."

"Yes, Lord Piergeiron." Cordyan bowed her head. She was conscious of the big man leaving, but her eyes were on Baylee Arnvold.

The ranger worked in the drawing room where Thonsyl Keraqt had been burned alive. Although a number of watch investigators had been through the room with all five senses and divination spells, they'd found nothing. Baylee's attention seemed to be concentrated primarily on shattered models that lay broken and scattered across the floor. The azmyth bat hung from the ceiling above him, its wings wrapped around itself as it slept.

"What is he working on?" Calebaan walked up behind the watch lieutenant without warning. He offered her some of the cinnamon bread he'd brought in for his breakfast.

Cordyan accepted the bread, as well as the small crock of honeycomb. She knew the wizard was talking about Baylee. "I don't know," she replied.

Baylee continued working carefully, dragging up some pieces of colored papier mache and discarding others. He had brushed debris out of the center of the area where a number of tables had been.

"What was there?" Calebaan asked.

"According to the housekeeper, there were a number of tables that held models of dig sites that Golsway had been to."

"Dig sites?" The wizard studied her shrewdly, then turned his attention back to the ranger. With calm and purpose, Baylee continued putting hunks of papier mache together, seeming to get more confidence as each piece fit together. "You mean excavation points? Caves in the ground?"

"And buildings." Cordyan nodded. "They were memories, according to the housekeeper. Sometimes Golsway would invite a promising student over to study an interesting facet of the archeological find. But that was not often."

Calebaan scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Curious, isn't it?"

Cordyan lifted an eyebrow and smiled. "The possibility that Golsway left the find he was working on out in plain sight?"

"Yes."

"I find it frustrating that the old mage would have thought of something like this. Yet, it is very believable."

"You have to wonder, though, how Baylee thought of it."

"The answer to that is simple enough," Cordyan answered. "He had to know what Golsway was working on."

"Even though he told you he did not?"

"Either he was lying, or seeing this room and those models brought a perception to him that he didn't know would be made. He went through the house with me on his heels for six hours this morning." That was one of the biggest reasons Cordyan was so tired now. When Copert's Conquest, the ship they had taken from the other end of the dimensional gate, had tied up at the docks just after midnight last night, Baylee had insisted on coming to the house instead of taking a room at an inn and sleeping.

"I'm glad I got the sleep I did," Calebaan commented. "Have you been to bed yet?"

"No."

"You should think about it."

"I do," Cordyan admitted ruefully, "and those thoughts make keeping my eyes open even harder."

"I can take over here," the watch wizard offered.

"No." Cordyan blinked her eyes with effort again, feeling the grains of sleep moving around in them. She knew Calebaan wouldn't take the decline of his offer personally. They had worked together long enough for him to realize that she was thorough and liked to do things her way. "If Baylee can do without the sleep, then so can I."