Night School

Clayton Emery

A Story of Sembia

Š 2000 by

Wizards of the Coast

THE HALLS OF STORMWEATHER explored, for the first time, the city of Selgaunt in the Forgotten Realm’s Sembia. Seven stories follow seven members of the Uskevren dynasty. The publisher planned one book for each character, but only four or five books were written. Tamlin, the wastrel heir, never got his own book. Once you meet him, you’ll see why.

A whistle was their only warning.

Two whistles, one from either side under the dark trees.

Instantly Vox and Escevar planted themselves to bracket Tamlin. Vox, old and huge and dark as the night, hefted a war axe while Escevar, young and fair, drew slim steel.

“Is that some signal?” Tamlin fumbled for his sword hilt in the darkness. The trio could see lights at both ends of the path, for Twelve Oak Park crowned a small hill in the heart of busy Selgaunt by the sea. Yet right here, amid ancient oaks like stone pillars, they might have been stranded in some remote mountain pass.

“Sounds like a shepherd’s whistle.” Escevar balanced a longsword with the point down and a smatchet, a thick-bladed hacking knife, with the point cocked up. The young men squinted to penetrate the dark night. Tamlin and Escevar were dressed in quilted silks and wool, flashy and fashionable, but the veteran Vox wore workmen’s clothes and a black bearskin cape, almost impossible to see. Frost puffing at every breath, Escevar hissed, “We can - Look out!”

The towering Vox grunted and chopped straight down with his long-hafted axe. The blade skinned flesh and chunked in dirt as some animal, fast and low and heavy, slammed into the fightmaster’s leg and knocked him reeling. Vox’s elbow punched Tamlin so hard the heir almost stabbed Escevar.

In the vanguard, Escevar heard footsteps or hoofbeats pattering towards him. Then he was butted in the gut as if by a charging ram. Vicious teeth snagged folds of his doublet and ripped it clean away. The beast’s breath stank like a cesspit. Escevar’s exposed stomach felt chilled by the winter night, and the young man gulped, winded and worried: his skin would peel away just as easy. A dog’s snarl made Escevar jump and cannon into Tamlin. Escevar jerked a leg more by instinct than training, and heard teeth clash in air. They needed elbow room to fight, thought Escevar, yet he and Vox had to protect Tamlin. A bodyguard’s job was never easy.

Angry and scared, the young swordsman flailed steel in a windmill pattern. A leftward swipe of the smatchet struck nothing, but his longsword kissed flesh. Yet Escevar was bewildered: the dog-thing had leapt in, bitten his doublet, then leapt out of sword’s reach in an instant. What kind of dogs were that smart?

“Let me fight!” Sandwiched, Tamlin couldn’t even raise his sword. Stepping sideways, he picked up his sword tip to deflect an attack, then whipped his cape around his left forearm as a shield, forgetting he carried a smatchet, for they were newly-adopted, the latest fashion in fighting. Tamlin felt Vox’s big callused hand swish for his shoulder. Vox’s idea of protection would be to mash Tamlin to the path and straddle him like a baby while swinging his great axe two-handed at all comers. Tamlin evaded his bodyguard’s reach. He’d outgrown that kind of protection, or so he hoped.

Crouching, unsure what to do, Tamlin waited for an enemy to blunder into his sword tip. Instead, silent and deadly as a crossbow bolt, a stinking dog-monster clamped onto his left arm wrapped in the cape. Tamlin whooped as he skidded on gravel and crashed on his rump. Yet even Tamlin, a poor fighter, realized the dog had jumped down from a tree branch. Maybe these weren’t dogs, but flying - gargoyles? gremlins? what?

Winded by the wallop, Tamlin was dragged across gravel by his arm. Instinctively he flipped the sword towards his attacker, unwittingly saving his life. The dog had let go the cape to snap at Tamlin’s face. Scant inches from the young lord’s chin, the dog’s teeth clashed on the steel blade. Growls turned to whines as its muzzle was cleft to the bone. Tamlin almost urped from the slaughterhouse breath, then the dog dodged sideways. Tamlin’s own blade whacked him like an iron bar on his thick velvet hat. Blood started from a nicked chin.

Disgusted by his ineptitude, Tamlin kicked viciously. His boot thumped muscle, but the dog disappeared in the darkness. Scrambling, with Vox’s big paw yanking his shoulder, Tamlin gained his feet. “Nine gates to the night! We’re lucky -“

“They’re all around us!” Escevar hollered. “Stand back to back!”

Like dominoes falling in a line, growls and chuffs and snarls sputtered around the three nightwalkers. Then some unseen doghandler piped from the gloomy trees, a sharp whistle. With a collective roar, the dog-monsters leapt.

The veteran Vox swept his long axe in a sidewide arc that kissed half a dozen dogs with cold steel. Without reversing the blade, he slung it backwards and was rewarded by the meaty smack of the poll spanking a skull and breaking a jaw. A dog skulked low, and its snaggly teeth penetrated Vox’s horsehide boot like hammered nails. Vox tugged his leg back to keep the dog hanging on, then knelt hard on its back. Slapping his free hand on the axe poll, he drove straight down at the belly and felt the blade bite deep. The salt-sweet tang of blood mingled with the beast’s open-sewer stench. Another dog snapped at Vox’s shoulder, but the big man wore black bearskin in winter, and the dog tore only the cape. Vox shot the axe haft into its gut so it flipped and slammed on its back, kicking and whining feebly.

Escevar and Tamlin, veterans of very few skirmishes, fared less well. A jumping dog snagged Escevar’s woolen cape, then hung slack to yank the young man down. Escevar was choked by his metal clasps until the soft pewter snapped. The surprised dog toppled backwards, cape tangled in its teeth. Stabbing wildly, the hired man punched a hole through the cape and nicked the dog’s breast. Another dog clamped onto his left forearm. Razor teeth sheared Escevar’s calfskin glove and ground the bones in his wrist, making him shriek. Frantically he hammered his sword pommel on the dog’s head, once, twice, thrice, but it wouldn’t let go. Pulled to his knees, Escevar knew it would rip his throat next.

Tamlin wished he’d paid better attention to Vox’s lessons in swordsmanship. His cape was gone, ripped off by an unseen beast. Belatedly he’d remembered his smatchet and jerked it from his belt. Lacking finesse, he slashed the air with sword and smatchet, and hoped he didn’t shear his own wrist. When Escevar screamed, Tamlin stabbed at the huge shape hanging from his friend’s arm. The blade met flesh tough as rawhide, and for a second Tamlin balked, then shoved hard, leaning into the thrust. The sword grated on ribs, and only then did Tamlin recall a lesson: Never stab the ribs, because the blade might fetch up. Even as Tamlin remembered, the stricken dog dropped, the blade twisted and trapped in bone, and the pommel ripped from his hand, gone.

“Drat the dark!” burst Tamlin. “Vox will kill me!”

“Lecture you - deaf, more likely.” Escevar hissed for pain in his shredded wrist. His smatchet dangled by a wrist thong. “Tam, you saved my life!”

“Did I?” Tamlin was astounded. “Oh, it was nothing, old chap, I - Ulp!”

For the second time, Tamlin crashed on his rump as Vox’s brawny arm knocked him and Escevar sprawling. Tamlin glimpsed two huge shapes soaring down like catapulted boulders, then a silver gleam cut the starry winter sky. Tamlin gasped to see the fightmaster’s feat, and thought yet again Vox must have orcish or ogrish blood to see in the dark like a cat. The two dog-creatures that had launched from trees were intercepted by Vox’s silver axe blade. Both dogs were blown from the air by the heavy blade. Flesh sheared, blood cartwheeled, the dogs crashed to earth -

- then Tamlin and Escevar were lifted bodily and shoved down the path. Vox couldn’t speak, but his push spoke. Run!

Clinging together, the trio trotted along the slippery gravel path. When the way levelled, they pelted headlong. Ahead the path forked around a shallow pool flanked by upright columns, benches, and flowerbeds: a summer place for parents and nurses to sit while children splashed. In winter the park was deserted, and the wading pool eeriely iced-over, gleaming in starlight. Over their panting breath and pounding feet the trio heard more sinister whistles sound behind. They imagined the rapid patter of dog paws drumming the earth. Tamlin was just about to ask which fork to veer around the pool when Vox stumbled like a runaway horse.

Knocked headlong, Tamlin and Escevar pitched over the pool’s stone rim and slid on their bellies. Escevar hissed as his bare belly slithered across ice. Tamlin slapped down a hand to stop, but still held his smatchet. The blade chipped ice and then grabbed so he described a wild stomach-lurching spin. Flopping like a stranded fish, Escevar rolled until his sword hilt scratched a furrow with a teeth-grating skreeeeek! Both young men tried to rise, but skidded and sprawled. Grunting, aching, freezing, they chunked weapons into the ice like crampons to drag themselves to the pool’s edge.

A one-man army, Vox stood back-to a stone fountain and killed dog-creatures. His flashing axe walloped a dog’s spine, crippling its back legs. It whined like a puppy. A backswing belted a low-flying dog from the air, and the return arc slammed another’s skull. Snarling and barking, more dogs surrounded the colossus, yet were savvy enough not to attack. Tamlin and Escevar grabbed the pool’s stone rim as Vox again raised his axe -

Whistles froze the fighter. Different, these tones started high and sank low. Instantly the dogs scampered away. Tamlin and Escevar squinted, but saw no mysterious whistlers, only hunched shapes that galloped amidst dark trees.

Cat-eyed Vox saw more. Whipping his left leg forward, swinging his axe far behind, he slung the long weapon at a light-colored figure silhouetted by a dark trunk. Vox’s companions heard the whap! of steel on flesh, and a gargling cry. Vox was already running. Tamlin and Escevar raced after.

Vox hunched over a stricken man whose breath gurgled with blood. The giant fighter snapped his fingers. Escevar pulled a magic candle from a pocket and touched the wick to steel. The paper-wrapped tube flickered aflame, and Vox snagged Escevar’s wrist to bring the light close.

“A hillman!” said Escevar.

“We’re attacked by barbarians?” puzzled Tamlin. “I expected plain-old city-bred thugs.”

Shaggy cropped hair, a thick beard, and swarthy skin spoke of a lifetime outdoors. The villain wore a long homespun shirt and a laced vest with the hair still on. The hairy hide was a curious dark brown and thickened at his shoulders for a humpbacked look. Vox’s cruel axe had ripped the man’s belly. Curled in pain, he spilled gallons of blood in a black pool.

Squinting by candlelight, Vox searched at the man’s throat but found no wooden or bone whistle, which meant the doghandler whistled through his teeth. The hillman carried only a short club drilled and weighted with lead and a long knife. A squirrel-hide purse dangled from his belt, and Vox used the long knife to cut it loose. Finding nothing else, the veteran spiked the man’s windpipe and left him for dead.

“You hardly need loot the man, Vox.” Tamlin’s voice shook. He didn’t often witness death, and his bodyguard’s simple savagery always startled him. “Leave the chap some coins so his kinfolk can bury him.”

Glaring under dark brows, Vox touched his own forehead, then flicked his fingers away. He pointed to his eyes, then to the dead man, and spread his fingers wide. Used to the mute’s sign language, the young men read Have you lost your mind? There’s more to this assassination attempt than meets the eye.

Moving on, Vox examined a dead dog. Or dog-monster. Similar in shape, the creatures proved more squat than dogs, almost humpbacked, with short thick legs. Vox pinched shaggy fur, stroked his breast, and pointed at the dead man. The young men realized the hillman’s furred vest was dog-hide. Square skulls of bone bore tiny lop ears and teeth like jagged glass. The rancid smell came from stale sweat, crumbs of dung, and fetid blood on their muzzles.

A second carcass sprang a surprise. Bending, Vox unfolded a leather membrane that stretched from the brute’s hocks to its hunch: a lump of muscle to power the stubby wings. Escevar tugged the wing and jerked a dead leg. “It’s like a bat’s wing! But flying dogs? I never heard of such!”

Vox yanked the wing to test the dog’s weight, and found it heavy. He scooped a hand along the ground to say, More like gliding dogs. A quick check with the fading candle showed another dog had vestigial wings no bigger than a pigeon’s, and a third had no wings at all. Then the candle sputtered out and plunged them into night.

“They’re not devil dogs, nor phantom hounds, from what I’ve heard in pubs,” said Escevar. “Wheels of fire! This city’s gotten stranger than usual lately. All kinds of oddities crop up!”

“Blame the Soargyls and their necromancers,” said Tamlin absently. “Should we alert the Hulorn’s Guards?”

“No. They’d ask a thousand questions and we’d have no answers. And I’m freezing.” Between battle fatigue, a wounded wrist, shorn clothes, and a lost cape, Escevar shivered uncontrollably. “Let’s get somewhere inside.”

“What about my sword?”

A nudge from behind was Vox’s way of saying, Leave it.

Leaving the dead dogs and lone handler, they left the winter-dead park for lighted streets, and safety, and warmth.

“Master Tam,” piped the girl. “You’re wounded!”

“Eh? Oh, no, Dolly.” Tamlin shrugged off torn clothes as the maid assisted. “It’s Escevar who got hurt. I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” Despite the late hour and hushed halls, Dolly still wore her uniform and waited up for her master. In the Uskevren household, servants wore a blue shift under a white smock, a gold vest, and a gold turban that set off Dolly’s short dark hair. Laying Tamlin’s clothing aside, she touched his cheek gently. The master started at a twinge, and Dolly’s finger showed red. “This sword cut must be treated right away.”

Behind Dolly’s back, Escevar and Vox rolled their eyes.

“Sword cut?” Tamlin felt the wound, thrilled at a badge of honor. “My, my. Will it leave a rakish scar?”

“Dolly, if it’s not too much trouble?” Escevar hissed as he shucked his calfskin glove. Punctures in the crescent of a toothy jaw leaked red. “Could you summon Cale and his magic box of healing gook? While you dab Deuce’s chin, they can lop off my hand and seal the stump with burning pitch.”

Thamalon Uskevren II, called Tamlin or Deuce, studied his chin scar in a silver mirror. Seven sleepy servants shuffled into the echoing hall bearing hot food, mulled wine, bandages, and fresh clothes. Newly-built, Stormweather Towers already felt ancient with jumbled rambling rooms with lofty ceilings that ate any heat and stone walls that echoed every cough and murmur. A fireplace big enough to roast an ox was kicked up, and the three ramblers crowded to the blaze. Gratefully they gulped warm mugs of Usk Fine Old, the sharp and spicy wine that Tamlin’s father had originated in his vinyard vats.

Seen in firelight, Tamlin resembled his father, being middling in height and sporting wavy dark hair and deep green eyes. Escevar was rail-thin, red-haired, and profusely freckled, and looked underfed and twittery, which he was not. Vox was a hulk whose single black eyebrow and fierce beard hid a dark face that hinted at orcish or orge blood. A black braid hung over his left shoulder to mask the white scar that had robbed him of speech. Hired years ago as Tamlin’s fightmaster, Vox nowadays served as his bodyguard. The foundling Escevar had bought off the streets at a bargain, originally to be Tamlin’s whipping boy and schoolchum, but now his companion, guard, secretary, and best friend.

As the trio were bandaged and brushed, Escevar asked in a hush, “Is the old owl still up hooting?”

Servants piffed to hear Thamalon Uskevren the First so nicknamed. Dolly, who kept the pulse of the mansion, recited, “The Master and Madame have retired. Master Talbot has embarked on a short hunting trip to the hills. He hopes to fetch a hart to the table for the Moon Festival. Mistress Tazi attends a play at Quickley’s, she said.”

Escevar frowned. “Deuce, maybe we should stay within walls ‘til daylight and see what your father advises. Those kill-crazy dog-creatures, whatever they be, were sicced on us by human huntsmen. If we meet Zarrin -“

“We shall meet her.” Tamlin pointed his toe as a kitchenboy yanked on his knee-high boot. “Father’s entrusted me with a mission, and I’ll see it carried out, and damn the riffraff.”

Escevar and Vox sighed in mutual suffering. The youth said, “Damning riffraff can lead to early death, friend. Why can’t the meeting wait until dawn, albeit that’s hours off since it’s winter.”

“Father insisted on secret.” Tamlin tugged on a quilted doublet of red embroidered with the gold horsehead-and-fouled-anchor badge of the Uskevren clan. Over it he strapped a broad black belt with scabbards for sword and smatchet. An armorer’s apprentice roused from bed had fetched a new sword. Servants silently waited for the master to leave so they could return to bed. Dolly brushed Tamlin’s dark unruly hair.

The “Young Master” went on, “Of course, everything in Selgaunt is done in secret. What with the Soargyls dropping out of sight, now’s the time to snatch up their neglected properties and contracts, Father says. And so we shall, once we strike the stockyards. Uh, where are the stockyards, anyway?”

Escevar rubbed his face and muttered under his breath.

The looming Vox raised a finger for a short lesson, then borrowed Escevar’s smatchet. Thick-bladed, with a checkered grip of teak and a thong to circle the wrist, it looked like a gardener’s tool for slashing brush. The blade’s throat was queerly cut with a deep slot. As an old weapons master, Vox hated the groove for weakening the blade, but new experiments in swordfighting were the rage with Selgaunt’s youngsters. This “bladebreaker” slot was designed to replace a cumbersome shield. Carried lefthanded, a fighter slashed down to both fend back an opponent and to hook his blade in the groove. Twisting the smatchet locked or broke the enemy blade, thus exposing him to the right-hand longsword. Escevar and Tamlin had practiced the maneuver, but Vox had proclaimed that “clowning around with toys by day” was no real test of alley fighting in pitch darkness when half-drunk. Vox demonstrated once more how to cock the smatchet up while pointing the longsword down, and how to windmill a “circle of steel” in lieu of a shield. Obeying the fightmaster, Escevar practiced a while, swiping and slashing the length of the hall.

Tamlin fussed with pins and medallions brought on a velvet pillow. As a frequent target of kidnappers and assassins, he had a superstitious awe of good luck charms. One geegaw featured an imp clutching a gold coin, a charm for business, and that one Tamlin pinned over his heart. From his baldric buckle he hung a tiny chain with a gauntlet symbolizing strength, and to his hat pinned a silver arrow spearing two hearts, in hopes Zarrin succumbed to his own charms. Tamlin donned the round blue hat with a gay pheasant feather and swirled around his shoulders a blue cloak edged with ermine, then struck a pose, hands on his swordbelt. Servants clapped at his smart appearance, and Tamlin smiled and bowed. “What do you think?”

Vox swiped hands down his front, then mimed circles around his eyes. Escevar interpreted, “I agree. Thr white fur will make you luminous in the dark.”

Escevar tugged on his hat and a borrowed cape. He wore fine clothes but plainer than Tamlin’s, while Vox wore a plain brown smock and leather vest under his bearskin cape, and went bareheaded. Both wore a small horsehead-and-anchor pin denoting servitude in the Uskevren household. The two waited by the door.

Preening in the mirror, Tamlin scoffed. “Piffle. I haven’t any enemies. Only tons of friends. Well, we’re off. Wish us well in our venture at the, uh…”

“Stockyard,” supplied Escevar.

“Yes, jolly good.”

A footman opened a big double door that unleashed a blast of frigid air fresh off the sea, then shoved it shut after the trio left. Shivering servants trooped off to bed. Dolly took along Tamlin’s torn cloak to mend, knowing he’d probably never wear it again.

“Tamlin! Young Master Uskevren, a word, please!”

“Wheel of the wizard!” groaned Escevar.

The trio toiled against a stiff wind that howled off the Sea of Fallen Stars and sizzled right through their bones. Nightal was the coldest month, and more than once the nightwalkers slipped on patches of ice crisscrossing the rutted streets. Yet the streets were busy as dozens of parties meandered from tavern to tavern. For young folk, the night was still young. Many waved to Tamlin and his bodyguards.

Now a lone man trotted up. Padrig Tuleburrow was called “Padrig the Palmer” because his hand was always out and always empty. Always he had some scheme brewing. Tamlin was a soft touch, the conniver knew, and never could his companions dissuade him.

“Master Tamlin!” Padrig was tall but soft, in a foolish lop-eared fur hat, fur coat, and the layered robes of a prosperous middleman. “You look dashing tonight, a veritable scion of Selgaunt and proper heir to your father’s throne!”

“Oh, stop, Padrig.” Tamlin smiled at the flattery. “My dear father is hardly a king, just a canny merchant.”

“Brilliant merchant!” oozed Padrig. “And it’s obvious that canniness carried to his eldest son. Mark my words, Master Tamlin, you’ll rule this city some day! And I know how to help you gain those celestial heights! There’s been talk …”

Escevar muttered to Vox, who always stood behind Tamlin, “First you butter the bisquit, then you bite it.”

“… a special deal for only my closest friends and best customers, Master Tamlin. I can’t slip any details, it’s all very hush-hush, but this plan -“

“Scam!” hissed Escevar.

“- plan,” Padrig plowed on, “involves only the best families of Selgaunt. Master Tamlin, if you invest a mere thirty ravens -“

“Thirty ravens?” objected Escevar. “I don’t get paid thirty ravens in a year!”

Ignoring the peasant, Padrig went on, “A paltry sum, to be sure, but with great potential for growth. You’d be sorry to miss this opportunity, Master Tamlin. When it comes back five-fold, everyone will know who’s the smartest bargainer in town -“

“We know who,” grumped Escevar, “and may he sink in the bay to feed the fish and do something useful for once in his life.”

“Oh, pay him, Escevar, and stop fretting,” said Tamlin. “Once I’ve sealed tonight’s bargain, we’ll be awash in coin.”

Grumbling, Escevar counted out thirty silver pieces from a purse, but held them until Padrig signed their receipt in Escevar’s little red-leather book, marking them “Investment”. Even as he counted the coins again, Padrig’s ears perked. “What mission are you bound to tonight, Master Tamlin? It’s clever of your father to entrust you with family business.”

“We’re bound for the stockyards. We have a secret meeting with - Ulk!” Tamlin jerked as Vox’s finger jabbed his spine like a dagger. “Uh, that is, we’re bound to carouse up one side of Sarn Street and down the other. So much ale, so little time, you know! Ha, ha!”

“Don’t I know! Ta, ta!” Laughing, coins in hand, Padrig melted into the shadows like a djinn into smoke.

Rubbing his back, Tamlin groused, “Drat the dark, Vox! I’ll pass pink for a week from a bruised kidney!”

“If your father hears you blabbed his secret plans,” warned Escevar, “you’ll be bruised all over from getting hurled down every staircase in Stormweather Towers.”

Tamlin had no retort, so they marched on.

Clustered on the Heartland’s crumpled coast, Selgaunt was an up-and-down patchwork of jeweled houses, sparkling parks, twisty streets, and proud people. The adventurers waved to friends as they walked the length of Larawkan Lane, for Stormweather Towers crouched hard over the harbor while the stockyards straddled the city’s western gate where it opened to farmlands and vinyards.

Gritting his teeth against a stiff wind, Escevar groused, “We’ll reek like manure for a week! Why would anyone plan a secret meeting in a herd of cows?”

“The contracts concern four-legged beasts as well as two-legged ones, as Father put it.”

“What else did he instruct for these negotiations? Or shall Vox and I be as surprised as Zarrin’s party?”

“Trust me, Es.”

Tamlin’s friends only sighed.

The stockyards bustled even after midnight. Many cattlebreeders and sheepherders had driven in animals before the city gates closed so they could adjust to their strange corrals: calm animals fetched more at auction than skittish ones. Tamlin and his escort circled lowing cattle and gibbering sheep, and watched where they stepped, for the livestock had made their mark on Selgaunt’s streets. Translucent globes floated above some cattle like firefly lanterns. Tubes plugged into the cow’s hind ends and glow-coals burned the released gas for light, a handy piece of farm magic that always amused newcomers to Selgaunt’s marketplace.

Amidst a maze of holding pens sat the Stock Market. The long drafty sway-backed barn held stalls and a judging ring where animals were paraded before bidders. Entering the tall double doors, the Uskevren clan found the building warm as a bakery, steamy as a greenhouse, and fragrant as a spring meadow. Farmers and drovers talked or sang to their beasts to settle them. Some saved pennies by sleeping in the stalls with their beasts, for the clustered animals heated the place better than sheet-iron stoves.

The secret convention was relegated to the second floor, which was partitioned into offices and meeting rooms. As the party’s leader, Tamlin made to mount the stairs first, but Escevar blocked him. “We nearly got our heads chewed off in Twelve Oak Park. Let me stick my face in first, please, milord?”

The broad stairs stretched over stalls where sheep and cattle contentedly chewed cuds. A farmwife curried a placid brown and white beast. Clumping up the stairs, Tamlin whispered, “This is a secret meeting, so look like cattle buyers.” Raising his voice, he called, “I say, isn’t that a fine looking cow! Yes, indeed, a magnificent cow, madame! And lucky too, with two colors! Just what I need to nurse my calves! I’ll bet that one produces buckets of milk!”

The farmwife looked up, puzzled. Vox sniffed, his idea of laughing, and Escevar chuckled. Nodding at the big beast, Vox put two fingers to his brow, stuck one finger before his groin, and made a double pulling motion.

Tamlin shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t understand.”

“He says your cow is a bull,” supplied Escevar. “And good luck milking him.”

“Oh.” Tamlin followed his friend into the second-floor hall. “They probably teach that in farmer school. It’s not something we merchants need to know.”

Behind, Vox made a sign of strangling himself. Escevar grinned, but drew his smatchet with his good right hand.

Through intermediaries meeting intermediaries, Tamlin Uskevren was to meet Zarrin Foxmantle in the farthest room just after two bells. Tamlin heard the city bells toll, far off but clear in the thick sea air, just as Escevar clicked the latch and threw open the door without stepping forward.

Thunk! A throwing dagger sizzled past and thudded into the door jamb. A female voice shrilled, “You backstabbing bastards! Get in here so we can kill you!”

Warily the three men peeked in the door. At the far left, the corner was lit by three lanterns hung from low rafters. A scarred table was surrounded by rickety benches and stools, the only furnishings. Flyspecked notices and lists were posted on the walls between many pegs for cloaks and coats. Shuttered windows in the end wall would overlooking the holding pens. At the table, surrounded by four servants, stood a young and beautiful blonde woman. Her hands were empty of knives, the Uskevren delegation noted, but her snapping brown eyes looked sharp and dangerous.

The Foxmantle quintet had lost a war. The leader’s purple embroidered vest lacked gold buttons, she missed her hat and a glove, and her cape hung askew because the chain had broken. Her attendants in purple and blue, two women and two men, were equally roughshod. A woman sported a black eye and a man one arm in a sling. All five bristled with weapons.

Mostly the men marked Zarrin, one of five breathtaking Foxmantle daughters. Pub talk liked to hash over which Foxmantle heir was the fairest, the most hellacious, and the most fun in bed. Zarrin strove hardest to gain power within her family, refusing the role of “a brood bitch who births a bunch of brats for my father and mother to bounce on their knees!” Tamlin and Zarrin were old sandbox chums, for only lately had the two families come into competition. The Foxmantles had always farmed, pressing wine, growing dyestuffs, salting meat, and tanning hides and furs, while the Uskevren had, before the family’s Great Fire, farmed the sea. Since Thamalon the First had begun buying and renting farms, dickering with the Foxmantles had become necessary lest they compete in the marketplace and make prices plummet.

Lovely Zarrin fumed but offered no more aggression, so Tamlin plucked the knife from the door jamb and, smiling, offered it to her. “I say, Zar, your welcome lacks the usual Foxmantle cheer. Have you suffered some setback in our city’s spangled streets?”

“You’re dark-damned right we suffered setbacks!” Zarrin snatched back the throwing knife. Tamlin had unwisely held it by the blade, and now looked at his fingers through slits in his gloves. “What’s the idea of siccing gnashers on us?”

“Gnashers? The flying dogs?” Absently Tamlin scratched his chin and made the scab bleed. Escevar stripped his left glove to show seeping bandages. Tamlin said, “We met some too, and their whistling keepers.”

“Keepers?” asked Zarrin. “We didn’t hear any whistles.”

“We did. Vox killed one.” Tamlin told about the foreign hillman in the gnasher-fur vest.

Zarrin pouted prettily. Her blonde hair, piled and pinned in back, yet fell about a widow’s peak to blonde brows, under which brown eyes frowned. “We just turned a corner and ran into a howling pack. We thought they were famished wolves that slipped into the city after cattle. They chewed up my retainers and spat us out. One’s at Selune’s temple having his hand amputated.”

“Where were you attacked, milady? What part of the city?” asked Escevar. “And when?”

“Below the Hunting Gardens, not far from the main house.” The Foxmantle freehold guarded the northern gate where Galogar’s Ride became Rauthauvyr’s Road. “Not long after sundown.”

Vox held up two fingers, stretched his arms, curled his hands to imitate a tree, showed ten and two fingers, then animals scampering before his eyes. Tamlin interpreted, “Yes, that’s near two miles from Twelve Oak Park. How can the keepers move a ferocious pack of monster-dogs through the streets without being seen? Did you notice some had wings?”

The two parties compared notes but learned little. Now and then from below came the bellow of a bull or bawl of a calf.

“Who knows?” Zarrin concluded. “Maybe these hillmen are crazy or cultists. Or maybe they work for someone in Selgaunt. If either of us were kidnapped, the ransom would bring a flock of ravens. We just need to watch our backs, as usual.” For emphasis she traced the family crest embroidered on her bosom: three vigilant eyes in purple set on a slant. “Drop it for now and get to business. You and I need to split up the gate tariffs and the drovers’ and freighters’ trade.”

“So Father informs me.” Handing his cape to Escevar, Tamlin took a stool and rubbed his hands as his father might. “The Soargyls - May they all be stricken with seven-fold boils! - kept the carters under their thumb by killing the troublemakers and extorting from the rest. But lately none of their thugs have collected the protection money: excuse me, civil supervision taxes. So collections at the gate are haphazardly enforced. Both our houses want to bid on the contracts for the gate tolls. Rather than brawl in the streets, we should reach some agreement.”

“I have one, simplicity itself,” offered Zarrin. “Consider. My family’s house overlooks Rauthauvyr’s Road. Your family keeps a tallhouse near the Way of the Manticore. Why not tend our separate gates? We’ll negotiate with the Hulorn’s seneschal for tolls from the North gate, and you take the Western. You’ve seen how busy the traffic is in these stockyards. Imagine the revenue you’d collect over a year! We’d sacrifice some duty to maintain the Elzimmer bridge, but it’s worth it to not cross the city just to empty coffers.”

They talked. Smiling, smug, and bewitched by Zarrin’s beauty, Tamlin failed to see Escevar and Vox signal in the background. Before the companions knew it, Tamlin spit on his palm and shook hands. “I say, Zar, this is smashing! We’ll stay out of each others’ hair and all prosper! Father will be pleased, and so will yours, I’m sure! We need to celebrate - Escevar, what’s all that noise?”

The bellows and bleats of livestock had grown so loud the negotiators had to raise their voices. Every animal within blocks, it seemed, bawled or squawled. Farm dogs barked and farmers shouted. Escevar slid down the hall and trotted back. “Something’s spooking the cattle! They’re almost breaking down the stalls downstairs! But I can’t see what’s stirring them!”

“Well, go find out!” Tamlin ordered. Escevar trotted off. Zarrin’s people shifted weapons. Axe in hand, Vox unlatched the window shutters.

As if shot from a catapult, two winged dogs swooped through the open window and smashed into the swordtrainer.

In that same second, Escevar dashed into the room, grabbed the door, and tried to slam it shut. Three unwinged gnashers bashed the door and knocked the bodyguard sprawling.

Four more gnashers galloped into the room, toenails skittering on the sandy floor. Two more soared through the window.

Everyone fought for their lives.

Tamlin glimpsed brown backs and yellow teeth and whiffed the open-sewer stench. Then a gnasher clamped bonebreaking jaws onto his knee-high boot. Another leapt and slammed Tamlin into the back wall. Savage teeth snagged his doublet and Tamlin was dragged half-over with the dog’s weight. A third vaulted its comrade and snapped teeth like a beartrap. Only his wild flailing save Tamlin’s right hand. Tripped by the dog tugging his leg, Tamlin sprawled on hands and one knee, all too aware his throat was vulnerable to attack.

Zarrin snatched up a stool and slammed a dog’s head. The stool splintered but the dog was hammered flat. Snatching out her sword, Zarrin took reckless aim and skewered the gnasher mangling Tamlin’s leg. Blood fountained as its throat was pierced. Tamlin kicked the dying dog loose. The other dodged Zarrin’s blade, snapping and snarling.

Temporarily free, Tamlin saw they were armpit-deep in rabid killers.

Flat on his back, Vox staved off one beast by the throat while pushing another back with his axe haft. Unable to free his weapon, he kicked a third brute. Escevar danced above him, swiping and slashing at jumping animals with smatchet and sword. A frustrated animal circled Escevar to dive for Vox’s face. The swordmaster tried to roll when Escevar was tumbled by a dog ramming his belly.

Escevar flopped atop Vox with a pair of snarling dogs atop him. Human and gnasher legs kicked around Vox’s head. Escevar’s blades swirled like a windwhipped windmill. The animals gripped by Vox tugged free to escape the circle of steel. The swordsman flipped over on all fours. Escevar was dumped on his side. Dogs pounced on Vox’s bearskin back. Swearing like a fury, Escevar stabbed wildly to protect himself and punctured his own thigh with his smatchet. Bleeding, Escevar stabbed, then lunged to gain his feet. Vox bumped his hip, and the two thumped back to back. But where in the name of Seven Sinners was Tamlin?

The Heir of Uskevren lurked behind a table that Zarrin had dumped and dragged against the wall. It formed a solid barricade but the ends gaped open. A darting dog clamped Zarrin’s boot heel. Zarrin shucked the boot but blundered into Tamlin and whacked her nose against the wall. The thought of a bloody swollen nose stoked her fiery temper, and Zarrin screamed as she slashed steel at anything that moved.

Tamlin armed himself with steel in each hand, but wrongly, so the smatchet jutted down and the sword tipped up. Whipping both, steel clashed uselessly on steel. Still, he struggled to see what went on elsewhere, knowing they had to quit the room.

Shadows swooped and swung as someone banged his head on a lantern. In the crazy light, Zarrin shrieked a battle cry and whacked at milling growling jumping gnashers until blood speckled the walls and ceiling. Zarrin’s four servants hunkered in a corner behind stools and benches, and through cracks and over the tops pinked dogs to hold them at bay. Escevar and Vox, bloody and sandy and fighting mad, stood back to back slicing and stabbing. As Tamlin watched, Vox feinted high, then drove his huge axe so hard a dog’s head split and the blade chonked deep into pine floorboards. Swiping where he could, Tamlin tried to count, but dogs had overrun the room, a dozen or more. To his left, six monsters breached the makeshift barricade and savaged Zarrin’s servants. Two, no, four more dogs skittered into the room, panting for blood.

Howling, Zarrin jumped the table to protect her servants. Tamlin was left alone as seven dogs scuffled to attack him.

“Can’t stay here!” the heir muttered. Flicking his blades wide, gritting his teeth, he vaulted the table and almost landed on a dog. Instantly the monsters champed at his boots and clothes. One winged creature hop-skipped to tear off his head. As Tamlin dodged frantically, the dog sailed by and crashed into companions. Punching heads with his pommel and snapping his smatchet, Tamlin raced toward Escevar and Vox. His only plan was to die with his comrades like a hero in a folktale, yet to be eaten by ugly dogs seemed a foolish and frivolous death.

“Vox!” Panting, Tamlin kicked a dog headlong. He yelled so the warrior wouldn’t whack him with a backswing. “Escevar! We must get out -“

Vox whipped his axe down but missed a dog. The blade bit the wooden floor and Vox let go the jutting haft. Whirling, Vox’s craggy hands grabbed Tamlin and hoisted him bodily off the floor. “Vox! What are you -“

Toted like a baby overhead, Tamlin glimpsed the night lights of the stockyard and a starry sky out the open window. Then he squawled as his boots passed the window frame. “Vox! No -“

Pitched feetfirst out the window, Tamlin wailed as he sailed through the air, but not for long. A howl ended with a grunt as his back slammed a forgiving pile, then a cry as he bit his tongue. Winded and agonized, Tamlin sucked air and a gushing aroma of cows. Vox had chucked him in a towering manure pile heaped beside the big doors.

Groaning, limping, shedding filth, Tamlin tottered to his feet. Head spinning, he sheathed his weapons and looked up at the window. A head flickered and disappeared. Tamlin heard yells and shouts and a vicious unending snarling and barking. He needed to rejoin the fray. He was no great talent as a fighter, but his friends and Zarrin needed every hand to fend off the monsters. Gnashers, Zarrin called them. Curious name.

Groggily Tamlin stumbled to the big barn doors, which stood open a shoulder’s width. Faint lights glowed inside, or maybe sparkled in his head, since he felt dizzy. Then a sound arrested him. A whistle.

The whistle came from outside the barn, so the hillman, the dog trainer, was out here with Tamlin. The heir panted, “Not good news,” and made to duck through the door.

An answering whistle piped inside the judging hall.

Surrounded, Tamlin froze in the doorway -

— and was almost stampeded by a charging bull.

A big brindled brown and white bull bawled and shoved its massive horned head outdoors. Tamlin barely dodged as a horn like a dagger hooked near his breastbone. Bellowing like a war trumpet, the terrified animal banged the doors wide and rumbled past like a war elephant. Cows and sheep gamboled after, bleating and lowing as if fleeing a forest fire.

Unable to get inside, not safe outside, Tamlin spotted an outside staircase and galloped up that. He hoped no animals pursued, but with his luck, he thought glumly, giant apes or mountain goats would climb for high refuge and butt him off the stairs.

A rough door at the top proved locked. Tamlin was debating where to try next when the door was flung open, almost clopping him in the jaw. Escevar and Vox, bloody and disheveled and armed with bare steel, skidded to a halt just before Tamlin was bowled down the stairs.

“Hold hard!” “Watch it yourself! Are you all right?” “What’s happening in there?” “Yes! Where’s Zarrin?” “Dunno!”

Tamlin and Escevar gabbled while Vox signalled madly. Below, the livestock still stampeded from the judging hall. Then the full pack of panting gnashers, winged and otherwise, erupted out the door in a brown river. Sharp whistles, three or more, shrilled through the stock market. The pack split and split again and vanished into the shadows.

In the sudden quiet, the men caught their breath. Tamlin asked, “Vox, why’d you pitch me out the window?”

“Oog!” Escevar sniffed. “Deuce, you stink!”

“Thank you, dear friend, for so kindly enumerating my faults regarding personal hygiene. Vox?”

The mute veteran’s hands sketched in the air. Tamlin interpreted, “The dog-things, gnashers, were only after me and Zarrin? How do you know that? They broke off the attack once I was gone and Zarrin bolted out the door? Ah. That explains… Nothing. I don’t get it.”

“None of us get much,” sighed Escevar. He propped one leg on a riser because his punctured thigh throbbed. “The whistling hillmen must have sent the gnashers into the building after you and Zarrin. Remember she was attacked earlier, just as we were? This was a golden opportunity with both you valuable nobles in one cozy room. But why they want to catch or kill either of you…”

Tamlin flexed his right hand. Mashed earlier by a table, it swelled so his glove constricted like a tourniquet. “My, my, what a night. We should have gone boozing instead. Oh, well, let’s get home and change clothes - again. At least Father will be pleased that I negotiated the gate tariffs before Zarrin disappeared…”

“… mutton-headed, crack-brained, slack-jawed, cross-eyed, granite-skulled acts of depraved lunacy and sheer eye-popping idiocy it has ever been my misfortune to witness, let alone partake in!”

Thamalon Uskevren the First was only warming up. Agitated beyond belief, he paced before the fire in his counting room. Tamlin squirmed in a high-backed wooden chair while Vox and Escevar stood equally mute behind.

“Why give away only the gate tariffs?” the elder raged. “Why not give away all our contracts? Why not rip the key to the family coffers from my aged palsied hand, and throw open the gates of our miserable shack of a homestead, and use both hands to strew our gold and silver in the streets for every beggar to scoop up? What have I ever done in this lifetime that the gods punish me with a son who carries cobwebs in his empty skull? Why did not the fates send me a drooling gibbering moron that I might have, in some tiny way by dint of long hours of excruciating labor, trained to do useful work such as fetching wood or slopping hogs? Instead, I suffer the sharpest torments by seeing this melon-headed twit tear down all my work and hurl my fortunes to the winds from the highest towers of Stormweather, our ancestral homestead for the moment, because I have no doubt that come tax time we will be impoverished and huddling in the gutters because of my son’s blatant ham-handed blundering -

There was much more, but finally the elder ran out of breath. He collapsed in a chair and slugged Usk Fine Old gone cold. Thamalon Uskevren, “The Old Owl”, looked like his son. He’d grown gray and seamed but never stooped, and his dark green eyes and still-black brows could summon a scowl to cower a prince, let alone someone who’d squandered his money. The room reflected the man: tidy, aesthetic, intellectual, buttoned-down. A table neatly was laid with a late night snack, a chess game waited, a stack of books lay open. A hushed ease with luxury and old money and secrets emanated from the walls.

When the echoes of the tirade died, Tamlin cleared his throat softly. “If I don’t guess amiss, you seem upset, Father. Is it possible that, though we shouldn’t dwell on an unpleasant subject, you could see fit to say why?”

“Why?” The patriarch glared until Tamlin felt like a chipmunk facing a timber wolf. Thamalon bit off every word. “Because you failed to negotiate a contract to the family’s advantage, son. That’s why.”

“Ah.” Tamlin digested the news, but concentrating was an unaccustomed activity. “Uh, might you explain how? I did secure the taxation rights to the, uh, western gate where the farmers come in. That promises to bring a pretty penny.”

Thamalon made a strangling noise and chugged wine as if quaffing poison. Heaving a tremendous sigh, he conceded, “Yes, the gate will bring a penny or two. That’s what farmers deal in: pennies. They don’t have many to spare, you see, after the Hulorn’s tax collectors circulate among the farms and extract the taxes first. All our family can collect at the western gate is a poll tax on livestock: a penny a head. In a good day, we might collect a hundred pennies or more.”

“Ah.” Tamlin pretended to ponder. “A hundred pennies. That’ll buy… uh…”

“See my son, the Minister of Finance, who doesn’t know what anything costs, calculate,” sniped the father. “A hundred pennies might buy you a new pair of gloves, Tamlin. Not a lot, considering you’ve lost twelve pairs so far this winter. Your clothing budget, by the way, is treble what the younger children spend, but we’ll scream about that later. For now, let me explain why I wish Zarrin Foxmantle were my son and you, Tamlin Uskevren II, were a fishcutter lost in a storm in a leaky boat on the Lake of Dragons!”

The lord rose, as did his voice. “Of course Zarrin would want the northern gate’s tariffs! And not because their family manor stands in the neighborhood: What kind of jabberjawed excuse is that? All the traffic from Ordulin and Surd and Tulbegh comes through the north gate, and unlike the Mulhessens, who use the western gate and send their tariffs ahead, the northern traffic is completely untaxed, which means the duties are collected at the gates! Further, the northern gate overlooks the Elzimmer Bridge, which charges for foot traffic and collects duties on all incoming ships’ cargoes! So, while you’re standing at the western gate collecting cow chips and getting dust in your eyes, my lamentably eldest and empty-headed son, the Foxmantles will sprain their backs lugging away all that tax money! I can’t believe how badly you botched this mission! How did poor Zarrin Foxmantle keep from bursting a blood vessel holding in her laughter? When word of this gets out, I’ll be the laughingstock of Selgaunt!”

In a brittle silence, Tamlin said, “Perhaps, dear father, if you’d explained all this beforehand, I may’ve -“

Tamlin froze as The Old Owl thrust his face inches from his nose. With eyes smoldering below black brows, the patriarch hissed in an icy frightening whisper. “I - did - explain. You - didn’t - listen.”

“Oh,” Tamlin squeaked. “Quite right. But it was so - complicated. All those variations. `If this, then that, unless this, in which case that’ stuff. I apologize. If there’s any way to make it up -“

“There is.” Looming upright, looking very tall despite his middling height, the lord pointed a bony finger at the door. “Take your dishonor guards and go. Find Zarrin and undo this miserable deal.”

“Uh, now?” Tamlin faked a yawn. “We’ve been rather drug through the mill, father, what with being attacked twice now by devil dogs and slung across ice and pitched out windows -“

“GO!”

The three listeners rose as if levitated and scurried out the door. Trotting down the wide circular stairs, they heard the liege lord scuffing hard behind in soft slippers. By the time they reached the door, courteously held open by a sleepy footman, Thamalon had final orders.

“Go,” he told his son. “Get out there, find Zarrin, and fix what you’ve botched. Or I’ll cut off your allowance, burn your clothes, sell your goods, cashier your servants, strike your name out of the city registry, and boil you in red pepper oil!”

The three deliquents stepped into the cold night, but Tamlin peeked through the crack of the door. “Uh, father, I know I haven’t performed to your satisfaction but, just curious, you see, you don’t really mean that last bit, do you? About the red pepper oil and such?”

Slowly the door creaked shut. Tamlin watched his father’s narrow face grow narrower. Through a slash of a mouth, he growled, “Son, I’m afraid I do.”

The door slammed.

Locked outside on high stone steps on a windy wintry black night, Tamlin looked at the door awhile, then at his friends. Grinning, he assured them, “He doesn’t really mean it.”

Biting their tongues, Vox and Escevar trudged down the stairs.

“Funny, I thought Father would be pleased.” The three companions trudged down the middle of Sarn Street, temporarily homeless if one didn’t count Tamlin’s two tallhouses and three guest apartments scattered throughout the city. The heir rambled, “He should be glad I settled the contract so quickly. When I’m forced to attend his business meetings, they drag for hours. All that talk about money - ick!”

“If it weren’t for those business meetings,” grumped Escevar, huddled against the cold and hating it, “you’d never get any sleep.”

“That’s true,” Tamlin admitted. “Still, Zarrin rolled over so easily, agreeing to everything I said, I thought she’d been melted by my charm.”

Vox walked behind, watching the street to both sides, signing nothing. Escevar stumped beside his charge, muttering, “I don’t have any great head for business, Deuce, but even haggling in the marketplace you never pay the first price asked. You agreed to Zarrin’s proposal, not yours, in an eyeblink, then moved on to celebrating!”

“True, true. Still, I’m new at this `work’ stuff. So far it’s dreadfully dull. What shall we do?”

“Find Zarrin, according to your father.” Escevar’s voice dripped acid. “It’s hard to believe you are his son sometimes. Or most of the time.”

“Find Zarrin…hmm…” Tamlin’s cape whipped around his shoulders while frozen snow pinged his cheeks. Vox’s bearskin had begun to frost over. Escevar cursed the gods of snow, winter, storm, and a few others. “Where do you think she might be?”

Escevar counted to twenty rather than thump his friend’s head. The trio had already tried the Foxmantle homestead. The gatekeeper wouldn’t admit them, it being enemy territory, but a maid admitted Zarrin had gone to the stockyards earlier and not yet returned.

“If Zarrin’s not home,” Escevar chided, “she’s probably carousing in a pub, feet propped up by the fire and a hot caudle in her hand, toasting her success in selling you down the river!”

“Right.” Tamlin nodded, then turned so abruptly he banged into Escevar. “Sorry, old chap. Let’s try some pubs. I’m dry anyway. All this negotiating makes one thirstier than sword practice.”

Escevar blinked snow off his eyelids as Tamlin drove for a lighted doorway. “Hey, I was joking!”

From behind, Vox voiced a single grunt that said, The last time you two had sword practice, candles drooped in their sockets from the heat.

Sarn Street was more commonly called “Souse Street”. Sixteen pubs lined the north side of the avenue alone, and over hours the determined adventurers hit every one. In each tavern, Tamlin greeted friends and strangers, bought rounds of drinks, told droll stories, hooked his arms around laughing women and, at Escevar’s prompting, asked if anyone had seen Zarrin. As the night progressed and the pub count climbed, Tamlin made more friends, groped more women, and told longer stories, and even Escevar had forgotten Zarrin. Vox went along dutifully to each pub, drank little, watched everywhere, and tapped his foot in disgust.

Eventually Tamlin and Escevar stumbled into The Black Stag, the last pub on the street, and collapsed onto benches. Unlike most pubs, where the furniture was too heavy to throw and the room stood wide open so barkeepers could see what went on, the Stag had high-walled booths and shadowed nooks and dim lights, which made it a favorite meeting place for flesh-pushers, pawners and fences, poisonous apothecaries, slavers, smugglers, second-story thieves, and other “Servants to the Underclass”. Still, hanging in such a dangerous place made visitors feel dangerous, so noble youngsters in the form of toffs, simps, bawds, and fops congregated. Naturally, many were Tamlin’s friends, or at least friendly. Barely had the Uskevren heir plunked down than he called for a round of Stag Stout for his best friends, some of whom he could even name. Tamlin babbled, “This is a great place to ask for - whatever it is we look for. The Stag’s famous for - trouble and - strangers. Best place for the worst things, what? Barkeep, where’s that stout?”

“You might lighten up with the golden touch, Deuce. Even your allowance only stretches so far.” Blearily Escevar, who always handled the money, upended a purse. Silver and copper plinked and plunked across the table and floor as booze-soaked Selgauntans cheered. Escevar bent to pick up coins and fell off the bench to more cheers. Some friends helped pick up coins while others pocketed them. Groggy, Escevar counted, getting a new total each time.

“Never mind, Es. I’ve got credit!” Tamlin called for more stout, though he hadn’t yet touched the first one. Drinking, slopping down his doublet, Tamlin tried to focus as Vox made a cutting stroke across his throat. “Cut? Throat? What, there’s a cutthroat behind me? Oh, cut! You mean, my father cut off my allowance? Oh, I don’t think he means it - Hey, where’s everyone going?”

At the deadly words “cut off my allowance”, the heir’s new-found friends vanished for other reaches. Within seconds, Tamlin, Escevar, and Vox sat alone. No one in the pub, not even dungshovelers and graverobbers and tax collectors, would sit with them.

“Drat the dark.” Tamlin slurped stout and belched. “‘Scuse. I wanted to ask those fellows something, but I can’t think what. Allowance - Oh, hey, has anyone seen Zarrin Foxmantle? She’s blonde, about this high - Oops!” Waving an arm almost pitched Tamlin off the bench, and he forgot what he’d asked. Escevar snored, face down on the opposite bench. Vox listened to a pair of sisterly singers who’d mounted a tiny stage. Growing morose from his friends’ rejections, Tamlin guzzled stout and sulked.

“`I forbid you maidens all,’” The two girls sang sweet and high. “`Who wear gold in your hair, for to go to Stillstone Hall, for young Tam Lin is there…’”

Tamlin’s ears perked. The song was “Tam Lin”, a tune old as the hills, and his namesake. Muzzily he followed the words, often heard but never considered. Tam Lin, the handsome knight, fallen from his horse in a hunting accident. Caught by the Fairy Queen, so enslaved. Forced to serve in her midnight court, which only joined this world under a full moon. Primed for sacrifice to a bloody-handed god. Until a maiden Lyndelle, pluckier than most, entered the sacred hall to meet the ethereal Tam Lin. His only hope of freedom, he told her, was if she caught him falling from a horse. And so they arranged it, Lyndelle lunging into a chaotic raid on a hellish night to catch her new-found lover. And so Tam Lin was freed, and the young pair united, and the song ended.

“Still, evil omens. What if she’d missed him? Good luck and good times can’t last forever…” Mumbling to himself, Tamlin shivered. Filtered through an alcoholic fog, the sinister song droned in his brain like a dirge. Fairy curses, a young lord snared by ill luck and fate, a ghostly un-life and sentence of sacrifice - and Tamlin himself a young lord banished from home. Was his only hope an innocent maiden’s rescue? No one in Selgaunt was innocent -

“Milord Uskevren?”

Jumping at his name, Tamlin pulled his nose from a flagon to see a girl thin and pale as an elf. Under a threadbare cape, really a blanket, she wore only a cambric smock painted down the front, and battered clogs on her feet. Under her arm bulged a sheaf of parchments tied with a faded ribbon. Her big eyes were red from cold or weeping.

Rattled by his own superstition, Tamlin babbled, “Uh, yes, I’m Lord Uskevren, or I shall be some day, if my father ever dies and I don’t, perhaps, unless he really carries out his threat, which he might, which I doubt, or I hope… Uh, where was I?”

“Milord.” The girl licked chapped lips and launched into a speech. “I wonder, sir, if you’d like your portrait painted. My name is Symbaline -“

“Symbaline!” Tamlin burst out. “Like the girl in the song! Another omen! Oh, no, wait. Her name was Lyndelle…”

“S-sir?” The girl hadn’t heard the lyrics, so she plowed on, “I’m one of the finest artists in the city. I can show you samples. The smartest nobles agree they’re lovely. Every lord and lady should have their portrait painted, and since you’re so dashing and handsome -“

“No, no, no. No thank you.” Tamlin slugged stout to calm his nerves. “I don’t need a portrait. No one wants my face hanging on the wall, though my father’d like my carcass hung from a lamppost. I can’t believe he’s chucked me out like garbage -“

He stopped babbling because the girl cried. She tried to stifle her grief, but tears spilled down her wan cheeks. Shuddering, sobbing, she couldn’t stop. Tamlin gawped, embarrassed. Even Vox, who habitually watched elsewhere, stared.

A barkeep bustled to the table with a billy club dangling from his wrist by a thong. He snagged the girl’s pipestem arm. “Here now, you snippet, don’t be harryin’ the patrons! I’m sorry, milord, I’ll pitch the sauce out -“

“No!” Tamlin shook his head in a futile effort to clear it. “Too many people have been tossed out in the cold! We’re… bargaining. Sit her there. Girl, sit.”

Symbaline sat, slowly, as if she’d break. Her stomach rumbled. Tamlin squinted. “What was that?”

Glowering in disgust, Vox flicked Tamlin’s flagon off the table so stout splashed on the floor. Snapping his fingers, he mimed to the bartender for food, enough to cover the table. Soon, a barmaid set down a tray of venison pasties, pickled eggs, ducks’ breasts, watermelon rind, black and white bread, fresh butter, green and white cheese, figs, raisins, and a cold shoulder of pork. Gruff Vox signalled the bony girl, who tore into the food.

“Oh, she’s hungry.” Tamlin looked at her thin worn clothing. “She’s poor, too.”

Vox’s hard hand cuffed Tamlin’s head, though the lordling hardly felt it. Gesturing, the swordmaster crooked fingers over his eyebrows and frowned, then swiped his hand down his face, and mimicked someone painting.

“My father. His face. Painted.” Tamlin struggled to think. “No, he wouldn’t like that. Mother paints her face, but women like -” Dodging another biff cleared Tamlin’s head. “Oh, yes, I see! Girl, what’s your name? Symbaline? Let me see your samples, if you’d be so kind.”

The artist gobbled with one hand and untied the ribbon with the other. Tamlin flipped through sketches of Selgaunt’s lords and ladies, then watercolored landscapes. “Lovely, glowing. Full of - colors and things. Yes, I’ll hire you to paint a portrait of my father. It’s been a while since he had one, and he shan’t live forever, if I’m lucky. I’ll give him it as a present for the new year, if he’ll let me in the door. And we’ll paint one of Mother for the Moon Festival. And Tazi, if we can slap that sneer off her face. And Tal too. We’ll hang his picture on the gate to scare away beggars - ha!”

“Thank you, milord, thank you!” Symbaline wiped her mouth with a napkin and wept anew. “I’m sorry I cry, milord, but it’s been a hard winter. I had a commission to paint Lord and Lady Soargyl, and I sketched for days to find a pose they’d like, but then Lord Soargyl changed his mind and shoved me out the gate, and I was never paid a penny for all my hard work -“

“Don’t fret, dear. We are not the sorry Soargyls. The Uskevren always keep their promises. No matter what. We’ll install you in the main house as our court painter. You can sleep there too: we could barrack an army in our guest rooms. And you can eat in the kitchen, if the cook’s budget will sustain it, the way you eat.”

“Oh, thank you, milord!” gulped the girl. “And I can paint more than just portraits! I’d really love to paint landscapes and seascapes -“

“Ah? That’s admirable, I suppose. You can decorate the main hall with a mural. It needs a little color, the gloomy old dump. Or we’ll send you up to the north tower to paint a picture of the harbor, and then the hills to the west -“

“You’re so kind, sir.” Symbaline fought to still her tears. “Everyone says you’re the most considerate and generous young lord in Selgaunt, and now I see it’s true. That’s why I approached you. You were my last chance, really. You saved my life. I had no place to spend the night nor any hope for the future -“

“Stop, dear, no need. This way I rescue an innocent maiden, not the other way ‘round, and so banish some omeny beasties lurking about.” That confused the girl, so Tamlin covered her cold hand with surprising gentleness. “Anyway, it wasn’t I who thought of it, but Vox here. He looks fit to eat babies, but he’s really the best companion one could want. With Vox at my side, I’m not afraid to venture anywhere in Selgaunt. He’s the finest fighter along the Sea of Fallen Stars!”

Tamlin made to raise his glass, then recalled his bodyguard had cut him off. “Ah. Vox, might I have a tiny drop of something just to toast your health? I’d really appreciate -“

For answer, the swordmaster innocently offered Tamlin a pickled egg and a cold duck’s breast.

The lordling’s stomach urped as his face drained pale. Tamlin squeaked, “Pardon me a moment…” and lurched for the door.

Eventually Tamlin staggered back to the table, wiping his mouth. Symbaline continued to plow through the food like an orcan army. “Milord, I hate to beseech, but I need a few coins to buy paints and canvas…”

“Easy enough.” Frowning at Escevar placidly sleeping on a bench, Tamlin hooked his boot and dumped his friend crashing to the filthy floor. “Escevar, give her some money!”

Roused, Escevar crawled back to the table. “I tol’ you, Deuce, we’re skint. All this’s on credit.”

With a sigh of disgust, Vox reached down his shirt, pulled out a squirrel-hide purse, and dumped coins on the table. Tamlin slid silver coins towards Symbaline, counting out seven for good luck.

Escevar’s slim hand slapped down on the lot. Tamlin objected, “Es, this is no time to be greedy!”

“No, look!” Shaking off sleep, Escevar became all business. He held up a big silver coin, worn and shiny and stamped with strange sigils. The coin was round but punched at the center with a triangle. “I’ve never seen triangle-cut coins before. And there are, um, sixteen here. Where’d you get them, Vox?”

Vox mimed a whistle, then cutting a throat. Tamlin translated, “The purse from the dead whistler, the gnasher-handler!”

“Wait now…” Escevar wrinkled his brow. “If the hillmen brought these coins from their country… And they spend them in pubs or stores…. Wherever we found a batch of these coins, we might find the hillmen’s hideout nearby!”

“Why find the hillmen?” asked Tamlin. “They tried to kill us. Shouldn’t we rather avoid them?”

“Don’t try to think when you’re potted, Deuce,” sniped Escevar. “We don’t really want the hillmen, but they did try to kidnap or kill you and Zarrin. Maybe they know where Zarrin is. Trained dogs, or gnashers, can sniff people out, you know.”

Fuddled, puzzled, Tamlin replied, “You’re just making this up to look good for the girl.”

“What girl?” demanded Escevar. “Oh, her. No! Would you think a moment, for the love of Selune? All you’ve done tonight is waste money, and get us thrown out of the house -“

Vox mimed bending over and heaving.

“- and puked in the street,” added Escevar. “Hardly the hallmarks of a hero.”

“Oh, so? I - I -” Indignant but stumped, Tamlin shut up.

The artist Symbaline interjected, “I know how you can find more coins.”

“You do?” asked both men. “How?”

“Magic.”

“Hoy, Lord Tamlin! A word, if you please!”

“Guts of the gods!” growled Escevar. “Why doesn’t someone squash that bloodsucking leech?”

Halting in the wintry windblown street, Tamlin, Escevar, and Vox hunted for the voice. It came from above. The Blue Coot was a three-story tavern of stone and timber. Stepped balconies tilted alarmingly over the street. In summer, whores male and female lolled above and called to potential customers. In winter, the balconies were rimed with ice. Padrig the Palmer leaned from a second-floor balcony, pudgy and tall and in his fur coat and floppy hat. Before, begging money, he’d worn a syncophant’s smile, but now his grin curled like a fox’s. Beside Padrig stood an unsavory youth and older man, both fit to cut a cripple’s throat for a penny. Third-floor balconies were dark and unoccupied.

“Master Tamlin, your plan proceeds apace!” Padrig bowed theatrically. “Before long you’ll sit the tallest chair in Stormweather Towers!”

“What?” Down in the street, Tamlin leaned back and almost toppled, for liquor still gripped him. “Did - Did I miss something, Paddy? What do you gibber about?”

“Your thirty ravens, sir, were invested just in time! All the city knows your allowance is cut off! Ratigan the Green manufactures poison, and now you’ve engaged a portrait painter to approach your father! You can’t enter Stormweather, but she shall! So while you stay the night in Lantern Alley, your minions will do your dirty work!”

Behind Tamlin, Vox tugged his bearskin cape aside to free his waraxe. The fightmaster pointed to the Coot’s doors and mimed chopping. Tamlin restrained him, asking both companions, “What’s this about? Who’s Ratigan? And how does he know about the girl? I thought she was innocent! And my tallhouse in Lantern Alley? Wait! If the girl’s part of some Soargyl plot -“

“Stop, Deuce! It’s claptrap!” Escevar spat in the street. “It’s another of his blackmail scams, spinning gossamer out of gossip! He’s framing you for some cocked-eyed assassination attempt on your father!”

“Someone plans to assassinate my father?” Tamlin gaped in horror, wishing dearly he weren’t drunk. “I mean, it’s been tried before, but I’m not involved! But what will Father think -“

“He’ll think you masterminded the plot!” Safe on high, Padrig laughed. “I have witnesses and a receipt for thirty ravens! That money will hire enough assassins - I say, what -“

Standing in the street, looking up, Vox suddenly yanked Tamlin back while Escevar bulled him from the front, yelling, “Move!”

On the second-story balcony, Padrig gaped upward, bleated, and dove into the tavern, as did the veteran thug. The young tough lingered too long. Tipped from the third-floor balcony, a massive chest of drawers plummeted and smashed to kindling on the second balcony. The young rogue was pulped as the balcony was torn clean off the building. Wood, oak, ice, and a crushed corpse crashed in the street.

Tamlin and friends peeked from the shelter of a doorway opposite. Patrons spilled from the Blue Coot to gawk at the bloody wreckage. Above, Padrig was nowhere to be seen. But on the third balcony…

“Tamlin, you owe us!” Grinning from the high rail were Garth the Gimble, called the “Snake of Selgaunt” for his green scaly tunic, and the Flame, always in red. Notorious denizens of Selgaunt’s shady underground, they’d shared a drink or two with Tamlin in the past. Garth called, “Pay no attention to Padrig! He seines the wind! Hey, what would you pay for his head, or some other part?”

“Uh…” Having said too much tonight, Tamlin curbed his tongue. “Uh, that’s not necessary. But thank you, Garth, Flame! I do owe you - something.”

With mock salutes, the pair passed into the dark third floor, vanishing like spirits at dawn.

Events rolled by too fast for Tamlin to grasp, but at least his head had cleared. Staring at the shattered balcony in the street, he mused, “I wonder who got squashed.”

“A cockroach, if he hangs with Padrig.” Wrapped in his cloak, Escevar nodded up the street. “Come on. We’ve got to gain the Wizards’ Guild. They go to bed at dawn, like vampires.”

“You have some strange coins and want to find a larger hoard?”

“I guess so,” replied Tamlin, still muzzy on details. Then Vox prodded his kidney, and he said, “Yes, that’s exactly it. If you please.”

Helara was a striking tall woman with a cascading mane of blonde hair she fluffed up repeatedly, as if posing. Her crimson robe was girded by a triple gold chain hung with charms of all shapes and sizes. The Wizard’s Guild was a rambling shamble tucked in the southeast corner of Selgaunt. The upper stories would overlook the city wall and the sea. The gloomy parlor was tricked out with odd-shaped furniture and glittery geegaws, and reeked of chemicals and ashes and incense. A ten-year-old page waited by the wall and bit down yawns.

“I wish someone would bring us a challenge,” Helara rattled. She talked fast yet idly, preoccupied with as many schemes as Padrig the Palmer, except hers usually succeeded. “That’s too simple a spell. `Like attracts like’, whether it’s money or love. Prospectors, dwarves, practice it all the time in the mountains: a compass arrow of silver points to silver, with a little coaxing.”

“So Symbaline said,” Tamlin explained, “though how an artist knows magic I don’t get. Can you conjure it tonight? We need to locate these hillmen.”

“And?” Helara sensed opportunity. “What will you do when you find them?”

“Eh?” Tamlin blinked. Stuffy smoky air made his head bloat. Too, the guild hall was quiet as a library. Wizards were usually a rowdy lot, but perhaps stayed discreet at home. “I can’t really say -“

“When we find the hillmen,” interjected Escevar, “and if we can avoid their bloody gnarly-toothed dogs, we may learn why they tried to snatch Deuce and whether they’ve seen Zarrin.”

“Zarrin Foxmantle?” The mage’s blonde eyebrows wigwagged. “She’s missing?”

Vox poked Tamlin to stifle an answer. Escevar hedged, “We haven’t seen her lately, but Selgaunt’s a big city. These whistling hillmen and their gnasher-dogs are a pest. Can you find them?”

“Can you pay?” returned Helara. “Talk on the street says Tamlin’s allowance has been cut off.”

“That rumor ran on fast legs,” groused Tamlin. “Hasn’t anyone better things to gossip about than my pocket money?”

“We can pay later,” said Escevar. “Draw up a promissary note and he’ll sign it.”

Helara pouted rouged lips, but agreed. “Give me the odd coins.” She ordered the child page, “Summon Magdon. And wake Ophelia. We may need her.”

All three men blinked when the summoned pair arrived. Sisters, though not twins, each had white hair and white skin and pink eyes. Otherwise, they were squat and chunky as farm girls, hearty enough to wrestle an ox. As the men gawped, Magdon spoke, “No, we’re not be-cursed, merely albinos. What do you require?”

Magdon’s blue robe was triply-wrapped by a black belt, and her bone-white fingers were stained odd colors. Ophelia’s yellow gown was unbelted but embroidered with flames at hem and sleeves. She yawned and sat a bench and scratched her hair. Helara handed Magdon the silver triangle-cut coins and some instructions, and departed the parlor. Magdon told the men to wait and followed. Ophelia yawned and scratched. Asked what she did, she replied only, “I have hidden talents.”

With nothing to see or do, the guests slumped onto twisty-backed settles and slanted stools. Borrowing the page as a runner, Escevar gave her a coin and a message for Cale, the butler of Stormweather Towers, emphasizing she not bother Lord Uskevren. Less than an hour passed before three burly men arrived in Uskevren livery, blue with the gold badge of horsehead-and-anchor. The housecarls came with boar spears so tall they couldn’t stand upright in the parlor.

Magdon returned. From her ivory hand dangled a jangly contraption. The sixteen silver coins were alternately threaded on a silver chain with a black bead, an owl’s skull, a scallop shell, three blue feathers, a cork, a lumpy gray stone, and other bits. From the bottom hung a curved strip of gold foil beaten so thin it shivered in no breeze at all. The gadget looked like a child’s windchime.

“What is it?” asked Escevar.

“A compass.” Hoisting the charmed chain, Magdon puffed at the gold foil. As it shimmied and bobbed, blue sparkles sizzled up and down the chain. Gradually the gold foil settled and pointed. “It doesn’t point north, but at a larger hoard of triangle coins.”

“Really?” Refreshed by a nap, Tamlin reached to touch, but Magdon steered it away.

“The magic is delicate as a spiderweb. I’ll hold.”

“You’ll go with us?”

“We all will. Apprentices need guidance.” Helara promenaded into the room like a queen. A floor-sweeping robe of red was quilted with a purple lining and hemmed with tiger hide that set off her wild tawny hair. Magdon and Ophelia donned plain cloaks of gray with gathered hoods that almost covered their heads. Escevar nodded to see them. In Sembia, peasant girls bound for “service in the city” were invariably given such cloaks as a going-away present. No doubt the girls’ talents had been discovered in some village and they bound over to the wizard’s guild. Yet if Magdon were a “gadget wizard”, as Escevar thought it, he wondered about Ophelia’s “hidden talents” and flaming embroidery.

Passing into a bitter night wind ripe with sea salt, the three men, three women, and three housecarls found Magdon’s windchime-compass jingled and jangled, blown every whichway. The three mages had to cluster with their cloaks to shield the flimsy artifact. Settling, it pointed up Rampart Street and onto Rose.

Whipped by winter winds, they pursued tedious rounds of walking, huddling, waiting, and moving on. Slowly, the women assured them, they steered to a trove of triangular coins. The seekers weren’t so sure, but Escevar reflected they needn’t pay the magicians if they flubbed the magical tracking.

Occasionally they spotted friends scurrying from pub to pub in the cold. By Ironmonger’s Lane, a small lithe woman attached herself to Tamlin. The noble had dallied with Iris a time or two, and smiled as she rubbed against him. Rail-thin, Iris wore only a jacket and trousers of rabbitskin, and tilted the neck to show nothing beneath.

“Lovely, dear, if goose-bumpled. We’re in a hurry, but I’ll stop by later. I hope.” Plodding onward, Tamlin mused, “For some reason, Iris reminds me of Longjaw. Where’s she at these days?”

“Haven’t seen her since the Sahuagin Wars,” said Escevar. “But pirates and smugglers don’t live long even in peacetime. What was the name of that artist? She’d make a tasty morsel if you fattened her up.”

Rambling, the young men speculated about various women they knew, oblivious to the albino sisters and tawny-haired Helara, who sniffled either in disgust or from the wintry wind.

The keen lessened in the shadow of the Hulorn’s Hunting Garden. Not-so-high on a crag was perched the Hulorn’s spired palace like a quiver of upright arrows, and at its feet ran a high stone wall enclosing a ten-acre hunting garden of wild weedy woods. Whether any animals lurked within, and whether the Hulorn actually hunted them, no one knew. No one had seen the erstwhile governor for quite a while, and the usual strange stories circulated. Hunting Street ran along the wall, lit in spots by glow-globes to discourage poachers. Opposite the wall, the snobby neighborhood sported houses gaudy even by Selgauntian standards. Mismatched towers, archways, curved staircases, hedged gardens, turrets, tricolor chimneys, false fronts, frescoes, balconies, and other ridiculous trappings decorated the block.

“That’s it.” Helara pointed to a two-story house of brick and timber behind a jig-jog brick wall with deep arches. A large house shrouded by trees and gardens. As proof, the red-robed mage and the albino sisters shielded the magic compass. Peeking over their shoulders by the light of glow-globes, the men saw the slip of gold foil curled rock-steady toward the house. “It’s the only place in the city those triangle-cut coins can be.”

“Splendid!” Tamlin stared at the shadowed house. “Uh, now what?”

No answers.

Escevar said, “Perhaps if we tell the Hulorn’s Guards that the house owner… might know hillmen with flying dogs… No, I guess not.”

Shivering and sniffling, the statuesque Helara said, “Why not knock on the door and see who answers?”

Lacking a better plan, the nine hunters trooped through a brick archway and bumped into an ornate iron gate, locked. Vox swung his axe’s thick poll and the gate popped open. Without speaking, the nine mounted a narrow gallery that ran half around the silent house. Winter shutters rimmed by felt sealed in sound and light, if any. The door was red with a simple iron thumblatch. With no signs of life, the searchers began to feel foolish, like children caught spying. Everyone looked to Helara.

“All right. I’ll knock. But if no one - Yow!”

One rap set off a shower of yellow sparks that sizzled and skittered across the door’s face. Thrown backwards, Helara nearly pitched off the gallery until Vox caught her. The door was marred by a smoking scorch mark. Hissing, Helara found her knuckles and fist blistered and her gown’s sleeve charred past her wrist.

“You bastards!” she panted. “I’ll show you!”

Eight companions reared back as Helara shot her sleeves, spat on her palms, and uttered a low spell like a curse. Bracing her feet, the mage slapped both palms against the door. Flashing yellow light blossomed. It lit the gallery, frizzed Helara’s hair, and made her clothes smoke. Over the sputtering and spitting of sparks, the mage shouted in a gravelly voice, “Ras-pal sky-y! Ras-pantle a-too! Ras-pah sen ma-NAN-TAL!”

Either her spell worked, or its power merged with the door’s charm, or together they doubled and trebled, for Helara got results.

The door and most of the front wall exploded.

Broken bricks and hunks of wood shot in all directions like catapulted missiles. Only Helara’s personal shield, her first muttered spell, kept Tamlin and friends from being killed by flying flinders, for the deadly rain blew around the mage in a soaring arc like an invisible bubble. Chunks of wall collapsed, crunching inside the house and on the gallery, though no one saw much because brick dust, smoke, paint chips, and other debris swirled like trash caught in a dust devil. Portions of the second floor collapsed alarmingly, then the house corner slumped with a creak and crunch. People shouted and screamed as the gallery let go, dipping toward the missing door. The companions skidded downslope and blundered into a crumbling brick wall. More dust roiled and boiled, making people sneeze and choke.

Tamlin and the albino sisters were tangled in a gap in the wreckage. Vox gained his feet and yanked them free of the hole. Two Uskevren housecarls tumbled into bushes, and now stayed on the ground to guard. Helara kicked and swore and tore her red robe on iron nails jutting from the door’s threshold, which suffered a big blackened bite.

Above the scuffling and grousing, Escevar called, “Someone’s home!”

A foyer and staircase were smothered in laths and plaster and broken tiles. Floorboards jutted over black space. A swarthy black-bearded man in a green robe had slunk down the stairs to peek at the enemy. Stunned by the destruction, he lingered too long.

Handed up by Vox, the tall Helara gained the crumpled littered floor. Batting back her smoking red-and-tigerhide cape, the mage saw the skulker. “Ratigan? You fumble-fingered pie-thief! You snake-eyed cross-patch! I warned you never to crawl back into my city!”

Screeching an arcane curse, Helara crossed her forearms. Trapped on the stairs, Ratigan reeled as a hailstorm of icicles shattered against his personal shield. Ice stabbed the walls, tore portraits, and chipped the banister, freezing instantly, making every surface slippery as glass.

Crouching to keep his feet, Ratigan crooked three fingers and conjured a flush of desert heat that steamed the ice into clouds. Yet he barely avoided skidding down the stairs.

Shooting her fingers downward, Helara hurled a second spell. Acid rain gushed from the ceiling. Ratigan writhed his flesh corroded and his robe smoked. Gamely he struggled to conjure. Fog blossomed around Helara’s feet, then coalesced into snaky heads with teeth. Without a pause in her spellcasting, the red-robed wizard stamped one foot, and the snake heads evaporated.

Over the chanting of mages and creaking and groaning of the house, Tamlin called to Escevar, “I remember now! Padrig mentioned Ratigan the Green! Should we have told Helara?”

Escevar never got to answer, for familiar deadly whistles keened behind the house. Within seconds, fearsome gnashers boiled around the ruined gallery. Lunging low or half-sailing on stubby wings, the beasts barked and snarled frantically, hot to tear into the invaders. After them trotted the foreign hillmen in rough smocks and gnasher-fur vests. They couldn’t hang back far as they shouted commands because brick walls hemmed the house.

Mouth open in a mute warcry, Vox slung his axe high and jumped off the gallery to the attack. Escevar, sword and smatchet sizzling, slashed and hacked the first dog that touched down on the tilted porch. Tamlin drew his longsword, but almost stabbed Magdon who, no fighter, whipped behind him for protection, her pale pink eyes round as lanterns. Hollering “Uskevren!”, the housecarls stabbed wildly at gnashers and hillmen. Meanwhile, in the crumbling foyer, Helara heaped abuse and spells on the besieged Ratigan.

Amidst this mad melee’, the albino Ophelia unleashed her “hidden talents”.

With a nerve-grating screech of “Al-scara-tway!” her stubby hand sliced a swath in the air. Five stripes of fire pinwheeled into the night, then struck, stuck, and burned - everywhere. Oncoming gnashers suddenly wore burning mustaches and fire-streaked backs. Vox’s bearfur cape charred with a nauseating stink. A housecarl’s tunic burned across his shoulders. Paint, brick, splinters, bushes, and leafless trees ignited in stripes that dripped flame like candle wax.

Ophelia flexed her left hand, shouted, and swiped again. Another five-fingered rainbow of fire sizzled on people and gnashers. Primed for more, the fingers of her right hand glowed.

“Doesn’t she have any other spells?” Tamlin called over his shoulder.

“We’re new to magic!” confessed Magdon. Her sister slung fire to the winds, igniting friend and foe alike.

Squatting, Tamlin surveyed the brawling, spellcasting, shrieking, stabbing, and dogfighting that boiled around and inside the teetering smoking house. He called, “I say, Magdon, everything seems to be under control! I’m going to explore a bit!”

“Don’t leave me!” chirped the gadget-mage. But clutching for Tamlin’s cape, she missed and skidded backwards down the porch.

Sword in hand, cape over his head, Tamlin hopped through the shattered door, dodged the shrieking Helara, skidded on ice, ducked a flaming tapestry curling off a wall, and scampered down a dark hallway.

Not so dark, he discovered. Ophelia’s errant spell had rooted in the upper story. Flames licked above Ratigan’s head as he clung desperately to the ruined stairs. This old house would burn like candlewood, Tamlin reckoned, unless it collapsed first. The floor wobbled while smoke thickened. The young lord wondered if he should bolt -

A scream rang on the second floor. A familiar scream.

Unable to climb the front stairs, Tamlin dashed to the back of the house. Opening doors found a barracks where the hillmen had obviously bunked, a dining hall, a pantry, a filthy kitchen - and a back stairs for servants.

Sheathing his sword, Tamlin clattered to the top. Fire chased across the ceiling and licked at paint and varnish. Above Helara’s shrieks and Ratigan’s bellows, Tamlin heard the scream again from a front room. The floor was painted with red and yellow squares. Superstitious, Tamlin skip-hopped from yellow to yellow to gain the door.

When Tamlin grabbed the thumblatch, a spark scorched a hole in his kid glove. Cursing, the young lord studied the door. Locked and magically warded, he decided, same as the front door, though not as strong a spell. The ward was probably meant to keep out the hillmen. It shouldn’t stop someone really determined, as Tamlin was, perhaps for the first time in his life.

Snagging his cape around his shoulder, the lordling rammed the door. Sparks flared and burned and blinded. His cape smoldered and charred. Hissing, Tamlin grit his teeth and bulled again, harder. Then again. Then, to Tamlin’s great surprise, the door burst. The young lord tripped on the threshold and sprawled on a bare dusty floor.

“Tamlin! Thank the gods! Free me, please!”

Scrambling up, Tamlin grinned with delight. Zarrin was disheveled and hollow-eyed but alive. Her wrist manacles encircled a stout post where plaster was gouged from the wall. A sagging settle and bucket were the only furnishings. The floor canted like a ship’s deck as the gutted house settled.

“Tamlin!” Tears streaked Zarrin’s dirty cheeks. Her purple vest lacked gold buttons, stolen. “Oh, I’m so glad you came! I smelled the smoke and feared to burn -“

“Yes, yes, don’t fret. Rescuing’s in my blood, after all, like heroism. And we Uskevren always keep their promises.” Tamlin fumbled with Zarrin’s fetters, feeling immensely smug at finding her. Still, he hurried, for flames licked at the doorway and smoke pooled on the ceiling. “What a story this will make for the pubs! Think how proud Vox will be, and Father - Oh, no! Wait!”

Tamlin let go the chains. “We must settle up first.”

Zarrin gaped in horror. “Don’t joke, Tamlin! Release me! The fire -“

“No, I’m sorry. Business before pleasure, as Father likes to nag. I have to renegotiate the gate tariffs.” Tamlin raised his voice over the crackle of flames, groaning of the house, and clash of spells and arms outside. Smoke made him cough. “Father was not happy with our bargain. You wouldn’t believe the nasty names I endured, Zar! Now let’s see… As I recall, you get to collect duties on the northern gate and we got stuck with the western. Or was it the other way ‘round? No, that’s it. So we need -“

“Are you mad? Are you drunk or crazy?” Zarrin rattled her manacles. “Get these chains off immediately! Get me out of here or I’ll kill you!”

“No, I’m afraid - Ouch!” Rubbing his chin, Tamlin gouged a scab from an earlier fight. “Wheels of the wizards, this is my night to suffer!”

“Very well, you can have the gate!” Tears from fright and smoke poured from Zarrin’s eyes. “You can have the northern gate and I’ll take the western! Just please -“

“No…” Tamlin fought to think. It had been a long night. “Escevar said never to accept the first offer. But how about -“

“All right, you can have both double-dark damned gates!” shrieked the woman. “Take them! I, Zarrin Foxmantle, hereby transfer to you, Tamlin Bloody Heartless Monster Uskevren, all taxes and duties collected at both gates! The Foxmantles divest themselves of any gates! Every gate in the city! Now get me loose or I’ll skin you alive!”

“I guess that’ll do.” Tamlin coughed as he fiddled with the shackles. The locks were new brass, but the chains antique. Drawing his smatchet, Tamlin whacked the fetters against the wooden post. The new-fangled smatchet, weakened by its fancy bladecatching groove, immediately snapped.

“Drat the dark! No wonder Vox hates these things!” Drawing his longsword, Tamlin used both hands to whack at the chains. Finally he shore them. Zarrin leapt off the settle like a rocket and pelted for the door, chains jingling. Spitting smoke, Tamlin left his sword wedged in the post and followed.

Fire rippled and flared everywhere. No wizards warred on the stairs, for the front of the house had almost crunched flat. Zarrin and Tamlin skidded down the ruined stairs, slithered out the squashed doorway, clawed across the splintered gallery, and finally dashed to the safety of the street.

Panting, breath frosting, Tamlin wrapped his cape around the shivering Zarrin. Huddled, they gaped at the ongoing chaos.

The tilted house burned brightly. Chunks toppled into the gardens. Flaming trees shot sparks that the breeze blew throughout the neighborhood. Citizens scurried in flickering darkness, carrying buckets and lugging firehooks. The Hulorn’s Guards worked in teams with spears to kill the last of the gnashers. Other guards fought the fire or shepherded neighbors to safety. Two hillmen lay dead and two more were trussed on their knees. Household goods, books, and clothes were strewn in the street. Proud Helara watched the blaze, a smirk on her face. Magdon and Ophelia stared in awe. Selgauntians milled, clustered, asked questions, and got in the way.

From the madness, Escevar trotted up and clapped Tamlin’s shoulder. He was smudgy and bloody but grinning. “Deuce! Thank the fates you’re alive! And you found Zarrin! Bravo! We won all around! Ratigan, that green wizard, ran screaming with his clothes half-turned to stone and his hair afire! And you’ll never guess who showed up! Padrig the Palmer! He ran up flapping his hands because his house was burning! He rented it to the wizard! That’s how he knew about Ratigan!”

“That answers a few questions.” Tamlin spoke over Zarrin’s blonde head. “So what did you do?”

“Oh, nothing,” Escevar evaded. “What with all those flying sword blades, Padrig got whacked on the head and fell in the cellar, poor chap.”

With a rush and gush, the house collapsed into its foundation. Sparks vomited into the sky. Trees sizzled like fireworks. People shout. Escevar spotted someone and ran off with a laugh.

“I can’t believe you took advantage of my misfortune.” Zarrin peered from the folds of Tamlin’s cape. “That was unfair, Tamlin. It was low and rotten. Holding someone’s feet to the fire to drive a better bargain is vile, slimy, underhanded, deceitful and - unkind.”

The girl shivered and snuggled into Tamlin’s arms. “I’m just cold, so don’t get any ideas. I’ll admit, though, you were clever. I’d have done the same. Maybe there’s hope for you, Tamlin. With all the schemes coming a-boil in this city, my family might find you useful, if you care to stay with business.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Tamlin looked at the running burning raging chaos that engulfed the early morning street. “I find business so dull…”

END

Table of Contents

Start