Azure Bonds

16 Run Aground

Giogioni Wyvernspur, suddenly aware of his duty to posterity, began the first entry in his journal, despite the inconvenience of the rocking boat. With a stick of soft lead he scrawled:

This business of being a royal envoy might not be so bad, Giogi thought as he closed his journal. All he had to do was carry a letter from Azoun to a member of Westgate’s ruling council, find out if they knew anything about this Alias person, and then keep an eye out for her in case she showed up within the next two months—all at the crown’s expense.

As he stood at the upper deck’s railing, the Wyvernspur noble could pick out snatches of the conversation the captain was having with Teziir’s harbormaster. Something about an increase in the docking fee—another ten gold pieces was owed. A reasonable sum for making it to land, Giogi thought, but the ship’s captain had another opinion.

“Outrageous! I won’t suffer such extortion. I’ll bring her in without your help. See if I don’t!”

Somewhere astern, on the lower deck, a high-pitched voice asked another passenger, “Penurious, our captain, or merely recalcitrant?”

Giogi turned toward the sound of the voice. Funny, I didn’t notice any halflings aboard before.

The passenger the halfling had addressed was a lady cloaked from head to toe. When Giogi saw her face he froze. The halfling was male, completely unfamiliar, but the woman’s face—he couldn’t be mistaken. It was her!

“Why, Master Phalse,” the lady smiled. “If I had known you were traveling on the same vessel, I might have forsaken dinner with the captain for your company.”

“Dinner with the captain, dinner with me, while poor Zrie is left alone in Westgate. You can be so cruel, Lady Cassana. You know he falls to pieces without you.”

So, Giogi thought, Alias isn’t her real name, after all.

The Lady Cassana laughed with cruel amusement. “He needs the reminder occasionally. What are you doing here? I didn’t notice you board.”

“That’s because I only just popped in. I thought I might accompany you. How’s your arm?”

The lady frowned. “How did you know about that?”

“My master’s been scrying you to be safe. There was a blur as the One approached your bird form. When she passed by we noted the dagger in your wing.”

Cassana shrugged. “All healed when I polymorphed back to my own body.”

“Well, our condolences on the failure of your mission.”

The lady snarled. “The beast sleeps with his damned sword, so I could only use the subtlest of magics lest I alerted him to my presence and he dispelled my attacks. My creature would not approach him, branded as he is. I almost had the mage and the thief, but Puppet managed to shake me off in time to raise an alarm.”

“Well, there will be other opportunities,” the halfling replied, shrugging.

“We were lucky she had the brands checked for magic, or we might still be searching all compass points. But it was a fluke she had it done again near Zrie’s old rock garden, and a fluke that my creature spotted her in the gap. Don’t you think it’s time your master got involved in this?”

“There is no need when he has such efficient, clever helpers as myself.”

“Oh? And what have you done lately to earn such praise?”

“Planted a tracking device in the One’s, or as you would say, Puppet’s, party. A device strong enough to be detected despite the enchantment of misdirection about her.”

“Planted with the thief, I presume.”

Phalse nodded.

“But, how did you find the party?” Cassana asked.

“Upon interrogating Nameless I learned of a peculiar desire he had to sing in Shadowdale. Like father, like daughter. I kept watch on the town. As soon as my scrying power became blurred, I knew the One must have arrived. Sneaking in was a bit perilous—the town is heavily warded against my kind, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Now, aren’t you glad I didn’t let you kill poor, foolish Nameless?”

Cassana smiled slyly. “I suppose I am.” From her pocket she drew out a small serpent. The reptile tried unsucessfully to slither from the woman’s grasp.

“You took him with you?” The halfling sounded surprised.

“He proved quite useful in holding Puppet’s attention. He really is a remarkable storyteller.” Cassana slipped the snake back into her pocket.

Giogioni withdrew hastily from the railing. It isn’t possible, he thought. She’s supposed to be heading to Yulash. Something has gone very wrong. She’s here, discussing the most sinister-sounding things. Using magical attacks against branded people, threatening to kill someone’s father, and turning humans into snakes. Instead of a sell-sword named Alias, now she’s a sorceress called Cassana. Giogi didn’t know what to make of it all, but his duty was clear. The woman had to be placed under arrest.

The sailors were all too busy dropping lines overboard and calling out numbers, so the Wyvernspur noble made his way toward the captain. “Excuse me, sir, but there is a woman aboard your ship who is wanted by the Cormyrian authorities. A very dangerous woman.”

“Ten!” a sailor shouted from the port bow.

The captain seemed not to see Giogi. His eyes were fixed on the port, his hands clenched about the ship’s wheel.

Giogi stepped closer, whispering confidentially. “Why, not sixteen days ago she tried to assassinate a very important Cormyrian official.”

“Eight,” shouted another sailor from the starboard bow.

“The fourteenth of Mirtul to be more exact,” Giogi said.

“Nine,” the first sailor called out.

“We all thought she’d gone north to Yulash, which is over six hundred miles away, but,” Giogi gave a nervous laugh, “I just saw her on the lower deck.”

“Seven,” called out the sailor on the starboard bow.

“It doesn’t seem possible. I mean, it would take nearly two rides, twenty days, for her to get back here that quickly, but maybe she never went there to begin with, don’t you see.”

“Five.” This last came from the starboard bow.

“Five!” the captain shouted. “Nine Hells!” He twisted the wheel furiously, but it was too late.

Giogi felt the deck rise in a most peculiar fashion. It began sloping rather steeply down to the stern and remained that way. “I say! Have we hit a shoal or something?”

The captain glared at him with murder in his eyes. “Strike the sails!” he shouted.

The ship’s first officer approached with his evaluation. “It’s no good, sir. We’ve grounded too far. Have to wait for a change of wind to shift us.”

The ship listed perilously to starboard, and Giogi was forced to grab the wheel to keep from slipping on the deck. A peculiar cracking noise came from the housing beneath.

The first officer looked at the captain with alarm in his eyes.

“Prepare to disembark the passengers, Master Roberts. Start with this one.” The captain jabbed Giogioni Wyvernspur with his index finger.

“That’s most thoughtful, Captain,” Giogi said. “I say, but I can wait for the woman and children first. Wyvernspurs know their duty when they see it.”

“Sir,” the captain said. “You can disembark now in the longboat, or you can walk the plank.”

Giogioni found himself lowered in the longboat. He’d been too busy fretting over his baggage as the other passengers were loaded in beside him, so it came as quite a shock to look up and find himself staring into her eyes.

Giogioni gasped, “You!”

“I beg your pardon,” Cassana said. “Have we met?”

Giogi gulped. This close up he realized he’d made a mistake. This was not the lovely, mad sell-sword Alias. The woman seated opposite him was too old. Her hair was the wrong shade. Her flesh was soft and unmuscled.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled. “I mistook you for someone else.”

“Attractive men need never apologize for mistaking me for someone else. Provided they never mistake me again. I am Cassana of Westgate.” Cassana squeezed the Wyvernspur noble’s knee in a suggestive manner.

Flustered, Giogi tried to explain further. “I meant—that is, you look just like her, except older. I swear you could be her mother, er, older sister.”

Cassana’s eyes narrowed, and Giogi kicked himself mentally for violating a sacred rule about never telling women how old they really looked.

“This woman I look like,” Cassana whispered. “Tell me about her.”

Giogi gulped again. Oh, gods! Suppose she is her mother? “Well, she’s like you. Very pretty. With red hair and green eyes. She’s a sell-sword though, not a lady like you.”

Cassana laughed. “So tell me, who are you and how did you come to know this sell-sword who looks like me?”

All the while they were being rowed to land, Cassana tried to pump information from Giogioni. He explained he’d met Alias at a wedding, that she was merely a passing acquaintance, but this did not satisfy the woman with the strange resemblance to his attacker. Unwilling to reveal the truth, Giogi began to invent details of an imaginary conversation he held with the sell-sword. Remembering Alias had rescued Olive Ruskettle, he said they had discussed music.

He grew increasingly uncomfortable in Cassana’s presence. She moved alarmingly close to him and insisted on arranging his alternate travel plans to Westgate. She’s just the type of woman Aunt Dorath is always warning me about, Giogi realized. Not that I need any warning—with my sixth sense when it comes to danger.

He was very tempted to ask what had happened to the halfling he had seen her with earlier, but he realized just in time that that might give away what he had overheard.

He found the answer to his question soon enough. As they rowed up to the dock, the halfling reached a hand down to help Cassana up the ladder lowered to the longboat.

“There’s another boat to Westgate pulling out in an hour. I’ve arranged passage,” Giogi heard the halfling say.

Fervently Giogi prayed Cassana would forget him in a rush to get to her next ship, but he saw her whispering something to the halfling. Phalse looked down at the Wyvernspur noble with curiosity.

If I know anything at all, Giogi thought, I know that going with that woman and halfling would be a serious mistake. I need a distraction. Something to take their mind off of me, before I end up in the sorceress’s pocket.

Giogi handed up his gear and climbed the ladder. Cassana did not even have a chance to introduce her companion before Giogi shrieked. “Oooh! Keep it away!”

“My dear Giogioni, what is wrong?”

Giogi pointed a shaky finger at a pile of crates on the dock. “A snake. A huge snake.” He spread his hands out the tiny distance of two hand spans to be sure his exaggeration was not mistaken. “It crawled into that pile of boxes. I don’t mean to be such a ninny, but a snake swallowed my Aunt Dorath’s pet land urchin once. It was horrible.”

Phalse was no longer paying attention to the young Cormyte. He was too busy searching through the crates for what he had been led to assume was the snake Cassana had kept trapped in her pocket. The sorceress, however, instinctively checked her pocket first, but that moment of inattention was all Giogioni needed.

Scooping up his baggage, he fled from the dock into the city of Teziir, desperately searching for a horse, a coach, or any quick means of escape from this den of foreign villainy.