Masquerades

Twenty-Two The Gathering Storm

Olive’s attempts to steer Thistle away from Victor were thwarted by the hard-line attitude of her supposed ally, Miss Winterhart. The halfling newcomer, while capable, intelligent, and alert, had to be the most tactless halfling in Faerûn. Unfortunately, Olive did not discover this flaw until the morning after Thistle’s dinner date with Victor Dhostar, and by then it was too late.

That morning Olive was headed toward the dining hall, her mind on mushroom-and-chicken omelets, when she heard Thistle, angry and strident, shout, “It is none of your business what Victor and I did last night.”

All thoughts of breakfast took a back seat to whatever potential disaster was brewing with the mistress of the house. Olive veered in the direction of the shout. She spied Thistle seated on the veranda, cornered by an irate Winterhart.

“It is very much my business if it threatens you or your household,” Miss Winterhart snapped back just as Olive stepped outside to join them.

“Something amiss?” Olive asked helpfully, hoping to instill some calm in the air before the other halflings in the household heard the argument and began gossiping about it.

“This new halfling of yours,” said Thistle, her eyes squinting with annoyance, “is prying into my private affairs. Her manner has gone beyond mere halfling cheek, and verges on full-fledged impertinence.” If Thistle had been standing, Olive was sure she would have stamped her dainty little foot, but she was not, and so Olive was spared that bit of theatrics.

“She sneaked out to dine with Victor Dhostar last night without a chaperon or a bodyguard,” Winterhart explained to Olive, “and she did not return until well after the midnight bell.

“I am mistress of this house,” Thistle retorted shrilly. “I will not be given a curfew.”

“Of course not, Lady Thistle,” Olive agreed. “Yet midnight is a little late for a dinner engagement to run, even in Westgate. Surely you can understand how Miss Winterhart must have worried for your safety.”

“There was nothing to worry about,” Thistle replied, her voice softening a little. “It was just a dinner aboard The Gleason, a farewell banquet for the captain and the officers. Afterward we climbed up the lighthouse, just for the view. That’s all.”

“A likely story,” Winterhart exclaimed.

“I beg your pardon?” Thistle said with a shocked expression.

“You heard me,” Winterhart replied. “He didn’t take you up there for the view. He took you up there so he could give you his little speech about how he dreamed of finding Verovan’s treasure so he could use it to make Westgate the greatest city in the Realms—greater than Waterdeep. How he’ll make Westgate safe, fill it with scholars and musicians, irrigate the fields.”

Thistle started at the mention of Verovan’s treasure, but her tone was as cold as the Great Glacier when she answered. “I do not appreciate my own staff spying on me. How dare you follow us?”

“Did you believe him when he told you he felt he could conquer the world with you by his side? When he asked if he would have the support of a clever, beautiful lady, what did you tell him? Have you given him a token of your esteem?” Winterhart asked snidely.

The girl reached without thinking, to feel the feather brooch pinned to her gown. “I find this petty espionage most unappealing,” she snapped back, but her face flushed scarlet as she spoke.

“How else can I be expected to protect you from such a devious scoundrel?” Winterhart demanded.

“Victor,” Thistle replied icily, “is … not … a … scoundrel. Mistress Ruskettle, I think you should find some other duties for Miss Winterhart. I simply cannot tolerate her as a lady’s maid.” The girl rose and strode imperiously back into the castle.

Olive surveyed Thistle’s untouched breakfast tray and plucked a piece of bacon from the plate. She crunched on it as she thoughtfully appraised Winterhart.

The younger halfling glared back at her. “How can she be such a fool to fall for that arrogant, conniving greengrocer?” Winterhart growled.

“She’s a girl, Winterhart,” Olive said, picking up a forkful of fried potatoes. “Remember when you were a girl? When you argued with your mother about the relative worth or worthlessness of some boy who took your fancy? When you were certain you could take care of yourself without anyone’s help? When no one could reason with you?”

“I was never like that,” Winterhart argued.

“Never? I’m beginning to wonder about you, Winterhart,” Olive said and wolfed down the forkful of potatoes.

She motioned for the other halfling to follow her down to the lower courtyard, where Kretschmer, one of the few surviving members of Lady Nettel’s guard, was drilling the new recruits Olive had hired. Olive pulled two wooden swords off the rack and tossed one to the prim halfling. Winterhart caught the practice weapon smoothly.

“It’s time I assessed your reputed skill with a blade,” Olive said.

“Is this another trial, Mistress Ruskettle?” Winterhart asked.

“No. Just a little exercise while we discuss tactics.” Olive gave Winterhart’s wooden blade a smack with her own. Winterhart responded by weaving her sword warily.

“I applaud your initiative following Lady Thistle last night,” Olive said. “I can’t, however, say I think much of the way you gave yourself away.” She struck a blow aimed at Winterhart’s thigh.

Winterhart parried the strike easily. “Does this mean you will try to convince Her Ladyship to keep me on as her personal maid?”

Olive shook her head, parrying a blow of Winterhart’s aimed directly at her heart. “I can’t afford to invite censure on myself. Someone’s got to undo the damage you’ve done.”

“Damage I’ve done?” Winterhart squeaked, lunging with her blade at Olive’s shoulder. “Victor Dhostar is the one who’ll being doing all the damage. That man is a menace,” the younger halfling snarled.

“Agreed,” Olive replied, leaping backward to avoid the lunge.

“If you know I’m right, you have to keep me close to Lady Thistle,” Winterhart said, pressing her advantage, lunging again with her blade at Olive’s shoulder. “Did you see how she blushed when I asked her if she’d given him a token? Did you notice she left the veranda instead of ordering me away? Even she knows I’m right.”

“It doesn’t matter who is right to a girl like Thistle,” Olive said with a sigh, smacking the hilt of Winterhart’s sword away from her body. “It matters who makes her feel good about herself. Dhostar makes her feel like a woman. You made her feel like a child. You’ve practically driven her into Dhostar’s arms. I’ve got to try to make her feel like a lady before Dhostar makes her forget her position.” She struck a blow against Winterhart’s hip.

Winterhart’s blade whipped back before Olive had a chance to parry. The tip of the younger halfling’s weapon slid across Ruskettle’s throat.

Olive stepped back and saluted with her practice weapon. “You have the drive and the skill and the reflexes,” she told Winterhart, “but you still have to learn when to pull back. I’m assigning you to help Kretschmer drill the new recruits. That would be a better use of your skills, I think.”

Winterhart glared at Olive.

More softly, Olive added, “Should you happen to show any more initiative and follow Lady Thistle about, without getting caught at it, or letting her know afterward, that would probably be the best use of your skills.”

Winterhart smiled slyly and saluted Olive with her own wooden blade.

Kimbel stood in the center of the Faceless’s new lair, turning slowly, surveying the contents of the room. From inside his shirt he pulled out a golden rod and began tapping it against all the magic in his sight, against the remaining iron golems, against the masks worn by the Night Masters, against the enchanted staves and weaponry hanging on the wall. A tiny spark jumped from the wand each time it touched a magic item.

A bell chimed, and Kimbel turned to face the magical portal mirror as a figure stepped through and entered the lair.

“You’re late,” the assassin noted calmly to the new arrival, a comely halfling dressed very primly.

“I’ve been reassigned,” Winterhart explained. “Ruskettle’s got me drilling the Thalavar castle guard. You’ve never seen a sorrier bunch of would-be warriors. I couldn’t get away until lunchtime.”

“You aren’t eating with the others? Someone might suspect you’re not a halfling,” Kimbel said.

“It will be over before anyone guesses the truth,” Winterhart replied.

“So you aren’t Lady Thistle’s maid anymore? Do you think you’ll get a chance to snatch her brooch in your new position.”

“No, but despite my warnings, Thistle is obviously crazy about your master. I’m sure he’ll have no trouble sweet-talking her into handing it over to him. He’ll probably enjoy that more than receiving it from one of us.”

An evil chuckle drifted around the pair. “So true,” a disembodied voice agreed.

Kimbel whirled about, the little golden wand in his hand held out at the ready, but Winterhart stayed his hand. “It’s only the dragon skull,” the halfling woman said. She turned to the corner of the room where the dragon’s skull sat balanced on an iron tripod, its eyes glowing like hot coals. “Hail, Mistinarperadnacles Hai Draco,” the halfling said coolly.

“Hail, servants of the Faceless,” Mist replied and chuckled again.

“And what amuses you so?” Kimbel asked the creature.

“I have lost my life, my body, and my freedom, yet I still have my sight,” Mist replied, “and a dragon’s sight is not easily deceived by invisibility, illusion, or other magic.”

“Prove it,” Winterhart challenged. “Tell me what you know.”

“Very well. You, Miss Winterhart, are no more a halfling than I, but I know what and who you are,” Mist retorted. “As for Kimbel, I think the Faceless would be very interested to know the truth about his magically enslaved assassin. There is a way, however, to ensure my silence. You know what it is.”

Winterhart nodded. “Once the Faceless has obtained Verovan’s hoard for the Night Masks, I will grant you your boon.”

Victor Dhostar sat in his office in the Tower, listening to one of the city’s accountants explain why the budget for the preceding month had been exceeded by twenty thousand gold pieces, but how the deficit for the current month would only be half that amount if the croamarkh passed the oar and sail tax. Fortunately, the croamarkh was delivered from having to deal immediately with the budget nightmare by a knock on the door.

“Come,” the new croamarkh called out.

A guard entered the room. “Excuse me, Your Lordship. Lady Thistle Thalavar is here.”

“Thank you. Please show her in,” Victor said. To the accountant he explained, “I’m afraid my business with House Thalavar is more urgent than this problem. We will have to continue this discussion later. Make another appointment with my scribe.”

“But, Your Lordship, we need—”

“Dismissed,” Victor growled with an expression that would brook no argument.

The accountant gathered his books and pens and bowed. He bowed again to Lady Thistle as she entered the room. As the accountant exited, Victor smiled with delight. The croamarkh had no appointment with Thistle, but on the off-chance she would take it into her head to visit him here he had left instructions that she be shown up immediately. “What service can I do for Your Ladyship?” Lord Victor asked.

“I can wait if I’m interrupting your work,” Thistle began.

“Lady Thistle, you are the head of one of the leading families of Westgate. I wouldn’t dream of keeping you waiting.”

As he rose from his desk and circled around to stand before the girl, Victor noted how his flattery caused her to straighten with pride. “Besides, if I kept you waiting and you left, I would be disappointed that I’d missed seeing you.” He took up the girl’s hand and brushed his lips along her fingertips.

“I’ve given a lot of thought to our conversation last night,” Thistle said. “I’m feeling very unhappy that I would not—could not give you the token you asked for.” She touched the feather brooch pinned to her gown. “After more careful consideration, I have decided to give you my wholehearted support, and you will have my token, tonight.”

“Oh, Thistle, my darling,” Lord Victor whispered. He swept the girl up in his arms and kissed her as if she were a woman.

“Lord Victor,” Thistle remarked when the croamarkh finally released her, “I fear you’ve mistaken my meaning.”

Victor stepped back and turned his head away as if to hide his disappointment. “Forgive me, Lady Thistle, I thought … I dared hope …”

“Oh, Victor,” Thistle whispered, stepping forward and taking the croamarkh’s hands. “It’s not that I don’t lo—that I’m not honored by your declaration. It’s only that I meant something different by offering my support.”

Victor looked the girl in the eyes once more, confusion written on his face. “What did you mean, Thistle?”

“I meant I will deliver Verovan’s hoard to you. So you can do all you said for Westgate. So you can make it the greatest city in all of Faerun.”

A smile fluttered across the croamarkh’s face. “Oh, Thistle. Sweet lady. All that talk of Verovan’s treasure—that’s just dreams, faerie tales. Someday, I will do all those things I spoke of, but when I asked for your support I was thinking more realistically—I was thinking of the kind of support a woman gives a man. Thistle, I love you. I want you to be my wife.”

Thistle beamed with pleasure, but she was still determined to prove herself. “There is no position I’d like more,” the girl replied, “but I will give you Verovan’s hoard. It’s not a myth. Meet me tonight at Castle Vhammos, and I will prove it.”

Victor shook his head. “Darling, even for Verovan’s hoard I cannot meet you tonight. I must be at the Temple of Gond for the ceremony to initiate apprentices. If I did not attend, it would offend every artisan in the city, not to mention the priests of Gond, and probably Gond himself.”

Thistle laughed. “You are so dutiful. Meet me tomorrow night then. You shall have Verovan’s treasure, and you shall have me.”

“Very well,” the croamarkh agreed. He leaned forward and whispered in the girl’s ear, “Tomorrow night I’ll let you prove whatever you like.”

The next morning, Thistle called Olive out to the veranda to join her for breakfast. The lady was watching Kretschmer and Winterhart drilling the castle guard. Marching in formation, the new recruits were beginning to look like a force to be reckoned with.

“Miss Winterhart is better suited to her new post, I think,” Thistle commented.

“Miss Winterhart tells me you visited Lord Dhostar yesterday afternoon, again without an escort,” the halfling retorted.

“She followed me again? Of all the nerve! I want you to dismiss her at once.”

“No, Lady, I will not,” Olive replied. Before the girl could protest, the halfling pressed on with an explanation. “I authorized Miss Winterhart to follow you. I couldn’t care less about your courtship of Victor Dhostar, but if you’re attacked by Night Masks, there must be someone present to defend you. I’m sure Lord Victor would agree with me that your safety is more important than your privacy.”

“Yes, he probably would,” Thistle agreed, her tone softening at Olive’s assessment of the croamarkh. “He cares about me. Oh, Olive, he’s so wonderful. I wish grandmother were here. She would be so happy for me. I know she’d approve of my supporting him, don’t you think?”

“That all depends,” Olive replied. “Your grandmother was the most dignified lady I ever met. I think she hoped you would be like her. Are you offering this support in a dignified fashion or like a schoolgirl?”

Thistle straightened her back as if her grandmother had just chastised her for poor posture. “Of course I will offer my support in a dignified fashion,” she insisted.

“Good,” Olive replied, “because however wonderful he may be, Victor Dhostar is still the head of a rival house. What was that thing your grandmother used to say about marrying into rival houses?”

“ ‘You can marry into them, but don’t offer to cover their losses,’ ” Thistle replied. “Olive, Lord Victor doesn’t need my money, but if he did I would give it to him because I know he would use it for the good of all Westgate.”

Olive tched just as Lady Nettel might have done.

“Don’t you halflings have any sense of romance?” Thistle snapped with annoyance.

“Sense and romance,” Olive sniffed. “Now there are two words that definitely don’t go together.”

Thistle harrumphed and stormed off the veranda, just as she had the day before, leaving Olive in complete possession of her breakfast.

After assigning duty rosters to the newly trained guards, Olive spent the rest of the day in her room, strumming nervously on her yarting. Try as she might, she could not shake off a sense of impending doom she had, not for herself but for Thistle Thalavar. The halfling was racking her brain trying to figure what Victor Dhostar’s game was. Thistle was a good match for any noble in the city, but men like Dhostar didn’t care about making a good match, Olive realized. They cared only about power.

Jamal came calling on Olive at Castle Thalavar shortly after sunset. “There’s something very strange going on,” the actress reported. “Kel says there are all sorts of Night Masks out tonight. He followed a pair of them down to Castle Vhammos. He says he thinks they’re all holding some sort of war council.”

Olive set down her yarting and began strapping on her scabbard. At that moment, Miss Winterhart burst into the room. The younger halfling was dressed all in leather and armed for combat with a human-sized sword strapped across her back in the fashion of warriors of the north.

“Lady Thistle has gone to Castle Vhammos,” Winterhart reported, “but I didn’t dare approach too closely. The guards are letting all sorts of unsavory types enter, but I do not think they will let a halfling pass. I know another way in. Follow me.”

Winterhart turned about and strode off with Olive and Jamal dashing after her. The younger halfling led them to her quarters in the lower regions of the castle. Olive was just wondering if there was some secret passageway Lady Nettel had neglected to mention when Winterhart plunged, like a diver into a pond, into the mirror hanging on her wall.

Olive’s startled reflection rippled for a moment and then was still. “I’m probably going to regret this,” the older halfling whispered just before she stepped into the darkness of the mirror.

Jamal was left facing her own reflection. There was probably nothing she could do, she told herself. She wasn’t much of a fighter, and she doubted very much there would be any call for an actress wherever the mirror took her. “Some cheap hero you are,” she said, glaring at the aging face glaring back at her. Taking a deep breath, she leaped into the mirror, thinking, I know I’m going to regret this.

Darkness seemed to fill the other side of the mirror. After a few moments, however, Olive’s eyes adjusted to the dim light cast by a brazier. She stood in the center of an underground cavern containing items removed from the lair of the Faceless—most notable were the remaining iron golems, the empty rack for the masks of the Night Masters, and the skull of the dragon Mist, with the red lights spinning in its eye sockets.

“Where are we?” Jamal whispered.

“The Faceless’s newest lair, I’d guess,” Olive replied. “Winterhart, how’d you get a magic portal mirror into here? What’s going on, woman?”

Winterhart held up a finger to indicate Olive should wait for a moment. The younger halfling stood before Mist’s skull, holding a small golden wand.

“Your associate is in the chamber above with the Night Masters and their followers,” the dragon’s skull was saying to Winterhart. “There are over two hundred Night Masks waiting for the Faceless to lead them to Verovan’s hoard.”

“Verovan’s hoard!” Olive gasped in astonishment. “But where are Lady Thistle and Lord Victor?” she demanded.

“Lord Victor has taken Lady Thistle to the top of the southern tower,” Mist reported. “With no idea that her lover is the Faceless, Lady Thistle is showing him how to open the portal to Verovan’s treasury.”

“Dhostar is the Faceless?” Jamal gasped.

“Of course,” Olive said. “That explains how he managed to make it look like his father was the Faceless.”

Mist growled at Winterhart, “I’ve fulfilled all my promises to you, warrior. Free me now, as you promised,” the dragon’s spirit demanded.

Winterhart stepped forward and tapped the golden wand on Mist’s disembodied skull. “Rest now, wyrm,” the halfling said.

The light spinning about in the skull’s eye sockets seemed to flow toward Winterhart’s golden wand, then vanished. The bone of the skull crumbled into dust. An eldritch wind blew through the cavern, blowing the dust about in a cyclone. By the glow of the brazier the dust seemed to take on the shape of a red dragon.

“Farewell, you red-headed witch,” Mist’s voice whispered, “and farewell to you, Olive Ruskettle.”

Then the wind increased, knocking Winterhart to one knee before carrying the dust away to some far plane.

Olive had her sword pointed at Winterhart before the other halfling could rise to her feet. “You’ve known all along that Victor Dhostar is the Faceless?”

“Of course,” Winterhart replied. In the blink of an eye, the prim halfling had drawn her own sword and crossed the blade against Ruskettle’s. “That is why I led you here, so you could witness his moment of triumph.”