Mistshore

CHAPTER 5

Icelin had seen jaw-dropping wonders throughout her youth in the City of Splendors, and just as many sights that had convinced her of the worthlessness of some folk. She had never seen anything that inspired such measures of both emotions as when she first set eyes on Mistshore.

Adjusting the hood of her long cloak so that she could see a farther distance, Icelin took in the sprawling mass of wood, rigging, and moving bodies that swelled the harbor.

The place reminded her a little of Blacklock Alley: twisting, narrow corridors, broken here and there by the half-exposed bellies of ships that had been turned into living quarters or hawking grounds for vendors selling food and ale, or drugs and flesh. Torches lined the walkways. Small boys pushed past her with buckets of water, which they emptied onto the path. The saturated wood kept the torches' sparks from erupting into fire.

The wind blowing in from the sea was cold, and plucked uncomfortable holes in Icelin's cloak. The ait reeked of fish, stale sweat, and a prevailing, sunk-in pollution that arose from the harbor itself. Tainted forever, the brown, salty sludge clung out of stubbornness and spite to the wreckages of Mistshore, determined in time to drag the structures down into the depths.

Icelin stopped to make way for a grizzled man in a tattered cloak hauling a hissing, spitting cat under one of his arms. He paused long enough to offer her an open bag of half-rotted fruit that had obviously come from a refuse pile. Flies buzzed around the brown apples and pears.

"Copper a dozen," he hissed, sounding just like the cat.

He smiled at her, exposing an empty mouth and a scar across his gums.

Icelin started to shake her head, but the man was already moving off, a look of fear crossing his face. Icelin turned around to see Sull towering over her. His own cloak did little to hide his bulk, but the hood kept his bright red hair under wraps.

"You're going to draw more attention to us with that scowl than you would if we were both running around here stark naked," she said.

"I don't like this place," Sull said. He kept a hand on her shoulder, his eyes constantly moving among the crowd. "Shifts under my feet."

Icelin looked down. The rough walkway, reinforced to hold large numbers of plodding feet, was still a slanted, groaning mess. The wood had rotted or broken in places, allowing brown water to seep through when the wake kicked up. Anyone not minding his feet ran the risk, of tripping and falling into the polluted harbor. Sull's weight made the rotting planks creak and bow.

"We'll find better footing closer to shore," Icelin said. "We only have to be out here long enough to find the Dusk and Dawn."

The structure they stood on now was at least a hundred yards across and roughly the shape of an octopus. The central head was marked by smoke plumes rising in massive clouds to the sky. The largest concentration of people gathered around an immense, controlled bonfire. Wooden paths branched off at odd angles from this single head, ending at other wrecks and sail-covered remains of ships that would no longer be recognizable to their former owners.

"Should never have come here," Sull muttered. He eyed the controlled devastation like a fish that had suddenly flopped onto the dock. Icelin knew she wore a similar, gaping expression.

They moved through the crowd slowly. Sull's presence soon warned away any eyes that lingered on Icelin, so they stayed unhindered except for the occasional vendor.

A woman carrying a tray of brown glass bottles stepped into Icelin's path. Each small vial had a cork stopper and a crudely inked label. She brandished them like a barmaid passing out ale mugs. Icelin could see down the cleavage of her low-cut dress. Water stains blotted the peaks and valleys of its hem.

"Need a pleasure draught, young one?" the woman said, "or something a little more fatal?"

Sheer curiosity drove Icelin to pick up one of the bottles. She ignored Sull's disapproving grunt.

"That's a good choice, that is." The woman took the vial from Icelin and popped the cork. "My own special brew. Call it Grim Tidings." Her laughter boomed over the crowd. "Completely odorless," she said, holding it under Icelin's nose, "unaffected by alcohol or sugar, so you can put it in your lord's tea or strong drink, whatever his pleasure. Course, it won't be pleasurable for very long!"

"So it's poison," Icelin said.

"Should bottle the harbor water," Sull said. "It'll get you the same effect."

The woman laughed again. "Oh, you've got a nasty one here, don't you? He your bodyguard?"

"You could say that," Icelin said. A gust of wind kicked up. Icelin buried her freezing hands inside her cloak. "Why aren't there more fires?" she asked. "You'll freeze to death out here in the winter."

"Some do," the woman said, and shrugged. "You won't find much heat on the fringes, cept from the torches on the paths. Didn't used to be that way, and whole ships'd go up when some poor drudge was careless with the cooking embers. Only fire allowed now comes from the path torches and the Hearth," she said, pointing to the thick smoke plumes. "Largest fire pit offshore anywhere in Faerun."

Icelin heard the unmistakable note of pride in the woman's voice and marveled at it. "Who built the Hearth?" she asked.

"Same person who pays the boys to empty water buckets on the walkways, I expect," Sull said.

The woman nodded. "The gangs do it. The children are their children. The ones that enforce the rules are their enforcers."

"The gangs rule here?" Icelin said.

The woman chuckled. "You're round as a newborn babe, aren't you? No one 'rules' Mistshore. We're lucky to keep it floating. Everyone takes a little chunk of power, but no one wants it all. Who wants to be king of a rat heap? The ship's already sunk; we just haven't got the sense to get off. So we keep it floating, make coin, and everyone's happy." She smiled sardonically. "My power is bottles. So buy one or don't. But every breath I spend flapping with you, I lose coin. So what'll it be?"

Icelin took out a handful of coins. "Is this enough for the vial?"

"Not by my measure, nor any self-respecting poisoner." The woman sniffed and raised her nose a notch in the air. "More silver, young one."

"Perhaps we'll shop elsewhere." Sull took Icelin's arm and started to lead "her away.

"Hold on, now, fleet-foots!" The woman scuttled around until she was in their path again. "Let me look a little closer at that handful of coins, I didn't get a good glance the first time."

"Count quickly," Sull said. "We're in a rush."

"Ah, there's the extra silver. You got it right." The woman scooped up the coins, buried them in the bosom of her dress, and handed Icelin the vial in exchange. "Enjoy," she said, and moved off.

"What was that about?" Sull said when she was out of hearing.

Icelin shrugged. "The way I see our situation, we have two weapons: your butchering tools and my magic, which is unstable under the most ideal circumstances. What can it hurt to have a vial of poison?"

"Just stay away from my tea," Sull murmured. "Why is your magic unstable anyway? From all I've heard, Waterdeep's the best place for wizards. They come in droves, sayin' somethin' about the city is better at keepin' the wild magic under control."

"That may be true in most cases," Icelin said. "Not in mine."

Icelin saw a break in the crowd at the end of the walkway. She started in that direction, as much to end the conversation as to get out of the throng. She felt Sull jerk the back of her cloak.

"I don't want to speak of this-"

"Hush, now. Look at the water." Sull pointed to a spot thirty feet out in the harbor.

Icelin looked, and through the wavering torchlight saw a faint, glowing shape pass close to the surface. Against the dark harbor, it shone as white as dust off a moth's wings. For a breath, she thought the shape looked human, writhing and clawing through the water. But that couldn't be-

"What was that?" she said when it disappeared.

"A reason to get back to shore," Sull said. "And there's another." He pointed ahead of them, where two men faced each other on the narrow dock. Both held rust-covered knives. Cursing and grappling, they fought while a crowd watched. Some of the nearby vendors pulled out coins, calling for bets as to whose throat would be slit first.

The bigger of the two men shoved forward, driving his blade into the smaller man's thigh. Blood poured down the man's bare leg, and he stumbled backward into the water. Crimson flowed to join the torchlight dappling the harbor.

Icelin pulled against Sull. "We have to help him!"

"Too late," Sull said. "Look."

The flash of glowing white came again, just as the man went under in a swell of wake. His head broke the surface once, and he screamed, screamed until he was choking on the terrible water. He disappeared again beneath the waves. This time he did not resurface.

Icelin stood frozen. Her legs felt weak under her. She looked around for a reaction from the crowd, but the bettors and the gawkers had broken up. The crowd kept moving, the vendors kept hawking, and those that did stand by to watch wore vacant expressions. Icelin wondered how much of the vendors' drugs they had coursing through their blood, to be immune to such a sttange, violent spectacle.

"What is this place?" she said. But she wasn't really talking to Sull.

"These are parts of the city you're never meant to see, lass," Sull said, patting her shoulder.

"And what of you?" Icelin demanded. "What have you seen of this kind of death? How can you just stand there and do nothing?"

Immediately she regretted her words. She had no cause to attack Sull. None of this was his fault.

"I'm sorry, Sull," she said. "That wasn't right."

But the butcher merely shook his head. "I been in my share of troubles, doin' things I'm not proud to tell you about," he said. "But this"-he spat in the water-"this is unnatural, even for Waterdeep. I didn't mean to patronize you, lass. My aim is to get you out of here safe. "Keepin' our heads low and out of other folks' path is the only way to do that."

She knew Sull was right, but nothing about this place made sense to Icelin. The people-scarred by disease and wounds suffered from fights like the one they'd just witnessed-wandered around like refugees from a non-existent war. Where had they come from? And what horrors had they seen out in the world that made them want to stay in a place like Mistshore?

They passed a crude signpost driven into the side of the walkway. Dock beetles scurried over its painted surface.

"Whalebone Court-Dusk and Dawn, appearing nightly," Icelin read. She followed a painted arrow to an openspace near a pile of rocks. Here the wood had been reinforced several times over with new planks and a fresh coat of paint. The footing still shifted, but Icelin no longer felt the queasy up and down motion that had accompanied all her other movements.

Twelve wooden poles jutted out of the platform like exposed ribs, six on either side. From a distance, they vaguely resembled the carcass of a whale. Men moved among them, tying off ropes and securing the flaps of a bright ted canvas.

"Puttin' up a tent," Sull said. "Think they intend on having a show?"

"Make way!" A stumpy man with a blond, pointed beard shouldered past Icelin. He wore a red velvet coat to match the canvas. He hauled an armful of knotted rope whose ends kept sticking in the gaping planks. Cursing, he jerked them free and moved on.

"Is this the Dusk and Dawn?" Icelin called after him.

"Working on it," the man shouted back. "Should have been open an age ago." He threw down an armful of rope. "Aye, I'm looking at you, Grazlen. Now get moving with that! Every breath you waste costs me coin."

Icelin and Sull moved out of the way. While they watched, the men hauled two more long poles out of the water where they'd been floating against rocks. Five of the men moved together to stand the poles vertically in the center of the platform. The bearded man stomped over and put his hand around the base of each.

Icelin saw his lips moving, the rhythmic song of magic she knew so well. Light flared at his fingertips, and the poles snapped to attention like wary soldiers, rigid upon the platform.

"Bring down the red!" the man in the red coat yelled. He spat on both his hands, rubbed them together, and shimmied up the poles.

The men below unfurled the canvas to its full length, securing all sides with the rope. The man in the red coat took an end and climbed to the top of the long poles, draping the canvas over them. That done, he slid to the platform, and watched as the men dragged the canvas over the rest of the exposed poles.

While the men tied the ropes to the platform, the man in the red coat removed a crumpled parchment sheet and a slender nail from his breast pocket. He spread the parchment out flat and pinned it to the canvas.

The sheet fluttered madly in the breeze, and Icelin could just barely make out the writing. "Dusk and Dawn," she read. And below that: "Time of Operation-Dusk until Dawn. Proprietor: Relvenar Red Coat."

"Open for business," the man in the red coat shouted.

Icelin looked around and saw that a small crowd had gathered with them to watch the proceedings. They filtered past in clusters, pushing and shoving to get into the tent.

Sull shook his head, chuckling. "I thought I'd seen every-thin'. But a moveable feastin' hall I'd not expected!"

"It makes a certain sense," Icelin said. "You were, right about the planks. They're too unstable to support a permanent structure this far offshore, not without stronger magic or more coin, or both. With a tent, he can move his operation whenever he likes and still be in the most crowded area of Mistshore."

"So it goes in fair Waterdeep," Sull said. "Commerce moves ever forward."

"Let's go in," Icelin said.

Sull sighed loudly. "And so it goes with all young people. Stridin' in headstrong, not carin' a bit if they're walkin' into certain doom."

Icelin threw him a bland look over her shoulder. "What kind of bodyguard talks thus?"

"A smart one," Sull replied.

Relvenar "Red Coat" made a quick round of the card players in one corner of the tent before heading past the dicing area.

All the gambling areas were marked off with paint on the floor. There were no tables and no chairs, and the only bar to speak of was the mass of ale kegs and crates of foodstuffs hauled in every night. The setup suited him just fine. The only thing about him that bore any frills was his bright red coat.

Dancing lamplight cast large shadows on the tent canvas. He paid an aching amount of coin to the gangs to keep the private lamps, but it was worth it not to have his patrons stumbling or knifing each other in the dark.

Relvenar moved to the back of the bar, where the wind teased the loose canvas and the smell of the harbor mingled with food and drink. He counted the kegs to make sure they would have enough for the night's crowd. He knew he should keep a larger stock, but transportation was cumbersome in Mistshore. The Dusk and Dawn had all the problems of a normal tavern mingled with the worries of a ship's captain. Relvenar wore the dual roles as well as he could. Business was. good, and his ship-such as it was-was intact.

The sound of fingernails scratching the outside of the tent brought Relvenar to a halt in his inspection of the kegs. The scratching moved along the canvas, and a shadow loomed suddenly in front of him. Relvenar recognized the slender, agile shape, with a bulky top where a hat might be perched.

A very ugly hat, Relvenar thought. But business was business, and this client didn't enjoy being kept waiting.

Casting a quick glance around to make sure he wasn't being watched, Relvenar huddled down and crawled under the loose canvas. Outside in the clear air, the smell of the rank harbor hit him square in the nose.

Relvenar brushed a hand in front of his face, as if he could banish the stench. He shivered in the cold night air. "Didn't think you were going to show," he said to the figure leaning casually against a wood piling. The man stood easily, his arms crossed over his stomach, unbothered by the cold and the stench. He did not look happy. But then, Relvenar had never seen Ruen Morleth wear any expression except for a kind of blank coldness.

It's the man's eyes, Relvenar thought. There's too much wrong with them.

"Is she here?" Morleth said.

"Came in right after opening," Relvenar said. "Her and a big fellow. Keeps pretty close watch."

"How unfortunate for your cut-purses." Morleth produced a folded bit of parchment from inside his vest. "Send them to this location."

Relvenar took the parchment but didn't look at it. "What if they don't want to go? I'm not forcing any trouble in my establishment. If folk don't feel safe, they won't come back. I'll have to close down."

"I have a difficult time imagining your clientele feeling 'safe' anywhere in Mistshore," Morleth said. "Don't worry. These two are lambs; they'll go wherever you tell them. They want to find me." For a moment, Relvenar thought he read amusement in the man's features. Morleth turned, his worn boots making no sound on the platform.

He's almost too frail to be a proper thief, Relvenar thought. Light on his feet, but it's like he's a wisp. All bone, hair that's as fine as dark spider's silk… The lass was the same way. They both looked like brittle spiders, apt to break in a harsh wind.

"I wish the lass luck handling you," Relvenar said, and bit his lip when Morleth paused. He looked back at Relvenar, holding his gaze until Relvenar shifted uncomfortably and looked away. When he looked back, Morleth was gone.

"Just like a spider," Relvenar muttered, shivering in distaste.

Cerest paced the dark street behind his home. The night was slipping away. Where were they?

He had already entertained a visit from a Watch patrol, and endured a polite but firm summons issued by the little bitch in charge. He was to give testimony against Icelin Team, before the Watch commander of Waterdeep himself!

Cerest knew they could have nothing with which to charge him. His men had been careful. The trails he'd left pointed to Icelin as a thief and now a murderer.

But what if he was wrong? Cerest leaned against the wall of the alley, his hands tubbing reflexively over his scars. The puckered texture of the burns helped to focus him, to remind him of how far he'd come.

All he had to do was find Icelin. Once he had her, he could leave the city if necessary. Baldur's Gate was thriving and swelling with more folk by the day. He and Icelin could start over there, disappear into the crowded cityscape, and make their fortune.

Everything would be exactly as it was before. When Elgreth had been alive, Cerest had had bright hopes for his future prominence in Waterdeep. Elgreth and-his family were going to take him all the way to the circles of nobility. Even when he'd been scarred, Cerest hadn't been afraid of being shunned. He'd held onto the hope that Elgreth would save him… But then the man died, and all Cerest's dreams had died with him.

No. He wouldn't let it end tonight. He would find Icelin and make her understand the kind of man Elgreth was, and all that he owed Cerest. She would pay his debt, or he would kill her for raising his hopes all over again.

The crunch of booted feet broke the stillness. Cerest tilted his head to the right to hone in on the sound.

Ristlara strode out of the shadows, her golden hair caught up in a black scarf. Behind her stood four men of various heights, shapes, and degrees of armament.

"You're late," Cerest said.

"How would you know, standing there so oblivious to all the night?" Ristlara sniffed. "It's a wonder you're still alive, Cerest." She nodded at the men. "We had to move slowly, in smaller groups. We'll meet at a location I've designated, if you're prepared?"

"I am." Cerest pulled up the hood of his cloak. "You told them Mistshore?"

She glanced sidelong at him. "Yes. Shenan will be there to meet us. Are you certain your information is accurate?"

"It is." What coin Cerest hadn't spent on his garden, he'd used to garner information from one of the low ranks in the Watch. His pride wouldn't let him confess the amount to Ristlara. The Watch was notoriously hard to bribe. They acted swiftly and decisively to cull betrayers from their midst.

He hadn't been able to get Icelin's exact destination, but the thick-head he'd spoken to had been savvy enough to know that many eyes were turning closely to Mistshore this night. All that remained was for Ristlara and Shenan's muckrakers to find her out, wherever she was hiding.

"How many did you bring?" he asked Ristlara as they walked, slipping from shadow to shadow on the broad street.

"As many as you could afford," Ristlara said. At Cerest's scowl, she added, "With you, Greyas, Shenan, and I, we are twelve strong. I've divided everyone into groups of four. Our searches will be more effective that way, given the layout of Mistshore. All the 'muckrakers' are human, so Icelin will not see them coming this time."

"Good," Cerest said. He remembered poor Melias and felt a flare of regret. If they were to work together, Cerest would have to teach Icelin control and restraint. He'd done it before, when those that served him had first witnessed the extent of his scars. Icelin had already demonstrated she could look at him without seeing the marks. There would be plenty of time for her to learn what else pleased and displeased him.