“I didn’t do it,” the butler said blandly.
The dozen people lining the entry hail of the Stalwart’s Club remained unmoved, dauntingly so. Their hard, silent stares revealed that they had already convicted the servant, if only in their minds. Even so, the emotions displayed on those faces were oddly muted-displeasure rather than anger, annoyance instead of outrage. It was hardly what one would expect from a crowd confronting the man accused of murdering one of their own. The butler, though, was not surprised. The Stalwarts could be a bloodless lot, especially when the matter before them was anything less esoteric than the smithing techniques of long-extinct dwarf clans or the proper table wine to serve with blackened Sword Coast devilfish.
“I don’t think they believe you, Uther,” said the burly guardsman who had a firm grip on the butler’s arm. “I don’t neither.”
“Either,” the accused man corrected. At the guardsman’s blank look, Uther explained, “‘Don’t neither’ is a double negative.”
“That sort of talk only proves you’re smart enough to do a crime like this,” the guardsman said, tightening his grip. “You already look the part.”
The latter comment was as pointless as the supposed restraining hold the soldier had on the servant. A misfired spell had left Uther with a visage that could only be described as demonic. His skin had been blasted to leathery toughness and a sooty crimson hue. Small but noticeable fangs protruded over his dark lips. The pair of twisted horns atop his head were not only impressive, but as sharp as any assassin’s blade. His physique was equally daunting. Had he wished it, Uther could have shaken off the guard with the merest shrug and shattered the manacles around his wrists with one flex.
“There’s only one thing that’!! save you now,” the guardsman noted as he led Uther through the door. “A good attorney.”
“A clever oxymoron,” Uther said, narrowing his slitted yellow eyes. The resulting expression was an odd mixture of humor and anger. “And they say the city watch attracts only dullards.”
The small knot of children always loitering before the Stalwarts Club broke into a chorus of taunts when Uther stepped outside. He regularly chased the urchins away, as they were wont to pick the pockets of any clubman drunk enough or foolish enough to give them the opportunity. For their part, the children harassed the butler whenever the chance arose, tying sticks to their heads as mock horns and feigning horror at his grim features. But the conflict had long ago become a game between the ragged children and the servant. So when they saw the manacles on Uther’s wrists, they swallowed their quips and gawked in forlorn silence.
One of the boys, a puny but bold child near the back of the knot, hefted a loose piece of paving stone and mentally targeted the soldier’s skull, which was unprotected by a helmet or even hair. He cocked his arm back to throw, but a gentle hand stayed the assault. The boy yelped in surprise. Few men were stealthy enough to sneak up on the streetwise group and not alert any of them.
Artus Cimber, however, had once roamed the same hopeless alleys and burrowed for safety in the same abandoned hovels those urchins now called home. His years as a world traveler had honed the survival skills he’d gained there-and tempered them with a bit of wisdom besides.
“That’ll only make things worse,” Artus said. He took the would-be missile from the boy’s fingers and let it drop.
The clatter of stone on stone drew an angry look from the guardsman. “What’s going-?” When he saw the man standing among the children, he cut his words short and shook his head. “Cimber. Still hanging about in the gutter, I see. Shouldn’t you find some friends your own age?”
“I keep making them, Orsini, but you keep arresting them.” As Artus started across the muddy, cobbled way, he asked facetiously, “What’s he supposed to have done, let the wrong opera cape get wrinkled in the cloak room?”
“He’s done the only crime that matters,” was all Orsini said.
The reply made Artus stutter a step. He’d known Sergeant Orsini since his own days on the street. The man had a surprisingly flexible view of the law for a Purple Dragon as the king’s most redoubtable soldiers were known. Orsini had let many a thief escape detention, so long as their need was obvious and their crime motivated by survival, not greed. But there was a single offense the soldier took seriously: murder. He pursued men and women accused of that particular crime with a passion that bordered on blind fury. It was almost as if each murder were somehow a personal attack on him.
“I stand accused of slaughtering the inestimable Count Leonska,” Uther confirmed.
“It’s about time someone got around to that,” Artus muttered. Then, more loudly, he asked, “Why do they think you beat the count’s other ‘admirers’ to the deed?”
Uther arched one wickedly pointed brow. “Because I am the butler, and the Stalwarts’ library contains one too many Thayan murder mystery. It’s happened at last-I am reduced to a clichй. They should all be very proud of themselves.”
“You left out the fact that you were the first person on the scene of the murder,” Orsini added. His voice was harsh, his whole body tense. “And half the club had previously heard you threaten Count Leonska’s life.”
The details Uther offered in reply were directed at Artus, not the guardsman. “One of the winged monkeys had escaped from the library,” he said. “I was pursuing the creature through the back halls, hoping to recapture it before Lady Elynna’s leopard caught its scent. During that endeavor I chanced upon the sounds of a disturbance in one of the rooms. When the door was eventually unlocked, in front of another witness.” The butler placed obvious emphasis on this fact, but Sergeant Orsini didn’t react in the slightest “The count’s body was discovered… in a rather unpleasant state.”
Uther did not bother to explain his threat on Leonska’s life. There was no need. Artus had been in the Stalwarts’ game room the day the count, using methods he’d perfected in his years as a mean-spirited drunkard, provoked a very public and frighteningly angry reaction from Uther. It was rare for the servant to rise to any bait dangled before him by a clubman-so rare that the incident remained vivid in the minds of everyone who’d witnessed it.
“Well,” Artus said after a moment, “we shouldn’t have too much trouble clearing you.”
“Am I to conclude from your use of the plural that you will help prove my innocence?”
Orsini tugged on Uther’s arm, hoping to move him toward the barred carriage waiting up the alley at the main thoroughfare. The guardsman might as well have tried pulling the Stalwarts Club from its magically secured foundation. “Don’t waste your time, Cimber,” he said. “The city watch will do its own investigation.”
Uther stared briefly and sternly down upon Orsini’s bald pate. “That is precisely the reason I need someone with a feathersweight of intelligence to find the true killer.” The words were snarled in such a way that the soldier was left to ponder just how deep the butler’s demonic facade ran.
“I’ll do my best,” Artus said. “I hope my lack of standing in the club doesn’t cause a problem.”
“That you are not a Stalwart is all the more reason for me to desire your aid,” the butler replied. He easily shrugged off Orsini’s now halthearted grip and placed his hands on Artus’s shoulders. “This will not be an easy defense to build. There are the side effects of my condition to consider, as well as the location of the murder.”
“Which was?”
“The Treaty Room.”
With that, Uther started down the narrow alley. Orsim had to hurry to keep pace with him, taking three steps for each of the butler’s two long strides. Artus watched them go, though only vaguely. His mind was already focused on the complexities of the task before him.
The misfired spell that had warped Uther’s form left him immune to any and all further magic, including those incantations the city watch used as a truth test against a suspect’s claims. Magic would wrest no clues from the crime scene, either. The Treaty Room had been rendered “magic dead” just days after Uther’s misfortune, and by the same world-rattling events that had caused the innocent spell to misfire and transform him. The instability in magic caused by the crisis known as the Time of Troubles had left the Treaty Room a magical void, a place where no spell could be cast and enchanted items simply failed to function.
Artus was still considering ways in which he might get around those obstacles when he entered the Stalwarts Club.
A few members milled in the entry hall, but most had gone back to whatever had drawn them to the club that day. A mournful fellow from Armot named Grig the Younger debated the finer points of Mulhorandi entrapment spells with a pair of dwarf women, twins who had both been named Isilgiowe for some reason that eluded even them. Sir Hamnet Hawklin expounded upon the hunting rituals of the Batiri goblins of Chult to Gareth Truesilver, newly commissioned as a captain for his heroics during the crusade against the Tuigan horde. In a nearby corner, an elf maid named Cyndrik tallied the money she’d gathered for the Lord Onovan Protection Fund, even though that hapless Dalesman had been quite fatally bitten in half by a gigantic lizard several months earlier.
They wrangled over topics and championed causes for which few outside the club spared even a moment’s thought. It was that collective energy that drew Artus to the Stalwarts. The intellect and effort focused upon obscure matters by those famous explorers, those noted seekers of adventure, quickened his mind and reinforced his commitment to his own consuming quest-the search for the legendary Ring of Winter, the existence of which had been written off as utter fantasy decades past. At the moment, the passion for the esoteric that Uther found so chilling about his employers was, in fact, bolstering his ally’s resolve to prove him innocent.
Artus threaded his way between the people in the entryway, but found himself facing a loud and impassable obstruction just a few steps down the corridor. A beautiful mountaineer named Guigenor, her temper stoked to the intensity of her long red hair, confronted one of the most influential of the Stalwarts’ inner circle. Her wild gesticulations kept Artus from trying to slip past; the ceaseless, seamless character of her tirade yielded no opportunity for him to politely ask her to let him by.
“Are you feeble?” she snapped. “Are you blind? Uther had the motive and the opportunity for murder. He was standing at the Treaty Room door, alone, when I came across him. You could still hear Leonska moving around in there-drunk, but very much alive.”
Without slowing for the space of a single syllable, Guigenor repeatedly battered the oak paneling with her fist. It wasn’t a very good simulation of the noises she’d heard from the Treaty Room, but she was aiming for impact, not accuracy As such, the dramatics proved a success; there were suddenly people lined up four deep on both sides of the blockage, listening to her prosecution.
“But does Uther use his strength to break down the door?” Guigenor continued. “No! He sent me for keys, for Torm’s sake! What’s Uther doing without his keys? It’s obvious-he had them all along. He sent me off, used his set to unlock the door, slipped into the room, and slaughtered Leonska. Then he sauntered back out, relocked the door, and waited for me to return with the spares. Any dolt-except you, perhaps-would see that there’s no other explanation!”
There was a moment of stunned silence at the tirade’s end. The placid-seeming older man at whom this verbal barrage had been aimed simply shook his head. “You are overwrought at the death of your mentor, my dear,” said Marrok de Landoine. “Otherwise you would not address me in such an impudent manner.”
Guigenor sputtered for a moment, struggling to put together a reply. Her anger at the casual dismissal, at the murder of her friend, boiled over into tears. She roughly shoved Artus out of her way and bulled through the crowded hallway much as she had many a snowbound mountain pass.
The look on Marrok’s face appeared full of fatherly concern for the young woman, but Artus had seen that smirking, fatuous expression before. Marrok reserved that empty smile for those he found distasteful, below his notice as a person of wealth and influence. Marrok was a man of remarkable resources, position, and accomplishment, even in a group as thick with decorated military heroes and titled aristocrats as the Society of Stalwart Adventurers. And, to him, Guigenor was quite unalterably an upstart.
The smile didn’t alter when Marrok first noticed Artus standing there. Then it abruptly faded, transformed into a look of utter weariness. “Mystra save me from the rabble,” the nobleman muttered. Artus opened his mouth to reply, but Marrok turned his back on the young man and walked away.
Grumbling through clenched teeth, Artus made his way back to the Treaty Room. He followed a route he would have found difficult to map, despite his years of practice in the field, for the Stalwarts Club was labyrinthine in design and cut loose from architectural logic by the amount of magic utilized in its construction. In some places angles did not operate as angles should. In others, straight lines were not necessarily the shortest distance between two points.
All that strangeness made the Treaty Room a haven to those few Stalwarts unimpressed by mages and spell-craft. Hidden in one of the most isolated sections of the club, the room could be generously described as four walls and a single stout door. It lacked secret passages, magical gateways, even windows. Its floor and ceiling were identical to their counterparts in most mundane homes-more carefully constructed and, at most other times, quite a lot cleaner-but essentially commonplace. The two things that most obviously set the Treaty Room apart from those average places now were the amount of blood splashed on the walls and the poorly dressed and rather overweight corpse laying atop the conference table at the room’s exact center.
“Well, let’s take the gorgon by the horns,” said Sir Hydel Pontifax-mage, surgeon, sometime War Wizard, and full-time Stalwart. He gestured to the Purple Dragon stationed by the door, who was doing quite a good job of refusing Artus admittance. “Be a good soldier and let my scribe in. I rather need his help if I’m to complete the medical examination your sergeant requested.”
Artus tore a few pages from the journal he always carried tucked into his wide leather belt; the wyvern-bound book was magical, so it wouldn’t even open in the magic-dead room. Then he ducked under the guard’s outstretched arm and hurried to the table. “Thanks, Pontifax. I was hoping you’d be here.”
The paunchy mage leaned over the body. “And I was rather expecting you to show up. Just the sort of messy business you can’t keep your fingers clean of. They’re blaming Uther, you know.”
“I told him I’d help clear his name.”
Pontifax glanced up. “Good for you! That puts a noble cause behind your meddling.”
Artus took the statement for what it was-gentle ribbing by his most trusted friend. He didn’t reply, didn’t feel the usual need to fire back a cutting response. In comfortable silence, the two set about their work. Pontifax examined the corpse and occasionally murmured observations to be recorded. Artus made a very rough sketch of the body and took down notes.
“What do you make of the dagger?” Pontifax asked after they’d completed their initial examination.
Count Leonska might have died from any of the dozens of deep slashes on his body, face, and hands, but the most obvious and violent wound was caused by the knife protruding from his chest. The blade was hidden in flesh, but the golden handle burned with reflected light from the room’s many candles.
“The markings are Zhentish,” Artus said. “A ritual dagger of some kind?”
Pontifax muttered a vague reply. His white, cloudlike brows had drifted together over his blue eyes. The effect was something like a gathering storm. “The body should be more of a mess,” he said.
Blood lightly spattered the count’s hands and clothes, but most of his wounds were clean. The sole exception was his crimson-smeared mouth. Artus used the dry end of his writing stylus to pull back a swollen lip. Leonska’s teeth were missing. They’d been shattered, many broken right down to the gums.
“What’s this?” Artus murmured. As he leaned close, he felt a shiver of apprehension snake up his spine. It was as if the count’s dead eyes were watching him. Hands trembling just a little, he picked a small, dark shred of material from between two broken teeth. “It’s leather, I think. Part of a gag?”
“That would explain why Leonska didn’t cry out when he was being attacked,” Pontifax replied. The mage nervously paced around the room, his stubby fingers steepled. “Uther heard a ruckus, but no shouts for help. That’s why he didn’t break the door in.”
“Guigenor thinks the count was stumbling around in here, drunk, before she ran off to get the keys. She was screeching at Marrok about her suspicions when I came in.,
“That young woman is one to talk about suspicions,” said Pontifax. “When the watch asked her why she happened to be roaming around back here, she said Leonska had left her a note requesting her presence in the Treaty Room. But she can’t find the note now.
“As for her claim that the count was alive when she heard the noises-nonsense. This murder took a long time to commit. They heard the end of the struggle, not its beginning.”
“Do you think Guigenor had a hand in this?” Artus asked, gesturing to a wall of framed treaties and trade agreements, all of which had been signed in the room. Blood had splashed across each and every one. “What kind of weapon would she have used?”
“I’ve heard of assassinations… the work of men from far eastern Kozakura who call themselves ‘ninjas.’ They sometimes leave behind some strange gore slinging like this,” Pontifax said. “It almost looks like Leonska was stabbed and slashed, then spun quickly so the blood would cake the walls.”
Neither man commented that it would take someone incredibly strong to heft the count’s bulk. The thought had occurred to both-as did the notion that Uther was probably the only person in the club who could do so without the aid of sorcery
Pontifax returned to the table and stared at the open door. “How did the blackguard get out of the room after doing this to Leonska, I wonder. Uther said the noises continued in here until just before Guigenor returned with the keys. The door remained tightly closed and locked until he opened it.”
“You don’t suppose the murderer is still hiding in the room.”
“Already been searched three times. We’ve checked for sliding panels and any of that rot. Nothing. And no magic could possibly work in here.”
Artus prodded a pile of threadbare clothes he’d found in one corner. The moth-eaten cloak, thick gloves, and long, dirt-smeared scarf had been folded and stacked neatly. Atop the pile rested a wide-brimmed hat dyed the black of ravens’ feathers. “All these belonged to Leonska?”
Pontifax nodded. “He was seen bundled up in those rags when he entered the club this morning. It was his usual attire.”
“You wouldn’t think someone with such shabby clothes would bother folding them so neatly.” Artus held up the corner of the rather grotesquely patterned scarf and said, “Poor fashion sense for a count.”
“He had poorer social skills,” Pontifax said. “As he did most mornings, Leonska made his way back here with a full wineskin and the single-minded purpose of drinking himself to the brink of unconsciousness.” He idly flicked one hand toward the body. “Only today he didn’t get a chance to stagger out and pick fights, like he normally did. Not a good soldier in the least-”
“For once you and I are in full agreement, Sir Hydel. No army would have ever taken Leonska on campaign, not even to haul baggage.”
Artus and Pontifax turned to the door to find Marrok de Landoine standing there, surveying them with practiced disinterest. “I thought I’d find you here, Cimber. If you are done assisting Sir Hydel with his examination, I’d like a word with you.”
The nobleman didn’t wait for a reply. He hooked Artus’s arm with his own and led him out of the Treaty Room, down the narrow hall. Stalwarts deferentially flattened against the paneling or ducked into doorways to let them by.
“I have my pass,” Artus said. He reached up to his breast pocket for the thin leather card that allowed him access to certain areas of the club-the library, game room, and main bar-even though he was not a full member. The gesture was automatic; the pass was the only topic about which the nobleman had ever addressed Artus directly.
“I’m certain you do,” Marrok said. “You consider Uther a friend, do you not?”
“Of course.”
“He is in a considerable spot of trouble.”
“I know. I ran into him outside the club,” Artus noted. “He asked me-”
“Despite what some of the other members think,” said Marrok, unaware or unconcerned that he was interrupting Artus, said “I believe him innocent.”
“I agree. Uther asked-”
“Earlier you caught me in a very bad temper. We’ve had our differences in the past, too…”
Artus suppressed a smirk. Marrok had single-handedly blocked his entrance into the society three times in as many years. In the nobleman’s eyes, no accomplishment as a scholar, explorer, or historian could compensate for Artus’s low birth.
“Yet I have always recognized you as… clever.” The pause made it obvious that Marrok had to cast his net far for the right word. The phrase that followed made it clear just how far. “In your own way.”
The slight was unintentional, though even more annoying for its thoughtlessness. Artus slipped from the nobleman’s falsely familiar grasp under the pretext of tightening a boot lace. After that they walked in silence for a time, moving toward the fabulous library at the club’s heart.
Finally, Marrok spoke again. It seemed to Artus that the nobleman’s superior glow dimmed just a little as he did. “Politics deserve more of your attention,” he began obliquely, then checked himself. “No, let me be direct. Some of the more senior members-Hamnet Hawklin foremost among them-have declared Uther guilty. I respect them, yet I also feel they are incorrect in their conclusion. It would be unwise of me to challenge them in any open fashion, but I must also-”
“So long as you’re being direct,” Artus prompted, “how about skipping to the verse of this song that involves me.”
“I wish you to find the killer.”
Artus began, for the third time, to tell Marrok he’d already promised Uther to do just that, but decided to see what the nobleman had to say. “I suppose I could try,” he offered.
Masking his feelings had never been one of Artus’s strong suits. The attempt now only caused Marrok to mistake the explorer’s hastily erected facade of guilelessness for actual reluctance.
“You’d do well to play along here, Cimber,” the nobleman said. “At least hear me out. You have no idea how disinclined I am to ask for your help.”
“Oh, I think I know. But why me?”
“Use a criminal to catch a criminal,” Marrok said, and this time the insult was carefully chosen. “Don’t think for an instant the club doesn’t know that your father was a highwayman. You lost your position as a court scribe when you got caught breaking him out of jail. We could also discuss that murder charge outstanding against you in Tantras. There’s no need for me to go on, is there?”
Anger edged Marrok’s words, made them sharp as blades, but he kept his voice tactfully low. They’d reached the library’s antechamber, where a small group of men and women were discussing a recent polar expedition the society had sponsored. Generally, Artus could have strolled through the club with a large spear protruding from his side and not attracted any attention at all. The moment Marrok de Landoine entered a room, he somehow became its focus.
“Here’s the fellow to ask now,” one of the loiterers announced. “Say, Marrok old man, when will that yeti Philyra bagged on the expedition be ready for display?”
Preparing exotic beasts for display seemed to be the one practical skill Marrok de Landoine possessed. He was loathe to discuss the craft. A fact his peers always capitalized upon in the club’s near constant public banter. Marrok had never intended to reveal his odd talent to his fellows. But the supposed artists to whom the Stalwarts had entrusted their unusual, often irreplaceable trophies did such a poor job that the nobleman was forced to step forward and save the membership and the library, where such valuable objects were displayed, from further insult.
“Eh?” Marrok said distractedly. “Oh, the yeti… any day now.”
The nobleman turned back to Artus, his own expression not all that far removed from the fearsome hunting snarl of the fabled snow beasts. “Uther is more valuable to the society than you are a detriment,” Marrok growled. “Find the murderer and I’ll… support you for full membership.”
As he turned to go, Marrok worked his mouth soundlessly, as if trying to exorcise the foul taste of the offer he’d just made. The nobleman passed Pontifax on his way out of the antechamber; the mage had obviously followed them from the Treaty Room at a discreet distance. The two exchanged civil, if frigid greetings.
“Marrok canceled the pass I gave you, didn’t he?” Pontifax said without preamble. “I’m sorry, my boy. He’s been in a foul mood ever since his favorite hound died. Kezef, I think he called it, though why anyone would name a pet after a monster like that-”
Artus shook his head, still a bit stunned by Marrok’s offer. “He’s going to support me for membership. If I clear Uther’s name, I’ll be a Stalwart.”
“It’s about time,” Pontifax said. “Assuming we find the killer, of course.”
Artus patted the mage on the back. ‘We will. Look, you follow up on the leads here-the note Guigenor supposedly lost, the dagger, that sort of thing. I’m going to get some communications help.”
“Communications help?” Pontifax repeated, confusion clear on his face. “Who do you need to communicate with that you can’t just chat up all on your own?”
A triumphant gleam flashed in Artus’s brown eyes. “Count Leonska.”
The soul you seek is not recorded in my rolls, said the weird, disembodied head floating above the low altar. The words buzzed in Artus’s mind, swarmed around his thoughts like flies. The sensation was no more peculiar than the specter’s features-or lack thereof. Its smooth gray face was broken only by two bulging yellow eyes.
“How can that be, 0 Scribe of the Dead?” intoned the priest kneeling opposite Artus.
I do not know the reason for it, only the truth of what I tell you.
“But all dead men are your charges. Can you not tell us where the soul of Count Leonska resides?”
There was a pause. Then the two fat tallow candles on the altar began to smoke. The black, oily coils snaked upward, but rose no higher than the specter’s chin. If you insist on badgering me, minion of the Scribbler God, said the Scribe of the Dead menacingly, then I will give my reply in the flesh. The smoke coalesced into a flowing cloak. The phantasmal head began to take on substance.
The priest toppled a candle with a casual stroke of one brown hand. The conjured power lingered for a moment above the altar, black cloak billowing, then slowly faded. Its bulbous yellow eyes disappeared last. Their awful gaze seemed to pierce the small prayer room long after they, too, had vanished.
“And what have we learned from this, Master Cimber?” The priest unrolled his long white sleeves, which had been bunched above his elbows. “Not to bother the seneschal of Hell, I hope.”
Artus uncrossed his legs and lay back on the prayer mat. His hopes of solving the murder quickly had not survived a few hours past leaving the Stalwarts Club. Now, days later, he had begun to wonder if he was in over his head. The ritual to summon Jergal had taken two full days in itself. Before the tenday was out, he might have to start plotting a jailbreak.
‘Well, we know that Leonska isn’t alive,” Artus sighed. “Pontifax checked to be certain. So why hasn’t his soul gone to the Realm of the Dead?”
“Perhaps a mage is concealing it,” the priest noted. “Or Jergal was lying to us. I have not the power or authority to compel one such as him to tell the truth.”
“There’s a first,” Artus said with a chuckle. “Zintermi of Oghma admits to a weakness.”
“All creatures possess weaknesses,” the priest replied as he dutifully collected the components for the conjuring rite. As with everything, Zintermi did this simple task methodically and gracefully. “You, for instance, lack the ability to admit defeat.”
“This is a very important matter,” Artus snapped.
“Any matter you take up becomes ‘very important,’” Zintermi said in the same pedantic tone Artus had found so infuriating as a student in the temple school. “Have you considered the possibility that Uther is guilty?”
“I told you, Guigenor is the murderer. No one’s seen her in days. She’s obviously gone into hiding. And Pontifax and I have gathered enough evidence to convince me she did it.”
“But not enough to convince the authorities,” Zintermi reminded him. “You say that Guigenor was recently seen conversing with members of the consulate of Kozakura, but that is not proof she studied with, or hired, any of their assassins. You have uncovered rumors of a failed romance between the young lady and the count, but these rumors cannot be confirmed and do not necessarily offer motive.”
Artus sat up. “Those suspicions should be enough to redirect the investigation, but Hamnet Hawklin and his allies are pressuring the watch to formally charge Uther and convene a trial. Without some sort of hard evidence against Guigenor-like finding the leather gag or the count’s missing wineskin in her possession, or having Leonska’s spirit identify her as the murderer-they’re going to do just that.”
“Perhaps you are searching for evidence that doesn’t exist.”
“Look,” Artus said irritably, “Guigenor is hiding something. She claims to be from the Dales. She’s not. Pontifax discovered she’s a native of Zhentil Keep, which would explain why the writing on the dagger was Zhentish.” He tapped his chest; beneath his tunic the skin was crisscrossed there with scars-the handiwork of Zhentish torturers. “And if she’s connected to the Keep, she’s trouble.”
Zintermi finally snuffed the remaining ritual candle. The oil lamps on either side of the door kept the room from sinking into total darkness, but shadows ventured out from the corners and slipped across the priest’s face. “There are things in your past you do not claim with pride,” he said. “Can your suspect not be afforded the same luxury? At the very least, Master Cimber, you should be more meticulous, more evenhanded. Might I suggest you delve into Uther’s history with the same eye toward inconsistency?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You have often repeated Uther’s quips about lawyers.
He is quite critical of anyone who pursues that profession, no? You might be surprised to learn that he was a barrister himself. In fact Uther can claim distant membership in the FitzKevrald clan, which has practiced at the bar in Waterdeep for centuries.”
The content of that revelation could not have been described as ominous, but Artus found himself unsettled by it anyway. Zintermi had a way of undermining Artus’s most carefully constructed theories, though he didn’t seem to gain any undue sense of triumph in doing so. That was his strength as a teacher. But the reason the explorer sought his advice so often was his practice of suggesting a better, more solid foundation to replace any he shattered.
The wise words Zintermi offered that evening were predictably simple: “Gather facts before you attempt to prove a theory. Observe, then conclude.”
Artus had the opportunity to put that advice into practice shortly after departing the temple. Doing so probably saved his life.
For each of the three nights since the murder, Artus had made his way to Marrok de Landoine’s estate. The nobleman had instructed the young explorer-there was no hint of a request about it-to provide a regular update on his search for the killer. So after leaving Zintermi, Artus once again trekked to Suzail’s most distant outskirts. There, the sprawling grounds of Marrok’s ancestral home presented themselves as a last bastion of carefully gardened topiary and well-scrubbed servants before a traveler would find himself surrounded by rough rolling hills and the even rougher farmers, ranchers, and hunters who tore a living from them.
As expected, Artus found the main gate unlocked. He trudged wearily up the long gravel carriageway, the crunch of his bootfalls sending alarmed rabbits scurrying for cover. Wan moonlight cast a pall over everything. Artus assumed the ghostly look of the fruit trees, the harsh hedgerows, and the nearly dark mansion to be the product of his overtaxed and under-rested imagination. The truth of it was, even the city’s most drearily practical clerk would have found the grounds strange and unsettling that night.
A dark shape stumbled from behind a tree, then disappeared into the entrance of a hedge maze. Artus saw the figure for only a moment, but it was clearly female. A poacher, he concluded. They were common enough on estates like Marrok’s, where the meticulously mown lawns rendered small game easier targets. This one was clearly drunk, though, far more likely to snare herself than any dinner. Artus felt a pang of sympathy for the poor woman, who very likely had children to feed in some hillside hovel.
That sympathetic inclination was quickly tempered by Zintermi’s advice, which had been lingering at the periphery of Artus’s thoughts all evening. At first Artus cursed the priest for making him suspicious of a drunken unfortunate. Nevertheless, he found himself observing his surroundings with a more critical eye. Had he not done so, he might have missed a telltale rustling in the hedges right before the attack.
Artus had a foot on the lowest of the steps leading up to the house’s pillared entry when she burst through the bushes like an enraged animal. She seemed oblivious to the scratches gouged into her bare arms by the branches. With both hands she clutched a large ritual knife. She drew the blade up over her head as she charged.
As he spun around to face her, Artus noticed all of these things dimly, just as he realized in a detached way that the woman was no professional assassin. The black hood concealing her face might be a favored guise of the ninja, but she was most certainly not one of their highly trained murderers. Her attack was clumsy, her movements graceless and stiff.
Artus easily ducked the blade swipe, then planted a kick in her midsection. He expected to hear her gasp, possibly even see her topple as the air exploded from her lungs. Instead she barely staggered a step before raising her blade again.
Artus drew his own dagger from the sheath in his boot. A gem in the hilt cast pale magical light in a circle just large enough to encompass both combatants. He sidestepped the woman’s second clumsy charge. As she moved past, he brought the rounded end of his knife’s handle down atop her skull. The blow didn’t faze her at all.
It did, however, loosen a coil of hair hidden beneath the hood. The escaped tresses snaked down to her shoulders. For a moment Artus mistook the flame-bright red hair for blood, so striking was its hue. Then a look of recognition flashed across his face.
“Guigenor!” Artus exclaimed.
The shouted name accomplished what no blow could: the woman stopped her attack. With one hand Guigenor drew off the mask that hid her pale, expressionless features. The fingers of the other hand opened slowly and the knife dropped to the gravel. With its golden handle, engraved with Zhentish markings, the weapon was a twin to the one he’d seen embedded in Count Leonska’s chest.
Finally the mansion’s main entry flew open. A small mob of servants flooded out with cries of “What’s going on there?” and “Be warned, we’re armed!” Artus turned his head for just a moment as they clattered down the steps. It was time enough for Guigenor to flee back into the bushes.
Artus might have caught her, but one of Marrolз’s men tackled him from behind. Before he could even cry out, two others had descended upon him, pinning his arms to the ground, kneeling heavily upon his back. “It’s her you want,” Artus wheezed into the gravel. “She’s a murderer.”
“I think we’ve enough proof of that now,” sighed Marrok de Landoine from the top step. “Well, let him up, you buffoons.”
Artus accepted a helping hand from a liveried servant.
“Someone should alert the watch,” he said to Marrok.
“Already done,” the nobleman replied. “I will, of course, sack the dolts who assaulted you.”
With an annoyed wave of his hand, Artus dismissed the offer. “Never mind that. We should be worrying about finding Guigenor before she hurts anyone else. She’s obviously unbalanced.”
“No fear,” Marrok sniffed. “My men will track her down. In the meantime, why don’t you come in. The watch will want to take your statement when they arrive.”
On his previous visits, Artus had been received in the foyer. And while that grand entryway had been constructed to impress-it was as large as the two rooms Artus rented over Razor John’s fletcher shop-giving his reports there left him feeling distinctly like a delivery man come to the wrong side of the house. Now Marrok led him down a long, carpeted hall, past ancestral portraits and brightly polished suits of armor, to a large book-lined study. It was all exactly as Artus would have guessed, a page out of the style handbook for old Cormyrean money.
“We should thank Tymora you escaped harm,” Marrok noted from behind the generously stocked bar. He sounded a bit disappointed in saying so. “Care for a brandy?”
Artus declined politely. He started to sit on a beautifully upholstered couch, then remembered his roll on the ground and stood up. He might brush himself off, but that would only draw attention to the fact that he had walked through the nobleman’s house trailing gravel and dirt. He suddenly wished himself back in the foyer. At least he knew how to act like a delivery man.
A footman arrived and spared Artus the embarrassment of trading small talk with Marrok. “Pardon me, m’lord,” he said after rapping lightly on the open door. “They’ve found the woman.”
“Do you have her securely bound?” Marrok asked, dis playing no more real interest in the subject than he might have given his neighbor’s dinner menu. “Where was she hiding?”
“No need to bind her, m’lord,” the footman replied. “We found her…“ he paused dramatically”… floating in the reflecting pool. Dead. The knife wound from Master Cimber must have killed her.”
“I never used the blade on her,” Artus said.
“Then it must have been a wound inflicted by one of the men in bringing her to ground,” Marrok offered hastily. “Excuse me for just a moment, Cimber. I’d best be certain they do not move the body until the watch arrives.”
Marrok put down his brandy snifter and crossed to the door, where he murmured a long string of commands to the cringing footman. Artus wandered across the room to the bookcases. As he might have suspected, he found little of substance, and the few scrolls or folios that were worth their ink seemed untouched, likely unread.
A low whine drew his attention to a door on his left. He paused to listen. When the sound came again, he recognized it for a dog’s plaintive cry. Artus tried the knob and found it unlocked. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges.
All manner of strange creatures and even stranger apparatus filled the room beyond. Coiling tubes carried liquids of various colors to and from animal carcasses laid out on metal tables. Jars filled with hearts and brains and other organs crammed shelf after shelf. Mounted heads of assorted sizes, shapes, and species covered one entire wall, while another displayed neatly sorted saws, blades, and other tools gleaming silver in the candlelight. And in the center of it all stood a yeti, its coat the virgin white of freshly fallen polar snow, its thickly muscled arms raised over its head in perpetual menace. Marrok had preserved the trophy so perfectly that it seemed trapped between life and death.
Something leathery pressed into his palm, and Artus jumped back a step or two. A pathetic-looking hound had nuzzled his hand with its nose. With yellow, glassy eyes, the dog stared up at the explorer. It whined once more. The cry sounded hollow, as if it came from a very long way off.
“Kezef, back!”
Marrok was suddenly beside Artus. He lifted the hound, which didn’t struggle in the least, and returned it to the other side of the threshold. As he closed the door on the whimpering animal, the nobleman said, “He’s getting on in years. Not much use as a watchdog, as you’ve witnessed.” The door clicked shut. “Sentimental of me, but I couldn’t bear to part with him.”
Artus knew that it was the most truthful thing Marrok de Landoine had ever said to him.
The nobleman proceeded to speculate in his usual disinterested fashion on how quickly Uther might be freed from prison now that they had proven Guigenor the murderer beyond any reasonable doubt. To Marrok’s way of thinking, Artus had stumbled too close to the truth, making it necessary for the woman to try to silence him. “Of course I will honor my promise,” Marrok concluded, refilling his snifter for the third time. “We can hold the ceremony granting you full membership in the club tomorrow.”
When Artus didn’t reply, Marrok’s expression turned serious.
“Is something troubling you, Cimber?”
“No, nothing,” Artus replied much too quickly. Then he forced a smile. “It’s always so obvious when something’s bothering me, why deny it? I know it’s customary for a new member to offer a gift to the society. I was worrying about what I might put together by tomorrow.”
“Uther’s freedom will be enough of a gift,” Marrok replied. “And the soul of Count Leonska can rest easier, now that you’ve identified his killer.”
“Of course,” Artus said. “How can I come up with a better gift than justice?” He finally sat down on the ridiculously expensive couch. “You know, I think I’m ready for that drink now.”
The Ceremony Hall presented a welcome contrast to the rest of the Stalwarts Club. It was stark and dignified. Actual candles lit its modest confines. Craftsmen, not djinn or golems, had woven the tapestries decorating the walls. The robes worn by the clubmen there had not been liberated from some sultan’s wardrobe or pilfered from the depths of Ilades. They were simple garments honestly made, unadorned by jewels or excess of history. In the Ceremony Hall, that was enough.
The initiation ceremony, too, proved remarkably restrained. It was over almost before Artus realized it had begun. He had expected more ritual, more pomp. He would have felt cheated, had he not been so preoccupied with the presentation of his gift.
Until the ceremony was through, Uther kept the curious from peeking beneath the sheet draped over the long box containing Artus’s offering. Once Artus was alone on the simple wooden dais at the head of the hall, ready to make his presentation, Hydel Pontifax and three other Stalwarts moved the still-concealed crate to the room’s center. Uther gave a subtle tilt of his magnificent horns and took up his station by the door. The clubmen were too caught up in speculation about the gift’s content to notice Sergeant Orsini of the city watch loitering impatiently on the other side of that same threshold.
“In return for the honor you’ve bestowed upon me,” Artus began, in the words he’d been instructed to use, “I offer this noble society a gift of lasting value, a token by which you may forever gauge my worth as a member and my regard for you all.”
No sooner had the final word been spoken than something rose up slowly from the box. The white sheet clung to it for a moment, cloaking a figure that was clearly human.
“I offer you justice,” Artus said. “I offer you the murderer of Count Leonska.”
The sheet slipped away to reveal Guigenor standing within the pine crate. Startled gasps and cries of outrage echoed through the hail. “Necromancy!” bellowed Sir Hбmnet Hawklin. “This is how you demonstrate your worth to us, you-you-weasel.” There was no more damning word in Hawklin’s vocabulary
“Guigenor did not kill the count!” Artus shouted over the throng. “She was a victim to the same assassin, for the same reason!”
The dead woman stepped from the box. Her unblinking eyes scanned the crowd, searching for her murderer. When she found him, she stiffly raised one arm and pointed him out.
Marrok de Landoine did not attempt to escape. Neither did he utter a single word of protest. He simply stripped off his robe, revealing a finely tailored doublet, expensive custom-made breeches, and dragon-leather boots. As Sergeant Orsini approached, he presented his dagger, handle first, to the nearest Stalwart. “Please see that this is returned to the armory on my estate,” he droned.
“Evidence,” was all Orsini said as he snatched up the dagger and slipped it into his belt. With vindictive glee, the Purple Dragon ordered an immediate and humiliating search of Marrok’s person for hidden weapons or, more dangerous still, any bits of arcane matter he might use for a spell.
A crowd of clubmen had surrounded Artus, demanding the true story behind the murders. He explained it all as best he could.
“Count Leonska sealed his doom when he used his influence, and a significant part of the club’s liquor reserve, to gain his protйgй entrance into the Stalwarts,” Artus began. “Marrok had been away on business at the time, unable to block Guigenor’s ascendance to the rank of full member. Upon his return, he set about to ensure the count would foist no more upstarts upon the membership.”
How Marrok had murdered Leonska remained a mystery to Artus, though no one had to stretch his imagination too far to picture the count drunkenly stumbling onto a blade or downing a snifter of poison. What happened next the explorer could explain with more certainty.
“Marrok raised the count from the dead and put him to the task of incriminating Guigenor,” Artus continued. “The count was sent back to the club, his wineskin filled with his own blood. He made his way to the Treaty Room, already dead, and set about laying clues-stabbing himself with the Zhentish dagger, splashing gore on the walls in the fashion of a Kozakuran assassination… Marrok had already made certain those things tied the crime to Guigenor. He’d even arranged for her to meet her ‘victim’ at the crime scene.”
“There really was a note,” Pontifax said with a nod.
“And Guigenor really did manage to lose it,” Artus offered. “It’ll turn up somewhere in the club one of these days.”
“So what happened to the wineskin?” someone asked from the crowd.
Artus shuddered. “Marrok must have ordered Leonska to get rid of that bit of evidence-so he ate it. His teeth were all shattered from trying to chew up the stopper before swallowing it.”
Pontifax cleared his throat sententiously. “It was a fiendishly clever plan,” he announced. “You see, the undead are not magical, per se, so the Treaty Room had no effect upon the poor creature’s actions. There was also the added benefit of having Leonska’s soul trapped in his corpse, which meant the watch could not raise it for questioning.”
Artus stepped down from the dais. “Marrok really only needed me to uncover all the evidence he’d laid out. He killed Guigenor, too, and had her attack me to sew up the case-and maybe just murder me in the process.” He plucked at his ceremonial robe. “Oghma knows he didn’t really want to let me join his club. I probably would have turned up dead eventually if I hadn’t figured this out.”
Pontifax continued to expound upon the minutiae of their investigation, anchoring the crowd in place as Artus drifted away. He passed the small group of priests who had already begun the task of freeing Guigenor’s soul from her animate corpse. Artus only wished the priests had been able to do the same for Count Leonska, whose body had been burned the previous night. The man had surely been conscious of his fate to the end, staring at the flames of his pyre with the same lifeless expression with which he’d regarded Artus that day in the Treaty Room.
“There’s a dog on Marrok’s estate you’ll want to have exorcised, too,” Artus called to Sergeant Orsini. The soldier was finally leading Marrok away. “The thing’s called Kezef. You’ll find it in the workshop off the study.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Marrok snapped. He swept the Dragons with an imperious stare. “That hound will be waiting for me when I return home in a day or two, or I’ll see the lot of you scrubbing gull droppings from the king’s yacht.”
The stunned expression on Artus’s face drew a sneer from Marrok de Landoine. “I have influence rabble like you can never counter. Even if the charges are true- note, please, that I said ‘if-I’ll certainly never hang for them. Just look around if you doubt me.”
Artus did just that as Sergeant Orsini hustled Marrok from the room.
For each person who looked upon the newest Stalwart with admiration and approval, there was another who glowered at him. More telling still, the most senior and influential members were the ones who offered Artus their undisguised animosity. A disdain for upstarts had not been a trait of Marrok’s alone.
“You appear glum when you should be celebrating, Master Cimber,” Uther said.
Artus shrugged. “I’m not all that certain I want to belong to this club anymore.”
“Nonsense.” The butler regarded the frowning, sulking Stalwarts with his slitted yellow eyes, then turned back to Artus. “They may not welcome you with open arms, but they will most assuredly offer you respect. You’ve brought down one of their own-whether he swings for his crimes or no.”
“They hate me for it.”
“Perhaps,” Uther said. “But they fear you for it, too. Fear is a useful thing when dealing with powerful men and women. To be honest, it’s the reason I am just a bit pleased they think me capable of murder.”
“And you’re not?” Artus asked. He hesitated before he spoke again, but when he did, he said something to Uther few would have dared. “I thought lawyers-especially FitzKevraid clan barristers-were capable of anything.”
The look that comment engendered on Uther’s horrible features was truly unsettling. A smile spread across his black lips. Then quietly, deeply, the butler began to laugh.