Midnights Mask (9 page)

“Something in particular,” Azriim answered.

Riven spit and said, “You won’t find one with silk sheets and a feather bed.”

Azriim missed his sarcasm, or chose to ignore it.

Isn’t that unfortunate? Sailors.” He tsked. “Oh. Here’s the very thing, now.”

They stopped before a twin-masted, square-sailed cog. The blazing red and gold pennon dangling from the midmast declared its port of origin to be Bezantur, a city in Thay. Several other flags and pennons adorned the masts. Riven had no idea of their meanings. A stylized demonic face decorated the prow, mouth open, fangs bare. Riven could not read the writing on the hull and would be damned to admit as much to the slaadi.

“Demon Binder,” Azriim said aloud. “What a quaint name.”

Deckhands climbed the ship’s rigging, swabbed the decks, and formed a human chain to load barrels and crates from the pier into the hold. The ship would be setting to soon enough.

Riven knew enough about the Thayans to think it likely that the ship carried more than barrels in its hold. Thayans were notorious slavers. Slavery and trafficking in slaves were technically illegal in Sembia, but the right coins in the right palms made enforcement lax, particularly when the ship carrying the human cargo was merely stopping in Sembian ports for a refit.

“Thayan,” Dolgan observed, unnecessarily.

“See the captain there, on the sterncastle?” Azriim asked. “My, he is a nice dresser. And that thin fellow beside him, with the earring, beard, and long hair, leaning on the rail? That must be the first mate.”

Riven saw the two men to whom Azriim referred. The captain wore a fitted jacket with shiny buttons, black pantaloons, high boots, and a tailored, high-collared red shirt and vest. A cutlass hung from his belt. The first mate wore similar clothes, but without the jacket and cutlass. Instead, he wore a long fighting knife on his hip.

Riven understood immediately what the slaadi proposed to do.

“We could just purchase passage,” he said, not because

he cared about the slavers, but because he was not sure how they could easily dispose of bodies. Besides, if the ship boasted one of the notorious and powerful Thayan Red Wizards as a passenger, things could get ugly very fast.

Dolgan chuckled.

Azriim grinned. “Now where is the enjoyment in merely buying passage?”

Riven looked into the slaad’s mismatched eyes. “I did not realize that enjoyment was the object. Efficiency and effectiveness are the only things I’m interested in.”

“Enjoyment is the only goal worth pursuing,” Azriim said, still smiling.

Frustrated with the slaad’s unprofessionalism, Riven could not hold his tongue. “You and your boy here are sloppy. You’ll leave a trail.”

“Boy?” Dolgan growled.

Azriim’s grin widened. “Indeed we will. And that’s the very point. Now, I’m sure there’s something you can do in this city to occupy yourself for a time. At the very least, get some better attire. Really, I’m embarrassed to be seen with you. Return here tonight, say, around the tenth hour. You are to be a wealthy merchant with a secret destination. Dolgan and I will… relieve the captain and first mate of their duties and prepare the crew for your arrival.”

Riven saw no point in arguing further. He shook his head in disgust, spun on his heel, and walked off. As he headed away from the slaadi and the docks, still stewing, he saw a trio of stray dogs slink down an alley. He thought of his girls and the anger went out of him.

He would have gone to his old garret already to check on them but he had not had a moment away from the slaadi, and he had not wanted the creatures to know of his girls. He knew well that affection for anything was a weakness others could exploit.

He wandered for a time, circling back a few blocks to ensure that neither of the slaadi was following him. Neither was.

Relieved, he turned a corner and headed south and west, toward the Warehouse District. He would take a moment to check in on the girls.

After the assassin walked away, Dolgan said, “I think we should kill him. Father is wrong about him.”

“You have made your views clear,” Azriim replied, looking up and down the wharfs.

Azriim needed to procure the services of a second ship. He agreed with Riven that the priest of Mask would not easily give up his pursuit, so he was planning a misdirection.

“I just made them clear again,” Dolgan said, and spat a glob of saliva onto the street. “He called me ‘boy’.”

“He certainly did,” Azriim said, and grinned.

Azriim was fond of Riven. He regarded the human as a fosterling, not unlike the way in which the Sojourner regarded Azriim and Dolgan. It amused and pleased him to have a ward of his own. He turned and faced his broodmate.

“He is an ally, Dolgan. He hates this priest of Mask, is that not clear? The Sojourner read his mind, is that not enough?”

“But . “

“Dolgan, of the two of us that are standing here now, one of us is stupid.” He let the meaning sink in; as he expected, it took a moment. “Let us leave the decisions to the other one, eh?”

Dolgan’s brow furrowed and he showed his teeth in a snarl. “One of us standing here is the stronger, too.”

“True,” Azriim acknowledged. “Which is why I leave the axe work to you. Now leave the thinking to me. Done?”

Dolgan shrugged noncommittally and chewed his lip. Azriim decided to take that as acquiescence.

“Come,” he said, and started walking the wharf. He did not seem able to keep mud from his boots, so he resigned himself to a layer of filth.

“Where?” Dolgan asked.

“You will see.”

Azriim found what he wanted within an hour—a large, three-masted open sea caravel sporting the scarlet and green flag of Urlamspyr. He knew the Sembian caravel would be faster than the Thayan cog.

An openmouthed wooden porpoise adorned the caravel’s prow; it held in its jaws a representation of a coffer filled with gold coins. Azriim smiled. Everything in Sembia related back to coin in one way or another. He saw only a few crewmen on deck, tying off lines or climbing in the rigging. Most of the hands must have been on shore leave.

“Remain here,” Azriim said. “I will return apace.” “Another ship?” Dolgan asked. “Why?”

“Because I have learned to respect the doggedness of our priest of Mask.”

“Huh?” Dolgan asked. “Doggedness?”

Azriim patted his broodmate on his muscular shoulder. “Remember, Dolgan—I do the thinking. Remain here.”

Though it galled him a bit, Azriim changed his facial structure to eliminate the half-drow features. As he walked, he lightened his skin, rounded his eyes and ears, and softened his cheekbones, Then, donning a businesslike smile, he walked down the pier toward the gangplank. He hailed the first sailor who made eye contact, a thin youth who had seen fewer than twenty winters.

“Is the captain aboard?” he called up.

The sailor rested his hands on the rail and squinted. “Who wants to know?” The human had a hole where one of his front teeth should have been.

“I do,” Azriim answered, and flicked a fivestar up to the sailor.

The youth caught it and the coin vanished into his sash belt.

“He is,” said the youth, and he vanished from the side. From above, Azriim heard the sailor calling, “Lubber to see the Captain!”

Azriim walked to the edge of the wooden gangplank and waited. He knew it would be rude to go aboard without an invitation. The other crewmen aboard the ship eyed him as they worked, laughing and making the occasional snide comment at Azriim’s expense. Azriim ignored them. He had business to do. And besides, they dressed like buffoons.

With his left hand, he drew one of his wands-a finger-long shaft of ash capped with gold-and palmed it.

After a time, Azriim heard the call, “Captain on deck,” as it passed from sailor to sailor. Hearing this, Azriim deemed at least some of the crew, and probably the captain, to be ex-navy. He rebuked himself for not anticipating that. He could have adopted the form of a scarred veteran. Still, coin spoke with a loud enough voice to a Sembian crew.

The captain appeared at the top of the gangplank. Black hair worn in a short helmcut topped a clean-shaven, pockmarked face. Bags hung under his piggish eyes. He wore fitted wool breeches, high boots, a broad belt with a silver buckle, and a stiff-collared blue shirt. A broadsword and dagger hung from his hip. He did not advance down the gangplank to offer Azriim his hand.

“I am captain of Dolphin’s Coffer,” he said, his voice loud and resonant. “Captain Sertan.”

Azriim made a bow and wasted no time. “Well met, Captain. I need your services and that of your ship.”

The captain frowned. “You want a berth on my ship? You know where we’re headed, do you?”

Azriim reached into his shirt pocket with his right hand and withdrew three rubies, each as big around as a fivestar. Several sailors in the rigging caught their sparkle and whistled.

With onlookers focused on his extended right hand,

Azriim used his body to shield his left hand. He surreptitiously pointed the tip of the wand at the captain and mentally activated its magic, which made the target open to suggestion. Azriim contained a smile when the captain’s expression slackened–a telltale sign that the magic had worked.

Azriim said, “No. I want to reserve your entire ship into my service, and I want you to head where I request. No questions asked. This is half of what I’m willing to pay.”

Captain Sertan eyed the gems and licked his lips. He might have agreed to Azriim’s request even without the aid of the wand. There was no cargo he could carry that would profit him more than what Azriim offered.

“That sounds quite reasonable, friend,” said the captain, and he walked down the gangplank. His voice had the lazy lilt of the enspelled. “Tell me more.”

Azriim smiled in a comradely fashion. “I want you to set to tonight and sail for Traitor’s Isle. Anchor there and wait for up to a tenday. I and my two companions will meet you there, probably within only a few days.”

“Meet us? You won’t be aboard?”

“Not at first. But we will show eventually.” He pressed the rubies into the captain’s hands. “And if we do not, keep what I have paid you and be about your own affairs.”

“Very well,” the captain said. “I will recall the crew.”

Azriim smiled. “Excellent! But first show me your ship.” Azriim needed to memorize the appearance of the vessel, to make teleporting there easier.

They turned and walked up the gangplank. Azriim knew that the wand’s effect would last only a few days, but he figured that would be long enough. Cale would either show within that time or he would not. And if Azriim had need, he could always renew the effect of the wand once he came aboard near Traitor’s Isle.

He looked the captain up and down and said, “I admire your garb, by the way.”

Cale, Jak, and Magadon followed Sephris and the Oghmanytes as they walked toward the Sanctum of the Scroll.

“He must have moved into the temple,” Jak said. “Or they forced him to move there.”

“So it appears,” Cale said.

When they first had met Sephris, the Chosen of Oghma had lived with a caretaker in a small residence near Temple Avenue. Sephris had covered the walls of his home with erudite mathematical scribblings. That was where Jak and Cale later had found his corpse, gutted by the slaadi. The creatures had murdered the loremaster for helping Cale and Jak. Cale guessed that the Oghmanyte high priest had moved Sephris into the temple for his own security.

“Do you think he will be… upset when he sees us?” Jak asked. He twirled his pipe in his fingers, a nervous habit.

“We’ll soon know,” Cale answered.

“Who is he talking to?” Magadon asked, indicating Sephris.

From their position behind and slightly oblique to Sephris and the Oghmanytes, they could see the loremaster in profile. His lips moved continuously, though he appeared to be talking to no one in particular. Cale was too far away to read them, but he knew well enough what the words were.

“He is talking to himself,” Cale said. “Calculating.” “Calculating?” Magadon asked.

Jak said, “He does mathematics, the kind no one understands but him. That’s how he knows things. He’s always doing it.”

Magadon’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘knows things’? Is he a prophet?”

“Of sorts,” Cale said. “Wait, and watch.”

The priests neared the tiered steps that led up to the double doors of Oghma’s temple.

Still muttering as he walked, Sephris pulled a stylus— the kind with a sharpened tip that was used to write in wet clay-from an inner pocket of his robes and pushed up his sleeve. He pressed the stylus’s tip into his forearm and began to write on his flesh. His expression never changed, even when he started to bleed.

“Gods,” Magadon oathed, aghast. “Is he mad?” “Maybe,” Jak said. “But I’ve never before seen him do anything self-destructive. What’s wrong with him?” Cale shook his head.

At first the priests accompanying Sephris did not notice his wounds. When they did, one of them shouted and the whole group stopped. Another of the Oghmanytes, a young, brown-haired woman, gently pried the stylus from Sephris’s fingers, all while speaking what Cale took to be gentle reassurance. The loremaster calculated throughout, offering the woman only token resistance. Another of the priests, a middle-aged man with wavy blond hair, stepped forward, took Sephris’s bleeding forearm in his hands, and whispered what Cale assumed to be a healing spell. The wounds in Sephris’s arm closed.

“This may not be a good idea, after all,” Jak offered. Cale agreed. It appeared that Sephris may have truly gone mad.

“Agreed,” he said. “Let’s see where his sums take him. lf he wants to see us, he will let us know. Otherwise, we go to Elaena.”

The priests escorting Sephris closed their circle more tightly around the loremaster and hustled him forward. He moved with them, as stiff as an automaton, still calculating. The group reached the stairs and started up.

Sephris put three stairs under him and stopped, head cocked to the side. The priests tried to pull him along but he resisted.

“Here we go,” Cale said.