Bartenders, Books, and Beltran's Blade

Synopsis

She copied Aldo the moment he touched her (form, clothes, voice, even the strength of his grip), which for a man whose whole craft is being someone else was less a curiosity than a violation. She read Koa’s surface thoughts without meaning to, found fear and Gwen’s pregnancy and a face pushing through a neck, and bolted out into the open. Koa ran her down before the trees and then simply told her the truth: seven hundred years ago a curse brought the Mól Empire down and turned the people in its keeps into ooze that keeps a soul intact, and today they had found a way to wake one. Her body is a readout of her (rippling when she is frightened, still when she is not), and it went still. She mourned everyone she had known and asked after the one who might know more. Her name is Rheem. Koa told Aldo not to wear her face back at her.

At the Crack the month’s business was settled (coin put to work, food secured for the season, aid asked of Loshev), and because Aldo has been sowing discontent in Haudh-Gwenn for weeks, Leon raised the prospect of a second, rougher army before any assault.

They came into the city at twilight in disguise and went first to the Color Stay, Haudh-Gwenn’s one neutral house, whose building-wide veil makes every guest appear finely dressed and overrides whatever they walked in wearing. The rooms were beyond them; Mikhail collected a package and a sealed letter held in his name instead, and set about the bartender for what she knew of the elite’s monthly gatherings. She is a hobgoblin called Katalia, she reads history for pleasure, and she asked him outright whether he was trying to ask her out. He was.

The day was split. Aldo, working from memory in an alley, forged a second Color Stay pass good for two free nights, and carved a wax seal to match the township’s own. He and Koa then spent five hours tracing the city’s premier smith, not a lone master like Hinta but a top-tier shop of several good hands, where the wealthy bring fine weapons, and so where Beltran’s hooked sword would be going. Mikhail went to the Chantry, where Baku took him up to the Slumbering Queen’s empty chambers and, for the first time, lifted her mask: an old hobgoblin. Guards had come looking for him a day or two before, because one of Beltran’s own had been missing for days. She offered him the rooms, partly so that someone would notice if the Queen came back.

The package was from Danil: a masterwork lute, years in the making, sent with an apology for a missed birthday and meant to retire the battered one that had come down from his parents. A hidden compartment held a scroll and an amethyst pendant carrying the spell written on it. The letter was cooler: not quite forgiven, but carrying word that at the Talesong conservatory Freya, the Tillermen’s Face, has been asking his professors about him, with Lenore staying under her roof.

Katalia paid for dinner. Without the inn’s veil she is striking (the veil, she says, plains her down), and she is simply immune to it, which is how she alone notices who is really at those gatherings. Over the meal she gave him the shape of the city. Traxian’s vote counts twice and Alyphe votes with him, which is nearly half the council; the remainder is bought. Beltran bankrolled the Ten Lashes, and part of his hatred is a rumor that the Valiant Few stole the credit for putting it down, the same business that made him captain of the guard. She had also heard that the gnoll attack was cover, buildings set alight so that Beltran could meet Orsugo unobserved. That one had gone out of Aldo’s own mouth into the market a few weeks before and come back around the city to her, and whether there is anything under it was never discovered. She also owns two volumes of the Mól Encyclopædia, believing her family came down from a Mól clan, and lent them both.

The letters were waiting at the Chantry. Totty of Ostrad is in; Hanza of Veren is in, junior, with Picard’s blessing; Arthur Freym arrives next month. Tariq al-Mahir cannot spare Loshev’s men; Harad was told rather than asked. In the morning they laid out the rest: a rumor that Whent has gone mad and been seen in one fixed place, to draw Beltran out after his own puppet; a return into the sludge-keep for a crystal, which means loosening a bar in the sewer grate that is its only exit; a lead-lined box for the sword once it is theirs; and then Wraithblade Keep.