HA!” ILIRA LAUGHED ALOUD AT A JEST BRACE HAD JUST made. “And then?”
The gnome beamed with triumph. “And then the troll, he says, ‘Oh, don’t worry—it’ll grow back. Promise!’ ”
His audience erupted in laughter, Ilira louder than most. Brace, pleased at the reception his story garnered, bought a round for the room. The bards interrupted their music long enough to toast their short patron, then renewed with a merry dancing tune. All made merry.
All but Myrin. Looking at the shadow that flickered along her skin, she just felt cold.
Cold and dark Hessar might be, but his healing seemed to have taken well enough. Ilira had spent much of the day unconscious, but the twilight had invigorated her and she awoke at sunset with a roaring appetite. Hence their current revelry in the cramped, sweaty interior of the Blue Banner, a rowdy tavern and inn in the Shou-dominated Tidetown. Founded by a Cormyrean expatriate, the establishment had proved popular enough that the owner was constantly expanding with new construction: another floor for renting rooms to patrons, an outdoor balcony, and the like. Neither the Fire Knives nor the Eye of Justice had a presence in this district, which was Nine Golden Swords territory. Levia would not dare come after them here.
All seemed well and safe, but Myrin didn’t feel particularly at ease. The thugs of the Eye of Justice had attacked her in her own manor, which was bad enough. And Kalen had not only supported them but actively fought at their side. He’d almost sacrificed himself in his attempt to kill Ilira, in the name of saving Myrin from herself. Could he have gone mad?
Or could he be right?
Since the battle, she’d found she could think with surprising clarity, unhindered by the complicated emotions tied to Kalen and now Ilira. She’d thought Kalen’s objection to the elf an extension of his protectiveness, but now that she examined the facts with cold dispassion, she started to see his point. They had glimpsed Ilira that first day in Westgate, when she had conveniently appeared to intercept a cadre of Justice Knights. Myrin didn’t believe that had been a coincidence, nor was her meeting with Ilira in the market “accidental.” By the time Ilira had approached her at the manor house, the elf had roused Myrin’s curiosity. From there, it had been a simple matter to manipulate Myrin into her friendship, offering hints to her forgotten past but nothing definitive. To what end? What was Ilira after?
Perhaps Kalen was right after all, and she ultimately meant to hurt Myrin—kill her, even.
A shadow flickered across Myrin’s scarred hand in her lap. She looked up, but no one was near her. She shifted her hands around, and as she watched, uncast shadows danced across her skin, like darkness imbedded in her flesh. As though suddenly aware of her scrutiny, the shadows vanished. What had she done to herself?
Myrin sensed someone watching her and looked up. Rujia stood a few paces distant, leaning against a pillar. The deva had vanished after the battle at the manor, but Myrin was far from surprised to see her here. As the oblivious Ilira and Brace started dancing to the jig that the bards played and folk applauded in time, the deva beckoned silently.
Myrin joined Rujia in the back of the tavern, beneath the shadows of the staircase, where illicit lovers hid their liaisons from curious eavesdroppers. Being this close to Rujia made Myrin faintly uneasy, but it was not out of fear.
“No one can know that I’m here,” she said. “Not Brace, not—that woman. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Myrin said. “Does this have to do with that book you gave me? The one you so obviously stole from my manor?”
Rujia narrowed her eyes, on the defensive immediately. “You see, don’t you, why you can’t trust Ilira? She tricks, lies, and murders, and those who love her aren’t safe.”
“What business is it of yours?” Myrin asked. “What am I to you that you care so much for my well-being?”
Rujia moved closer, and laid her hands on Myrin’s shoulders. “If anything happened to you, I—” Her face came closer.
Myrin was almost taken in. Indeed, she would have accepted Rujia’s kiss and whatever else the deva might have offered, had she not realized something very important. “Stop.”
Rujia hesitated. “What’s wrong?”
“I just remembered,” she said. “The lying, the stealing, the illusion, the seduction—it’s all very familiar.” She drew out her orb and pressed it to Rujia’s chest. “Step back.”
The deva retreated a step, staring at her uneasily. “I knew it. I knew you saw my face in the sewers. I was so careful. I spent nearly a year developing ‘Rujia.’ ”
“Can you hate her so much?” Myrin asked. “I know she has hurt you—I saw it happen—but can you not leave it in the past?” She took Rujia’s hand. “Can you not let it go?”
“I—” Rujia turned away.
“I won’t tell her, you know,” Myrin said. “I won’t tell her the truth about you.”
Rujia looked surprised. “Why not?”
“Because we’re friends.” Myrin took Rujia’s hand. “But in return, you have to try to let it go. See her for who she is, not who she used to be. Can you try?”
They shared a moment in the shadows of the stair, gazing into one another’s eyes.
At length, Rujia looked away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Fair warning—if you stay with her, sooner or later, it will bring you to grief.”
Myrin sighed. “You’re threatening me now?”
“No, but—I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Why the sudden care?”
“It wasn’t all a lie, you know—the seduction. Nor did I shield you from the vampire for no reason—because believe me, that isn’t something I would do.”
Myrin looked at her, puzzled. “What are you saying?”
“You saved my life twice, yet I’ve done nothing to earn it. You know who I am, yet still you try to persuade me to be better than I am.” Her illusion wavered. “I have lived many years, but I’ve … I’ve never known someone like you.”
“A wizard?” Myrin asked.
“A friend.”
Reality split and swallowed Rujia into another, brighter world. Myrin thought she would never see her friend again. Sorrow roiled in her, and the shadow she’d absorbed from Hessar did nothing to blunt the feeling. On the contrary, Shar’s blessing seemed to delight in sadness.
Myrin stood for a long time in the shadow of the stairs, her mind turning in circles around all the intrigues flanking her. Finally, she looked up at Ilira where she danced and laughed with Brace. For all the secrets and potentially murderous motives that she supposedly harbored, the elf seemed quite at ease. She seemed, for the first time Myrin had known her, legitimately happy.
Myrin decided that the time had come for a confrontation.
“A toast,” Myrin said, but no one listened. She stepped from the shadows and cast a tiny cantrip to make her voice spread to the rafters. “I’ve a toast!”
The folk of the common room raised their glasses with a cry of approval. Brace looked at her in wonder, while Ilira’s face grew cool and unreadable once more. This, if nothing else, convinced Myrin of her current course. The barkeep poured her a glass of wine, but before one of the barmaids could bring it, Myrin drew it to herself with conjured force.
“Well.” Myrin raised her glass. “I may have lost my ancestral manor—at least for the moment. And I am now apparently a known criminal—”
This drew a chorus of “huzzahs!” from the assembled folk. She suspected more than a few spent their time doing piracy or thievery rather than honest work. Ilira, however, did not cheer but watched Myrin carefully.
“And even so, I’ve no regrets,” Myrin continued. “For I have gained stout-hearted friends in the place of my name—friends who would never hurt me or keep secrets from me. And I really don’t mind that arrangement. So hail!”
“Hail!” Again they cheered and raised their glasses. Ilira’s mirth had gone away entirely.
“I would change none of my actions.” Myrin fixed the elf with her gaze. “Not one.”
This time, they all drank. Myrin downed the entire glass of strong wine, doing her best to keep watching Ilira as she did so.
Finally, the elf looked away. “Excuse me,” she murmured.
“But my lady—” Brace said.
She placed her gloved hand over his mouth, and he kissed her knuckles. It was the closest they would come, Myrin thought, considering her spellscar. Ilira’s eyes became black and the shadows coiled around her. As everyone was looking at Myrin, not Ilira, she took the moment to vanish into Brace’s shadow. Ilira always made a point to use her shadowdancing only when unobserved, Myrin noted. Was she ashamed of it, or were her motives more sinister?
At the very edge of her perception, Myrin saw a shadowy image of Ilira flit, birdlike, from the common room up the stairs toward the balcony. She imagined no one else could see this, as she had absorbed something of Hessar’s sight from their brief touch. She shaped her shadow door and stepped backward, falling briefly, until she stood on the weathered deck.
The dizzy haze of teleportation cleared, and she found herself overlooking the Sea of Fallen Stars, the waves lapping gently below. The summer rains had vanished with Midsummer, leaving the city gripped in balmy warmth by day and a soothing afterglow by dusk. Folk could sit at the tables outside at all hours, but no one was there now … no one except the two of them.
The glint of a star sapphire drew her attention to where Ilira leaned on the rail, her hands clasped tightly around the wood. If not for the pendant Ilira wore wrapped around her wrist, Myrin might not have seen her there against the night. She gazed out at the overcast sky, which hid the almost-full moon behind gray haze. Seabirds cried out to one another, and they heard the muted laughter of another festhall, juxtaposed with the clash of steel from some distant street.
“You know what I want,” Myrin said. “Although I’m worried that if I ask, we’ll be interrupted by vampires or more crazed knights or mayhap a dragon this time.”
If Ilira had heard, she gave no sign.
The trappings of mirth fell away and Myrin looked at her with a hard expression. “Did you kill them?” she asked. “My mother and father, I mean.”
Ilira raised her chin but said nothing.
“Is that why you haven’t told me who I am?” Myrin balled up her fists, around which blue fire began to crackle. “Because if I knew you had murdered my family, I would hate you?”
Ilira still said nothing, her face turned away.
“Silence, is it?” Myrin fumbled the family history out of her belt pouch and slapped it down on the rail by Ilira’s hand. “Tell me the meaning of this, then.”
Myrin opened the book to the last filled pages and pointed to the sketched images contained there. She pointed to the portrait of a handsome half-elf man, and read aloud: “Neveren, Lord Darkdance: 1290 to 1358.” Then she indicated a beautiful human woman with chocolate skin. “Shalis Ptolexis Darkdance, 1318 to 1379.”
Ilira stiffened, and her fingers tightened on the rail.
“And this.” Myrin turned the page. Few words adorned this last page: only a birthdate—1358—and a name: Maerlyn Darkdance. But the portrait … The portrait was of Myrin, only a little younger than she was now, from her blue hair to the awkward smile she wore all too often.
“You have answers,” Myrin said. “And I want them. Now.”
“Answers.” Ilira looked to Myrin for the first time, and the wizard saw with shock that her eyes were jet black. “And you will answer me, then? About stealing my scar?”
Myrin backed away a step, clutching the tome to her chest, and Ilira turned on her like a roused wolf. The moon came out from behind the clouds, casting Ilira’s shadow, which writhed madly on the deck at her feet. It reached its claws toward Myrin’s own shadow, and Myrin flinched despite herself.
“First you nearly kill yourself doing exactly what I begged you not to do,” Ilira said, stripping the glove from one hand. “Then not only do you steal my burning touch, but you don’t tell me about it until it’s too late.” She held up her bare hand. “And I thought I could be cruel.”
“I swear by Mother Mystra—”
“Mystra’s dead and isn’t listening!” Ilira took a step toward her, her eyes blazing with angry blackness. “This is between you and me.”
Ilira’s shadow had given up its assault on Myrin’s more timid shadow and turned back on its mistress, seemingly trying to hold her back. The shadow had always given insight into Ilira’s emotions, and if it was fighting back, that meant she was conflicted. Seeing this emboldened her.
“What reason have you given me to trust you?” Myrin demanded. “You’ve led me into one trap after another, all for your own gain.”
Ilira drew back. “It’s not for my own gain. I’ve been seeking the truth, just like you.” Her shadow roiled, then curled around her to embrace her. “It’s—gods. You said it in your toast.”
“What do you mean?”
“Friendship.” Ilira shook her head. “It’s never been a real thing to me. A ‘friend’ is merely searching for an angle: how to use me, how to bend me to her will or break me. Everyone I’ve ever loved has turned into my enemy, at one point or another.”
“That sounds like your scar,” Myrin said, then winced. “I’m sorry! Wait—”
Ilira glared at her, and her eyes became jet black once more. She glanced over her shoulder, at a far rooftop across Tidetown. Shadows gathered and whisked her dancing away. She reappeared on the rooftop, gave Myrin a long look, then shadowdanced away again.
She still hadn’t got the answers she wanted, but just then, Myrin felt sad for an entirely different reason. “I meant—” she leaned on the rail and sighed. “That sounds lonely.”
As the night deepened, he found her clinging to the spire atop the highest tower in Westgate, the wind whipping her unbound hair around her face. Her black eyes were fixed upon the distant horizon, as if longing for the sun to sear away the darkness that was her element. Blood beat in her throat and temple, and she clutched her free hand to her chest. She looked delicate and vulnerable and very angry.
Into the approaching midnight, Ilira sang an elven melody of such haunting beauty and deep abiding sorrow that he could not resist lingering to listen. The words hardly sounded angry to an untrained ear, but the fey races had ever been masters of hiding their true feelings behind softness. Finally, the song faded away, and she stared silently into the darkness.
It was at this point he knew she could feel him, and there was no point in hiding.
“You should have been a bard, not a thief.” Hessar emerged from the shadow of the spire at her side. “But is there not a man’s part to that song as well? A lost lover to soothe your pain?”
Ilira said nothing, only looked out over the city.
“You sing of being broken and alone,” Hessar said. “These things are sweet to the lady.” He looked her up and down. “I do not often desire women, but I do delight in true despair.”
“If you would speak,” Ilira said softly, “then speak.”
“As you command.” Hessar ran his bare fingers up her arm, which she bore with stoicism. “This is an amusing sort of rabble you’ve gathered around yourself, but then, you always did draw fools to distract you. Fools who could never touch you—not the real you.”
His hand fell upon her neck, and she shivered but did not pull away.
“It wasn’t quite true, what you told them,” he said. “You can touch certain folk, can’t you? In fact, you couldn’t use your fire on the children of Netheril even if you wanted to.”
Ilira pulled away roughly and regarded him with dangerous black eyes.
“Now, now. Is that any way to treat a very old friend?”
Perhaps his use of the word was a mistake, or perhaps it was exactly what he needed to say. Regardless, Ilira glared at him with violence in her eyes.
“Remember your vows, my lady. Just because your bonds have loosened over a century does not mean you are forgotten.” Hessar caressed her face with his grey fingertips. His yellow eyes gleamed, reflected in her black gaze. “Or would you prefer your newfound ‘friends’ learn of your true loyalties, Shadowf—”
She pulled him into a deep kiss.
At midnight, the Trickster found the damned monk lounging on a rumpled bed in a seedy dive in Tidetown. He was naked, which was not a total loss, but there desire ended and distaste began. His fatuous smile made him particularly repulsive.
“Truly? Her? Ugh. Just when I thought you couldn’t make yourself less appealing.”
“Ah, my little Trickster—jealous?” He indicated the bed beside him with a languorous wave. “It’s still quite warm if you care to join me.”
“Somehow I doubt that, shade—that your bed would ever be warm.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised.” His yellow eyes grew luminous. “And how has your seduction gone, or did you pick the wrong form for the Darkdance girl? I’ll never understand why you picked that. It’s just so … so blank.” He looked her over. “I don’t understand the white and purple. And that name—Rujia? So uninteresting.”
“You have a small mind, monk, but this does not surprise me,” the Trickster said. “Seduction is hardly a matter of sweat and desire, but giving the mark what he or she wants.”
“That’s a surprisingly mature attitude, from what I’ve heard of you.”
“We all grow up, don’t we?”
“So you’re saying what Myrin wants is an ageless, serene, perfect creature of mystery?” Hessar stretched across the bed he had shared not a song’s length before. “Ah yes, but I’ve answered my own question. I’ve just described the Shadowfox, have I not? Your worst enemy.”
The Trickster glared. “It doesn’t matter. Myrin sees through my disguise. She knows me for who—if not what—I am.”
“Shame,” Hessar said. “The master will not like this development. And yet you come to me.” He rose, making no effort to draw the blankets around himself. “You knew I would find out on my own, so you came here to purchase my allegiance and silence, no? With that … thing?” He appraised her body with distaste.
“Don’t misunderstand.” The Trickster averted her eyes as the monk touched her chin with his fingers. “Myrin will keep my secret. I am not compromised. I can go back.”
“Oh? Why would she not go immediately to her shadowy mistress and tell all?”
“She won’t.” The Trickster could not give him a better answer.
“Imagine that. You have genuine feelings for the Darkdance lass, don’t you?”
“Shut up,” she said.
“Perhaps you’d rather switch targets? The Shadowfox has lost none of her tricks, for a century of rare usage. I’m sure you could craft a disguise she’d find … appealing.”
Revulsion filled the Trickster and she wrenched herself away from the monk. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t ever. If you knew what that woman has done to me—what she took from me—”
The monk spread his hands. “A jest, merely. Don’t bleed your feminine sentimentally all over the room.” He turned away and donned a robe hanging from a peg on the wall. “Your misfortune is fortunately timed, and soon it will not matter if you can serve as a snake in Lady Darkdance’s bedclothes. The game is nearly ended.”
“Our … patron is moving? At last?”
“Indeed. You are almost free of this—if you behave yourself.”
The Trickster gritted her teeth. She hated and feared Kirenkirsalai, but she truly dreaded the day when her father discovered her misstep. The sooner she could escape the vampire, the better. “I know that.”
“Do you?” Hessar fixed her with his yellow eyes. “I want to ensure that your head—not your heart—is in this. You’ll have your revenge, but on his terms, not yours. Acceptable?”
“Yes.”
The Trickster nodded, although she felt far less resolved than she put on. She could not forget what Myrin had said to her. The woman had called her a friend, and now she was about to betray her trust. When in her life had trust ever mattered?
“There will be blood,” she said. “Enough for both of us.”
In the early hours of the morning, Myrin awoke from her troubled sleep to find her rented room at the Blue Banner grown wintry cold. She thought at first that she must have left the window open, but she saw the dark shape of Ilira framed in the moonlight. She sat on the windowsill, her knees pulled up to her chin.
“You came back,” Myrin said. “I … I thought that might be our farewell.”
Ilira drew herself down from the window and perched on the edge of the bed. After a heartbeat, she drew out a cloth-wrapped item from an inner pocket and offered it to Myrin. The wizard looked at her questioningly, but Ilira merely nodded.
Myrin unwrapped the parcel, revealing a silver ring that picked up the glint of moonlight. The image upon it was scratched out, but when she touched the ring with her bare flesh, a sigil appeared of a bird crafted of black flames. The phoenix sigil tickled at her mind until she realized where she had seen it—engraved in the cover of the Darkdance family histories, the most recent of which lay open on her bedside table.
This was her family’s signet ring—the mark of Darkdance.
“I thought as much,” Ilira murmured.
“What does this mean?” Myrin asked.
“It means I am sorry,” Ilira said. “My words earlier were untrue and ill-advised.”
“Accepted.” Myrin laid the ring on the blankets, but the sigil did not disappear. Instead, it started to waver, as though it would fade over time.
“Sorry, also”—Ilira gave her a sidelong glance—“for kissing your man.”
That clutched at Myrin’s attention. “What? Kalen’s not—” She trailed off when Ilira gave her a dubious look, and heat flared in her cheeks. “Aye, mayhap he is. Although he … I don’t know what’s going through his head. He thinks you’re a danger to me.”
Ilira’s eyes gleamed brightly. “Do you think I am?”
“No.” Myrin shook her head. “But I need to know. Are these my parents? Is this me?”
She showed Ilira the book again, still open to that page. Tears dotted the parchment where she had cried herself to sleep reading it again and again, searching for clues in the few words. Those same tears welled anew in her eyes.
“Just tell me it’s true, or that it’s a lie—a sick jest at my expense,” she said. “Please. You must know. You must know who I am.”
Ilira gazed at her a breath, then nodded. Slowly, she traced her finger through the book’s shadow, scooping up a blob of the inky darkness. Then she put her finger to the book and traced a new word beneath the portrait: “Myrin.”
It was not the word itself that made Myrin go weak but rather that the delicate script matched the other entries perfectly.
“It—it was you?” Myrin asked. “You penned this? All of this?” She marveled at the care that had gone into the portraits. “You didn’t kill them.”
“I’ve killed many people, but I would never hurt them,” Ilira said. “Your parents were like family to me. I am sorry I could not save them. It is a pain I have borne for a century.”
“My parents,” Myrin said. “So it’s true.”
Ilira nodded, her eyes bright. “You are Neveren and Shalis’s daughter, without a doubt. You have Nev’s wits and courage and Shalis’s beauty and strength.”
Myrin’s eyes welled with tears.
“I am sorry to have kept the truth from you so long. I just—I wanted to be sure, before I told you. Now I am.” Ilira took Myrin’s hand. “And you are not a simulacrum, a wraith, or anything like that. You are exactly the woman you seem to be: Maerlyn Darkdance.”
Myrin had a sudden memory of a year ago, when she had first met Cellica, Kalen’s adopted sister. The halfling had asked her name and she, barely remembering, had started “Mare, mere—” to which Cellica had said, “Myrin?” She had nodded.
“The ring proves it,” Ilira said. “Neveren had that ring specially enchanted, so that only an heir of his blood could awaken the sigil. It was precious to him, so I hid it where no thief would steal it—among the treasures of thieves. Among the Night Masks.”
“My father was a Night Mask?”
“As was I, but that is a tale for another day.”
“But—” Myrin said. “But how is that possible? That was over a century ago. How—?”
“How could you have seen a hundred winters and not look a day over twenty?” Ilira shrugged. “Magic can do many things—your spellscar, a portal, something altogether different.”
“My spellscar?” Myrin asked. “According to your records, I would have been seven and twenty when the Spellplague fell. Am I frozen at that age?”
“Perhaps. A dear friend of mine was trapped in the body of a beautiful young woman who never aged, but was condemned never to sing again. And she had the most beautiful voice.” Ilira shook her head. “Your spellscar is powerful, but I do not think it is so mighty.”
“It doesn’t seem so,” Myrin said. “My spellscar is only for stealing magic—”
“As you took mine?” Ilira asked, her words a touch bitter.
Myrin looked down at her hands. “I am sorry. By the time I realized it had happened, it was too late.”
“I do not begrudge you—indeed, I thank you.”
“Because of Kalen?” Myrin sniffled and wiped her nose. “He does kiss well, doesn’t he?”
“Quite well, but that isn’t what I meant,” she said. “Even if you did it accidentally, you were still trying to aid me, and that is a gesture of love.”
Myrin was overwhelmed and speechless. Tears filled her eyes and she pushed herself into Ilira’s embrace. She had so many questions, but sleep was closing in on her—the exhaustion of the last few days finally taking its toll.
“I will tell you more when there is time, but for now, you must rest.” Ilira pulled away and pressed her gloved hand to Myrin’s cheek. “You’ll be seeing Saer Shadow again sooner than you think, and you’ll need your strength.”
“What do you mean?” Myrin wiped at her eyes. “Do you fear another attack?”
“Tomorrow, we go on the offensive.” She smiled slyly. “Tomorrow, we steal him back.”