NINE

Nestrix stormed through the city and down Market Street, no longer noticing where she was. If she'd had her wings, she'd have relished her dark mood, used it as an excuse to swoop low over the crowded stalls, scattering fat merchants and dawdling maids, breathing great gales of lightning until the colorful cloths ignited and the curios melted and the fruit roasted whole. Maybe tear the mast off a ship or two and frighten the sailors off the deck and into the deep. Remind the world of who she was. She shivered.

But trapped on the ground, all she could do was stomp through the crowded market until the cobblestones made her feet ache through the boots she was supposed to be finding a spot for in her new hoard.

This was Tennora's fault. She should turn back right now and crack the little bitch's head open on the windowsill. Leave her there and go after Aundra Blacklock herself. Teach the sorceress to meddle with her. Teach Tennora to speak to her like a common dokaal nothing! Even diminished as she was, she could make them fear her, make them wish ... make them ...

Nestrix heaved a great sigh. The truth was she didn't want to kill Tennora or hurt her—or even particularly frighten her. She wanted Tennora to be sorry for saying those things—that she was a monster, that she had done something unforgivable—and she didn't want to force the words from her.

And why was that? The girl was helpful, it was true—but helpful or not, what more was she going to do? She thought of the way Tennora had brushed her hair, and rolled her eyes at her own growing sentimentality. As if the girl would polish her scales and help organize her treasure once Aundra had fixed everything. Everything would be over once Nestrix was a dragon again. Tennora had said it herself: Nestrix wasn't the color of dragon she could trust.

A fat drop of rain hit the crown of her head, jarring Nestrix from her thoughts. She looked up in time to see a bolt of lightning race across the horizon before the rain began to fall in earnest. A shiver ran through her. What she wouldn't give to dance in the lightning again.

The crowd scattered for the relative shelter of the shops and the tents. Nestrix watched the rain coming down for a few minutes before she became aware of the sensation of her dress sticking to her skin.

It wasn't a sensation she'd bothered to notice before, but now that Tennora had shown her she didn't have to be wet when it rained, Nestrix found it extremely irritating.

A man on the street whistled lasciviously at her. She turned and glared at him, and the catcall died on his lips. Not being soaked through would prevent that too. Hooting and cackling like a rooster—she'd long realized it was a dokaal's way of trying to mate, but Tiamat take her if she understood any of it.

Tennora had a cloak for the wet weather. Nestrix could go back and take it. Tennora might even give it to her. Maybe she'd apologize and then make her some tea. ...

"No," she said to herself. She didn't need Tennora's help. She would find her own cloak and show Tennora she could take care of herself just fine.

A few minutes' walk down the street brought Nestrix to a shop with an elaborate gilded sign—Valhana Darvien, Fine Clothingand Tailoring. In the window, two wooden forms of women were posed, both wearing ruffled dresses.

The memory slid into her thoughts like a sharp knife—the golden-haired woman, a cloak around her shoulders, a wooden form in the corner, someone measuring the cloth asking if she didn't want to buy a nice dress or perhaps a new set of—

"Stop it!" Nestrix hissed and clutched her head. The memory retreated.

Nestrix stared at the window for a moment. It looked a little like the one in the foreign memory—the fabrics heavier, the gowns unfamiliar. But ... those strange memories had recognized it.

Shown it to her.

She shook her head. It was just a likely place to have cloaks. Nothing more.

Bells strung on the doorframe tinkled merrily as she stepped inside. The carpet was green and very thick, as if it grew out of the floor in tangled mats. Nestrix rocked her weight against it, finding her balance. A slim girl looked up from behind a counter's table. Her dark eyes flicked over Nestrix, and she didn't bother to hide the sneer that curled her lip.

"Well met," she said. "I believe you want the seamstress on the other side of the market. Goodwoman Laever."

Nestrix frowned. "I came here to buy clothes."

"We don't have what you're looking for," the girl said, coming out from behind the table. "You should move along."

Nestrix narrowed her eyes. "Why? I want to buy some clothes. You're selling clothes."

"Yes, and this is a very high-quality establishment." She looked Nestrix over once again. "We don't have anything in your ... size."

The rear of the store was filled with row after row of fabric on bolts, ready to be fashioned into all manner of garments. Nestrix looked at them pointedly, but the girl didn't budge. She looked at Nestrix as if she were defending her hoard against something weak and trembling. Something cowardly.

Rage swelled inside Nestrix like a physical thing, a force that might push through her skin and make wings and claws and teeth. She felt the dragonfear racing ahead of it like lightning before thunder. The girl's eyes widened a little as it wrapped itself around her, and Nestrix smiled, ready for the rage to crash and rumble and storm through her.

All at once, the fear slipped out of her grasp, taking the force of her anger along with it. The vacuum left her dizzy, and when she put a hand out to steady herself against the desk, the world spun and she fell to one knee on the thick carpet.

The alien memories surged into the void and pressed on her the feeling of killing a man in a dark alley, a soldier of some sort, with a sword that didn't belong to her. The air overflowed with the stale, fishy smell of a dockside, and another man was shouting at her, shouting at Lyra.

Nestrix gasped and pulled herself up.

"Get out!" the girl said, recoiling.

"I have coin and I want to buy clothes," Nestrix growled.

"Get out or I'll call the Watch!"

"Chennae, what's going on out there?" a new voice called out. Nestrix pulled herself to her feet in time to see a plump woman in neat work clothes come in from the back room. She glanced over Nestrix. "Good afternoon. Is there a problem?"

"Yes," she said, shoving the memory aside. It wouldn't budge, and it filled in the dead man's rusty armor, the stubble on his cheek, the whites of his eyes. "I'd like to buy some clothes."

The woman folded her hands in front of her. Though her skin was pale and sun-sheltered, her hands looked as if they had known many years of work. "Very well. How much were you planning on spending?"

The other man—his name was Gralik—he grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back, saying they had to run. She'd loved him ... no, someone had loved him.

Nestrix focused on the seamstress, her head pounding with the effort. "I ... don't know. What do they cost?"

The remembered affection swelled up in her, threatening to overwhelm her. He had been kind, clever, short-tempered, but so had she been. A match, an equal.

No, Nestrix thought, and replaced the man with the sinuous coils and sharp eyes of Tantlevgithus, a true match, a true equal, lover, and opponent in all the ways a mate should be.

The alien memory snapped like a string pulled too taut and let Nestrix back into the real world. She gasped at the shift.

The girl, Chennae, snorted. Her mistress gave her a stern look.

"Chennae, go to the back room and find something to do," she said. The girl looked as if she'd been slapped for a moment, but gave a dutiful curtsey and left. The seamstress took her place behind the counter's table.

"You don't look as if you've done this before," she said. "Perhaps I can save you some time. A simple dress—no god's-eyes, no lace, homespun cloth—will cost you two silvers and three coppers."

"All right."

"Is it?"

Nestrix squirmed a little. She knew what the seamstress must be thinking—with her too-small dress and her heavy boots, there was no way that Nestrix could afford such finery. She thought of the hillocks of gold coins, stamped with the faces of scores of rulers she had once used as her bed. But that stirred up more thoughts ...

As easy as it would be to shout the seamstress down and make her take the coin, Nestrix doubted it would work. Not with this one.

You were clever once, she told herself. Weren't you?

"I'm ... new to Waterdeep," she said. "My clothes were lost. My trunks were ... misplaced on the caravan I took here."

The seamstress raised an eyebrow. "Misplaced?"

"Bandits in the passes," Nestrix amended. "Things were ... very confusing afterward. I've sent for my things from"—Where had Tennora thought she was from?—"Tethyr. But in the mean-time"—she looked down at Tennora's old clothes—"I borrowed this. I don't like it. I have plenty of coin." She pulled her purse from her neck and opened it on the table. Gold and silver spilled out on the surface. "There. You see?"

"It is your coin?" the seamstress asked.

"Of course." It was now, at any rate, but that was a line of logic not every dokaal followed, so she invented some more. "My father was an adventurer. I inherited a fair amount," she added, thinking of the portrait of Tennora's dam and the man in the hearth-house. People seemed to like adventurers; everyone in the city seemed to know one or be one or think they'd make a good one. The seamstress smiled.

"You'll pardon my presumption. Better to ask than to have the Watch on me," she said. "You'd best store it in a strongbox though. You're like as well to have your purse plucked carrying those coins around. But I think we might be able to lighten your load a bit." She smiled cheerily. "What were you planning on purchasing?"

Nestrix hesitated. Just a cloak, but that had been before they'd insulted her pride so. "Quite a bit," she said. "Perhaps. It depends upon ... when everything else—"

The seamstress nodded. "Your things will arrive. Eventually. But to start, a good sturdy dress or two for day, something fancy for evenings, a stormcloak, and a few frilly smallclothes should stand you. We can measure you today, but it will take a tenday or two to get the other pieces finished."

Nestrix bit her tongue in annoyance. In a tenday, she would need none of this. "Is there any way I could get the stormcloak now?" Nestrix said. "I'm tired of being wet."

"The storms do get tiresome. Every year, the same time, but they only last a tenday or so. I do have a finished cloak," the seamstress said. "If you're not too picky about the color—one of the Hawkwinter girls ordered it." She sighed and shook her head. "I send her a message saying it's finished. She sends one back saying she's no longer interested. 'The cut is gauche.' More likely she burned through her allowance for the month."

"Yes," Nestrix said, hardly understanding a word the woman said.

"That's what comes of spoiling children, I suppose. Stand up here"—she helped Nestrix onto a wooden box before a full-length mirror—"and we'll see if you like it." She bustled into the next room and left Nestrix to consider the mirror.

The reflection of a woman—her dark hair damp and curling, her skin a freckled brown, her eyes a nostalgic shade of blue—looked back at Nestrix. She curled her lip. So did the reflection.

"Here we are," the seamstress said, coming up behind Nestrix with the cloak in a muslin bag. "Lucky you, it hasn't been hemmed as yet. You're a bit tall to be a match for Young Lady Hawkwinter."

Nestrix closed her eyes—she was not tall. She was a mite, a crumb, a mouse. Once she would have filled this room from floor to ceiling; now a score of her wouldn't come close to filling it. She felt untethered and flimsy. If she opened her eyes, the vertigo and the memories would claim her again.

She felt the seamstress settle the cloak on her shoulders and straighten the hem. "There we are. What do you think?"

Nestrix opened her eyes.

The cloak was blue.

... the color of a stormy sunrise over the desert...

A chill ran up Nestrix's neck. Her own ancient memories unfolded. Blue—the shade of an angry sea, the shade of the night and the moonlight reflecting off the sand dunes—blue, the color of dragon scales. Ulhar—the quickest, the wisest. It hung down in the shape of wings.

... The shape of her wings, draped over her back as she dozed near the cavern's mouth ...

Her breath caught in her throat, and she fought to keep her mind still and empty.

"I say, that shade suits you very well," the seamstress said. "Better than Lady Hawkwinter, even. What do you think?"

Nestrix swallowed. "It's perfect."

... blue and the blood red of rubies settled in her claws: one, two, three ...

"I'll let you have it for four silvers. That's a quarter off, since it's already made."

... blue and the red of rubies and the wash of gold in the back of the cave where she settles the rubies, like eggs in a nest ...

"Yes," Nestrix breathed.

... blue and gold and red like eggs in a nest, the nest tucked farther back still, three mottled eggs buried in a mound of sand. She sifts more sand over the nest; they need to stay warm ...

"Stand up straight, and I'll hem it for you. Shoulders back, now."

First she'd placed the statuette, the figure of some dead god from before she was hatched—a pretty thing even Tantlevgithus was jealous of—into the pile of coins and chains, then the rubies, then back to the eggs. She smiled, standing on the box in the tailor's shop, to remember it.

The thief who slipped in behind her came after. She remembered the sound of footsteps as she sprinkled sand over her clutch. She remembered looking back over her draped wings at a noise. She remembered slipping through the side caverns toward the entrance, of peering around the comer to see the woman hardly as tall as Nestrix's elbow creeping down the tunnel. Her leather armor blended into the gloom of the cave, but Nestrix's sharp eyes picked it out. Her hair was like spun gold.

... gold and red and blue, blue is the anger that storms and howls through her. Protect the treasure, protect the eggs. No filthy dokaal thiefs hands will touch them ...

She remembered stalking the thief, the woman's form obstructed and revealed by stalagmites and columns. Invisibility cloaked Nestrix; the thief never saw her. The fool, the bitch—Nestrix would make sure the thief regretted her intrusion before she died.

... protect the eggs, protect the eggs. She'll not take them. Tantlevgithus will be jealous she took this prey alone. He is so young and furious—but this one is hers ...

She remembered the thief coming to the treasure in the lower cave, watching her run her hands over the glittering jewels. She lit a sunrod, thinking herself alone—Nestrix remembered licking her lips, crouching for the attack.

... That's it—sift through the jewels, don't mind me, nothing to bother you. Who cares if that's mine? She picks up a gold-chased mithral torque, a beautiful thing with a great fat sapphire in the middle, and slips it around her neck. Creep forward, one claw at a time until the smell of the girl is heavy and close as old meat...

She remembered how her breath stirred the thiefs hair, how the girl had ducked suddenly, twisting beneath Nestrix and scrambling to her feet behind her. She ran for the exit—the exit Nestrix was careful to cover and hide from intruders—the one that led out into the Calim Desert. Nestrix pursued.

... gold is the torque and the hair of the thief; red is the blood pounding in her veins; blue is the fire that tears into the night, the desert, the world beneath their feet.

As they ran into the desert, as she caught up to the thief, the Spellplague ripped through Toril.

She remembered the feeling like molten glass in her veins, and then the heat vanishing, the glass suddenly going cold and stiff. And over again, hot and cold cycling through her veins until they split open. She remembered the girl, the thief, her eyes wide and then wider, her skin splitting and bubbling as the strange Blue Fire ripped through them both. The thief seemed to explode—she grew so quickly—and Clytemorrenestrix collapsed into herself at the same rate. Her scales felt as if they themselves were on fire—her first introduction to the nerves and softness of a human's skin. She roared, but the sound was thin and tore her throat. When the thief screamed alongside Nestrix, it was the voice of a dragon, not an anguished girl.

... blue is the fire and the end of the world, the end of the wings on her back, the end of the scales on her arms, the claws on her fingers, the end of long nights while the moon reflects on the dunes ... blue is the death of the goddess ...

And for a moment she'd forgotten and pushed aside for a hundred years, she knew the thiefs thoughts, her life, her secrets as intimately as if they'd been her own. Her name had been Lyra. She had kissed her first boy at twelve and killed her first man at nineteen. She found the cave of Clytemorrenestrix after caravan guards spoke of the treasure the blue dragon had stolen from them tendays earlier. She wanted the treasure for the same simple reason Clytemorrenestrix did—it was beautiful and it was tricky to get.

Her thoughts and memories intertwined with Nestrix's, as tenacious as ivy. She watched the thiefs intrusion into her cave from Lyra's eyes, felt the sudden terror as she turned and saw the great and terrible head of the blue dragon looming over her.

Nestrix remembered the Blue Fire going on a very long time. She remembered the emptiness it created in its wake.

She remembered waking up in more pain than she'd ever imagined, in the valley of a bronze dragon's coiled body. She remembered looking down at the horror of her fleshy hands, her feet, those useless breasts. In the moonlight of that night, Nestrix felt the loss of her blue scales as keenly as she felt the absence of the Weave. Nothing, she was certain—although later she would convince herself otherwise—would ever be the same.

The bronze was dead, strangled by the torque it had worn as the thief, the same torque she had stolen from the hoard. Nestrix set a shaking, muddy-colored hand on the gore-smeared cabochon, now the size of her whole palm. The horror of the sight drove her heart like a wind whips a sandstorm out of a clear night. Her chest tightened around her breath.

Then she remembered her clutch.

She scrambled up the side of the bronze, struggling to get her back legs—they were suddenly so long—underneath her. The scales cut her bare feet. She kept slipping in the blood. Her tail was gone—without it she had no idea how to keep her balance. Tripping, running half upright, half on her hands and knees, Nestrix came to the cave entrance.

Instead of the cave, instead of the bluff that held her lair, Clytemorrenestrix found a pile of rubble lanced by a spire of glass. As if the Blue Fire had melted the sand and pulled it up through the roof of the cavern.

Streaks of gold, blisters of rubies and sapphires, grit and rock embedded in the spire. And halfway up—twice Nestrix's shriveled height—the charred remains of blue eggs.

A scream built in her throat, but it couldn't find its way out. She fell to her knees, eyes locked on her clutch, and gasped for air. They were gone. They were gone. Nothing could bring them back.

She threw back her head and noiselessly sobbed at the Blue Fire still dancing over her head.

Then the rubble stirred and something crawled out. She looked down. The scream exploded from her throat as the monster hauled itself out of the remnants of her home.

Of all the things she would refuse to forgive the Spellplague for, what it did to her third egg would be the last she let go of.

What crawled from the rubble was coated in a slime of yolk, and bits of the shattered shell clung to its hide. It hadn't been ready. It hadn't been time for the hatching. The wyrmling crawled toward her on stubby, half-formed legs, its blind eyes still dark patches. Its hungry maw was augmented by that shattered magic, rimmed by toothed tentacles that waved toward her. Curled inside its shell, it had been small enough to fit in the hollow of her claw before the Spellplague had started; what stalked her now was half again as big as she'd become.

It did not know her. And as it clambered toward her, she did not know it.

Nestrix scrambled away, through the rubble. She threw rocks and shards of glass, learning quickly how to work her new, flexible hands. The thing howled and squealed, but didn't slow. Its tentacle-teeth lashed the air, catching her soft ankle. Nestrix grabbed hold of one and yanked. The creature squealed again and shuffled back a few steps, clearing enough of the rubble for Nestrix to see the edge of her hoard. And the handle of an axe.

She'd never held an axe as a weapon before—the thief in her thoughts seemed to take hold of it for her, recognizing a weapon and not a bauble—and she swung wildly, still unsteady on two legs. It bit into the creature's still-unhardened flesh again and again, without aim. The thing screeched and thrashed, and managed to wrap a pair of tentacles around her waist, pulling her toward its mouth.

She pulled the axe up. And swung down into the creature's skull. Over and over.

It twitched, and the tentacles went slack.

Nestrix collapsed. She remembered sitting there on the ground, blood thudding in her ears, every muscle shaking. She remembered looking up at the creature, remembered seeing the eggshells and the yolk shining in the moonlight. Remembered the realization flooding her like a second wave of the Blue Fire.

She'd killed the last of her eggs.

She remembered the scream, and the night that stretched on forever. ...

*****

A sharp pain in her ankle brought her back to the present, and she was standing again on the box in the tailor's shop in the middle of a city she should never have been in.

"Sorry, dear," the seamstress said, coming to her feet. "That last pin missed. Is that a good length?"

Nestrix's head pounded, and she finally recognized the thoughts of someone else swirled and coiled in her mind. Suddenly she wanted nothing so much as to run, out through the rain, away from the city, as far and as fast as she could. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was clutching the pouch that held a fragment of her last egg's shell. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

She wiped them before she realized what a strange thought that was—her eyes. She looked at the reflection again, wrapped in its blue cape, and felt ... what? Sorrow. Pity. Anger.

Recognition.

She shivered. The city was doing terrible things to her. Tennora was doing terrible things to her. It was a test, a trial—at the end of it she would have her wings back and the thief out of her thoughts. She had to. For her lost eggs. For Tantlevgithus.

But then a little voice inside her wondered, in the dark of the night will I miss this soft skin or the taste of summer ale or the feel of boots on my feet?

The seamstress was looking up at her. She swallowed. "It will do."

*****

Ferremo Magli strolled down Market Street, glad of the rain and the season. It gave him an excellent chance to wear his new stormcloak—a thoroughly dashing, dark green affair with black leather trim. He'd done his share the previous night, fighting off those mad little thieves and shaking down the eladrin once more. His master would take care of the rest.

The effort of a few hours to track down the lovac, and by sunset his master would be unchallenged.

Which meant this afternoon, he had a chance to visit his favorite tailor's and pick up his latest acquisition in plenty of time for the brightstarfeast tomorrow. It had long been his philosophy that people were bound to notice an assassin who dressed like an assassin. Why not be the most noticeable person in the room instead, gather compliments, and save the black for the night work? He liked to think the difference made more of an impression on his victims as well—he thought back to Rhinzen's insults in the carriage the other night, quickly followed by his whimpering for mercy. Ferremo smiled to himself.

He was in such a pleasant mood, he nearly walked right into the tailor's without noticing the woman who stood in the back of the room. The same woman who had killed two of his men the previous night.

It couldn't be, he thought, looking through the window at the tall, dark-haired woman being fitted and offered a selection of silks. Plenty of dark-haired, tall women in the city. Tymora didn't smile on him twice.

But she glanced to the side, to answer a question or trade some banter, and he was certain: the proud nose, the sour look, those eyes—like his master's—just a shade too bright to be natural. The blue dragon.

In the back of Ferremo's mind, he called out to his master, a thought that streamed off into the city, to the other's mind.

His master's voice did not answer. Ferremo called out again.

This time the reply was like a punch to the lovac's brain, so sharp he stepped back from the window as if he could escape it. The message was clear: Andareunarthex was busy.

Ferremo rubbed his temple. If his master was busy, it meant he'd likely found the little blonde thief who'd put a blade in his arm. The assassin smiled. Good.

Other dragons of the great game—he had come to understand—stayed out of the action and sent their lovacs into the world, to plant the beginnings of actions, to encourage the growth of their plans, and to seek out other pieces for the taaldarax to use in play. Other dragons watched and calculated and gave orders. They did not get their claws dirty.

But when Ferremo had reported back the name of the blue dragon's lovac and the address she would be found at, Andareunarthex had shut down any suggestion of Ferremo or one of his minions handling Tennora Hedare.

"This move is mine," he'd said. "Be ready if I need you."

"Is this allowed?" Ferremo asked. After all, attacking another player was very clearly against the rules. Dareun fixed him with a poisonous grin.

"She has already broken that rule by attacking the seed hoard," he said. "She cannot claim its protection now."

Which meant he would be busy for a long time indeed. Ferremo would just have to delay the blue dragon until she could be dealt with properly.