“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.