As he walked, Manshoon reached up and slapped himself on the cheek. “I must stop talking to myself. A bad habit, acquired during too many long, dark years of scheming, and all of that is almost behind me now, with Cormyr practically in my grasp.”

He gave a bright smile to a surly carter sweating along under the weight of a full keg, received an astonished stare in return, and sauntered on with a light heart.

Elminster dead. By his own hand, thorough and certain. Yes.

That extermination opened so many doors and made so many perilous trails safer and easier. Though it did mean some rethinking of strategy.

With his need for haste gone, it was now imperative to delay this Council of the Dragon. With Stormserpent and his fellow young hotheads down, he needed time-another day should suffice-to replenish the ranks of noblemen serving him.

When the Council inevitably turned into a bloodbath, he wanted particular royalty, courtiers, and nobles slaughtered, not mere random murders.

Tailored bloodletting saved so much time.

Elminster quelled a sigh. Lord Delcastle was growing wild-eyed, apt to do nigh anything-and becoming truly dangerous.

Oh, Rune’s body was agile enough to snatch up furs and blankets to trammel the blade the young fool was waving around, or even fling them over his head to blind him, and smite him cold-but Rune was naked, and Storm might as well be, and that sword was sharp. Someone was going to get hurt.

And it was all so unnecessary.

The coffer young Arclath was threatening him with was empty, until El departed Amarune-and Storm could just as easily store his ashes down the toes of her boots, or for that matter, scoop ashes that weren’t him at all from yon hearth for the angry young lordling to destroy to his heart’s content…