The Lies Have Limits

The morning after Xanathar died, Rishi left Firemind’s restoration room beneath Blackstaff Tower with a grain of stone caught beneath his thumbnail.

He found it while waiting for Vajra to open the chamber across the corridor. He caught it on the edge of his sleeve, returned to the guarded door, and gave it to one of the masons.

Maeril waited for him. Neither spoke as they entered the room where Renaer sat beneath a lamp, reading a broadsheet with his family name printed across the top.

The table held maps, casualty lists, repair estimates, and three unfinished inventories of the gold. Rishi set his staff beside a chair. His shoulder had stiffened during the night, and sitting brought a dull ache through his thigh.

Maeril remained standing with a cup between her hands.

“Apparently I fought the beholder alone,” Renaer said. “On the roof of the Palace.”

“A remarkable recovery,” Maeril said. “Yesterday you could scarcely stand.”

He laid the sheet flat. “Someone will ask me to describe it.”

“Tell them it did not happen.” Vajra took the chair at the table’s end and opened a folder. “Lady Silverhand will announce the recovery tomorrow. I want an account we can support before another printer supplies us with one.”

She passed a draft to Renaer. He read it with one finger moving beneath the lines.

“Intelligence, accommodation, preparation. Accompanied Force Grey and assisted in securing the Vault.” He looked up. “All true. It still leaves my name as the first one anyone will see.”

“Your father hid the gold. You helped us recover it. People will ask what you intend to do now.”

“And these unnamed companions?”

Rishi looked at the space Vajra had left in the account. Maeril lowered her cup.

“Their work will be recorded,” Vajra said. “Their names need not be published. Neither do the identities of the people rescued from Manshoon.”

“The theft must be named,” Rishi said. “And what it did to the people living above that gold.”

“Dagult Neverember will be named. The recovered sum will be published when the counting is complete.”

“And afterward? We promised it would not disappear again.”

Vajra drew the nearest ledger toward him. “Then begin with this.”

The first pages listed streets, damaged foundations, and temporary lodging. Farther down, names stood beside payments for injuries and funerals. Rishi recognized a Rivenbeam worker he had helped carry from the road.

He laid his hand beside the entry. “Who can question these decisions?”

“The accounts will be open. Households and guilds can bring claims to the restitution offices, and refusals must be recorded with their reasons.”

“Where the people refused can read them?” Maeril asked.

Vajra met her gaze. “Where they can read them, or have them read. The same condition Aurinax demanded when he agreed to surrender guardianship.”

Maeril’s mouth curved. “He demanded an audit.”

“Public accounting. Restitution before celebration. He was exact about both.”

“Magnificent.”

Rishi remembered the dragon asking what he would do if the hoard were entrusted to him. Here were more needs than he had been able to name: a cistern beneath three streets, lodging for families whose houses could not be entered, a payment beside a dead worker’s name. “I can tell you about people we met. I cannot decide for the ones we have never seen.”

“Give us what you know. The decisions will belong to the city, and the record will show who made them.”

Renaer turned the public account back toward her. “Keep the others’ work in this. If I stand beside Lady Silverhand, I will say I helped. Anyone who asks whether I found the keys or killed Xanathar will get the truth.”

“That is what I am asking.”

“They will still call me a hero.”

“You did fight,” Maeril said. “I watched you. It was untidy, but unmistakable.”

He gave her a tired look, then bent over the draft again.

Vajra opened the next ledger. She grouped the pages beneath the map: repairs and housing, support for the injured and bereaved, then the work needed to keep the streets safe while rebuilding continued.

Rishi followed the marks for damaged water lines. One ran beneath the route to Erik’s house.

“We cannot spend everything on the visible breaks,” she said. “The sewers, cisterns, and foundations must be examined before people return.”

“And the crews doing it must be able to refuse ground that will kill them,” Rishi said.

“Rivenbeam has provided a thorough demonstration of the alternative,” Maeril said.

“Their surviving workers have begun giving statements,” Vajra said. “So have the families.”

Renaer pulled a thinner file from the stack. His name appeared on its cover. “You want me to administer these trusts.”

“If you accept. Compensation, repairs, and legal assistance for households damaged by the theft and the fighting over it. Trollskull Alley is among them.”

He opened the file. Rishi could see the words Trollskull Manor beneath his hand.

“Elisa should have been here to see this,” Renaer said.

Maeril put down her cup. “We intend to tell her. And Chime.”

Renaer looked toward the corridor. “What have they said about Firemind?”

Rishi had watched the masons turn a fragment beneath the lamplight that morning, trying it against three different edges. Each time they had set it down again. “They are still finding where the pieces belong.”

Vajra rested her hands on the table. “The petrification holds. Reversing it before the body can bear the change could turn every break into a wound. Some matter is missing. The priests, transmuters, and masons need to agree on what can safely replace it.”

“How long?” Maeril asked.

“I do not know.”

Renaer drew the restitution file closer. “Put his treatment here. Every specialist they need, for as long as they need one.”

“The expenditure will be recorded as restoration and care. His identity can remain in the protected records.”

Rishi looked up. “Who reads those?”

Vajra opened a smaller ledger beside the first. “The officials responsible for checking the expenditure. I answer for these entries to the Open Lord. The public record gives the amount and purpose; the sealed record identifies the person.”

She turned a page. Rishi saw payments for protected lodging and relocation, with a separate column for names.

“Publishing where we move a witness would undo the protection,” Vajra continued. “Paying an informant openly would kill some of them.”

“And how does a payment for a useful secret avoid becoming a payment to keep one?” Maeril asked.

“By leaving a record another person can examine. Secrecy cannot excuse missing money.”

“Or a false purpose,” Rishi said.

“Or a false purpose,” Vajra agreed. “The restrictions themselves will be public. No invented household, no repair that never happened.”

Rishi moved his hand away from the ledger. There would be choices he could not follow from this table. He could ask that someone remain answerable for them.

Renaer took up a pen. “Then I will do it. I want the terms attached to the appointment.”

“Careful,” Maeril said. “Continue like that and someone may respect you.”

“I will bear it.”

He signed.

Vajra gathered the ledgers and took a sealed report from beneath them. “The Stone and the memory crystal were destroyed last night. Aurinax witnessed the working. We examined the remains before closing the chamber.”

Rishi straightened. “Lysaerra knew?”

“We asked before touching either. She consented.”

He let the breath out slowly.

“She is still with Mereth,” Vajra continued. “There is a quiet estate she may use, with guarded grounds and wards against divination. She can choose the people who attend her.”

“And choose to remain at the Spires?” Maeril asked.

“Or ask for another arrangement. Mereth made that very clear.”

Rishi glanced at Maeril.

She had picked up her cup again, but had not drunk. “The unicorn?”

“They brought it aboveground with the wounded. It is eating, and the healers are tending the leg. Mereth has found somewhere quieter for it to rest.”

Maeril closed her eye briefly.

Renaer set down the pen. “Thorvin has gone as well. I released him when we returned. He asked for his tools before he asked whether Xanathar was dead.”

“He left freely?” Rishi asked.

“Through my front door. With everything he brought.”

“The Order needs his drawings,” Maeril said. “Nar’l told us he destroyed the Dream Nullifier.”

Vajra took a blank sheet. “I will have what remains secured and examined. Send the drawings with the warnings he gave you.”

“Thorvin was afraid of it before Nar’l broke it. Tell them not to mistake wreckage for something harmless.”

“They will be warned.”

She wrote the order and placed it beside the door reports.

“And Nar’l’s people?” Renaer asked.

“The Watch has confirmed his death. The surviving swordsman is in custody. Force Grey is taking the Guild’s remaining strongpoints; Manshoon’s cells are scattering. Some have asked to surrender.”

Maeril’s fingers loosened around her cup at Nar’l’s name. Rishi looked down at the hand he had used to cover the drow’s face. The skin across his knuckles had split again during the recovery.

“Keep the prisoners where they can be questioned,” Rishi said.

“They are guarded. I want answers from them too.”

Rishi moved his hand beneath the table. “And Firemind’s room?”

“Ward and guard both. Access is limited to those treating him and the people we agree may visit. His presence here will not be announced.”

Maeril reached into her satchel and laid the wrapped halves of the portal wand on an empty part of the table. “This is what may help us find the other two.”

Vajra leaned forward, leaving the wrapping closed. “I read your note. The books you requested are being brought up. There is a study on the upper floor with a warded desk.”

“And someone who knows how these remnants behave?”

“I will examine it with you. Bring me your first reading this evening. Until then, keep the pieces separate.”

“I had reached that conclusion.”

“I find it useful to hear you say so.”

Renaer folded the public account and laid it over his appointment. “My father’s name will be everywhere by tomorrow. Mine beside it.”

Rishi looked at the restitution file. “Then let people know where to find you.”

Renaer watched him.

“Stand where they put you,” Rishi continued. “Make it feed people.”

The pen moved once between Renaer’s fingers. He placed it across the file. “I can do that.”

Maeril rewrapped the wand and stood, easing her bad leg before putting weight on it. “We owe Gondafrey and Duhlark a visit. Grim is expecting his book. After that, I intend to become very difficult about planar references.”

“Food will be brought to the study,” Vajra said.

Maeril paused with her satchel open. “You have some experience with this.”

Vajra slid the final report into its folder. “Go while there is daylight. I will see you this evening.”

Rishi took up his staff. At the door he looked back at the ledgers, then at Renaer gathering the signed papers.

He had a worker’s name to bring to the repair authority when they returned.