Paper Cuts

It was the fourth hour of night, and the Promenade was drowsing. Truly, as was known up and down the Sword Coast, it never slept; the avatar of the commercial Amnish soul always had to keep at least one eye open for a bargain. But now, with the lamps going out under the eaves of the last tardy shops, and blinds covering all save two of the market stands, little remained to keep feet moving along the terraces and coin changing hands. The regular guard patrols discouraged lower class loitering, and the upper classes had warmer locations at their disposal than the darkened pavements of Waukeen's Promenade. Another hour or two, and the carts would begin to roll through the east gate, then the barrel-men and fish-wives, with a rearguard of street-sweepers following them, brushes carried like pikes on thin shoulders. But now – now he could enjoy the deep quiet, the pause between the breathes of a dozing giant.

Sand closed his eyes and inhaled. Spices and the fresh airs of night and fumes from the incense burners. To his right, honeysuckle. To his left, garlic frying in olive oil: one of his neighbours dining late, no doubt.

It had taken him a hundred and fifty years to find a city that by-and-large worked. There was no imminent invasion, no mysterious sickness; there were no recruiting drums beating up and down these streets. Many times, he had thought that everything was up for him, that one of the nastier deities had decided to stretch out a fat index finger and wipe him from the board. And yet he was alive. And well. Thriving, almost. So now he resolved to appreciate the unlikely fact of his survival. To forget the past, the future, the challenges of finding a reliable cheap supply of wolfsroot when the trade-routes to the mountains were always closing.

He poured himself a shot of anisette from the decanter on his balcony table. "A hundred years, Sand," he murmured, adding to the deserted market stalls below him, "and a hundred years to you too."

He put a hand on the railing, not yet drinking, not wanting to return to his usual preoccupations.

Although it was night, and barely spring, wrapped in a fur mantle and with a brazier radiating the balcony with warmth, he felt as comfortable as he might have on a midsummer's morning in Neverwinter, and a great deal safer.

On the opposite side of the market, he saw fabrics shake. Heard the rustling of a dress. Above them, a glimmer of red hair. He narrowed his eyes, but the person had gone – disappeared into one of the many hidden courtyards and lay behind the row of merchant's houses

The moment was broken. He was disquieted. He drained the anisette, poured a second glass, and sat down at his desk to catch up on his correspondence. The ink-well was dry. Not feeling like fetching water from the pool in the atrium, he tipped a few drops of spirits into the ink to liquefy it. Well, it seemed to work. He hoped that Harcourt wouldn't sniff the paper and decide that he was in danger of addiction. But in that case, his friend might rush southwards to his aid, so perhaps the aromatic ink wasn't such a terrible idea. Especially if he could persuade Harcourt to visit the thermal baths with him.

Ches, 14.

My very dear Harcourt,

I cannot express with what delight I received your last letter. Enough for you to know that I had been awaiting the arrival of my annual summons to be cross-examined and potentially cross-sectioned by the Athkatlan bureaucracy concerning my licence to practise magic. The heavy knock at my door made me fear that the interview had been cancelled in favour of immediate deportation to somewhere unutterably horrible and vulgar: the Underdark, perhaps, or any halfling village you care to name, full of gluttons and clog-dancing, where even you would hesitate to look for me.

Imagine my delight upon finding instead a messenger from Candlekeep on my doorstep, delight only a little marred when he demanded a huge amount of money as a tip for his 'good service' (!) before he would consent to hand over your parcel. Next time please send me someone less financially astute. I suggest casting your net among the idealistic throng of baby adventurers, and sending your haul on a quest to save the universe (Address: The Glass Retort, Second Tier, Waukeen's Promenade.) They will do it for free. Faerun needs cures for fungal infections more than it needs fabulous magic swords, which it has already in sickening abundance; but no ballad has yet been written about the hero who found a remedy for mushrooms growing in the wrong place.

Anyway, the manuscripts are here, on my desk, and immaculate. A thousand thanks. One from me, and the rest from all of the well-paying customers whom my work will one day relieve considerably (just what of I leave to you to decide.)

That you have been promoted – again - is hardly a surprise. Or if it is a surprise, it is so only because you are a capable and intelligent young human clearly deserving of your new rank. Yes, still young! In the normal order of things, I fear that those with a dragon-wrestling barbarian warlord for their great-great-great-grandfather are too often given preferment at the expense of those with talent and focus. But even when we first met in the atrium of your old master's house in the Blacklake district, your gifts were apparent to the discerning eye – and two were on you that day, at least. Since then, the War, your courage in the matter of the murderer of Blacklake, and your actions at the start of the Spellplague – these have all confirmed and more than confirmed your earlier promise.

I will leave discussion of the things that interest us both to our next meeting for the usual reasons.

Life in Athkatla continues well. Well, life continues. A little miracle in itself, and one that the few who remain in Neverwinter and Luskan cannot expect for themselves. I find the Amnish every bit as acquisitive, selfish and mercenary as I was warned, and I rejoice in it. Rejoicingly. Your friend is a happy Sand when he counts his takings in the warm southern evenings. And don't pull that face! You know I have some purer concerns than the purity of the gold coins in my bank vault. But no one here suggests I should risk my life for the good of the state. No one uses blackmail and holy fervour to force me to do what I would have done voluntarily, Tyr rest milord Nasher's soul.

I miss much about my former home, and not only the regular sight of you and – you know the rest, my dear. Still, there are plenty of distractions from the pains of nostalgia in Athkatla available to the man of means, or to the mean elf with a knowledge of disintegration spells, for that matter. Plays, lectures, feasts, gardens, a circus – not the amateur kind that we were once involved in at Crossroad Keep, but a real professional circus with a real professional elephant. And lately there has been a curious addition to the old – now rather expensive and genteel – slum district.

A Festhall. Do you know what that is? Nothing like The Moonstone Mask, I assure you. The attendants are all literate and numerate, and remarkably few appear to have the pox. Festhalls are branches of the Society of Sensation, an organisation rooted in Sigil and, it seems, currently occupied in seeding itself wherever a door is opened between it and the Prime. These Sensates believe that to be truly alive, one must endeavour to feel, to experience, as much as possible. And to help their acolytes, disciples and bored members of the public to follow the path to enlightenment, they provide 'sensory stones', a kind of glass bauble which captures and preserves the memories of a donor and offers them up to whoever wishes in exchange for a small fee or a memory of their own. I gave them my memory of alphabetizing my file of invoices for potion ingredients on a gloomy winter's day when I had a cold. Let the voyeurs sensate themselves with that. The worthwhile memories are just for the two of us.

In the sensory chamber, some wag had switched all the labels on the stones. This led to some unpleasant surprises. A picnic in the meadows of Rashemen involved no meadows, no Rashemen and the picnic was a victim who was devoured by, judging from the tentacles, a polymorphed illithid. I could see, and hear, and smell, and taste everything. I could feel the shapeshifter's thoughts. I think I could even taste the thoughts of its victim.

The next stone promised an in depth tour of a yuan ti bordello – you would have chosen the same, so stop smirking. What I got was thirty minutes in the life of a prisoner at Zhentil Keep. I fear very much that their life did not extend for another thirty minutes. After that I saw a great many things I would rather not have seen – a man burning but not consumed by the flames that sprang from his body, an astral deva held crucified against a wall of bodies by a thousand silver splinters, a vampire on the prowl in Athkatla's own metropolis of the dead. Someone will certainly be renewing his stocks of holy water in the near future.

Within the final stone I visited, I saw something more unpleasant than in all of the previous memories put together. Surely a just punishment for engaging in such a crass past-time! The one comfort is that the experience becomes somehow distant, difficult to hold in the mind, as soon as the stone's spell is broken. I was not greatly traumatised, but nor did I learn anything of use. Who knows what innovations we may see imported from Sigil in the future? But as long as its lawyers and alchemists stay away, I will not complain – much.

Your faithful

Sand

p.s. Do you want to know what I saw in the final stone? Then wait till you see me a ten-day from now, and I'll tell you about it in as much detail as I can recall and you wish to hear.