by Ed Greenwood
Korvaun nodded. "I see," he said, and did. "Yes."
"Good. The gods smile on us both this day," Mirt said briskly. "Now, how many coins d'ye want?"
"I know not, yet. Master Dyre said he'd send us an accounting."
"An' ye can send word to me, an' I'll have coins or tradebars or both ready here for your hands-your hands, mind, not some servant or fellow lordling-to claim."
Mirt's second decanter was almost empty. Korvaun regarded him in some amazement. He was fat, yes, but this firebelly stuff! The man should be slurring his words at least by now! Korvaun started to stammer thanks.
One large and hairy hand shot out in a silencing wave. "'Tis the least I can do to help such a rare breed: a noble who sees the city so clearly an' cares about what meets his eyes. Yet I can do something more, an' believe I will. If Waterdeep needed ye, would ye answer the call?"
Korvaun blinked. "But of course-"
That large, silencing hand worked its power again. "If I asked ye to do a service-large or small, perilous or seemingly silly-for our city, would ye? Dropping all else an' with no thought of fame nor reward?"
The youngest Lord Helmfast met the old moneylender's gaze squarely and said quietly, "Yes. This I swear."
"Good. Fix in your memory, then, two words: 'searchingstar' and 'stormbird.' Got them?"
"I-searchingstar? "
"Aye, and stormbird."
Korvaun nodded.
"Good," the Old Wolf said again. "Now remember also this: if a stranger says 'searchingstar' to ye, ye're to get yourself here as fast as your legs can bring you an' say 'searchingstar' to whoever answers the door. If some stranger instead says 'stormbird' to ye, do the same-but bring whatever friend ye've confided in."
"Friend? You suggest I'd confide in-"
Mirt made a rude sound. "However hard ye swear to the contrary, here an' now, ye'll tell a friend all about this. Young, excited lads always do."
"I-"
Mirt's hand went up again. "Spare me your protests, but mind ye tell someone who can hold his tongue, or ye'll discover the hard way that I've never seen ye before, an' this little chat never happened."
Korvaun nodded. "I quite understand."
"There's something else ye should know, wise young noble, something to tell ye not to always trust in what ye see."
Mirt brought something else up from behind his battered chair: something small enough to fit in his palm. It gleamed, yet bent easily in Mirt's stubby fingers-but slipped back into its former shape as he shifted his grip. It looked like a miniature shield, with a flat top and sides but a rounded bottom, or at least it did until Mirt turned it the other way up and held it forth. Leather thongs dangled from it, making it now look more like an eyepatch than anything else.
"This," Mirt said simply, "is a slipshield. Touch it."
"A what?"
"A little secret of the city. Touch it."
Hesitantly, Korvaun did as he was bid. It felt… hard. Like wood, solid and smooth, neither hot nor cold.
Mirt had muttered something, and now drew back, fastened the thongs loosely around his arm, pushed the little shield against his arm with one finger, and murmured something else Korvaun couldn't hear.
The Old Wolf's features melted, blurred-and Korvaun was looking at himself.
"Aren't I handsome?" his own voice asked him. "Give a young noble a kiss? No? Look down at your hands."
Korvaun did so-and discovered to his horror that they were hairy and knobby-knuckled, with stubby fingers and calluses. They were the hands that had waved him to silence and hefted decanters. Mirt's hands.
He looked up at his double, but its shape was blurring, and his own hands were, too. Then the image of Korvaun was gone, and the stout, shaggy old moneylender was holding the little shield in his hand and grinning at him. Korvaun quickly looked down. His own hands were back, too. So the slipshield was a device that let two men trade shapes.
"Let that be the secret I'll test your keeping of," Mirt said as he dropped the shield into Korvaun's palm. "Now be off with ye, before your bodyguards reluctantly decide something's happened to ye and they'd better start earning their pay. Back on the streets with ye, an' back to getting rich. From the day ye pick up my coins, ye've a year to pay me back."
Korvaun discovered his mouth was still agape. He closed it hastily to stammer his thanks.
Mirt snorted and showed him to the door, slapping the unfinished firebelly decanter into his hand. "A gift. Ye'll be needing it, Lord Helmfast."
Korvaun managed a smile. "You speak with conviction. Are you a seer?"
The moneylender snorted. "Ye're tryin' to do the right thing, lad. D'ye think to be the first man who won't be punished for it?"
Mirt sneezed again and slashed aside another black, clinging armful of cobwebs. Well, 'twasn't as if this tunnel got used every day. The lantern in his hand was getting uncomfortably warm, so he must be almost there by now.
Aye, there 'twas. And at least he wasn't making this trip at the dead puffing run, with some disaster or other rocking the city above him. 'Twas good some of the young noble pups were finally showing signs of taking up the mantle of responsibility. At last. At far too long and bleeding last.
And wonder of the gods, if young Helmfast wasn't actually seeing for himself that the common folk had true cause for complaint!
Mirt passed his hand along the wall at ankle height, and was rewarded with a momentary glow. Aye, right here.
He trailed his fingertips up the rough stone to the familiar knobs, curled his palm around one of them in such a way that his fingertips pressed onto the stones in spread array, and a door-sized oval of wall abruptly swung inward, revealing faint blue gloom beyond.
Mirt stepped through, to be greeted by the sound of a young lass choking.
The duty apprentice was seated at the usual desk, with a glow-stone resting on the pages of what might be a spellbook but then again might just be a heaving-bosoms chapbook. She'd dropped both book and stone in haste as the opening of the seldom-used secret door startled her, and grabbed for a ready wand beneath the still-bouncing book.
That wild grab had forced her to hastily swing her feet down from their perch on the far end of the desk, and her fashionable boots had brained her backup-who was now slumping senseless to the floor. So much for Tower guardroom rules about the backup sentinel watching from no closer than the far doorway.
Mirt put away his growing grin and set down his lantern as it became clear the tangle-haired young mage was in real trouble. The wand shook in her hand, and she was making strange gargling, mewing sounds as she spat out too little of a hot-mussels-and-gravy bun.
Mirt could lurch forward with surprising speed when he had to, and in a trice he'd snatched the wand from her trembling hand and flung it aside, then come around the desk and laid hold of one booted ankle. Thankfully these slender, high pointy-toed jobs didn't come off all that easily, so he could do this:
He hauled hard, put a foot on her stool, pushed off as if he was starting to climb a steep stair-and the choking apprentice was suddenly upside down.
Her fashionable skirts fell away to reveal old petticoats with holes in them and a stained undersash that wasn't much cleaner than Mirt's own customary clout. Her face promptly changed from trying to turn blue to also trying to blush crimson at the same time.
The Old Wolf shook the lass once, vigorously, then thumped her on the back hard enough to make her limbs bounce and flail like a rag doll's.
"This'll clear your pipes!" he announced heartily, watching hot mussels, gravy, and half-chewed bread shoot past his boots. Before she could even begin to sob for breath, he threw her up into the air, caught her waist in both hands, and spun her upright like a wheel.
She was taller and more gangly than Asper, and Mirt got an unintentional elbow in his face for his pains, but in another moment she was coughing and crying all over her desk, with Mirt resting one hand on her flank to keep her standing.
It took her some time to
recover her breath, and Mirt passed it by reading her book-it was a heaving-bosoms affair, by Sharess! — aloud.
"'The bruising strength of his grip made her gasp, and even as she twisted furiously away, cursing her silks for their lack of handy daggers, she knew she'd been dangerously-possibly fatally-wrong about him.'
'"A moment later, her fingers found what they'd been straining for… and a moment after that, he knew it too.'"
Mirt chuckled. "Ho-ho, but this is ripe stuff!" He thumbed a few pages, ate the discarded end of her bun with lip-smacking enjoyment, then glanced at still-heaving shoulders and asked, "Are ye all right yet, lass?"
"M-my… my…" She was still fighting for breath and turning to face him slowly, hands far from her belt dagger-or the one strapped to her ankle that Mirt's rough medicine had just revealed.
"Wand? 'Tis under my boot-and staying there, until ye settle down."
"Who are you?"
Mirt grinned at what he could see of the tear-streaked face through all the hair. "Call me Elminster-and get me Laeral straightaway, aye?"
Large, dark eyes goggled at him as frantic fingers dragged hair out of the way, then the still-raw voice that went with them managed to stammer, "The L–Lady Laeral is, uh, elsewhere at the moment."
"Then," Mirt growled grandly, "I suppose Old Windbag-Khelben, to ye-will have to do."
A strange expression crossed the guard-prentice's face as mirth rose to join anger and embarrassment. Abruptly she gasped, "Stay here!" and rushed out of the room, looking even more like she was struggling not to laugh.
Mirt waited for her to look back and then disappear around the first bend of the ascending stair. Then he set off after her. He knew where she was almost certainly heading.
A short but wheezing journey later, they arrived more or less together at a certain door, where the guard-prentice gave Mirt an angry, helpless glare, and whispered something to its latch, almost as if she was kissing it.
The door clicked and moved a little, as if a lock had been released, and the apprentice quickly stepped forward, whirling to slam it shut again-and discovered that the fat stranger had somehow crossed three paces of passage and got not just his foot, but an entire leg through the door in her wake, and there was just no way she was going to be able to get it closed.
The rest of Mirt followed his bold leg into the chamber, favoring her with a fond grin. "Shouldn't ye be getting back to your post?"
The mage drew herself up to say something really blistering-and someone else said an oath for her, a long and heartfelt string of obscenities that owed so much to spell-inferences and references to wizards long dead that its heat was quite lost in its own bewildering grandeur.
"I love ye, too," Mirt replied affably, as the Lord Mage of Waterdeep came toward them like a thundercloud, with the chaos of collapsing spells singing and lashing across the vast chamber behind him like wildly whipping mooring ropes flung by a storm-ropes that glowed and spat showers of sparks and flung lightnings, that is.
So large was that room that it should not have been able to fit inside the neighborhood, let alone the slender girth of Blackstaff Tower-yet most of it was occupied by a gigantic stone head that any Waterdhavian would know at a glance as belonging to one of the Walking Statues of Waterdeep. Mirt knew Khelben was "bringing them all in" this month to augment their enchantments, but couldn't identify any of the strangeness in the air around the head as more than just "powerful magic."
There were glowing golden lines of force, now drifting slowly to the floor. Along and above some of them were elaborate runes and words, written in flowing script on the empty air, and here and there Mirt could even see tiny gemstones and winking motes of light orbiting a few of the sigils. It looked like hours of work to him… and by the expression adorning the Blackstaff's face, probably was.
From somewhere down near her boots the guard-prentice found her voice. It emerged quavering dangerously, but quite loud enough. "S-sorry, Lord Master. I bring Elminster, who craves audience with you."
The exhaustion, loss, and rage warring on Khelben's face twisted into something like incredulity. "That's not Elminster! Idiot lass! He's not nearly so handsome!"
The apprentice recoiled from her master's anger but glanced helplessly at the fat, spiderweb-covered bulk of Mirt. Her face changed. She struggled again for a moment, as if she was going to choke anew, and then burst into helpless giggles.
With the last of his great web of spells crashing soundlessly to the floor behind him, Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun clasped his hands behind his back, gave his helpless apprentice a disgusted look, and swung his glare back to Mirt.
"Well, whatever do you want?"
Mrelder nodded thanks to the wench as she set down the latest round of ale.
The dozen men in the booth with him-apprentices, daycoin-men, and hireswords, strangers all-took up the tankards and drank deeply.
His offer of a free highsun meal with drink had bought him their time, and a few sly hints about a rich, fat, easily plucked pigeon of a merchant had won their close attention.
The theft he was hiring them for was pure fancy, of course. The men in the booth would probably always wonder how the plot had unraveled but would have no doubts about the fate of the man who'd hired them-or rather, the man whose face Mrelder currently wore. That unfortunate would be found dead in an alley before nightfall. Golskyn's mongrelmen would make sure of it.
Mrelder set down his tankard and tried not to be seen scratching. His father's spells had reattached his arm, but the fingers always felt numb, now, and the rest of it itched damnably. "Our time draws to a close. Questions?"
"What of the Watch?" asked a sell-sword.
The disguised sorcerer put on a grim face. "Greater concerns ride them than what we offer."
Uneasy glances were exchanged. "There's trouble in the city?"
"Trouble enough," Mrelder told them. "'Tis whispered Lord Piergeiron's passed into the Halls of Tempus."
"The Open Lord, dead?" someone gasped incredulously.
His neighbor gave him a sharp elbow. "How else d'ye get there, fool? And when the answer comes, try not to shout it quite so loud!"
"Aye," Mrelder said in a grim whisper. "The Lords're keeping it secret. Until they let it be known, I'd be taking it as a favor if you'd keep it secret too."
Every one of the dozen grunted agreement, but every last one of them drained their tankards in haste and looked to him for dismissal. Mrelder doubted their eagerness to depart came from any desire to return to work. He waved them away, hiding his smile with his ale.
By day's end, Dock Ward would be buzzing with the rumor of Piergeiron's death.
CHAPTER SIX
A trio of revel-bound matrons bustled past Lark, their feathered cloaks aswirl in the evening breeze. Self-satisfied confidence wafted from them like perfume-never mind that they resembled a gaggle of fattened geese. Lark batted away an errant feather and fought down a moment of panic.
"Gods going sideways," she murmured under her breath. "I don't know if I can go through with this."
Stars twinkled over elegant Sea Ward, and the night air was turning cool. Lark had surreptitiously tossed her old cloak over one of the ornamental spires adorning a grand railing two blocks back, and the breeze ghosting past her bared shoulders made her shiver.
She suppressed an urge to tug at the low-cut bodice. Faendra's gown was absent from much of her upperworks and clung to her hips as if it was dripping wet. Lark had never stepped out of doors in such scant garb, nor, for that matter, had her mother. This was a strange city, to be sure, where fine ladies showed the world more flesh than Luskan's dockside whores!
But then, Lark thought cynically, judging by the gems on lavish display around her, these noblewomen got a better price for their… wares.
Jewels sparkled in the night as women-and men, for that matter-alighted from gilded coaches. They swept down the street toward Westwind Villa in a grand promenade to the strains of hired minstrelsy.
Don't hurry. Hold your gown up as if you're used to doing it, and DON'T HURRY. Only a few steps more.
At the head of the stair, tall and many-paneled doors stood open to reveal golden light and revelry beyond. She could hear the announcements now over a rising hubbub of chatter and mirth.
"Lord and Lady Gauntyl," the doorwarden declaimed haughtily. Everyone ascended another step. She was the only one climbing the steps alone. Lark swallowed hard.
"Lord and Lady Thongolir," the warden said grandly.
Another step. Lark reminded herself that the Texter had thought she was worth the price of her freedom and good enough to serve him still, in the small, secret way hidden beneath her belt, inside her gown.
"Lord Ulboth Tchazzam, and the Lone Lady Carina Tchazzam," the doorwarden announced, his voice rolling out into the vast, growing din of revelry. Ah. They'd be brother and sister, not a couple.
One of the guards on the topmost step was peering at her suspiciously. Oh, Lady Luck, be with me now!
Lark forced herself to raise her chin a trifle more and kept her eyes cool and the faint half-smile she'd learned so long ago on her lips.
"Lord and Lady Manthar."
Then she was on the top step, and the doorwarden was giving her a faint frown.
She turned her head just far enough to give him her half-smile and murmured, "Lady Evenmoon, of the Evenmoons of Tashluta." That should be far enough away that she wouldn't have to fear dozens of Tashlutans loudly proclaiming her an impostor, and it certainly sounded better than: A tavern wench from Luskan, daughter of a dockside trull, in a borrowed gown.