The City of Splendors

by Ed Greenwood

  “What? By who?”

  “By whom, lad, by whom. Ye don’t want to sound unlettered. How d’ye think street urchins earn coppers enough for a daily gnaw-bun, hey? By running an’ telling some merchant ye’re strolling down his lane, or some gossipmonger who wants to Know All, an’ resell some of it for brighter coin … or some creditor, that ye’ve wandered within reach at last.”

  Mirt swallowed most of the contents of his decanter at a single gulp without apparent effect and growled, “Yet ye spoke of having coin enough not to need my hand a-clutching at your purse, or if it falls empty, something else ye keep dangling rather near it.”

  Korvaun frowned. “I really came here for advice,” he said quietly. Lifting his decanter, he peered into its depths, and his frown deepened.

  “Drink,” Mirt bade gruffly. “ ’Tis fine. Nothing but the finest horsepiss do we serve young noble visitors wise enough to know how dunderheaded they are! I grow older and thirstier by the breath, so out with it, lad: what troubles ye?”

  Korvaun grimaced. “Dyre’s furious with us. He said all of us reach a time when consequences can no longer be laughed away, and that his friends—all the merchants and shopkeepers of the city—would be watching us. He made it sound like the city was two steps away from rising to butcher all nobles!”

  Mirt took a swig from his decanter, sighed in appreciation, and asked it, “Did he, now? How unusually candid of him. Ye should be grateful he managed to speak so bluntly, instead of trailing off into cursing the way most of us coarse lowborn do. I hope ye remembered more of his words than just that much.”

  Korvaun found that his mouth had fallen open. Uncomfortably aware of the weight of the Old Wolf’s gaze, Korvaun murmured, “I’d never considered before that the commoners might get angry at, well, the way of things.”

  Mirt’s gaze turned mocking, and Korvaun found himself burning with embarrassment.

  “I mean, at what we young nobles have always done—pranks and swordplay and jollity. The common folk always just seemed to—”

  “Get out of the way as best they could, an’ otherwise just stand and take it?”

  “Well, yes. Exactly. And yet I see it, now: they’re right to be furious. We smash what they can ill afford to lose, and our jests mock them even when we don’t mean to … and yet most of the time we do.”

  Mirt nodded. “The road to being deeply loved, no?”

  “No,” Korvaun agreed a little grimly, and drank.

  Liquid fire promptly ran up his nose as well as down his gullet, and left him sputtering.

  The Old Wolf chuckled, deftly plucked the decanter from failing Helmfast hands, and dealt Korvaun a slap on the back that would have led to prompt face-first disaster if he hadn’t also raised the knuckles of his decanter-holding hand like a wall in front of Korvaun’s chest.

  Korvaun wiped away tears and croaked, “What is this … stuff?”

  “Firebelly. ’Tis all the rage in the pirate ports, an’ goes well with the strongest cheese. Makes your breath sweet, clears out the pipes—as ye’ve found—an’ is very good for ye.”

  Through still-watery eyes Korvaun found Mirt grinning at him, and gasped, “Are you drinking it, too?”

  “Of course I am, ye silly man; I have some professional ethics. So it’s dawned on ye at last that the common folk of our fair city might be discontented an’ have cause to be. An’ now? ”

  “An uprising would be terrible. It must be forestalled, and you … are of common birth, wise to the streets, and yet are … well, widely rumored to be—”

  Mirt’s eyes were bright and steady, offering no aid at all, and Korvaun wallowed in blushing embarrassment for a breath or two ere he managed to blurt: “—a Lord of Waterdeep!”

  “Well, now. Rumors can be such ugly things, can they not?”

  “So can truths,” Korvaun told him quietly. “Nobles learn that much, at least. Even when secrets …” He paused, wondering just how to say what was in his thoughts.

  “Are such fun, an’ the game that all your elders are playing?” Mirt asked, his voice very dry.

  Their gazes met squarely. After a moment, Korvaun nodded.

  “Merchants are no different from nobles when it comes to secrets,” the Old Wolf said gruffly, reaching down behind his chair to bring up a second decanter. “ ’Tis just that more of our secrets are about money. Nobles have more idle time to play at pride an’ betrayal, but your biggest, sharpest secrets are all about coins, too. Inheritance, hidden debts, obligations, trade-ties gone wrong; all of that.”

  “All of that,” Korvaun agreed. “So what should be done—no, what can I do—to take the commoners a step back from their anger?”

  Mirt unstoppered his new decanter, sniffed it, and asked the stopper curiously, “Why should ye do anything?”

  “Well, if we nobles are the cause, we must be the ones to make amends, and it seems fairly clearly that we are the cause.”

  “Ye’ve taken the first stride already, young lord: ye’ve admitted that, an’ seen Waterdeep differently because of it. Now, if ye could bring your young friends around to the same view …”

  “I’ll do that!” Korvaun said with sudden fire. “I’ll go and tell—”

  “No,” Mirt growled, “ye’ll not.”

  The youngest Lord Helmfast blinked at him. “Whyever not?”

  “No one ever convinced a hot-headed young noble of anything—at least, not one who still keeps his brains in his codpiece an’ hasn’t yet had his teeth handed back to him by the world—by talking to him. Ye rush in with your jaw flapping, an’ they’ll listen an’ think poor Korvaun’s gone straight into gods-mazed idiocy, an’ can safely be ridiculed or humored but either way ignored. Events have to bring your fellow lordlings around to seeing this for themselves.”

  “ ‘Events’? Like a city-wide riot?”

  The retort brought a slow smile to Mirt’s lips. “No, that’d make them see foes to stick their fancy blades through. I was thinking more the sort of ‘hard lesson’ events that knock sense into us all, events that sometimes—just sometimes, mind ye—can be nudged into happening by, well, by a young nobleman who’s almost half as clever as he thinks he is. The sort of events that your mother an’ every other woman her age learned long ago.”

  Korvaun frowned. “I beg your—?”

  “Nay, ye do nothing of the kind. Ye look for a challenge, if ye beg my pardon or anything else in that tone. Stop thinking with your pride for just a breath an’ see what I’m saying: now, don’t all the noble ladies ye know, young and old, arrange things to make their menfolk or brothers or sons react in some way they’d like? Get angry an’ insist on something, mayhap? Or regard some matter as touching the honor of the House, an’ thus demanding the opposite response from them than they’d said they’d give, a little earlier?”

  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 trade-bars 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: ‘searching-star’ 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 glowstone 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.