When Mirt awoke and rolled over, it was gray dawn. Beside him, the bed was empty. He looked first for his sword and laid it by long habit close within reach. Then he dressed quickly and quietly, as was his wont, stretching once or twice as cats do.
Nalitheen came into the room before he was done, with two steaming tankards of what smelled like bull- tongue broth. She stopped suddenly at the sight of him fully dressed.
She was barefoot, and as a warming-robe wore a once-fine, patched gown, open down the front but loosely belted at the waist. She handed him one tankard with what might have been a smile and sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling what she wore more tightly around her.
'You'll be leaving, then?' she asked, raising her eyes to his. There was something strange in them.
Mirt nodded slowly. 'I must. The company rides again, this afternoon, after we've bought food enough to ride on.' He sipped, and nodded appreciatively. 'My thanks- this is welcome, indeed.'
Nalitheen looked at him. 'So was your kindness last night,' she said. Mirt met her gaze steadily, and then deliberately drained his tankard and rose. A gold piece fell from his hand to clatter inside it as he set it down.
'One more thing, if you will,' he said slowly. Nalitheen raised her eyebrows over her tankard, as she sipped her still-steaming broth.
'Show me your daughters,' Mitt said softly, almost pleading.
Nalitheen looked at him for a moment, the tankard suddenly forgotten in her hand, and then nodded and led him to a curtain in one corner of the room.
The door behind it was locked. Expressionlessly, Nalitheen put one end of the curtain into Mirt's hand'. Then she bent and took a slim key from beneath a floorboard in a corner nearby, fitted it to the lock, and swung the door wide. A ladder led upward into soft gloom.
Nalitheen waved him forward. Mirt nodded and climbed the ladder slowly and carefully. The rungs creaked under his weight. The ladder ended in a little room under the eaves of the house, rosy now with the first true light of dawn. Great, wondering dark eyes waited for him there, as two sleepy, tousle-headed lasses stared at him from their shared bed.
'Naleetha and Boroldira,' Nalitheen introduced them from behind him. Mirt turned at the harshness of her tone and saw her knuckles white around a dagger she clutched, its wickedly sharp point toward him. 'Borold's,' she added, flatly, nodding down at it.
Mirt met her burning eyes for a long, silent moment, then deliberately turned his back, to face the girls in the bed. 'Ladies.' he greeted them gravely, bowing as if they were high ladies of a court, 'I am Mirt the Wolf. Pray accept my apologies for disturbing your slumber. Naleetha, Boroldira; I am pleased to have met you.'
He smiled and turned back to Nalitheen, the smile still on his lips. 'Thank you,' he said simply. He stepped past her blade as though it was not there and went back down the ladder, not hurrying. He strode on, with Nalitheen behind him, on and down the stairs below, to the front door of the house.
When he turned, Nalitheen was standing on the lowest step of the stair, trembling, the dagger in her hands. Tears glistened in her eyes.
'Put the blade away, milady,' Mirt said softly. 'There's no need for that.'
Nalitheen shook her head, slowly and helplessly, and let the dagger fall to the floor. She stared down at it silently, her hair fallen around her shading her face.
'How long have you known?' Mirt asked her quietly.
'T-they told me who killed him,' Nalitheen whispered, and then looked up at him angrily through her tears, head to one side. 'They told me Mirt the Merciless killed my man. I've waited for you. Two long seasons, lying alone and crying every night. I wondered if you'd ever come close enough to me for this dagger to reach.'
'And now?' Mirt asked, unmoving, holding her gaze.
'Last night was different,' Nalitheen sobbed, and looked away, striding along the bottom step of the stairs. She wheeled at its end, and cried, 'How long have
'Last night. When you told me how he died,' Mirt told her truthfully.
'And you stayed?'
'I'd paid,' Mirt replied mildly, and then added, 'No, that was cruel. I trusted you with my life, Nalitheen. Then and now.'
He drew his blade, slowly. Nalitheen flinched but did not draw back. Meeting her eyes steadily, Mirt upended his scabbard and shook a cloth bag out of its depths. The coins inside it clinked heavily as he put it into her hands.
'This,' he said gently, closing her fingers around it with his own, 'is for you, and Naleetha, and Boroldira. I'm sorry. I'll come again, and there'll be more. You have my word on that.'
Nalitheen looked at him, unmoving and expressionless, the gold in her hands. Mirt kissed her forehead gently, resheathed his blade, and fetched down his cloak from a peg.
'Gods bless you for your charity, Mirt,' Nalitheen whispered, sounding more weary than bitter. She shivered, shook her head a little, and closed her eyes, leaning against the door frame.
' ‘Tis not charity,' the Wolf of Waterdeep told her almost fiercely as he turned to go out into the brightening street, 'for I'll be back.'
'You offend me, pig of a merchant,' the Calishite said, his accent as heavy as his perfume. Though Velzraedo Hlaklavarr of Calimport was hardly slimmer than the wheezing figure sprawled with his boots up on the chair, Velzraedo was far better dressed. His spade-beard wagging, the Calishite added a delicate stream of curses that called into question Mirt's ancestry, personal hygiene, dietary habits, the hobbies and judgment of his mother, and his familiarity with camels. 'Kindly,' he added with a sneer, 'remove yourself from this seating you so indolently occupy. Its use is required by myself- Velzraedo Hlaklavarr of Calimport, First Finger of the Masked Vizier!'
Mirt's reply was a repetition of the mellifluous, echoing belch that had first offended the silk-clad envoy. 'My,' he told his fingernails, not moving from his sprawled position at the best table in the Brave Bustard, 'but it certainly seems mustard and quince were not meant to be in a sauce together-at least not in
The envoy interrupted his airy observation with a roar of rage. He snatched one of the dozen or so wicked silver-bladed throwing knives from the gleaming row adorning his belt. His arm was a blur of purple silk-right until the moment it crashed down on the table in the violent and bouncing company of Velzraedo Hlaklavarr's nose.
The Calishite's generous behind and gilded boots rose into the air, driven up by the chair that Mirt the Moneylender's boot had thrust into his guts. In the suddenly silent tavern, everyone heard the loud sob of pain and robbed breath that Velzraedo Hlaklavarr announced to the world.
Almost lazily Mirt plucked the knife from the Calishite's numbed fingers, used its point to skew aside the envoy's turban, and delicately brought a decanter of firewine down onto Velzraedo Hlaklavarr's balding head.
In the wake of that wet, solid blow, the Calishite jerked once, arms flailing weakly, rolled to one side, and lay still. His tongue hung loosely over the edge of the table.
Mirt looked up at the six grandly uniformed warriors the envoy had brought with him. He smiled, Velzraedo's throwing knife waggling ever-so-gendy between his fingers. 'Pity overwhelm us all, but he's collapsed. It must be the air in here-very bad, very bad. I fear my own offerings do nothing to improve that state of affairs, so perhaps His Fingerness will revive most speedily and completely elsewhere, hmm?'
The envoy's guards glared at Mirt, hands clenched on the hilts of their blades-then surveyed the dozen or so armed, scruffy men sitting tensely at the tables all around, weapons ready and bottles hefted for hurling. Dark eagerness burned in their eyes. Even the serving wenches had turned to glare, clay wine-jacks poised in their
