“So, Lord of Waterdeep,” the owner of the grandiose tent teased, eyeing Mirt from its far side. “Care to … catch me?”
“Well, now,” Mirt growled, “if it comes to pouncing, are you a kitten-or a tigress?”
“Come and see,” Rensharra purred.
With a roar Mirt lurched around one end of the bed-only to receive her gown in the face as his intended prey tossed it at him in the wake of her cartwheel away, across the bed.
She came up smiling. “I find it warm in here-do you?” Her eyes pointedly raked him from head to flopping old seaboots, ere she kicked off her own fashionable anklestar boots and fled from the room.
Mirt pursued her, obediently unhooking his jerkin as he went.
The attic door stood open, its glowstone unhooded to light the way, so he followed.
The light proved to be coming from the far end of the attic, where a clattering noise announced that Rensharra Ironstave was the owner of a box hoist, and had just ridden it down out of sight, probably into her cellar.
Mirt grinned and started working the winch. All good fun, this …
He was wheezing in earnest by the time the box appeared up out of the depths-containing her underslip, of course-and he was able to step into it and thankfully let go of the crank.
His plunge down the shaft was as noisy as it was swift, so it wasn’t until it ended with a dull, meaty thud that he noticed something was amiss.
Of course, the black-gloved arms sprawled out from under the box, and the thin ribbon of blood sliding out to join them, were the sorts of sights he’d seen all too often before.
He could tell at a glance that the arms were far too brawny to belong to Rensharra, so he spared them no more attention than to snatch up the needle-pointed dagger they’d let go of-covered in sticky orange-green Calishite poison, of course. In his experience, hired slayers sent to silence targets of lower rank than nobility and rulership seldom traveled alone.
The only light coming into the cellar spilled down an ascending stair at the far end of what looked to be the typical labyrinth of apple baskets, crocks of preserves, and shelves of oddments, so Mirt headed toward it.
He was halfway there when Rensharra screamed, and something made of crockery shattered loudly. Mirt went up the stairs like a bellowing bull, trying to sound frightening enough that anyone who’d cornered the lady clerk of the rolls would be distracted from making an actual kill by the volume and apparent formidability of an impending attack.
What he saw in the room above-her dining hall, by the looks of it-was Rensharra at the top of an ornamental pillar, clad only in net leggings, a clout, and a decorative black lace belt, kicking frantically at the hands of a masked and gloved man in black leathers who was half up atop her sideboard, trying to catch hold of her ankles to haul her back down. She’d just pulled off her dethma and was flailing him across the face with it, its metal-tipped breast cups clanging with every blow, as high and shrill as metal windchimes.
A second man in black leathers lay sprawled motionless on his back across the dining table, his jaw gaping and the shards of what must recently have been a large crockery flower flute scattered around his head-water, flowers, and all.
Mirt laughed aloud at what he saw, shouted, “Never fear, lass! I’ll save you!” and charged down the room, snatching up a chair as he went.
The man trying to snare Rensharra turned and dropped to the floor, clawing out and hurling a belt knife at his large and loud new foe.
Mirt batted it aside with the chair and threw his own newfound knife. It struck the man’s neck, stuck there for a moment, then continued on its way to quiver in the wall above the sideboard.
The man cursed, sounding more frightened than furious, and grabbed another knife from his belt.
Mirt threw the chair.
The man howled in pain as the hurtling furniture smashed some of his fingers, drove his arm back around behind him, and sent his second knife clanging and clattering into a corner. Then the chair hit the sideboard and rebounded off it, one leg askew, to strike the man from behind. It slid onward a little way with the somewhat dazed man draped atop it-but when it stopped, its rider tried to turn to face Mirt and haul out a short sword.
He’d half-managed it, starting to sway and shout something desperate that came out strangely slurred-so the knife bore
A nose shattered, blood spurted, and the owner of both went down, toppling to the floor like one of those proverbial felled trees.
As Rensharra screamed again, Mirt was already looking up at her to give her his best reassuring grin, so he saw where she was looking and knew instantly that the source of her fresh fear was back down the room behind him. He ducked, grabbed the chair he’d just thrown, and threw it again, back down the room.
Peering after it, he watched a furious man in the latest expensive and stylish lords’ evening garb dance aside with a flourish of his rapier and snarl, “I’m
“More than you brought,” Mirt informed him, lurching to meet the noble and plucking up chairs as he went.
The noble sneered at the first one, was staggering after the second, and was swordless, dazed, and bleeding from a scalp graze after the third and last chair. It happened to be the last seat on Mirt’s side of the long dining table, so the Lord of Waterdeep planted one boot in an available crotch-taking care to angle up and under, so as not to break any toes on the inevitable armored codpiece-and as the stricken noble doubled over, put his best roundhouse right into the man’s throat.
The noble went down with a dying sob as Mirt grinned in ruthless satisfaction. Aye, it’s hard to go on breathing through a shattered and flattened throat. Their master’s fall left four armed retainers he’d brought along still to deal with-but one look at their master jerking and strangling on the floor had them whirling around to flee headlong.
Mirt decided to snatch up the noble’s rapier and pursue them, to at least ventilate a few backsides. If witnesses telling tales to the Watch could be whittled down to one man, or several wounded men, the Watch might have fewer lies to wade through-or mistakenly swallow.
So it was that he returned to Rensharra drenched in blood, none of it his own, to find her barricaded in her bedchamber. The rest of her garments seemed to have vanished.
“My hero!” she gasped over the tangled barrier of furniture, her eyes alight. “No one ever fought to the death for me before!”
She tossed aside the splintered chair leg she’d been ready to club the wrong intruder with, and started flinging aside elements of barricade with furious energy and a fine disregard for dated styles of furniture, to welcome her right intruder.
“You deserve a reward,” she panted, when she’d cleared enough for her to drag Mirt into the room. “Come and claim it.”
A moment later, she demonstrated those words had been a command, not mere suggestion or entreaty, by taking hold of his blood-soaked belt and hauling, hard.
They fell into the waiting tent together.
“He’s shaking,” the drow murmured warningly to Gulkanun, nodding her head at Longclaws as the spell- cursed war wizard staggered wearily into his room and slammed its door.
“Means he’s exhausted,” Gulkanun said tersely. “He did most of my ward work, knowing I had to last the night awake standing watch. With you.”
The dark elf nodded. Longclaws had been the last of their colleagues to retire to a room. All of her suggested alterations of the wards were done, and everyone was beyond tired. She and Gulkanun regarded each other, neither of them smiling. Silence fell. In it, the curvaceous dark elf strolled slowly toward Gulkanun.
“I would prefer you kept your distance,” he muttered.
“
“
Not slowing her same leisurely pace, she came right up to him, and reached out with one slender, long-
