'He'll certainly get exactly what he deserves.'
Kethry watched the horse vanish over the crest of the hill. 'I wonder how he'll like being on the receiving end?'
'I know somebody who will like this -- and I can't wait to see his face when you tell him.'
'Grumio?'
'Mm-hmm.'
'You know,' Kethry replied thoughtfully, 'this was almost worth doing for free.'
'She'enedra!' Tarma exclaimed in mock horror. 'Your misplaced honor will have us starving yet! We're supposed to be mercenaries!'
'I said almost.' Kethry joined in her partner's gravelly laughter. 'Come on. We've got pay to collect. You know -- this just might end up as some bard's song.'
'It might at that,' Tarma chuckled 'And what will you bet me that he gets the tale all wrong?'
'Not only that -- but given bards, I can almost guarantee that it will only get worse with age.'
Nine
The aged, half-blind mage blinked confused, rheumy eyes at his visitor. The man -- or was it woman? -- looked as awful as the mage felt. Bloodshot and dark-circled eyes glared at him from under the concealing shelter of a moth-eaten hood and several scarves. A straggle of hair that looked first to be dirty mouse-brown, then silver- blond, then brown again, strayed into those staring eyes. Nor did the eyes stay the same from one moment to the next; they turned blue, then hazel, then back to amethyst-blue. Try as he would, the mage could not make his own eyes focus properly, and light from a lanthorn held high in one of the visitor's hands was doing nothing to alleviate his befuddlement. The mage had never seen a human that presented such a contradictory appearance. She (he?) was a shapeless bundle of filthy, lice-ridden rags; what flesh there was to be seen displayed the yellowgreen of healing bruises. Yet he had clearly seen gold pass to the hands of his landlord when that particular piece of human offal had unlocked the mage's door. Gold didn't come often to this part of town -- and it came far less often borne by a hand clothed in rags.
He (she?) had forced his (her?) way into the verminous garret hole that was all the mage could call home now without so much as a by-your-leave, shouldering the landlord aside and closing the door firmly afterward. So this stranger was far more interested in privacy than in having the landlord there as a possible backup in case the senile wizard proved recalcitrant. That was quite enough to bewilder the mage, but the way his visitor kept shifting from male to female and back again was bidding fair to dizzy what few wits still remained to him and was nearly leaving him too muddled to speak.
Besides that, the shapeshifting was giving him one gods-awful headache.
'Go 'way -- ' he groaned feelingly, shadowing his eyes both from the unsettling sight and from the too-bright glare of the lanthorn his visitor still held aloft. ' -- leave an old man alone! I haven't got a thing left to steal -- '
He was all too aware of his pitiful state; his robe stained and frayed, his long gray beard snarled and unkempt, his eyes so bloodshot and yellowed that no one could tell their color anymore. He was housed in an equally pitiful manner; this garret room had been rejected by everyone, no matter how poor, except himself; it was scarcely better than sleeping in the street. It leaked when it rained, turned into an oven in summer and a meat- locker in winter, and the wind whistled through cracks in the walls big enough to stick a finger in. His only furnishings were a pile of rags that served as a bed, and a rickety stool. Beneath him he could feel the ramshackle building swaying in the wind, and the movement was contributing to his headache. The boards of the walls creaked and complained, each in a different key. He knew he should have been used to it by now, but he wasn't; the crying wood rasped his nerves raw and added mightily to his disorientation. The multiple drafts made the lanthorn flame flicker, even inside its glass chimney. The resulting dancing shadows didn't help his befuddlement.
'I'm not here to steal, old fraud.'
Even the voice of the visitor was a confusing amalgam of male and female.
'I've brought you something.'
The other hand emerged from the rags, bearing an unmistakable emerald-green bottle. The hand jiggled the bottle a little, and the contents sloshed enticingly. The rags slipped, and a trifle more of his visitor's face was revealed.
But the mage was only interested now in the bottle. Lethe! He forgot his perplexity, his befogged mind, and his headache as he hunched forward on his pallet of decaying rags, reaching eagerly for the bottle of drug-wine that had been his downfall. Every cell ached for the blessed/damned touch of it --
'Oh, no.' The visitor backed out of reach, and the mage felt the shame of weak tears spilling down his cheeks. 'First you give me what I want, then I give you this.'
