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 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.
