that let out the truth. There was no captain, no Swiftoar, no cargo and, most of all, no coin for Shank to spirit off. Instead, Shank got curses and blows when he came to close the game-and all unjustly of course. It would have taught the outlander a proper lesson if Shank had made off with his cash.
He moaned it all again, even though there was no use in it, and swigged down another gulp of sour brew. The taste reminded him of the empty jingle in his purse. Corlis would be wanting coin for the drink, and Shank didn't have any. What he needed right now was for a quick and wealthy mark to walk through the door, something not very likely at this squalid ordinary.
'Too much joy or too much drink? Or a little of both?' a chipper, thin voice probed with just a touch of peevishness at having missed the fun.
Maeve stopped in the marbled hall, caught unawares by the stealth of her interrogator. Stealth wasn't that hard, considering the shadowed gloom between the pillars and the fact that the voice came up from somewhere around the height of her waist.
A halfling, fine-dressed in the gaudiest work the court tailor could tolerate, was suddenly beside the wizard, materializing seemingly out of nowhere. His garb was a garish mismatch-harlequin hose gartered with red silk and a rose and teal velvet damask doublet of intricate pattern, trimmed with more lace than a banquet table. It screamed of a soul utterly blind to taste… until one noticed that the blindness was actual. The little fellow's eyes were covered by a thick band of black cloth, and he clutched a short cane
Maeve was like to have leapt up in surprise before she realized it was only Sprite-Heels-or rather the Honorable Lord of the Watch Sir Sprite-Heels the Clever. (King Pinch's reward for loyal service was to put his fellow rogue in command of the city guard.) The knave had crept up on her yet again. For the years that she'd known him, the wizard was still not accustomed to the halfling's cat-footed ways. Blinded only twelve-months before, the half- ling still got himself about with surprising silence and ease.
Td say,' Sprite drawled as he tipped his head to hear her echoes, 'that's your poxing laugh-the one you make after you've just shook hands with some popinjay. You wouldn't be up to old tricks now, would you, Maeve? What would our King Pinch say if he heard his old gang was laying curses on his subjects?'
'He'd probably say I had my cause-and you would, too,' Maeve sniffed back. 'They got what they had coming.'
'Don't they all!' The tap of Sprite's cane hurried to keep pace with her as the halfling fell in alongside. 'Them wizards again?'
'Yes-them wizards.' Maeve's face flared up redder than her usual cheery drunk-red. She hustled down the hall, a tornado of indignation. 'They had no right saying all those things-not after all I've done for Ankhapur. Not a one of them there was ready to fight Manferic or do any of those things. / did and they weren't mocking me then. A pox is only the least of what that lot deserves.'
'Of course, you're right, Maeve,' the halfling said with a cynicism that masked his genuine sympathy. 'Still, now, you go poxing every one of them, and people are bound to start asking about it. You could get 'em believing there's a plague here.' The click of the cane's metal ferrule on the slippery-smooth stone of the floor set Sprite's words to a lively cadence.
'Ill pox every whoreson one of them.'
'Maybe me and Pinch ought to go into the cure-all business.' Not all that often did she latch on to an idea so fierce, but when Maeve did, Sprite knew there'd be sparks and smoke before it ended. 'What'll Pinch say, Maeve?'
'A pox on our King Pinch, too!'
'Might be interesting,' Sprite smirked.
They walked a bit farther. Their conversation had run out, lingering on the image of their lord-as much as they'd admit he was-covered with foul sores. It was morbidly amusing, but they both knew neither could bring it to pass.
'Drink?' With uncanny sense, Sprite tapped down a side hall toward his rooms. '~ 'Why not?' Maeve agreed, resolved to be damned and determined even if it was almost dawn. There was always time for another drink.
With barely a fumble, Sprite undid the latch to his apartment and ushered her into the darkness beyond.
It was a full bottle (or two, since neither was keeping count) later when the wizard and halfling had come back to the question of respect
'They got no right,' Maeve moaned for the several hundredth time, perhaps more so to Sprite's ears. She sloshed about her goblet, splattering drops over the antique table, a table that had been carved of fine bronzewood in some distant village of Chult and trekked the vast distance here no doubt on the back of some exotic beast. The morning sun, for the day was well up, glistened in the golden drops
'Maeve, what you need is one of those-oh-rats, beasties,' the halfling suggested weakly. He raised his sagging head from the table, where he'd only been 'just resting' while the wizard poured more drinks. Though he couldn't see it, the sloshing sound of yet another round of poured wine rendered him immensely pale.
'Rats?'
Sprite tried to nod, but that only made him feel greener. 'Rats-you know, rats, owls, frogs-them little pets wizards get.'
'Familursh,' she slurred, and gulped down more wine.
'That's right. All them high-ups got 'em. You should have one too, Maeve.'
'A familiar?' The wizard rolled the words around like a fine drink, considering the idea. 'It'd have to be a right pretty one. No toads.'
'No toads,' the halfling mumbled.
'I got me a scroll somewhere.' Maeve was now musing, working out the deed in her head as if she were planning a foist of her own. Sprite sat back with bleary satisfaction and proceeded to topple right out of his chair.
Passed out drunk, the halfling was in no way able to hear (and certainly in no way able to see) Maeve trundle out of the palace and into the morning light. She blinked like an owly fish caught in the overbright shallows. It had been some considerable time since she'd seen a morning; an early hour, anything before noon, was an exceptional moment. Nonetheless, she was determined to endure this grotesque hardship to realize her goal.
Thus determined, Maeve set out for the comfort of Ankhapur's grimy waterfront. It was the city's lowest of the low quarters, despised by the honest folk who nonetheless crept there every night to savor its taverns, flops, and festhalls. The waterfront stews were gray and small and pretended not to exist, letting their customers imagine they had privacy and discretion, though in truth little transpired that wasn't spread to someone's ears. The naive found themselves compromised, the gullible blackmailed, and it took a native, not just to Ankhapur but to the waterfront itself, to have any hope of keeping one's business to oneself. It was just the kind of place Maeve wanted, her true home.
Though she'd traveled here from far lands, she'd lived most her life in such surroundings. Every town that wanted to be of consequence had its version of the Ankha-purian waterfront. A town could never be a city without one, its character incomplete without this pocked and festering side of its urban body. More than any other monument, statue, palace, or memorial, such districts revealed the hidden souls of the city founders, the dark and secret selves of respected ancestors.
It was far better for her to work in such surroundings. The royal laboratories, territory hers by title, were too public for this work. Nothing she might try there would pass unnoticed, and with the real chance that she might get it wrong, the woman did not want to risk such open humiliation. This task was better done in some forgotten room, among her own kind, where she could do her work in peace. Among the stews, she might raise a few curious eyebrows, but folks there had the sense to give a wizard wide berth for fear they'd wind up as frogs or worse.
As for the stench, the thugs, the blackmailers and loose women, Maeve didn't mind. She was boozily confident she could slide back in, even though her street sense was somewhat out of practice after a year of palace life. Indeed, the doubt that she might not know Ankhapur's cheats and black ways as well as she could never entered her mind.
Clutching an ungainly bag of powders, devices, and bottles, she ignored the looks of the festhall girls going home in the dawn light, the hungry stares of hungover drunks as they staggered themselves out of the mud where they'd fallen, and the curious thronging of urchins who acted far more innocent than they ever had been. She wound her way through the alleys and lanes leading to a wineshop she knew, one where the owner, Corlis, would be
