Keeper of Secrets.'
And he whirled away and was gone in a rattle of beads ere Mirt could ask more.
The Revel of Storms had been marked by a trio of furious, fast-racing cloudbursts that had snarled across the city near highsun, leaving behind a hot, damp evening trimmed around its edges with ominous rolls of distant thunder.
Mirt the Moneylender growled in tune with them as he tramped in out of the darkness, the well-oiled back door of the Yawning Portal swinging wildly in his wake. He ignored a disapproving look from one of the sweat- cloaked cooking lasses and lurched past her with nary a leer-leaving her looking warily at his back and wondering what calamity he was bringing word of.
In truth, Mirt's dark temper was due to nothing more than a bad day of trade. Two debtors had paid off early, another two had vanished without trace, and four more were showing him empty hands and claiming poverty, while having no skills that Mirt could hire out to recoup his coins.
A season or so back, in the Company of the Wolf, swift sword thrusts would have handed such grinning-up- their-sleeves wastrels fitting rewards … but just as he was no longer Mirt the Merciless, helm-lord of hireswords who'd been better disciplined blades than the grandest royal guards he'd seen anywhere, Mirt no longer handed out fitting rewards that carried high prices. His own neck, for instance.
No, 'twas time for a drink and a quiet demolition of Durnan across a lance-and-lion board, whilst muttering forth heartfelt venom on all wastrels, idiots, and unsympathetic gods.
There it waited under the lamplight at one end of the smooth-polished bar, all the pieces set out on the lancers and lions board, with Durnan's own battered tankard standing behind it, but-Mirt blinked-his old friend was across the room, grimly wrestling a slumped, gore-drooling body up out of a chair. Blood dripped from dangling fingertips as the lifeless man was swung up and under one of Durnan's stone-thewed arms. A lolling head faced Mirt for a moment: Yelver's.
'Spew of Sune!' Mirt snarled. 'Dur, how-?'
'Throat dart,' Durnan said. 'Handbow, with his slayer sitting across from him. Young elf lass, by the one glimpse of an ear I had out the cowl of her cloak as she whirled away.' He waved his free hand down the room. 'Tharl tried to bar her way-but she murmured magic and the cloak swallowed her and itself before he could lay hand or blade to her.'
By then the innkeeper had reached his destination, and his hand fell to the ring of an all-too-familiar trapdoor, awakening the glow of the spell that let only him open it.
Mirt lurched forward sputtering, 'Hey-hoy! Nay so swift! I can have his memories spell-read.'
The innkeeper shook his head, and thrust a pointing thumb at something glistening that was starting to slide out of Yelver's left nostril, its black and slimy end questing obscenely into the air like a corkscrew seeking a bottle.
'See?' said the innkeeper. 'Some jack who did darker business than yours with goodman Toraunt made him swallow a brainworm.'
Black and glistening, the worm slid a little way out of Yelver's nose, swollen from its meal of man-brain.
'Seventeen dragons' Mirt snarled disgustedly, glaring at it. 'Gone for good.' He turned away to slam one hairy fist down on a handy table-and remembered something, and turned back to where Durnan was calmly feeding the corpse down a chute into the unseen depths below.
'Have ye ever heard of the Keeper of Secrets?' asked Mirt.
As Durnan peered at his friend, lifting a surprised eyebrow, Yelver Toraunt's dead limbs thumped and thudded on stone walls a long way down. Something that slobbered was waiting for their arrival. After the final, meaty landing, made a swift but noisy disposal of Durnan's offering.
Someone sitting at a table nearby winced at the gnawing sounds, and turned away.
'Gods below,' a sailor muttered, 'but I need more bellyfire after hearing that! Keeper!'
'The master's name is Durnan,' the man seated across from him growled. 'And orders aren't bawled here. Twice.'
The sailor's reply was a sneer, but Durnan was already striding across the floor, every inch a prowling warrior. The flicker of the candle wheels overhead gleamed on the broad metal bracers he wore on his forearms, and on the hilts of the three ready daggers sheathed in each of them.
'What'll you have, thirsty guest?' he asked calmly. 'Another tall tankard of Black Sail? Or something warmer?'
'Uh, er, I'll stick to Sail,' the sailor said, a little sullenly.
'A sturdy quaff, to be sure,' Durnan agreed, standing back with a smile.
The serving lass who stepped in front of him to place a glistening-with-condensation tankard and a half-moon of seed-spiced cheese in front of the man wore only a smile, a magnificent mane of startlingly blue hair, baggy breeches, and a bewildering tangle of dark tattoos that confused every gazing eye.
The sailor blinked away from her beauty and mumbled, 'I've no coin for yon cheese. Take it aw-'
'Nay, nay,' the tattooed woman said in a husky, smoky, surprisingly deep voice, patting his arm like a hungry whore.' 'Tis free-of my making, and Durnan's compliments. We like to treat friends well here, lord of the waves.'
The sailor shot her a swift, hard stare, seeking some sign of mockery, but found none. With a rather sheepish grunt, he raised the cheese in thanks, found himself looking into Durnan's half smile, and sought refuge in the tankard.
When he set down both his drink and a remnant of cheese to draw breath a swallow or three later, he looked almost surprised to still be unpoisoned, or free of bitter-salt or other trickery.
By then Durnan was setting an even larger tankard in front of Mirt, moving his first lancer forward to a fortress square, and saying, 'I've been hearing about the Keeper of Secrets, Mur. A woman who deals with the desperate, they say. Her shop's in North Ward.'
'North Ward? A fence? A pawn-hand? And why've I never heard of her?'
Durnan shrugged and said, 'I guess you've not yet been desperate.'
Mirt snorted. 'Not a rat gnaws nor a chamber pot breaks in this city that I don't hear about-excepting guild inner circle whisper-moots and what goes on behind the walls of the nobles' towers. Ye know that, Dur.'
The innkeeper shrugged, his eyes ranging around his taproom.
'She's not been in business long, I'd guess,' he said.
Mirt moved a lion, and Durnan's fingers flipped up the trapdoor on the next square to reveal the grinning skull that meant he was bringing his lich into play-and dooming Mirt's piece-without the master of the Yawning Portal ever looking down at the board.
'She does her trade in dark rooms atop an empty all-mending shop on north side Sammarin's Street,' he added quietly. 'Rooms of locked iron bar gates that're never lit, so no eye ever sees her. Neighbors hear her singing at all hours-haunting airs and unfamiliar tongues, but a beautiful voice.'
'Happy dancing hobgoblins,' Mirt said, not believing a bit of it. He moved a lancer away from the revealed peril of Durnan's lich. 'I can't believe I've never heard a breath of this…'
'Deafness comes to us all, in the end,' Durnan murmured, moving his lich forward to capture a lion-and doom Mirt's throne-princess in the process.
The moneylender stared at his imminent defeat and sighed heavily.
'I yield me. Another game?'
The innkeeper smiled and took down his cloak, signaling to Luranla to take the bar. The tattooed lass gave him a smiling wave and wink, and turned to survey the room as Durnan had been doing.
Mirt stared up at his friend and asked, 'Do I play that badly?'
'This night, yes. Yet we're friends, so I've agreed.'
The moneylender blinked.
'To seek out your other game,' Durnan replied, taking down a baldric heavy with warblades from a peg on the wall, slinging it over his shoulder, and reaching for its cross-buckles. 'And visit this Keeper of Secrets.'
'Your business, gentlesirs?'
The ever-so-slightly hollow voice seemed to come from their left. Down a speaking-tube.
Durnan looked at Mirt, and made the 'your speech' gesture they'd both known he'd make. Words had never been his chosen weapons.
