The stout moneylender held up a hand and let the second ring on it do its work, enshrouding the open doorway and the walls all around them in a cloaking mist. The sounds of Skullport died away abruptly as the ward took effect, and in the sudden stillness a steely voice close by his throat said firmly, 'My thanks for your quick- witted courtesy, Mirt. You can let go of me now and step well clear, grinning-faced codpiece and all.'
'Anything to avoid unpleasantness-and gore,' the moneylender quipped, complying. 'Ye make a fine lass, Transtra.'
'Not for you, I don't,' the lamia noble replied sharply as scales began to reappear on her lengthening legs. 'Let us keep to matters of trade-bars and importation, shall we? I believe we'd gotten to six score casks of belaerd and ten strongchests of heavy chain.'
'Ye don't want to throw in a ruby or two?' Mirt rumbled in reply, raising an eyebrow.
The lamia regarded him coldly. 'No,' she said shortly, 'I don't.'
'Ah,' Mirt said airily, 'then I've something of thine to return, it seems.' He held out a string of rubies in one stubby-fingered hand.
Transtra frowned at it, and then looked down to where her unbound hair cascaded over her bosom. The bottom three stones on her string were missing. She snarled in anger as she raised blazing eyes to his.
Mirt bowed gravely to her as she snatched her rubies back, and with his chin close to the floor, he looked up and flashed her a momentary, rolling-eyed idiot's grin.
Transtra's tail lashed the floor for a perilous moment or two thereafter before the lamia's hiss of fury slowly relaxed into a rueful, head-shaking chuckle.
'You've never played me false yet,' she said in quiet surprise, watching the shaggy-haired man straighten up with a grunt and wheeze. 'How is it, then, that you make any coins at all?'
'My boundless charm,' Mirt explained nonchalantly, 'leaves rich women swooning in my arms, anxious to make gifts of their baubles to one so attentive and-er, gifted-as I. 'Tis what has brought me all this grand way, to where I am today.'
'A rented upstairs escort's chamber in the worst brothel in Skullport?' Transtra asked sardonically, gliding toward him.
Mirt stuck hairy thumbs in his belt and harrumphed. 'Well, lass, 'tis no secret that my discretion — '
'Has slipped indeed if you dare to call me 'lass,' ' was the acidic reply. The lamia noble folded her arms and drew herself up, tapping the floor with the tip of her tail in irritation.
Mirt waved a dismissive hand. 'If ye think a little assumed pique will make me remorseful and somehow beholden when we talk more trade, think awhile again, little scaled one.'
'Little scaled one?' the lamia noble hissed, truly angry now, bending toward him with blazing eyes. 'Why, I've a-'
She reared back, startled, and hastily raised her hands to hurl a spell as a pinwheel of tiny lights suddenly appeared in midair in front of her. Transtra's angry gaze went to the merchant, but saw that this apparition was no doing of his, Mirt was as surprised as she. The lamia backed silently away, hands raised in readiness.
From those circling lights arose a whisper familiar to Mirt. 'Gone into Undermountain to rescue Nythyx Thunderstaff, old friend, I may need help,' it said. The first ring on his hand quivered in response, silently tugging Mirt in the direction of the Yawning Portal, Durnan's distant inn.
Mirt followed that urging, striding in his battered, flopping old boots across the floor and toward the shattered door. Transtra drew smoothly aside to let him pass, he seemed to have forgotten she was in the room. The wards parted soundlessly at the frowning old merchant's approach, and he stepped out into the passage, finding it unencumbered by minotaurs. A few steps took him to the nearest window.
The fat merchant looked out and down over the walled, warded courtyard of Bindle's Blade, the newest tankard house in dark and dangerous Skullport. On his arrival, he'd glanced at the tables there and had seen… aye, he had…
A recent venture in Skullport were guide torches, which could be hired for an evening and were carried about wherever one willed by floating, disembodied skeletal hands. Many of these flickering innovations were bobbing and glimmering among the carefully spaced tables of the Blade right now, and one of them shone quite clearly on the face of Nythyx Thunderstaff. She sat calmly with several slave-dealing women. A long, tall flagon of amberjack was in her hand, and a slim long sword at her hip. As he watched, she laughed at someone's jest, slid back in her chair, planted one delicately booted foot atop the table, and raised her flagon in salute to the slaver who'd amused her.
If that was a woman in distress, Mirt thought he'd hate to see a confident and contented one.
Mirt watched the young woman stretch in her chair, catlike, and glance around. He drew back before she might happen to look up at the window, and shook his shaggy head. 'Well,' he said slowly, 'Well, well.'
'This… thing that has befallen,' the lamia noble said from close behind him. 'It has put an end to our trade talk for now, has it not?'
Mirt turned to look into eyes the color of flame, and noticed-not for the first time-just how beautiful Transtra was. 'It has,' he said almost sadly, and his business associate gave him a little smile… as the flickering fire of a ready spell faded from one slim, long-nailed hand.
'There'll be… other evenings,' she said, and slithered past so closely that her leathery scales brushed along his arm. Mirt watched her go down the stairs into the darkness before he stirred, harrumphed, and shook his head. It was a pity he was so stout, and that lamias ate human flesh. He'd started to want that little smile to mean the other thing.
He stepped back into his room and did something to the first ring. A tiny pinwheel of silver motes obediently arose to silently circle it. He bent over them and whispered, 'Gone out into Skullport to answer Durnan's call for aid in rescuing Nythyx Thunderstaff, I've seen her safe here, so suspect a ruse.'
The magelight faded. The fat, aging Harper and Lord of Waterdeep muttered something over his other ring, drawing the tatters of his ward in around him so he'd be cloaked against flying death on his walk through Skullport. Shops and faces in the undercity changed with brutal rapidity, but the place grew no more tolerant of the weak and unwary. Mirt looked all around and took something small from his belt pouch to hold ready in his hand as he trudged along the passage, toward a hidden stair out of the House of the Long Slow Kiss. He left the door of his room open behind him so that Hlardas would know he was gone and could turn off the foot-treadle blades. He'd best shout a reminder as he passed the kitchens. One could lose good chambermaids that way.
Asper hurled herself into a somersault over the startled guard's head and spun around as her bare feet bounced to a landing on the cold flagstones. The city guardsman turned with smooth speed, magnificent in his splendid armor-in time to see the gleaming pommel of the young lady's poniard a finger's width from his eyes, where its wicked point should have been. He'd barely begun to gape at it when he felt the pommel of her reversed long sword nudge his ribs, in just the place where it would have driven all the breath out of him had this fight been in earnest.
He stared into the sweat-slick face of the grinning ash-blonde girl and shook his head in surrender, drops of his own sweat flying from the end of his nose. 'I see ye do it,' he growled, 'but I still don't believe it.'
'Consider yourself slain, Herle,' said the guardcaptain from behind him, 'and next time, try not to turn like some sort of sleeping elephant. She could have put her blade through your neck and been gone out the door before you were well into your pivot!'
'Aye, Captain,' Herle said heavily. 'Just once, I'd like to see y-'
He fell silent, gaping at a pinwheel of tiny lights that were silently appearing in midair in front of his leather- clad sword-foe, one by one. In wary silence, Asper watched them spin into bright solidity. She held up a hand to bid the guardsmen keep still.
A hoarse whisper she knew well arose from those circling lights. 'Gone out into Skullport to answer Durnan's call for aid in rescuing Nythyx Thunderstaff, I've seen her safe here, so suspect a ruse.'
The motes of light then faded until only Asper could see them, thanks to Mirt's magic. They drifted into a line leading north-and sharply downward. Into Undermountain, below even this deep, dank cellar of the castle.
Asper frowned at those tiny points of light. She knew her man had sent her the message in case Durnan's call had been false-a ruse to lure Mirt himself into danger. And, ruse or not, unless either of the old Lords of Waterdeep had changed a goodly amount in the last few days, they'd sorely need her aid in some way, ere long. She turned and bowed to the watching guardsmen.
'It's been a pleasure breaking blades with you, as always, gentlesirs,' she told them, wiping the sweat from
