visible wounds.
“A wench did that,” Morligul explained before he could ask, pointing down at the body. “Rorn’s chasing her right now.”
Illance looked down at the unconscious Brabras, shook his head, sighed in exasperation, and grunted, “Can’t even get good bullyblades these days! Come!”
He stalked off, heading for the front door of the Ravens. Elminster hastened to follow.
The third hard, ringing slap brought Mirt awake.
By the burning sensation down that side of his face, previous slaps had been administered with powerful enthusiasm, yet had failed to rouse him.
“I hope ye’re a pretty lass,” he growled, “because those are the sort of folk I like to be slapped by.”
He tried to turn his head, which was when he discovered he was bound-by quite a lot of rope, knotted very tightly-to a chair in a cavernous warehouse.
Standing in front of him was Lord Traevyn Illance, wearing an unpleasant smile as he stared at Mirt. The old lord was flanked by five bullyblades in matching surcoats, and another man who looked more like a mage than any sort of warrior. As Mirt looked at all of them, Illance nodded to his five bodyguards, and they disappeared through a door in the wall behind him, seeming rather eager to be gone.
“I think we both know why you’re here, Rauligus,” Illance said coldly.
“Ye’re smitten with me and seek to enjoy my charms in private?” Mirt asked hopefully.
Illance’s eyes narrowed. He looked at the mage, then back at Mirt. “Your voice is different, the words you use, too… you are Lord Rauligus Helderstone, are you not?”
“Have been these too many seasons,” Mirt replied cheerfully. “Getting good at being Lord Helderstone, I am.”
Illance nodded. “Then you will recall that you owe me a quite considerable sum. Seven hundred thousand golden lions, to be precise. Not to mention ten thousand more on the year-day mark, every year since you borrowed it. Twenty-nine summers ago.”
“Aye?”
“You dispute this?”
“Nay.”
“Good. Then you should also recall that the entire sum was due if ever you returned to Cormyr. Which you have obviously now done. Probably because you had to depart Sembia in a hurry, thanks to some new foe-and considered me the lesser peril.”
“Aye.”
“I’ve heard you’ve been here in Suzail for almost a tenday, now. Yet, I had to hear it from others, because I heard nothing from you. You failed to contact me promptly upon reaching the city to offer me the repayment of my loan, despite such action on your part being a clear part of our agreement. I am hurt, Rauligus. Hurt. Almost as deeply hurt as I’ve been all these years, living in near penury without my gold. It’s been calling to me, Rauligus, as I scrimped and saved and did without… but I took what scant consolation I could from the knowledge that my gold was at least in the hands of a fair man, an honest man. A rival, some might even say a foe, but an honest man.”
Illance was pacing now, drawling airily, the wizard in the background smiling and enjoying the performance.
“I am that,” Mirt agreed happily.
Illance stopped. “Oh? You claim so? How is it then that you shatter our agreement, returning to fair Suzail to live like a decadent king, drinking kegs upon kegs and rolling in perfumed bedlinens with playpretties night after night, without even a word to me? For in that, I do not see the conduct of an honest man. I see the brazen behavior of a swindler.”
“Nay, nay!” Mirt protested, trying to strain against his bonds without appearing to do so. Gods below, but they were tight. He was trussed like a roast, and every whit as doomed. “ ’Twas nothing of the sort!”
“Lies are no more attractive when retold,” Illance replied coldly and waved his hand dismissively. “Enough of this. I was hoping for pleading, for desperate bargaining for your life-or at least the retention of some of your limbs-but you seem to have become some sort of happy half-wit. So, hear now your fate-my five bodyguards are going to torture you into yielding up the whereabouts not just of what you owe me, but all your properties and wealth. Everything. If you’re still alive, we’ll put you on a boat to Westgate to be unloaded, naked and broken, onto the docks, to see how long you survive in that pleasant den of vipers.”
“B-but you sent them away,” Mirt pointed out brightly.
Illance smiled. “Oh, they’ll be back. Just as soon as they finish enjoying your maid, in yonder room.” He leered. “She’s really your wife, isn’t she? Wearing quite a few sapphires, wasn’t she? Oh, yes, I’m expecting them back soon. Yet, we mustn’t rush my loyal blades… and there are five of them.”
Mirt let himself look downcast for the first time. He was done. The ironguard ring Storm had given him protected against metal weapons-until, of course, they took it from him-but there were many other ways a man could be hurt. Roasting alive, or breaking most of his bones, one after another, for instance.
“And how d’ye know I won’t lie to ye?” he asked. “Send ye headlong into trap after trap?”
Illance smiled thinly. “This handy hirespells mage here will tell me when you’re lying. And keep you alive and awake through the pain, so you can enjoy every last moment of it.”
The wizard gave Mirt a solemn wink. Then he turned to the door the bodyguards had disappeared through and called, “Done, lass?”
The door opened and Storm stepped through it, dragging the limp body of the largest bodyguard by his throat.
She was barefoot and bloody, the gown torn to shreds that still clung to her largely because the blood was making them stick-but she was grinning.
“Done,” she said simply, striding across the room. Behind her, through the doorway, the rest of the bodyguards could be seen strewn senseless all over the room she’d departed.
She was coming for Illance, who after one look at her turned and fled across the room with surprising speed.
El hurried after him, caught him up, and calmly tripped him.
Illance had just time to scramble up to his knees before Storm reached him. Her kick took him under the chin, snapped his head back, and lifted the rest of him right off the ground.
They watched the old lord bounce, out cold. Storm waited until Illance lay quite still before plucking out the noble’s belt dagger and heading over to Mirt.
“Hey, now,” Mirt said, “ye look dangerous with that fang.”
Storm smiled through the blood. “I feel dangerous with this fang. Yet, Mirt, why the worry? You always wanted bondage, and bared women to come for you…”
“Not with knives, and not me bound,” Mirt protested.
Storm sighed as she set about cutting him free. “Details, details…”
“Hoy!” Mirt yelped. “Get yer knife away from that! It’s not a detail!”
Elminster looked up from Lord Illance’s body. “Stop playing with Mirt and get over here. Undressing unconscious men is harder than I remember.”
“Undressing…?” Storm teased. “El, is there something you should be telling me?”
“Just help me get all this clobber off him,” El growled. “By Siamorphe, Tiamat, and Waukeen, but nobles wear more costly tripe than they ever did when I was playing at being one!”
Mirt shook free of the last few coils and lurched to his feet, wincing and growling at the numbness-and the pain, wherever there was no numbness. “What’re ye baring him for, anyhail?”
“I want every last bauble and stitch of magic on him, to take to Alassra,” Elminster replied. “Though none of it-even if we amass a cartload of it-will do her as much good as a blueflame item. If I could get one of those before we go to her…”
Mirt shook his head. “Well, I just want to be free of nobles trying to harm me. D’ye know if anyone else in Suzail is likely to treat kindly old Helderstone like this one was planning to? For that matter, what’s to stop him trying again, when he wakes?”
El and Storm looked at each other, then shrugged.
