Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [55]
"Are you thinking of what houses may be standing empty this good day, groaning with the weight of coins for the taking, while all Hastarl turns out to watch corpses paraded by?" Farl asked lightly.
"Nay," Elminster said. "I was thinking of switching the bucket that bath-keeper sits on for another-taking the one he's filling up with coins right now, and in its place leaving a bucket of-"
"Dung?" Farl grinned. "Too risky, though, by far-half the folk in line'd see us."
"Ye think they don't know what we do for a living, Farl? Even ye can't be that much the idiot!" Elminster replied.
Farl drew himself up with an air of injured dignity. " 'Tis not that, goodsir-'tis that we have a reputation to maintain. Everyone may know that we take, aye-but none should ever see us doing the taking. It shouldst be magic, d'you see? Like those wizards you're so fond of."
El gave him a look. "Let's go take things," he said, and they strolled off to arm themselves for the workday ahead.
*****
One house topped the list of places to loot, and they hastened hence, wearing livery that was not their own but that served to conceal carry-bags strapped to their backs and bellies and to hide the handfuls of daggers they both carried.
They dropped over the back wall into a pleasant garden, crossed it like two hungry shadows, and swarmed up a climbing thornflower to a balcony. A servant was asleep in the sun in the room beyond, seizing a prize opportunity while his master was out of the house.
"This is too easy," Farl said as they sped up the stairs to a gilded door. He thrust his dagger into the carved snarling lion in its center and waited while the spring-loaded darts flashed away harmlessly down the stairs. "Don't these fools realize that the shops that sell 'em thief-traps are always run by thieves?"
He dug his blade into one of the lion's eyes, and the cut-glass eye popped out of its setting to dangle from the end of a cloth ribbon. Finding the wire in the opening behind the eye, Farl cut it and swung the door open. El looked back down the stairs as they went in, but the house was silent.
The bedchamber was a vision of red and deep pinkish tapestries, cushions, and couches. "I feel as if I'm in someone's stomach," Farl muttered as they crossed this sea of red.
"Or wading around in an open wound," Elminster agreed, striding up to a silver jewel-coffer.
As he reached for it, a hard-thrown dart flashed past his fingers. Farl spun, dagger in hand-to stare into the eyes of two women and a man who were climbing swiftly in through a window. They were all clad in matching black leathers, and bore a sigil on their breasts: a crossed moon and dagger.
"This loot belongs to the Moonclaws," said one woman in a steely whisper, her eyes hard.
"Ah, no," Farl replied disgustedly, hurling his dagger. "Gangs!"
His blade spun through the air to plunge through the hand of the other woman, the hand that had been sweeping up with a dart in it. She screamed and fell to her knees.
Elminster hurled a dagger hilt-first into the man's face, tossed a cushion after it, and then sudden rage took hold of him. He leapt forward to plant a kick so hard in the man's gut that he groaned aloud as his toes struck the armor plate there-but its wearer was driven headlong back out the window to fall screaming to the garden below, a garrote waving uselessly in his hands.
"So noisy… so unprofessional," Farl murmured, snatching up the jewel-coffer. The wounded woman was fleeing for the rope at the window she'd come in by, sobbing from the pain and shaking blood all over the red carpets. "Hey-that's one of my good blades!" he complained as the other woman leapt at him, hurling one dagger and raising another.
Farl ducked and swept the coffer up; her blade struck it and shot into the ceiling, where it struck a roof-beam and stood quivering. The woman tried to reach over the coffer and slash his face,