Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [56]
Farl examined its bloody tip and wiped it on the woman. "Dead?"
Elminster shook his head. "Just asleep; too hurt to defend herself." They knelt together over the gem-coffer, scooping and snatching in real haste, until Farl said, "Enough! Use their rope-let's begone!"
They paused to check the firmness of the gang's grapnel, and then hastily clambered down, Farl first. The male thief lay sprawled senseless on the turf, with a shocked-looking servant gazing down at him. Seeing the rope dance and jerk, he stared up at them. Then he screamed and ran, and from the window above them, the two thieves heard an angry shout.
"Gods be-damned! Let's hope they've no crossbows!" Farl snarled, slipping down the rope as his hands burned.
Then suddenly, sickeningly, the rope was no longer attached, and they were falling. There was a thud and a grunt from below as Farl landed. El tensed at the thought he might soon land atop his partner, but Farl was already up and sprinting out of the way. Elminster tried to relax as the turf swiftly rushed up to meet him.
The landing was hard. He got up, wincing; his right foot hurt, and beside him lay the man he'd kicked, mouth open and face white. A sick feeling rose in him, but as he scrambled to his feet, he saw the man's hand move feebly, grasping for a windowsill that wasn't there. Elminster and Farl sprinted together across the garden and scrabbled hastily up and over the wall. They dropped into the street outside and began strolling nonchalantly toward the nearest cross-street, but a heavy clothyard shaft hummed low over the wall and struck the high wooden gate of the house across from them.
Farl stared up at it. "By the gods, a proper archer! Let's begone!"
So it was at an undignified run that the two fetched up, puffing, behind the boarded-up shop to lose loot and gear. Then Farl smote his forehead. "Gangs!" he hissed. "They've always someone to spare, must've set a watcher!" He turned and ran back the way they'd come, motioning to Elminster to hurry on down the alley.
Elminster continued to flee, moving purposefully but not running, looking around warily from time to time. He'd gone two streets farther when Farl dropped down from a nearby rooftop, puffing, and said, "Right… let's dump all of this and buy some of Hannibur's hot buttered rolls! We've earned an early even-feast!"
"The watcher?" Elminster asked.
"I threw a blade at him an' missed by half a league-but he was so startled he fell over backward off his roof-and split his head open on the edge of a wagon, below. He'll be watching nothing, forevermore." Elminster shuddered.
Farl shook his head and looked gloomy. "What'd I warn you? Gangs! There goes the high tone of Hastarl!"
Six
SQUALOR AMONG THIEVES
There is one sort of a city that's worse than one where thieves rule the night streets: the sort where thieves form the government, and rule night and day.
Urkitbaeran of Calimport
The Book of Black Tidings
Year of the Shattered Skulls
The best Calishite silks rarely made the long and perilous way up the pirate-infested and storm-racked coast of the Great Sea in numbers enough that Elembar, Uthtower, and Yarlith did not drink them all in-leaving some for the long, arduous pole-barge journey up the Delimbiyr. It was rarer still for the merchants who owned such barges to stop in tiny, provincial Hastarl, where homespun was the favored wear and a good sword-scabbard was more admired than an elegantly cut jerkin. It was rarer yet for the shining, ornamented purple-and-emerald Tashtan weaves from the fabled Cities of the Seabreeze farther south to accompany the silks. Crowds at the docks were heavy. Some of the fat, strutting cloth merchants didn't even bother to climb the streets to the tall, narrow shops