Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [35]
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The chime he'd been expecting sang its eerie little song just outside the door, and Bezrar scrambled up from his littered desk. He was sweating-but then, Aumun Tholant Bezrar was always sweating. Part of it was because he was, let's grant it before the gods, fat… and the other reason was because someone whose daily business as an importer and wholesaler of sundry goods involved far more than the usual cartload of smuggling and of stolen goods well, such a one has a very good reason to sweat.
He fumbled aside the bar, the three chains, the two bolts-and flung the door wide. "B'gads, you're here!"
"Stand aside and let me in," Surth's cold voice snapped out of the darkness, "instead of announcing my arrival to the entire neighborhood, you incredible dolt."
Bezrar blinked, chuckled, and hastily shuffled back to make way for his partner. Surth was right, of course. Surth was always right. "Did y'bring the hoods?"
"No, of course I strolled across all Marsember to pay for a special order and forgot to bring them back with me!" Malakar's voice was as thin, sour, and sarcastic as always. "You'll have to cut your own eyeholes-you do have some shears in this sty, don't you?"
Bezrar chuckled rather than stiffening as he would have done in the unlikely event of any other man in Marsember addressing him in this way. Surth was Surth: Malakar Surth, every cold, sinister, and icily superior inch of him. He was tall and lean where Bezrar was not and sour and sarcastic where Bezrar was jovial and cheerfully evil.
Twas dealing in scents, wines, cordials, and drugs until the coins spilled out of your ears that did it-that and worshipping Shar. Bezrar neither liked nor understood Surth's love of cruelty, but there were times when it came in right handy-stop me vitals!-such as, well, now, for instance. He shook out the hood Surth handed him and held it up, preparatory to yanking it over his head.
"Sit down first," Surth advised him coldly. " Twould be less than amusing to see you stumbling around all this chaos putting the point of your shears through an eye-or perhaps me." Surth made the dry little snort that signified he'd uttered a joke and added, "Come on. The night won't last forever, you know!"
"Odd's fish, no!" Bezrar agreed enthusiastically-if in muffled tones-from within the hood. And promptly stumbled backwards to sit down in his chair with a resounding crash. Surth rolled his eyes in disgust as he watched the fat and hairy fingers of one sundry-wholesaling hand grope around among the litter of papers like a drunken spider, seeking the shears that lay ready gleaming less than a fingerlength away.
His own hood was already prepared and-he jerked it down savagely and settled it with an impatient jerk-on. "Bezrar" he said warningly, in tones that produced the expected result: a frantic flurry of activity that sent the wholesaler's chair creaking.
"Yes, yes, aye, yes!" the frantically snipping wholesaler responded, ending with a triumphant, "There! "
"Luminous,"Surth told him in a voice that fairly dripped sarcasm down the walls. "Now, shall we-?"
"Yes, yes, of course, b'gads!" The fat wholesaler heaved himself up like a 'walrus conquering a shore-rock, puffed his way toward the door-and halfway there smote his forehead, turned to pinch the lamp out and snatch up his ready-scabbarded longknife-a truly impressive specimen of the curved Marsemban fish-gutting blade-and turned back to his partner with the sudden question, "What if they're not there?"
Surth set his teeth. "Then we'll try again another night," he explained patiently. 'Wo one swindles ten thousand in gold from Mai-from us and lives to whistle away with it."
"But… but what if they are there but are ready for us? With dark spells,