Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [49]
"S-surth? B'gads, you're alive! Did they throw yuh out?"
That voice was all too familiar. Bezrar, who must have run and abandoned him to certain death, alone in that bedchamber with two hired slayers! Bezrar, the utter dolt and complete simpleton who'd-
Strong hands (accompanied by much wheezing and breath that smelled like mint-sugar-mint-sugar?-rather than the usual old garlic and reekingly older fish) plucked Malakar Surth up from the cobbles and set him on his feet.
Malakar Surth drew breath for the rudest words his mind could find to blisteringly deliver to a certain fat merchant, in the few breaths it would take Surth to find and pluck forth Bezrar's own dagger and bury it hilt-deep and repeatedly in Bezrar's fat and stupid face… then blinked, gaping his mouth wide in astonishment with not a single choice word uttered.
Bezrar stood before him uncertainly shifting from best-booted foot to best-booted foot. The importer and wholesaler of sundry goods was clad in the quietest, most dignified finery Surth happened to know he owned. There was a just-as-uncertain half-smile on his face and a long, long lead-rein shared space with a coach-whip in one of his hands. The other had just opened wide the door of Surth's closed coach-which was drawn up neatly before the doors of Dagohnlar House. He blinked at it again, half-believing it would vanish and leave him staring into the hard and surly faces of an angry Watch-patrol, with some Dagohnlar servants pointing him out for immediate arrest.
The coach, however, stayed very much where it was, gleaming in the light, clinging rain Marsembans were pleased to prosaically call "pre-dawn mists" with its side-lamps lit and Surth's best team of matched dapple-grays standing patiently in harness. Patiently, which meant they'd been fed.
Surth shook his head in disbelief, and his jaw dropped still more. Two folded bath-towels were piled neatly on the coach floor, below a seat that sported a complete, laid-out change of Surth's clothes. The very dark ruby outfit he'd intended to wear, from gloves to velvet-trimmed boots.
He turned his gaping face to Bezrar, who broke into a grin. "I did good, huh? I saw the note you left for your stablemaster, and he told me what it meant. So… here we are."
For the first time in his life, Malakar Surth threw his arms around a man with love in his heart and an intent to kiss.
"Ho! Hey! No time for that, or we'll be late for your 'associate.' Your horseman gave me to understand that doing that would be a very bad thing."
"Bezrar," Surth managed to say, as he clapped the fat merchant's arms enthusiastically and lunged past him for the towels, "I shall heap special prayers on Shar's altar on your behalf for this and- and buy you something you especially want!"
"That dancing lass at the Amorous Anchor?" Bezrar asked hopefully.
"Twoof her! Or her and her best friend, rather, or- luminous,Bezrar! Just… luminous!"
Malakar Surth was not a man given to throwing back his head at the unseen, mist-shrouded stars and cackling wildly, but he did so now-attracting a raised eyebrow from a Watch officer turning the corner in the forefront of his patrol; a brow that lifted even higher as the thin, laughing man began to wildly tear his clothes off and fling them uncaringly behind him.
The Watch patrol eyed the open door of the coach, exchanged weary glances with each other, and in unspoken accord turned down another alley. Idiot nobles…
Surth was whipping the horses down Tarnsar Lane toward Chancever Street, still wildly grateful to Bezrar-who sat grinning smugly beside him-until a dark thought struck him: how had Bezrar known just where, in Surth's very private and trap-fitted house, he kept these clothes? Or managed to reach that even more private and trap-guarded closet?
Eight
NIMBLE NAVIGATIONS IN
MARSEMBER
If you'd see true villainy, look not to alleyways or dark taverns. Seek out the high and private chambers