Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [8]
"Well put, Korthauvar," a cold voice said out of the darkness above them. "Very well put. I shall remember your cogent arguments with the very precision you desire. No, tremble not – you're right.
As much as some of us 'masters' may hate to admit it, your conclusions are unassailable."
Silence fell, leaving Korthauvar Hammantle and Hlael Toraunt staring at each other in terror in the dim cold, their hurried breaths curling away like smoke between them.
That silence stretched and grew long. When at last hope crawled back into their hearts and they began to straighten and breathe more calmly, the cold voice snapped suddenly, "Now the policy so cogently outlined by Korthauvar Hammantle sees its first application. Both of you – a handful of us, one might say – are now – right now – welcome in my chambers for a little task that needs doing: a little snatching after spellfire."
*******
Mirt the Moneylender took the broad steps that curved up to the upper floors of his mansion two at a time, puffing like a brace of harnessed boars dragging a heavy wagon.
"Ha-ha!" he roared, in full gloat. "Has ever a man strutted and swaggered in Dock Ward with more just cause than I?"
He rubbed his hands together in glee as his old, flopping boots found the uppermost step, and took him briskly past the frankly buxom wench of glossy ivory and fully life-sized stature that crowned the stairpost. Beyond, on a tray of gleaming silver large enough for Dambrathan slavers to serve up bound slaves upon – for they'd done just that, ere a certain fat and fiercely mustached mercenary swordlord relieved them of it – stood a sparkling forest of finely etched and smooth-blown glass decanters. Snatching up the tallest and unstoppering it for a healthy swig without wasting time on such fripperies as a goblet, the Old Wolf of Waterdeep hurtled onward, borne along on a hearty trail of chuckles.
"Asper, m'gel," he roared, "I'm a very prince among thieves – a deal-master among merchants! Old Thaglon surrendered all his fine steel-and-silver Amn-work for half what he should have asked – all because they're nigh-starving down there, and I threw in those two warehouses full of rotting nutmarrows I've been trying to get rid of. Ha-ha! Even if he delivers half the amount he promised, at a third the quality he claims, I'm ahead several wagonloads of coin! Come here and kiss this bottle with me!"
He roared with gusty laughter and swung around a cabinet carved into the fanciful likeness of a wyvern's head, its eyes being doors, each fashioned of a shield-sized slab of smooth-carved amber, into the sun-drenched open space at the center of the chamber where furs and cushions lay thick (with Asper betimes lounging upon them, though she wasn't lying there now). He kicked a cushion at the head of an obsidian unicorn statue with an accuracy and fervor that could not have failed to startle the beast had it been alive, and added in loud and leering tones, "Hah! Then ye can kiss me, by the back hind tooth of Larloch's pet dragon-devouring dragon!
We're rich!"
"You know, Old Wolf of mine, I believe I'd noticed that," a quietly musical and gently amused voice said from somewhere very near. "In fact, we've been rich for as long as I've been old enough to notice anything."
"Aye, but now we're richer – and 'tis so damned clever! Little love-lass, where are ye?" Mirt demanded in an amiable roar, stamping around the trophy-crowded room impatiently. Still rubbing his hands, he peered into the bedchamber,