Realms of Magic - Brian Thomsen King [74]
*****
"Too much joy or too much drink? Or a little of both?" a chipper, thin voice probed with just a touch of peevishness at having missed the fun.
Maeve stopped in the marbled hall, caught unawares by the stealth of her interrogator. Stealth wasn't that hard, considering the shadowed gloom between the pillars and the fact that the voice came up from somewhere around the height of her waist.
A halfling, fine-dressed in the gaudiest work the court tailor could tolerate, was suddenly beside the wizard, materializing seemingly out of nowhere. His garb was a garish mismatch-harlequin hose gartered with red silk and a rose and teal velvet damask doublet of intricate pattern, trimmed with more lace than a banquet table. It screamed of a soul utterly blind to taste… until one noticed that the blindness was actual. The little fellow's eyes were covered by a thick band of black cloth, and he clutched a short cane Maeve was like to have leapt up in surprise before she realized it was only Sprite-Heels-or rather the Honorable Lord of the Watch Sir Sprite-Heels the Clever. (King Pinch's reward for loyal service was to put his fellow rogue in command of the city guard.) The knave had crept up on her yet again. For the years that she'd known him, the wizard was still not accustomed to the halfling's cat-footed ways. Blinded only twelve-months before, the half-ling still got himself about with surprising silence and ease.
Td say," Sprite drawled as he tipped his head to hear her echoes, "that's your poxing laugh-the one you make after you've just shook hands with some popinjay. You wouldn't be up to old tricks now, would you, Maeve? What would our King Pinch say if he heard his old gang was laying curses on his subjects?"
"He'd probably say I had my cause-and you would, too," Maeve sniffed back. "They got what they had coming."
"Don't they all!" The tap of Sprite's cane hurried to keep pace with her as the halfling fell in alongside. "Them wizards again?"
"Yes-them wizards." Maeve's face flared up redder than her usual cheery drunk-red. She hustled down the hall, a tornado of indignation. "They had no right saying all those things-not after all I've done for Ankhapur. Not a one of them there was ready to fight Manferic or do any of those things. / did and they weren't mocking me then. A pox is only the least of what that lot deserves."
"Of course, you're right, Maeve," the halfling said with a cynicism that masked his genuine sympathy. "Still, now, you go poxing every one of them, and people are bound to start asking about it. You could get 'em believing there's a plague here." The click of the cane's metal ferrule on the slippery-smooth stone of the floor set Sprite's words to a lively cadence.
"Ill pox every whoreson one of them."
"Maybe me and Pinch ought to go into the cure-all business." Not all that often did she latch on to an idea so fierce, but when Maeve did, Sprite knew there'd be sparks and smoke before it ended. "What'll Pinch say, Maeve?"
"A pox on our King Pinch, too!"
"Might be interesting," Sprite smirked.
They walked a bit farther. Their conversation had run out, lingering on the image of their lord-as much as they'd admit he was-covered with foul sores. It was morbidly amusing, but they both knew neither could bring it to pass.
"Drink?" With uncanny sense, Sprite tapped down a side hall toward his rooms. "~-
"Why not?" Maeve agreed, resolved to be damned and determined even if it was almost dawn. There was always time for another drink.
With barely a fumble, Sprite undid the latch to his apartment and ushered her into the darkness beyond.
It was a full bottle (or two, since neither was keeping count) later when the wizard and halfling had come back to the question of respect "They got no right," Maeve moaned for the several hundredth time, perhaps more so to Sprite's ears. She sloshed about her goblet, splattering drops over the antique table, a table that had been carved of fine bronzewood in some distant village of