Realms of the Underdark - J. Robert King [36]
"Anything to avoid unpleasantness-and gore," the moneylender quipped, complying. "Ye make a fine lass, Transtra."
"Not for you, I don't," the lamia noble replied sharply as scales began to reappear on her lengthening legs. "Let us keep to matters of trade-bars and importation, shall we? I believe we'd gotten to six score casks of belaerd and ten strongchests of heavy chain."
"Ye don't want to throw in a ruby or two?" Mirt rumbled in reply, raising an eyebrow.
The lamia regarded him coldly. "No," she said shortly, "I don't."
"Ah," Mirt said airily, "then I've something of thine to return, it seems." He held out a string of rubies in one stubby-fingered hand.
Transtra frowned at it, and then looked down to where her unbound hair cascaded over her bosom. The bottom three stones on her string were missing. She snarled in anger as she raised blazing eyes to his.
Mirt bowed gravely to her as she snatched her rubies back, and with his chin close to the floor, he looked up and flashed her a momentary, rolling-eyed idiot's grin.
Transtra's tail lashed the floor for a perilous moment or two thereafter before the lamia's hiss of fury slowly relaxed into a rueful, head-shaking chuckle.
"You've never played me false yet," she said in quiet surprise, watching the shaggy-haired man straighten up with a grunt and wheeze. "How is it, then, that you make any coins at all?"
"My boundless charm," Mirt explained nonchalantly, "leaves rich women swooning in my arms, anxious to make gifts of their baubles to one so attentive and-er, gifted-as I. 'Tis what has brought me all this grand way, to where I am today."
"A rented upstairs escort's chamber in the worst brothel in Skullport?" Transtra asked sardonically, gliding toward him.
Mirt stuck hairy thumbs in his belt and harrumphed. "Well, lass, 'tis no secret that my discretion-"
"Has slipped indeed if you dare to call me 'lass,' " was the acidic reply. The lamia noble folded her arms and drew herself up, tapping the floor with the tip of her tail in irritation.
Mirt waved a dismissive hand. "If ye think a little assumed pique will make me remorseful and somehow beholden when we talk more trade, think awhile again, little scaled one."
"Little scaled one?" the lamia noble hissed, truly angry now, bending toward him with blazing eyes. "Why, I've a-"
She reared back, startled, and hastily raised her hands to hurl a spell as a pinwheel of tiny lights suddenly appeared in midair in front of her. Transtra's angry gaze went to the merchant, but saw that this apparition was no doing of his; Mirt was as surprised as she. The lamia backed silently away, hands raised in readiness.
From those circling lights arose a whisper familiar to Mirt. "Gone into Undermountain to rescue Nythyx Thunderstaff, old friend; I may need help," it said. The first ring on his hand quivered in response, silently tugging Mirt in the direction of the Yawning Portal, Durnan's distant inn.
Mirt followed that urging, striding in his battered, flopping old boots across the floor and toward the shattered door. Transtra drew smoothly aside to let him pass; he seemed to have forgotten she was in the room. The wards parted soundlessly at the frowning old merchant's approach, and he stepped out into the passage, finding it unencumbered by minotaurs. A few steps took him to the nearest window.
The fat merchant looked out and down over the walled, warded courtyard of Bindle's Blade, the newest tankard house in dark and dangerous Skullport. On his arrival, he'd glanced at the tables there and had seen… aye, he had…
A recent venture in Skullport were guide torches, which could be hired for an evening and were carried about wherever one willed by floating, disembodied skeletal hands. Many of these flickering innovations were bobbing and glimmering among the carefully spaced tables of the Blade right now, and one of them shone quite clearly on the face of Nythyx Thunderstaff. She sat calmly with several slave-dealing women. A long, tall flagon of amberjack