The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [131]
"You didn't hurt your eye in that brawl," a cool voice commented, from behind him.
Beldar froze. Then he made himself turn slowly. He knew that tone-one usually used by someone holding a weapon, who was exceedingly pleased that the person being addressed was not.
The servant girl was alone, and her hands were empty. By the look on her face, she didn't consider that one dented serving tray had settled the score between them.
Swallowing rising unease, Beldar mustered his most supercilious smile. "Weren't you off to mount a gallant defense of cheese or some such?"
The lass didn't rise to his bait. "You didn't hurt your eye in that brawl," she repeated.
Beldar set down his tankard. "Oh? And how could you possibly know?"
Lark smiled thinly. "After you fainted and fell on me, I passed much time with your head on my lap, while your friends argued with the Watch. Your wounds were right under my nose, and as I don't happen to own wardrobes full of gowns, just where you were bleeding was of some importance to me. You had a cut on your head above the hairline, but nothing more."
Beldar stared at her. He remembered few details of that humiliating episode, but-blast it!-she was probably speaking simple truth. The reason for her candor was appallingly clear. She'd been witness to his least shining moments, and with the instinctive cunning of the coin-poor lowborn, understood that he did not want his falsehood-or the events of that night in Luskan-to reach the ears of his friends.
"I assume your silence has a price?"
She nodded. "I need the services of a wizard who can truly tell the nature of magical things."
This was hardly what he'd been expecting. "Why?"
After a moment's hesitation, the lass half-turned away from him and then swung back, with a small silver charm in her hand that hadn't been there before. "I came across this and want to know what it can do. Find a wizard for me and pay his fee, and your friends need never know their gallant, noble friend sold an unwilling woman to a murderous half-ogre."
He couldn't quite suppress a wince. "I didn't know his intention."
"Not at first, perchance, but then you did-yet stood like a post as he dragged me away."
Beldar stared at Lark, seeking some defense for his behavior. The best he could muster was, "I broke no law in Luskan, and in all fairness, I should advise you that the magisters of this city have recently begun punishing extortion rather severely."
"I'm unsurprised," Lark replied softly. "Why else would you not parry my request with threats to reveal…"
She let silence fall between then until he gently finished her sentence: "Your circumstances when last we met."
"Aye. My circumstances.'' she said with soft, searing bitterness.
Beldar drew himself up. "Because, Mistress Lark, that would be as unworthy of me as it is of you."
A flush rose into her cheeks. "So you'll not help me?"
"I'll help you," Beldar replied, "but such aid is not to be construed as payment for your silence on this matter or any other."
Lark's smirk told him she saw his carefully worded parry for what it was: cowardice, dressed up in a magister's fine black robes, but cowardice all the same. And why should she think otherwise, when laws written to prompt men to own their words and actions were so often used to shrug off responsibility?
That was a question for another day. The wench was obviously determined to view any aid he might offer as silence-coin, and it was a reasonably cheap road to her immediate silence. Of course, those who wore black mail invariably made additional demands, but she was, after all, a woman, and common born at that. He could charm her into compliance long before her wits took her that far.
And if you can't charm her, a ghostly voice hissed deep in Beldar's mind, you can always kill her.
That notion was so absurd Beldar was able to brush it aside as absently as he might wave away a stingfly.
"It so happens," he told the unsmiling lass, "I know a wizard who just might serve