The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [46]
The Old Wolf's features melted, blurred-and Korvaun was looking at himself.
"Aren't I handsome?" his own voice asked him. "Give a young noble a kiss? No? Look down at your hands."
Korvaun did so-and discovered to his horror that they were hairy and knobby-knuckled, with stubby fingers and calluses. They were the hands that had waved him to silence and hefted decanters. Mirt's hands.
He looked up at his double, but its shape was blurring, and his own hands were, too. Then the image of Korvaun was gone, and the stout, shaggy old moneylender was holding the little shield in his hand and grinning at him. Korvaun quickly looked down. His own hands were back, too. So the slipshield was a device that let two men trade shapes.
"Let that be the secret I'll test your keeping of," Mirt said as he dropped the shield into Korvaun's palm. "Now be off with ye, before your bodyguards reluctantly decide something's happened to ye and they'd better start earning their pay. Back on the streets with ye, an' back to getting rich. From the day ye pick up my coins, ye've a year to pay me back."
Korvaun discovered his mouth was still agape. He closed it hastily to stammer his thanks.
Mirt snorted and showed him to the door, slapping the unfinished firebelly decanter into his hand. "A gift. Ye'll be needing it, Lord Helmfast."
Korvaun managed a smile. "You speak with conviction. Are you a seer?"
The moneylender snorted. "Ye're tryin' to do the right thing, lad. D'ye think to be the first man who won't be punished for it?"
* * * * *
Mirt sneezed again and slashed aside another black, clinging armful of cobwebs. Well, 'twasn't as if this tunnel got used every day. The lantern in his hand was getting uncomfortably warm, so he must be almost there by now.
Aye, there 'twas. And at least he wasn't making this trip at the dead puffing run, with some disaster or other rocking the city above him. 'Twas good some of the young noble pups were finally showing signs of taking up the mantle of responsibility. At last. At far too long and bleeding last.
And wonder of the gods, if young Helmfast wasn't actually seeing for himself that the common folk had true cause for complaint!
Mirt passed his hand along the wall at ankle height, and was rewarded with a momentary glow. Aye, right here.
He trailed his fingertips up the rough stone to the familiar knobs, curled his palm around one of them in such a way that his fingertips pressed onto the stones in spread array, and a door-sized oval of wall abruptly swung inward, revealing faint blue gloom beyond.
Mirt stepped through, to be greeted by the sound of a young lass choking.
The duty apprentice was seated at the usual desk, with a glow-stone resting on the pages of what might be a spellbook but then again might just be a heaving-bosoms chapbook. She'd dropped both book and stone in haste as the opening of the seldom-used secret door startled her, and grabbed for a ready wand beneath the still-bouncing book.
That wild grab had forced her to hastily swing her feet down from their perch on the far end of the desk, and her fashionable boots had brained her backup-who was now slumping senseless to the floor. So much for Tower guardroom rules about the backup sentinel watching from no closer than the far doorway.
Mirt put away his growing grin and set down his lantern as it became clear the tangle-haired young mage was in real trouble. The wand shook in her hand, and she was making strange gargling, mewing sounds as she spat out too little of a hot-mussels-and-gravy bun.
Mirt could lurch forward with surprising speed when he had to, and in a trice he'd snatched the wand from her trembling hand and flung it aside, then come around the desk and laid hold of one booted ankle. Thankfully these slender, high pointy-toed jobs didn't come off all that easily, so he could do this:
He hauled hard, put a foot on her stool, pushed off as if he was starting to climb a steep stair-and the choking apprentice was suddenly upside down.
Her fashionable skirts fell away to reveal