The Diamond - J. Robert King [21]
It seemed only Noph wasn't rejoicing. He stood in the cell where he'd met with his father, and a fictitious fireball had blasted Artemis Entreri and Trandon into twin piles of ash-this wood ash, by his boots.
Noph growled to himself. Appearances, facades, deceptions; how could Khelben nod so sagely at Piergeiron's morality tale when the Blackstaff himself had just perpetrated a treasonous deception on the entire city? "Being a hero is the most confusing job in the world," Noph complained aloud.
"Well now, getting down to the brass, you hit the snail on the prosuberbial head there," a basso voice answered, from disconcertingly nearby.
Noph looked up into the tragicomic mope of Becil Boarskyr's face, the cell bars stretching his red jowls back into a doglike grimace. It was not a pretty sight. "Mayhap," Becil added, "that's on account of because it's not a job."
"What are you talking about?" Noph snapped wearily.
"A job's something they give you compensatory damages for doing it. But heroes don't get any monetary renunciation. If they did, they'd be just missionaries."
"Mercenaries," Noph corrected reflexively.
"Yes, that's it, mercy killers-"
"Mercenaries!" Noph snarled. "People who fight for money: mercenaries!"
Becil nodded amiably. "Yes, mammonaries. Which is why being a hero doesn't provide a fellow the fine emnities of lordly life."
"Amenities."
"Amen to that, yourself. Anyway, when a hero does his goodliness, it's like he doesn't get fiscal repercussions because it's not him who gets paid but the whole world."
Noph suddenly understood. The whole world gets paid. He stared at the twin dust piles.
Khelben hadn't benefited from the jailbreak. He'd nothing to gain from keeping Eidola's identity a secret. He'd not seized power during Piergeiron's long incapacity. In each case, Waterdeep had been made the richer, not the Lord Mage. He was a hero because he acted on behalf of everyone but himself. The whole world got paid.
"Now, as long as we're conversating about those of us who worship mammon getting the chance to go prostate before the sanctuary of our golden god-"
"Prostrate," Noph corrected irritably. "Don't throw around words you don't know."
"I'm planning to expose myself about the jailbreak unless I get some commercial satisfaction."
"You what?" Noph asked, emerging from the empty cell to glare at Becil.
"I observated the deception you and that Blackshaft perpetuated on the Waterdousians," Becil said. "And so, I'll need twenty thousand gold for you to buy the pleasure of me keeping my mouth shut."
"You're going to blackmail Khelben?"
"Blackboil is such a dirty word-"
"No one will listen to you."
"I have the truth."
"It can't be called truth when put to such purposes."
"You'll see."
"I already see," Noph assured him darkly, and then stiffened. An insistent thumping echoed down the hall, followed by muffled shrieks and curses.
Noph ran toward the sound, passing along corridors to a solidly barred floor hatch. He pulled the bar and flung back the hatch. Beneath was a latched iron grating, its bars as thick as his wrist, and beneath that a deep well. A rickety ladder clung to one side of its shaft. The shouts and screams came from the depths below: desperate human voices.
"I wonder how much the world'll be paid for this," Noph mused grimly, as he yanked a lantern from a wall hook, undid the latch, swung back the grating, and started climbing down the well.
His legs made long shadows in the lantern light. He felt like a spider scuttling down a hole. Real spiderwebs broke as he descended through them; they clung to him in a gossamer net.
Ancient rungs cracked under his feet. The lantern light didn't reach the bottom of the well. How deep