The Lost Library of Cormanthy - Mel Odom [27]
"There are many lessons to be learned that are contained in the objects you ridicule so easily," he said.
You are wasting your breath, Baylee. She has only deaf ears for the perspective you offer.
Jaeleen pounced on a silver necklace with a trio of very nice emeralds Baylee had passed up. He'd only taken a few coins, some coppers and some silvers to tide him over on his journey to the Glass Eye Concourse in the coming tendays, in case he wanted to lie in a bed for a change and eat something another person had prepared.
"By Tymora's bountiful breast," Jaeleen exclaimed, "how could you have missed this?"
"I didn't," Baylee assured her. His heart beat rapidly as he spied an embossed leather pouch. He pulled it up from the tangle of bones and opened it.
"You left this here?"
"Yes."
"Fool." The necklace disappeared into one of Jaeleen's hidden pockets. "Do you know how much Algan One-Thumb will give you for something like this down in Suzail?"
Baylee looked into the pouch and found a thick sheaf of papers inside. He glanced swiftly through them, finding they were only a collection of letters. Evidently one of the victims of the trollkin had been a mail carrier. He stuffed the parchments back into the pouch and slung it over his shoulder. "Do you remember how Algan became known as 'One-Thumb?' He was a butcher who always tilted the scales in his own favor when no one was looking. Till someone did look, and removed that thumb for him."
"He has a fat purse."
"And a way of keeping it that way," Baylee agreed. Algan was known among the explorers and adventurers who brought back whatever booty they could from their expeditions. The moneylender was even good for an occasional loan to some who were willing to ferret out the truth of a rumor he'd chanced upon.
"I know how to deal with him," Jaeleen replied. "He doesn't dare short?change me. I always bring him quality merchandise, and there are others I could deal with."
Though none with a faster purse, Xuxa said. That's why Jaeleen will always deal with Algan's kind, and take quick money over good money.
Jaeleen continued her searching, crying out in small, surprised yelps that Baylee knew were designed to needle him. He ignored them, concentrating on the prizes he turned up. The elven quill and ink pot looked more like refuse than treasure, but the style to his trained eye identified it as being little more than a hundred years or so past the fall of Myth Drannor. He put it into his bag of holding. With luck and a proper diviner, he could get a sense of who had owned it and perhaps fit another piece of the historical tapestry of the area together.
He added a gray coral mariner's good luck charm that looked like a hunk of broken rock no bigger than his thumb. It took closer inspection to see the symbol of Selune, the circle of seven stars surrounding two feminine eyes, carved into the coral. It was a delicate piece of work, worn by time and by rubbing so that the carving was barely visible. He judged it to be of Turmish origin, and a few characters-probably a prayer-on the back of the rock confirmed that it was from the Vilhon Reach, off the Sea of Fallen Stars. There was no apparent reason why a mariner would be in the area. The mystery intrigued him, and perhaps a historian would be able to place the time period by the writing on the back.
Only a little while later, he found what he came looking for.
The book was small, hardly bigger than his unfolded hand, surely no wider, not even as thick as his forefinger. Baylee took it from the waterproof pack strapped to the back of a skeleton. The foodstuffs in the pack had long since ruined, though pots with wax seals somehow remained miraculously intact amid the packed clothing. He took them from the pack and set them gingerly aside. Probably they contained wines or mendicants, but all of them would have long ago gone bad. Accidentally breaking them open in the enclosed space of the chamber would