The Wyvern's Spur - Kate Novak [83]
Years of dealing with human prejudices had left Olive unwilling to leave justice in the hands of authorities. She doubted that any of them, even Harpers, ever felt any concern for people like her and Jade. She couldn't trust them to believe her story about Flattery or do anything about him.
She knew Giogi Wvvernspur was different, though. She would take Giogi into her confidence. Giogi, she figured, will be flattered if he thinks I'm a Harper, and it would never occur to him to check into my credentials. As far as he knows, I'm a bard of some renown, and Cat's already prejudiced him against Flattery. It won't be hard to convince him of the truth.
Besides, how can he deny assistance to the woman who restored the wyvern's spur to his family? Olive thought, tossing her hair and watching it shimmer in the mirror. The halfling couldn't help but realize that once Flattery was dealt with, the gratitude of a Cormyrian noble, even one as minor as Giogi, could be extremely useful.
I won't need to explain to Giogi all the details of how I recovered his family's heirloom, of course; he can assume I'm just extraordinarily clever, which is fairly close to the truth.
"Time to arm myself for battle," Olive muttered. One at a time, over her bed, the halfling emptied the pockets of each item of her wardrobe that she'd worn the evening before. She had pockets in her pants, pockets in her tunic, pockets in her vest, pockets in her cloak, and pockets in her belt. Soon a pile of debris collected on the bedspread.
A job long overdue, she thought, appalled by all the clutter she found. Some of it was organized-capital and basic equipment-but most of it was junk she'd been unable to part with because she'd convinced herself that eventually it would prove useful.
Her own purse held plenty of coins: ten platinum tri-crowns, thirty-two gold lions, plus change-sixteen silver and twelve copper coins. Much more lay stashed beneath the floorboards of her rented room. A smaller sack contained twenty glass "rubies" for emergencies and four real rubies for real emergencies. She set both sack and purse aside.
Her lockpicks and wires were nestled neatly in their leather case, though in the corner of the case, wrapped in rags, were twenty-some unsorted picks-some she'd found in her travels; others were broken tools she'd been meaning to replace. More than fifty odd-sized keys jangled from her iron key ring. A few were made to open more than their share of locks; others were rendered useless by distance from, or destruction of, the locks they'd once fit. A spool of sturdy string, a penknife, and a flint with striker completed her "absolutely necessary" pile.
Olive made a separate pile of four more balls of sturdy string, two corks, a fishhook and sinker, hair ties and fasteners, a comb, chalk, three empty glass vials-one missing a stopper-six mismatched buttons, a bag of raisins, two dirty handkerchiefs, a candle, a stick of charcoal, spectacle frames without the spectacles, a yarting thumb pick she'd been searching for all week, last week's shopping list, nut shells, peas, and enough biscuit crumbs to keep a pigeon happy for a month. It was mostly stuff she would throw out-eventually.
"And last but not least," Olive said, pulling Jade's magical pouch out of her vest and untying the strings, "the wyvern's spur," she announced, dumping the contents of the miniature bag of holding on her bed.
"She's as bad as me," the halfling said, astonished by the assortment and number of things that tumbled from the enchanted leather sack. Two handfuls of coins-mostly copper and silver-a purple silk scarf, a brass shot glass, a minty-smelling potion in a crystal vial, a very nice pearl necklace, six keys, a silver spoon, a pair of gloves, a ball of string, a button hook, some regular dice, some loaded dice, a yard of lace, an apple, some chunks of cured, dried meat, and several pieces of hard candy covered in lint.
"Yech," Olive muttered. She shook the pouch some more,