Neither she nor Mirt turned their heads so much as an inch in the wine importer's direction, but they both knew how much he'd suddenly stiffened and gone pale at the mention of Laeral and the sudden thought that she just might be Mirt's outside-the-law muscle.
Mirt stared stonily back at her and snapped, "She may approach-on her knees, mind, and begging for mercy."
"Yes, Lord," Asper breathed, bowing her head hastily. "I shall impart your will to her."
She kissed the rug before his boots and backed away from him on her knees, clear across the room to the archway and through its curtain. Once safely unseen by visiting Athkat-lan swindlers, she rose with the suppleness of a snake and a wide grin on her face to find Laeral stifling a giggle.
The Lady Mage of Waterdeep gave her a quick, wordless hug and dropped to her own knees. Pinching the inside of her nose high up with two long-nailed fingers so that tears of pain came to her eyes, she let them run artistically down her cheeks, dropped a look of despair across her face, and commenced her own long crawl through the curtain and across the gigantic snowcat-fur rug.
"Mercy, Lord Mirt," she whimpered, lifting her tearstained face at about the halfway-point of her journey. "Please! You must give me more time to pay, I beg of you! Khelben sends word that he, too, will come to you on his knees if that is your wish and that you must understand that he wants me to do everything I can to please you! Everything!"
Paraster Montheir stared open-mouthed at the most powerful woman in Waterdeep crawling along on the furs with her tear-glistening face raised pleadingly to the moneylender, but Mirt barely glanced at her.
"Aye, aye," he growled, "Khelben knows my weakness for pretty lasses. Tell him-after I've finished with ye-that he seeks to buy my patience but succeeds only in trying it. Now, plead as if ye really meant it! Grind thyself into my floor, kiss my boots, and keep on kissing them until I give ye leave to cease!"
"Oh, most gracious of men, flower of mercy," Laeral wept, "your kindness warms me! I'm unworthy to kiss your boots and the feet within them, but please allow me to do so! Command me as your slave! Oh, Mirt, all Water-deep lives and breathes because of your deeds and coins and wisdom, and I'm so ashamed at my failure to repay in time! Just a few days more, perhaps a tenday, and-"
"Start licking," Mirt growled, watching the grandly clad woman snaking her way forward. Hurriedly Laeral threw herself across the remaining expanse of furs to the toes of his worn, flopping seaboots and lavished kisses upon them, her shapely behind in the air.
All the color had gone out of Paraster Montheir's face, leaving it the color of an old, dirty seal tusk. Mirt looked up at him and then back at the woman at his feet, frowned thoughtfully, and grunted, "Well, now, perhaps there is a way ye and Khelben could hurl magics to aid me in a little matter. Keep licking, wench! I gave ye no command to stop, did I?"
"Mirt," the Athkatlan wine-merchant stammered hastily, "I've changed my mind. You'll have your money in full later in the day, plus double interest for the tenday arrears. I'll send it to you here, in the hands of my banker's trusties, forthwith! Ah-"
The old moneylender rose, no trace of a grin on his face, and snapped, "Be still and speak not" to the Lady Mage at his feet. He pointed at Montheir and growled, "I accept, in gold coins of a minting, weight, and condition as would be accepted by a guildmaster of this city. Wait to send the coin-carriers until sundown."
He took something that had been hanging on the quillons of a scabbarded sword low on the wall behind his desk into his hand, and Montheir saw that it was a whip. Mirt lashed the palm of his own hand thoughtfully, looked down at the backside of the silently kneeling Lady Mage, then lifted his gaze to the Athkatlan again and added, "Ye see, I'll probably be busy until then."
Paraster Montheir swallowed, nodded hastily, and was still nodding with a sickly grin coming and going on his face when Mirt barked, "Asper! To me! Hasten, no need to crawl!" The lithe, leather-clad lass raced into view through the archway and came to a halt with hands at her sides, as alert and straight-backed-rigid as any Palace guard standing to attention.
"Conduct our valued friend Master Montheir to the gates with all courtesy," Mirt commanded her.
"At once, my Lord!" she breathed and made her turn toward the Athkatlan merchant almost a leap of eagerness. "This way, honored merchant," she urged, indicating the door with a flourish as if he'd never seen it before, bowing low, then leaping to open it for him.
Swallowing again, Paraster Montheir nodded hastily to Mirt, turned, and waved at Asper to precede him.
She bowed to him again and did so, slowing to offer him her arm on the broad rough-slab stairs that descended into the forehall past rows of figureheads and bowsprit filigrees salvaged from wrecks in the dangerous coastal seas just north of Waterdeep.
At about the sixth step down, Asper murmured, "If you’ll allow me to say this, Master Montheir, you are a very brave man."
The Athkatlan looked at her sharply, seeking any hint of sarcasm or perhaps pleading or admiration, but her eyes were downcast and her face unreadable.
Paraster made no immediate reply, but when they reached the bottom of the stair and a sharp singing in the air around him announced the passage of his shielding magics out through a stronger, invisible enchantment, he murmured in a low voice, "He won't really whip the Lady Mage of Waterdeep, will he?"
"Oh, yes," Asper replied, slowing and turning to look at him with eyes that were large and grave. "In fact, Khelben insists on it."
"The Blackstaff? He does?"
"Oh, yes," Asper told him, not loosening the clasp of their linked arms as they walked on. "Laws are laws, and a bond is a bond. Let me show you something."
Laden servants were hastening back and forth across the forehall between the pantry and a shuttered larder where wagons left deliveries. Asper reached out her free hand to a passing maidservant. "Maerilee-show this honored merchant your back."
Maerilee nodded, undid a bodice-lacing atop one of her shoulders, turned away, and let her garment fall to her waist. Across shoulder blades and a deep-corded back, Montheir found himself gazing upon a webwork of deep white and purple scars.
The servant looked at Asper, who nodded, and Maerilee bowed her head and went on her way. "She displeased my lord," Asper told the Athkatlan softly, "over a debt."
Paraster Montheir said nothing and remained silent as she conducted him out through the great entry doors of the mansion, but he nodded to her as he would to an equal as they parted on the broad top step of the outside stairs.
He looked back once as he joined his guards and shuddered as he saw the wench in leathers wave casually to the two gargoyles-if that's what they were; great stone beasts with wings and claws and tusks-perched atop the doorposts, receiving their solemn salutes in return.
Asper seemed to speak to someone else as she turned to go in, someone ghostly, whose feminine head and shoulders seemed solid enough but who trailed away to nothingness well above the ground. The doors of Mirt's Mansion closed softly, and Paraster Montheir found himself listening to a high wail of pain coming from somewhere within that old, ramshackle, fortresslike house.
Asper smiled and shook her head as she shot the last bolt and turned back toward the stairs. The problem with watchghosts like Ieiridauna was that they loved dramatics. That cry of pain sounded more like a large and enthusiastic wildcat in heat than a woman in pain.
On the other hand, perhaps 'twas overly harsh to criticize another's acting. Laeral had been so overblown as to be about as convincing as a slap-puppet play-though it had worked, hadn't it? — and if things had gone on much longer, a certain lass who rejoiced in the name of Asper couldn't have avoided bursting into wild, helpless laughter. Shaking her head, she retraced her steps to Mirt's office.