From those circling lights arose a whisper familiar to Mirt. "Gone into Undermountain to rescue Nythyx Thunderstaff, old friend, I may need help," it said. The first ring on his hand quivered in response, silently tugging Mirt in the direction of the Yawning Portal, Durnan's distant inn.
Mirt followed that urging, striding in his battered, flopping old boots across the floor and toward the shattered door. Transtra drew smoothly aside to let him pass, he seemed to have forgotten she was in the room. The wards parted soundlessly at the frowning old merchant's approach, and he stepped out into the passage, finding it unencumbered by minotaurs. A few steps took him to the nearest window.
The fat merchant looked out and down over the walled, warded courtyard of Bindle's Blade, the newest tankard house in dark and dangerous Skullport. On his arrival, he'd glanced at the tables there and had seen… aye, he had…
A recent venture in Skullport were guide torches, which could be hired for an evening and were carried about wherever one willed by floating, disembodied skeletal hands. Many of these flickering innovations were bobbing and glimmering among the carefully spaced tables of the Blade right now, and one of them shone quite clearly on the face of Nythyx Thunderstaff. She sat calmly with several slave-dealing women. A long, tall flagon of amberjack was in her hand, and a slim long sword at her hip. As he watched, she laughed at someone's jest, slid back in her chair, planted one delicately booted foot atop the table, and raised her flagon in salute to the slaver who'd amused her.
If that was a woman in distress, Mirt thought he'd hate to see a confident and contented one.
Mirt watched the young woman stretch in her chair, catlike, and glance around. He drew back before she might happen to look up at the window, and shook his shaggy head. "Well," he said slowly, "Well, well."
"This… thing that has befallen," the lamia noble said from close behind him. "It has put an end to our trade talk for now, has it not?"
Mirt turned to look into eyes the color of flame, and noticed-not for the first time-just how beautiful Transtra was. "It has," he said almost sadly, and his business associate gave him a little smile… as the flickering fire of a ready spell faded from one slim, long-nailed hand.
"There'll be… other evenings," she said, and slithered past so closely that her leathery scales brushed along his arm. Mirt watched her go down the stairs into the darkness before he stirred, harrumphed, and shook his head. It was a pity he was so stout, and that lamias ate human flesh. He'd started to want that little smile to mean the other thing.
He stepped back into his room and did something to the first ring. A tiny pinwheel of silver motes obediently arose to silently circle it. He bent over them and whispered, "Gone out into Skullport to answer Durnan's call for aid in rescuing Nythyx Thunderstaff, I've seen her safe here, so suspect a ruse."
The magelight faded. The fat, aging Harper and Lord of Waterdeep muttered something over his other ring, drawing the tatters of his ward in around him so he'd be cloaked against flying death on his walk through Skullport. Shops and faces in the undercity changed with brutal rapidity, but the place grew no more tolerant of the weak and unwary. Mirt looked all around and took something small from his belt pouch to hold ready in his hand as he trudged along the passage, toward a hidden stair out of the House of the Long Slow Kiss. He left the door of his room open behind him so that Hlardas would know he was gone and could turn off the foot-treadle blades. He'd best shout a reminder as he passed the kitchens. One could lose good chambermaids that way.
Asper hurled herself into a somersault over the startled guard's head and spun around as her bare feet bounced to a landing on the cold flagstones. The city guardsman turned with smooth speed, magnificent in his splendid armor-in time to see the gleaming pommel of the young lady's poniard a finger's width from his eyes, where its wicked point should have been. He'd barely begun to gape at it when he felt the pommel of her reversed long sword nudge his ribs, in just the place where it would have driven all the breath out of him had this fight been in earnest.
He stared into the sweat-slick face of the grinning ash-blonde girl and shook his head in surrender, drops of his own sweat flying from the end of his nose. "I see ye do it," he growled, "but I still don't believe it."
"Consider yourself slain, Herle," said the guardcaptain from behind him, "and next time, try not to turn like some sort of sleeping elephant. She could have put her blade through your neck and been gone out the door before you were well into your pivot!"
"Aye, Captain," Herle said heavily. "Just once, I'd like to see y-"
He fell silent, gaping at a pinwheel of tiny lights that were silently appearing in midair in front of his leather-clad sword-foe, one by one. In wary silence, Asper watched them spin into bright solidity. She held up a hand to bid the guardsmen keep still.
A hoarse whisper she knew well arose from those circling lights. "Gone out into Skullport to answer Durnan's call for aid in rescuing Nythyx Thunderstaff, I've seen her safe here, so suspect a ruse."
The motes of light then faded until only Asper could see them, thanks to Mirt's magic. They drifted into a line leading north-and sharply downward. Into Undermountain, below even this deep, dank cellar of the castle.
Asper frowned at those tiny points of light. She knew her man had sent her the message in case Durnan's call had been false-a ruse to lure Mirt himself into danger. And, ruse or not, unless either of the old Lords of Waterdeep had changed a goodly amount in the last few days, they'd sorely need her aid in some way, ere long. She turned and bowed to the watching guardsmen.
"It's been a pleasure breaking blades with you, as always, gentlesirs," she told them, wiping the sweat from her brow with one leather-clad forearm as she stepped into her boots. "I must go, I am needed."
"Is it something we should know about?" the guard-captain asked, frowning.
Asper shook her head. "Lords' business," she said, and ran lightly out of the room, leaving all the arms-men staring after her.
"How can one woman's blade-even that woman's- matter to the Lords of Waterdeep?" one guard asked in tones of wonder. "What is she, that they need her to aid them so often?"
"Friend," Herle replied, "you try to best her at blade-work next time, and then come and ask me that again." He casually cast the blade in his hand end over end down the length of that vast chamber, into the glory-hole in the far corner-an opening no larger than his fist. The blade settled home to its hilt with a rattling clang, and all his fellows of the guard turned to look at him with whistles of awe. Herle spread his hands, without a trace of pride on his face, and added, "You all saw what she did to me. However good one is, there's always someone better."
Another guard shivered. "I'd not like to meet whoever is better than she."
"And now for the other working," the eye tyrant breathed, turning an eyestalk toward a certain shadowed cavity high in the cavern wall. Obediently, something small and glossy rose into view and drifted smoothly out into the greater emptiness of the main cavern: a shining sphere of polished crystal, the size of a large human head. It winked and sparkled as it glided toward the beholder, and then suddenly grew brighter, a pale greenish glowing awakening within it.