The coins started to come. Bolts of cloth gathered less dust, and Blandras took less and less mold-stained and mice-nibbled stock to the copper coin markets outside the walls, and looked a little less drawn about his face. His shop grew no larger, how shy;ever, and no new coach or steed appeared in his sta shy;bles. Gossip soon suggested he owed money elsewhere, and was sending it away with the same men who brought him his cloth. . and as he did nothing scan shy;dalous, or seemingly anything at all outside of his shop, really, gossip soon forgot him.
Certain eyes and tongues in the city would have been surprised indeed to learn that no less than four of the houses on Spurnserpent Street now belonged to Blandras Nuin. They'd become his one at a time, in an inexorable march along that old lane situated on the edge of the expanding area where the wealthy were tearing down and rebuilding in grander style. They'd have been still more surprised to learn that the modest, kindly cloth mer shy;chant was just waiting for other folk to move before send shy;ing an agent to make offers on others … but the only eyes that did notice belonged to local Harpers, and they were pleased to see coin going there and not into something unseen or suspicious that meant they would have to skulk at the shutters of yet another fine, upstanding citizen.
An unseen, ghostly lady who'd had over six hundred years to take her measure of folk watched the world through the eyes of the man who was not Blandras Nuin, and heard as he did the words he spoke, and saw his deeds. She wondered sometimes, if things had been dif shy;ferent, if this was a man she could have turned to truly become the sort of man he was pretending to be. A man she could have welcomed to Storm's kitchen table with a glad heart, however many murders had stained his hands in the past. After all, her own had certainly known blood enough, and Storm welcomed her.
One could always build a legion of castles on "if things had been different." Those who tried to, in life, were often the most dangerous ones. More than that, she'd had long enough to learn that men cannot be turned. They can only turn themselves. One can ruin a life with a single, crippling sword stroke, or a blinding iron, but one cannot guide the unwilling save by example and by holding out choices, and only when the unwilling don't realize what is being done. Sylune was also determined that she would do no more than guide. Down the years the eldest of the Seven Sisters had heard enough whimpering, of dogs and men, to have any favor left for the boot or the whip.
Yet she already knew that whatever Blandras Nuin was becoming, Auvrarn Labraster only really understood boots and whips. She would have to be his whip-if ever she got the chance.
Sometimes Blandras Nuin bought drinks for traders in other goods from Waterdeep, the more garrulous mer shy;chants whose wares never touched on bolts of cloth or garment-making. He sat with them, and made them feel welcome and in the company of a friend, and gave them an ear that listened all the night through, and was never attached to a face that looked bored or hostile. He seemed to some a dreamer after the gilded bustle of a city he'd never dare to try his luck in, one of many such on their travels who were hungry for their talk of who was riding high and who'd fallen down in the City of Splendors. He wanted to know where things might be heading for those fortunate and wealthy enough to pitch in when the coins started to roll. New fashions and the latest nasty gossip of betrayals and debauched revels, noble feuds and men-and increasingly, women-found dead in new and stranger "suspicious circumstances," fueled an ever-burn shy;ing curiosity. If the eyes of the man who bought their drinks widened at some of the names, why then they always seemed wide and avid, didn't they?
Temple scandals and guild rights, warehouse fires on the docks and new turrets added to the already over shy;gilded houses of merchants rising past their ears in coin; he listened to it all.
Those nights of Waterdhavian tales were the times when Blandras Nuin bought extra bottles to carry home in his fists, or strayed to the houses where lamps burned late and silken scarves hung at the windows, beckoning lonely men inside.
Unnoticed and invisible, Sylune rode her unhappy steed through days, then months, drawing the cloak of her patience around her and waiting, waiting for the moment when a certain ring would come off Labraster's finger, and give her the chance she needed.
The moon rode high above scudding clouds this night, and the breeze off the sea reached cold fingers right through his thin cloak. The man who sometimes forgot that he'd ever been Auvrarn Labraster reeled more than a little as he came down the worn stone steps of the Howling Herald, leaned for a moment against the stair post topped with a gaping gargoyle head, and was noisily sick all over the refuse strewn in the lee of the post.
Ah, but he'd drunk too much-a lot too much. Good old Blandras Nuin had lent small sums to a lot of men to subtly spread his influence and circle of friends, and most of them never intended to pay it back. As long as he kept smiling and not mentioning it and draining the tankards they bought for him, there was no need to kill him. Cut off from his armsmen, alley boys, and more sinister allies, Auvrarn Labraster had to be careful about things like that. He was alone, like any other idiot mer shy;chant whose friends lasted just as long as the coins in his purse. Any shadow could hold ready knives and grasping hands.
A shadow moved in the gloom of the narrow passage between the Herald and the bakery next door. Labraster moved hastily, if unsteadily, around to face it, feeling for his knife.
Eyes gleamed in the darkness, then teeth, curving into a smile. "Go home, weaver," a voice hissed contemptu shy;ously. "I know how empty your purse is."
Rage rose in Labraster, just for a moment, and with its coming, his head started to pound as if quarry hammers were setting to work on the back of his head.
"Errummahuh," he agreed hastily, turning away and hurrying off down the street, away from the softly chuck shy;ling shadow waiting by the stair post. Gods, but a youth with a long knife probably could open his kidneys for him this night, with ease, and leave him to bleed his life away in the mud, bereft of coin, and alone. Alone. . the smil shy;ing image of the priestess Meira swam into his mind, then, and he groaned and clutched at his head.
"No," he whimpered. "Gods, no. A toothless alley whore would be cleaner and more loving."
That mumbled conviction took him around a corner onto Boldshoulder Street, which was cobbled, uneven, and dotted with the mud and dung of many wagons. He realized this only as he slipped in one such offering, his left boot shooting out wildly in front of him.
A moment later, he'd measured his length helplessly in midair, and a moment after that he slammed down so hard on his back in rather liquid horse droppings that the breath was hurled out of him. His elbows and head went numb, and he could barely find strength enough, in the sudden dizzying swirl of the moon above him, to writhe in pain.
It must have been some time later when he rolled over. Dazedly he recalled that at least two separate pairs of boots had clicked hurriedly past him without stopping. He was cold, his head was splitting, and he reeked with wet, green-brown dung.
"What had they been feeding the horse that did this?" he snarled, on the verge of tears from the smell and his headache. "And how by the God on the Rack could it have been in any state to pull anything?"
Somehow he found his feet again and stumbled on down the street. Prendle was just two lanes over, and in his house he could get a bath. Nuin had an ornate tub. The man must have had a thing for cleanliness. Perhaps he'd fallen down, just like this, once too often, and gotten tired of crawling naked under the pump in the stable yard. Auvrarn's stomach lurched as a stray breath of sea breeze brought a fresh waft of the smell coming off him to his nose. The breeze didn't touch his hair, which felt like glue. There was probably dung all through it. Labraster moaned, and felt like throwing up again-well, gods, why not?