The fat, red-faced man in the room broke off his muttered negotiations and stood hastily back to give his business associate the room she needed. Serpentine coils slithered around his feet as she drew herself up, swaying slightly, and frowned in concentration.
Transtra’s flame-red hair and beautiful, unclad upper body remained unchanged, the string of rubies she wore still winking between her breasts—but below her slim waist the scales melted away and her tail shrank into long, human legs. Mirt stepped firmly forward between them, the magic that protected him from her touch flaring into life, and swept her into an amorous embrace just as a splintering crash heralded the collapse of the door.
The shrieks and cart-rumbles of bustling Skullport flooded into the room. Aminotaur’s long-horned head ducked through the wreckage of the door, warily following the huge broadaxe. Its nostrils flared as it roared, “Transtra?”
Mirt lifted his head from yielding, cherry flavored lips and rumbled testily, “Ye’ve got the wrong room, hornhead—and I’ve paid for this one.”
The minotaur bellowed its anger and lurched forward— but came to an abrupt halt as a slim blade rose smoothly from between the floorboards in front of it, ascending with deadly stealth. “The next one’ll rise between your legs,” the fat moneylender growled, “unless they walk on out of here right swiftly. Hear me?”
The minotaur glared at him then stared hard at the woman Mirt held, muttered, “Sorry,” and withdrew. The stout moneylender held up a hand and let the second ring on it do its work, enshrouding the open doorway and the walls all around in a cloaking mist. The sounds of Skullport died away abruptly as the ward took effect and in the stillness a steely voice close by his throat said firmly, “My thanks for your quick-witted courtesy, Mirt. You can let go of me now and step well clear.”
“Anything to avoid unpleasantness—and gore,” the moneylender quipped, complying. “Ye make a fine lass, Transtra.”
“Not for you, I don’t,” the lamia noble replied sharply, as scales began to reappear on her lengthening legs. “Let’s keep to matters of trade-bars and importation, shall we? I believe we’d reached six-score casks of belaerd and ten strongchests of heavy chain.”
“Ye don’t want to throw in a ruby or two?” Mirt rumbled, raising an eyebrow. The lamia regarded him coldly.
“No,” she said shortly, “I don’t.”
“Ah,” Mirt said airily, “then I’ve something of thine to return, it seems.” He held out a string of rubies in one stubby-fingered hand. Transtra frowned at it, then looked down to where her unbound hair cascaded over her bosom. The bottom three stones on her string were missing.
She snarled as she raised blazing eyes to his—but Mirt bowed gravely to her as she snatched her rubies back, and with his chin close to the floor looked up and flashed her a momentary, wild rolling-eyed idiot’s grin.
Transtra’s tail lashed the floor for a perilous moment or two thereafter, before her hisses of fury slowly relaxed into a rueful, head-shaking chuckle.
“You’ve never played me false yet,” she said in quiet surprise, watching the shaggy-haired man straighten with a grunt and wheeze. “How is it, then, that you make any coins at all?”
“My boundless charm,” Mirt explained nonchalantly, “leaves rich women swooning in my arms, anxious to make gifts of their baubles to one so attentive and—er, gifted—as I. ‘Tis what’s brought me all this grand way, to where I am today.”
“A rented upstairs escort’s chamber in the worst brothel in Skullport?” Transtra asked sardonically, gliding toward him.
Mirt stuck hairy thumbs in his belt and harrumphed. “Well, lass, ‘tis no secret that my discretion—”
“Has slipped indeed if you dare call me ‘lass,’ ” was the acidic reply as the lamia noble folded her arms and drew herself up, tapping the floor with the tip of her tail in irritation.
Mirt waved a dismissive hand. “If ye think a little assumed pique will make me remorseful and somehow beholden as we talk more trade, think awhile again, little scaled one.”
“Little scaled one?” the lamia noble hissed, truly angry now, bending toward him with blazing eyes. “Why, I’ve a—”
She reared back, startled, and hastily raised her hands to hurl a spell as a pinwheel of tiny lights suddenly appeared in midair in front of her. Transtra glared angrily at the merchant, but saw that this apparition was no doing of his; Mirt was as surprised as she. The lamia noble backed away, hands raised in readiness.
A whisper familiar to Mirt arose from those circling lights: “Gone into Undermountain to rescue Nythyx Thunderstaff, old friend; I may need help.” The first ring on Mirt’s hand quivered in response, silently tugging him in the direction of his friend Durnan’s distant inn.
Mirt followed that urging, striding across the floor in his battered, flopping old boots 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. He’d glanced at the tables there through this window out of old habit upon arrival, and was sure he’d then seen… aye. He had.
A recent venture in Skullport that had met with general approval were the many guttering guide-torches that could be hired for an evening—carried 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, sitting calmly with several female slave-dealers, a long, tall flagon of amberjack in her hand and a slim long sword at her hip. As he watched, she laughed at someone’s jest and slid back in her chair to plant one delicately booted foot atop the table, raising her flagon in salute to the slaver who’d amused her. Umhuh. If that was a woman in distress, he’d hate to see a confident and contented one.
Mirt watched the young noble stretch in her chair, catlike, and glance around. He drew back before she might happen to look up and shook his shaggy head. “Well,” he said slowly, “Well, well.”
“This … thing that has befallen,” the lamia noble said from close behind him, “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, catlike smile as the flickering fire of a ready spell faded from one slim, long-nailed hand.
“There’ll be … other evenings,” she purred, slithering 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 lamia nobles 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 star-motes obediently arose to silently circle it. He bent over them and murmured, “Gone out into Skullport to answer Durnan’s call for aid in rescuing Nythyx Thunderstaff; I’ve seen her safe here, so expect a ruse.”
As the magelight faded, the fat, aging Harper and Lord of Waterdeep muttered something over his other ring to draw 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 then took something small from his belt-pouch to hold ready in his hand as he trudged along the passage to take another, hidden stair out of the House of the Long Slow Kiss. He left the ruined door open behind him so Hlardas would know he was gone and turn off the foot-treadle blades.