There followed a sudden lionlike roar of dismay and a tinkling of merry feminine laughter. Korvaun followed the sounds into the warm, damp air of the solar.
Both combatants were regarding him with interest before he could even draw breath to speak. Rings on their fingers glowed in sudden readiness. Korvaun tried a smile.
"I… offer no menace to you or to any in this fair house. I'm Korvaun Helmfast of House Helmfast, here to crave audience on matters of business with the famous Mirt the Moneylender."
Mirt grunted, wiped one fat-fingered hand across his brow, and leaned on his sword as if it was a dung-spade. Korvaun managed not to wince.
"A flatterer, eh? Ye must be desperate."
Korvaun found himself at a loss for words. Well, that was quick.
"I've some need for coin, yes," he managed, uncomfortably aware of dancing mirth in the woman's eyes, "yet I've come here rather than just emptying the nearest family coffer because I find myself also in need of some advice."
The shaggy-mustached head lifted from its hard-breathing rest on the pommel of the sword, its owner frowning in sudden interest. "Well, now. Have ye, indeed?"
A hand like a gnarled, hairy-knuckled shovel waved Korvaun toward a door.
"Rest yerself in there, my young friend, an' we'll sport together awhile. Asper will find us something to drink-something unpoisoned, I hope."
Asper gave him a dazzling smile, tossed her blade onto a cushion, and dived head-first down a hitherto-hidden slide. The broad leaves of a sea-mist flower, large enough to conceal several such floor openings, danced in her wake.
Aware of Mirt's scrutiny, Korvaun repressed the urge to shake his head in bemusement as he went to the indicated door. Unlike a noble villa, indeed. The man most of Waterdeep called the Old Wolf fell into step behind him.
"So, young Helmfast, how's your mother these days?"
Gods, but she was beautiful. Not in the overpainted, gilded, exquisitely coiffed manner of noble matrons, nor yet in the slyly wanton lushness of the best tavern dancers, but… like a graceful wisp of a temple dancer, yet with something of the imp about her, too, in her dark leathers.
Asper gave Korvaun a smile that made him blush as she handed him a decanter to match the one she'd given Mirt, stopper and all, and trotted out of the room, unstrapping and unbuckling as she went.
"She's gone down to the pool to bathe, an' there's no one else this end of the house," Mirt grunted, from where he was lounging in an old wreck of a chair with his feet up on a matching ruin of a footstool. He waved Korvaun to more catastrophes of furniture. "So speak freely. An' soon."
Korvaun lowered himself gingerly onto a decrepit chair. It creaked, but held firm. "Goodsir, I'm here because I need to settle a debt we-I've just incurred, to a certain Master Stone-"
"Nay, nay, tell me nothing, young lord! I needn't know an' don't want to know, for I cannot tell excited Guardsmen or dogs of the Watch what you've never spoken of. Besides, I know all about your little swordsclang with Varandros Dyre, an'-"
"You do?" Korvaun blurted, too astonished to stop himself.
Keen old eyes met his from under bristling brows. "Tymora keep ye, is each new generation born blind? As ye strut about the city, young cockerel, has it never occurred to ye that your every spit and belch an' casual insult is marked, an' remembered, an' told about to someone else?"
"What? By who?"
"By whom, lad, by whom. Ye don't want to sound unlettered. How d'ye think street urchins earn coppers enough for a daily gnaw-bun, hey? By running an' telling some merchant ye're strolling down his lane, or some gossip-monger who wants to Know All, an' resell some of it for brighter coin… or some creditor, that ye've wandered within reach at last."
Mirt swallowed most of the contents of his decanter at a single gulp without apparent effect and growled, "Yet ye spoke of having coin enough not to need my hand a-clutching at your purse, or if it falls empty, something else ye keep dangling rather near it."
Korvaun frowned. "I really came here for advice," he said quietly. Lifting his decanter, he peered into its depths, and his frown deepened.
"Drink," Mirt bade gruffly. "'Tis fine. Nothing but the finest horsepiss do we serve young noble visitors wise enough to know how dunderheaded they are! I grow older and thirstier by the breath, so out with it, lad: what troubles ye?"
Korvaun grimaced. "Dyre's furious with us. He said all of us reach a time when consequences can no longer be laughed away, and that his friends-all the merchants and shopkeepers of the city-would be watching us. He made it sound like the city was two steps away from rising to butcher all nobles!"
Mirt took a swig from his decanter, sighed in appreciation, and asked it, "Did he, now? How unusually candid of him. Ye should be grateful he managed to speak so bluntly, instead of trailing off into cursing the way most of us coarse lowborn do. I hope ye remembered more of his words than just that much."
Korvaun found that his mouth had fallen open. Uncomfortably aware of the weight of the Old Wolf's gaze, Korvaun murmured, "I'd never considered before that the commoners might get angry at, well, the way of things."
Mirt's gaze turned mocking, and Korvaun found himself burning with embarrassment.
"I mean, at what we young nobles have always done-pranks and swordplay and jollity. The common folk always just seemed to-"
"Get out of the way as best they could, an' otherwise just stand and take it?"
"Well, yes. Exactly. And yet I see it, now: they're right to be furious. We smash what they can ill afford to lose, and our jests mock them even when we don't mean to… and yet most of the time we do."
Mirt nodded. "The road to being deeply loved, no?"
"No," Korvaun agreed a little grimly, and drank.
Liquid fire promptly ran up his nose as well as down his gullet, and left him sputtering.
The Old Wolf chuckled, deftly plucked the decanter from failing Helmfast hands, and dealt Korvaun a slap on the back that would have led to prompt face-first disaster if he hadn't also raised the knuckles of his decanter-holding hand like a wall in front of Korvaun's chest.
Korvaun wiped away tears and croaked, "What is this… stuff?"
"Firebelly. 'Tis all the rage in the pirate ports, an' goes well with the strongest cheese. Makes your breath sweet, clears out the pipes-as ye've found-an' is very good for ye."
Through still-watery eyes Korvaun found Mirt grinning at him, and gasped, "Are you drinking it, too?"
"Of course I am, ye silly man; I have some professional ethics. So it's dawned on ye at last that the common folk of our fair city might be discontented an' have cause to be. An' now?"
"An uprising would be terrible. It must be forestalled, and you… are of common birth, wise to the streets, and yet are… well, widely rumored to be-"
Mirt's eyes were bright and steady, offering no aid at all, and Korvaun wallowed in blushing embarrassment for a breath or two ere he managed to blurt: "-a Lord of Waterdeep!"
"Well, now. Rumors can be such ugly things, can they not?"
"So can truths," Korvaun told him quietly. "Nobles learn that much, at least. Even when secrets…" He paused, wondering just how to say what was in his thoughts.
"Are such fun, an' the game that all your elders are playing?" Mirt asked, his voice very dry.
Their gazes met squarely. After a moment, Korvaun nodded.
"Merchants are no different from nobles when it comes to secrets," the Old Wolf said gruffly, reaching down behind his chair to bring up a second decanter. "'Tis just that more of our secrets are about money. Nobles have more idle time to play at pride an' betrayal, but your biggest, sharpest secrets are all about coins, too. Inheritance, hidden debts, obligations, trade-ties gone wrong; all of that."