The Best of the Realms, Book II

NOTHING BUT TROUBLE

Mother Teshla’s Turret Club for Adventurers was currently the most cozy gathering place for “lads and lasses of the sword” in all the fair city of Waterdeep. Its rooms were crowded with comfortable old chairs to sink into and handy tables to put your boots up on, and there was good wine, better beer, and hot, dripping butter-and-bacon sandwiches to consume. There were even eels in honey sauce. Still slithering, of course.

It would be nice to see Teshie again, after all this time. A certain far-too-generous mage of Shadowdale had chosen a good place for their meeting. Now, if Khelben didn’t get wind of any of this until they were done, things would be just fine. If not…

Mirt the Moneylender shrugged. Disaster would come. He’d learned there was little one could do beyond frantic scrambles to get out of its way. Whatever befell, he’d see Teshie again.

With a smile of ready anticipation on his battered face, Mirt the Moneylender glanced up at the soft summer stars, beckoned to the cloaked and hooded figure climbing in his wake, and launched himself into one last, lumbering charge up the final flight of the Club’s outside stairs.

Mother Teshla’s Turret Club had but one drawback: it was in a turret, and turrets tend to involve climbing.

Gauntleted fists punching the air and mail-girt paunch wobbling indomitably, Mirt wheezed his way to the landing, leaned against its low parapet, and gasped for air. When his ragged moustache was no longer whistling in and out, the stout Old Wolf of Waterdeep reached out one metal-clad finger to slide open a cover on the door in front of him, snarled two words into the hole thus revealed, and beckoned again to his cowled follower.

Then he opened the door—to be greeted by a chorus of oaths from the dimness within. Several swords flashed out, seeking his face!

So he grabbed them in his gauntleted hands and hauled, hard.

With startled cries their owners flew past him and over the parapet, headed for a swift rendezvous with the cobbles of the courtyard below.

No sooner had their cries died away than an icy voice from the depths of the room beyond the door asked, “Just why, Mirt, are you killing the proud young nobles of our fair city this time? They were paying promptly for their drinks, mind you—unlike some stout lords I could name!”

“I said the pass-phrase, Teshla,” Mirt growled a little sheepishly, “and then gods-be-damned if they didn’t attack me!”

He was as smitten at the sight of her as he’d been the first time, two dozen summers ago. She stood just a little taller than the proudest curve of his belly, a slender ramrod of fiery spirit. Her skin was milk-white, her eyes snapping black pools, and her petite form eye-snaring in its liquid grace. She wore purple silk that clung to her slimness in ways that left nothing to Mirt’s always-rampant imagination. His eyes fell to her jeweled cloth-of-gold slippers as he remembered a night when she’d been wearing only purple… but not all that much purple…

” ‘Beldarra’s buttocks’ hasn’t been the pass-phrase since two summers ago,” Mother Teshla told him even more coldly, coming to the door. Meeting the sharp black points of her eyes as they drew nearer, Mirt began to know just how one of his hogs felt when the butcher came into the swine-yard, knife in hand, and looked its way.

He opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a sort of sizzling, rustling sound, like a giant beetle calling to its young.

He might recall Teshie with fondness, but ‘twas clear she didn’t share his warm memories. Women were different…

“So you’ve slain three young noblemen of Waterdeep for nothing” Teshla snarled, “in a manner that’ll have the Watch up here in less than a candle-down. My thanks, O lion among adventurers. How are you going to put this right?”

Mirt tried to speak again. “Ugluckle!” he said heartily.

“Ugluckle” is the favorite comment Lords of Waterdeep use when confronted by particularly glowing examples of their own stupidity. He tried a smile, but could feel it sliding down off his chin as he met Teshla’s waiting gaze. She was a woman whose level stare was capable of making a charging dragon snort and shy away.

Long ago he and Teshla had been lovers, and he’d thought they were still old friends, but right now Mirt was beginning to doubt it. To say nothing of the wisdom of coming here in the first place.

He glanced gloomily down into the courtyard, and found it empty of all but a curious cat, looking back up at him.

Trying not to show how astonished he was, the veteran Lord of Waterdeep gestured grandly down at the empty—and unstained—cobbles below.

“No harm done, Teshie,” he boomed. “Look you, and behold! Three young gallants whisked away to the beds of their beloveds by a little spell we’re experimenting with—er, for the security of Waterdeep, y’understand. They’ll find a few coins in their palms when they arrive, for their troubles, and all will be well…”

Teshla stormed past him like an angry thundercloud, glanced over the rail, and sniffed.

“Well, I don’t know how you did it,” she said, looking up from about the level of his belt buckle with her eyes still afire, “but I want no more ‘experimental spells’—or slain patrons—this time, 0 lovelight of my past. You may as well come in… you and your silent friend.”

Glancing at the silent, cowled figure, she turned back to the door, then added over her shoulder as she went in, “Oh, yes: the pass-phrase just now is idiot come calling.’ Nothing personal, you understand.”

“Er, no. No, of course not,” Mirt rumbled heartily to the empty doorway. Then he beckoned the hooded figure impatiently and strode into the Turret Club.

Teshla had vanished. He was standing in a room that held several unshaven, sour-looking men. All of them were bristling with weapons, all of them were glaring at him, and none of them wore friendly looks.

“Be ye thinking of sitting down here, Old Wolf?” a man with an eyepatch asked with a crooked smile as his pet snake slithered lazily up one arm. “I’d think again, if I were you.”

“And I’d wish I’d kept my mouth shut, Bollard,” Mirt rumbled serenely, as he casually planted his right boot deep into the shadowed flesh under the man’s protruding belly, “if I were you.”

* * * * *

There are seasoned adventurers in Faerun who can laugh in the face of disaster, grin merrily at swift-approaching, certain death, and shrug and walk away from calamity. Bollard was not one of them.

He fought briefly for breath enough to scream, but managed only a sort of whistle. Looking pale and haggard under his thick coat of pimples, Bollard tried again. He uttered a sort of rattling groan and, liking the sound of it, gave vent to another.

“Anyone else have something clever to say this even?” Mirt inquired jovially, looking around the room.

No one spoke, and no one met his eyes. With a loud snort, the stoutest Lord of Waterdeep swaggered across the room to its far door, the hooded figure following him silently.

No swords greeted him when he opened this door, which was almost something of a disappointment. Almost.

Instead, he found himself facing a purplish, midair shimmering that he recognized as a curtain of silence. Beyond it, a young woman who hadn’t managed to put on all that many clothes before starting work was dancing around a certain table. The table named for the meeting he’d come here for. The table where one of his oldest enemies was unexpectedly sitting.

Truly the gods seemed to be smirking at Mirt the Moneylender tonight.

Orgaz the Boar had cold eyes, ruthless habits, and two protruding lower teeth or tusks that had inspired his nickname. He also had several score thousand gold coins of Mirt’s money, a fast ship that some critics had dubbed the home of “the dirtiest Sword Coast pirate unhung,” and an arsenal of personal spells that had kept him safe from the Old Wolf and several dozen other creditors. But right now, he had his back turned.

Mirt grinned and sidled forward, like a large stone pillar trying to glide stealthily across a room. The radiance of the magical curtain flickered as he passed through it, and Orgaz turned his head.

Knife already in hand, Mirt smiled tightly and threw. The blade flashed through the air and bit deep, pinning the Boar’s hand to the table. The hand that had been darting toward the wand that Mirt’s second knife now sent flying.

“Well met, old miser,” Mirt rumbled, striding forward.

Orgaz stared back at him, looking as stunned as a knight who’s dug in his spurs and roared at his horse to charge— only to have it turn its head and calmly inform him that it isn’t in the mood just now, thank you.

The dancing girl watched dagger and wand flash past her, stopped singing huskily, and tried screaming instead—with immediate and impressive success.

Mirt had just time to sit down at the table beside Orpaz and swing his feet up onto a nearby vacant chair before the noise the girl was making brought Mother Teshla back into the room.

“Stop that,” Teshla snapped, poking the maiden’s supple— and bare—stomach with one bony finger.

The maiden shuddered, but did not cease her screams. Mirt winced. Her shrieks were reaching notes that needed to have a fast brace of arrows fired through them… or some intrepid adventurer to leap off a turret, catch hold of their rising cacophony, and wrestle it to the ground until the Watch came along to cart them down to the harbor and drown ‘em deep.

Teshla evidently thought so too, for she deftly snatched up a tablecloth, tossed it over the maiden’s head, and followed it with a hard-swung chair. The girl toppled in sudden silence.

“Mirt, if you’ve been attacking my guests—” Teshla began threateningly, as she lowered the girl’s shrouded form to the floor.

“Nay, nay, Teshie. I’ve only just sat down! Orgaz here has kindly caught one o’ me blades that fell from its sheath as I approached,” Mirt assured her.

“I’m sure,” Teshla replied, in a tone of voice that a noble lady of Waterdeep might use to tell a servant that a giant tick seemed to have somehow found its way into her salad.

She glanced at Orgaz. He still looked decidedly like a corpse that had been floating in Waterdeep Harbor for several hot days, but at least it was now a corpse that had decided to try smiling. Slowly.

“When you’re done, would you kindly clean the blood off my table?” she asked him.

Orgaz, who’d managed to say nothing thus far, continued to do so, but nodded hastily, looking at Teshla, then across the table at Mirt.

Chin resting in one hairy hand, Mirt gave him a kindly smile. He was dreaming of Orgaz sliding helplessly down a steep and slippery castle turret roof, crying out for Mirt to throw him something—and Mirt obliging with the only portable thing in the room: a full chamberpot.

Orgaz gulped at Mirt’s wolfish grin, looked back at Teshla, and chirped, “Take me with you. Downstairs.”

Downstairs was where Teshla sold disguises and equipment to needy adventurers. She gave the Boar a look of disbelief, then got up, yanked Mirt’s dagger out of the pirate’s hand, and plucked at his sleeve. Yowling in pain, Orgaz was dragged from the room in the space of a swiftly-drawn breath.

Wiping his bloody dagger clean on the tablecloth that covered the fallen dancing maiden, Mirt sighed and turned to the cowled figure. “None too soon, that. Sit down, lad. Elminster’ll be here right soon, now.”

“I’m here already,” the chair Orgaz had been sitting in said rather testily as it started to shift its shape. “Long enough ago, in fact, to keep three young nobles from spreading their brains all over yonder courtyard. If ye carved any wider a path through the good citizens of Waterdeep, Old Wolf, ye’d soon have nobody left to be Lord over!”

“No doubt, no doubt,” Mirt grunted, “but I’m running late, just now. Could you save the lecture and see to the lad, here?” He grabbed the sleeve of the cowled figure and rumbled, “Unhood, Bergos.”

Obediently the figure pulled back its cowl and blinked at the mightiest mage in Faerun. Elminster looked back at him and sighed. Being born wealthy and noble doesn’t make a young man handsome, polite, or gallant, but the young man seldom realizes this.

The eyes of young Bergos were bulging and staring, and his cheeks were as red as the embers of a roaring hearthfire.

Mirt took one look at him and reached for the nearest decanter. He was in love, all right. This would be, let’s see, the third time this summer that Bergos Brossfeather had fallen into eternal, undying love with a young noble lady of Waterdeep. Er, if it was a young noble this time. Or a lady.

“He’s smitten,” Mirt growled. “Some foe cast a spell on him that makes him lovesick. He falls helm over heels for someone new every time there’s a new moon. I need him cured. Politics.” The Lord of Waterdeep held up his decanter thoughtfully. Ever a glutton for punishment, he stared at himself in its reflective depths.

The Brossfeathers owed Mirt rather more gold pieces than what Waterdhavian nobles called a “thousand thousand” (usually with white faces, gulps, and pursed lips). If Bergos, who’d signed the deeds of debt, didn’t come to his senses, Mirt would have to tear Brossfeather House apart stone by stone to see his money back. And that would make him enemies in almost every noble family in Waterdeep. ‘Twas already his busy season; Mirt didn’t feel like welcoming that many foes just now.

“Who is it right now, Bergos?” Elminster asked quietly, moving his fingers ever so slightly.

The young nobleman grew still, his staring eyes seeing someone not in the room.

The Old Mage nodded as if he could see that someone, too. Then his face seemed to melt and run, dissolving slowly into the features of a young, sapphire-eyed lady with a sparkling grin.

“The things I do for Waterdeep,” Elminster growled as Bergos flung himself across the table to embrace his newly revealed love. From under a rain of kisses, the mage growled, “Ye owe me one, Mirt.”

In a conjured voice that only the old merchant could hear, the great mage added, “I’m probably going to have to keep us both hidden and act like a little spitfire for a month or more to cure him. The spell’s a good one; just smashing it would leave his mind in ruins. D’ye know what better things I could be doing, with an entire month?”

“Wait!” the Old Wolf rumbled, as wizard and ardent young noble began to fade away together. “Who cast the love-spell on Bergos?”

“She did,” Elminster replied, pointing, before he was entirely gone.

Mirt spun around, following the Old Mage’s pointing finger.

Teshla was standing in a doorway, hands on hips. She was smiling brightly—an expression often assumed by women engaged in slipping something past the wits of their loved ones.

“Hello, Old Wolf,” she said huskily.

Mirt got up hastily, decanter in hand. “Why, Teshie? Why’d you do it?”

“It finally got you here, didn’t it?” she replied, a familiar flame kindling in her eyes. As she glided forward, humming a tune he remembered, Mirt wondered if Elminster had left behind another teleport to save him if he dived into the courtyard…

“No,” Teshla told him a little smugly, “He did not. He even laid this spell on me, to let me read your mind. You can’t escape me any longer, Old Wolf. Sit down.”

“Oh,” Mirt replied a little faintly. “Oh, well…”

And he sat down.