"Well, so he was lured, right enough. But our victim's Caethur the moneylender."
There was a general growl of disgust. "Pity the thief didn't slay him," one of the others said. "Or did he?"
"Oh, he'll live, though it might be long years, if ever, before he has much of a voice again. But unless Clutchcoins knows who did him-and will tell us-I think Waterdeep's best served if we-"
"Exactly," an older, deeper voice agreed. "I'm sure there's something that needs our urgent attention going on over River Gate way, about now. Help Caethur to the Watchpost, and see if he feels like making us all wiser. I'll be deeply unsurprised if he does not."
* * * * *
The bearded old man ignored the grand entry stair and its flanking stone pillars, striding instead up a flight of steps set into the mossy side of a rock garden that rose to the right of the sprawling stone magnificence of Mirt's Mansion. Through a bower of dappled moonlight he moved unchallenged to a small stone arch bridge that joined the rising shoulder of Mount Waterdeep that held the moneylender's gardens to an upper balcony of Mirt's fortified house.
Halfway across that span the air seemed to sparkle, and he was suddenly facing a silent woman in a clinging, flowing gown . . . a gown of pale moonglow, to match the tatters streaming across the sky overhead.
Elminster smiled and bowed his head in greeting. "Fair even, Ieiridauna. Are Mirt and Asper at home?"
Smiling silently, the watchghost nodded and stretched one long and shapely arm back to point at the door behind her. Then she drifted forward tentatively to touch the Old Mage's cheek with her other hand. Elminster took a slow step to meet her.
The soft brush of her fingertips chilled him deeply as it stole a little life-force, but Elminster turned his head to kiss those icy fingers, then clasped Ieiridauna gently against him.
Her breath was like a icy thread of glacier-wind, and her shoulders and breast seem to grow more solid the longer he embraced her, but suddenly his encircling arm was empty, and the watch-ghost was past him, weepingly softly and saying into his ear, "Too kind, great lord, too kind! You must not give me too much."
Elminster turned and said softly, "Lady, 'tis my hope that you abide in Faerun for at least an age to come, to bear witness and whisper wisdom-and the life is mine to give."
The watchghost shook her head and knelt to him, her head and shoulders silvery-solid but the rest of her mere shiftings in the night air. "You do me too much honor, Lord Chosen."
Elminster chuckled. "Ah, yell have me blushing yet, lass!" He struck a mock-heroic pose, pulled a face at her, then winked, waved, and went to the door. Ieiridauna's gentle sobs followed him.
The plain dark door opened before his hand could touch it, and a bristle-moustached face peered out of deeper darkness at him. "Seducing my watchghost again, El? Is there no end to your lecherousness?"
Elminster spread serene hands. " Twould seem not, Lord Walrus. Nor my meddlesome curiosity, when it comes to the affairs of others-such as the overly rich of Waterdeep."
Mirt grunted and beckoned him inside. "This had better be good-ye interrupted us in the midst of Asper dancing."
"Ah!" Elminster said quickly, as they stepped between two motionless helmed horrors, into a lamplit bedchamber dominated by a massive many-pillared bed. "Pray continue!"
Mirt's lady love unfolded herself from a seemingly impossible pose. She'd been balanced on her shoulders on the bed, head looking back down its length as her legs arched over her to clutch a gem between her toes and dangle it in front of her own nose. She tucked her legs back in one graceful movement, tossing the gem upward in a sparkling of reflected glows, caught it deftly, and said firmly, "Later. I'll hear fewer lewd comments this way. What befalls?"
"Yell pull something, doing that," the Old Mage commented, watching Asper flip herself forward and to one side in a deft, sinuous movement to end up reclining along the edge of the bed facing him.
She twinkled a fond smile at him. "Indeed: the undivided attention of a moneylender and a Chosen of Mystra. Drink some of yon wine and speak."
Elminster raised his eyebrows, held out his hand, and a decanter lifted itself from a forest of its fellows atop a tall, ornately carved greatchest and drifted into his grasp.
"No wonder mages are such drunkards," Mirt muttered. "Why, if I could do that . . ."
"You'd never have to get out of bed at all," Asper murmured sweetly. "El?"
"I come from Cormyr," the Old Mage replied, uncorking and sniffing appraisingly at the mouth of the bottle. "Where coins in profusion enough that they'd best be described as 'huge heaps of wealth' are being spent on a secretive campaign to overthrow the Obarskyrs and put a new king on Cormyr's throne."
"So what else is new?" Mirt grunted. "Our so-called nobles spend in like manner here, seeking to learn who each hidden Lord is, so they can have us murdered and bribe those who're left to choose them to step into our shoes. They never seem to reflect that they'll be setting themselves up to be murdered in turn, but then nobles are rarely swift-witted enough to get dressed without help." He held out his hand. "Are ye going to drink that or just pose with it?"
Elminster swigged, sighed appreciatively, said, "Nice fire, that!" and handed the old moneylender the bottle. "Well," he continued, strolling to the bed to pluck up the palm-sized gem from Asper's fingers and idly stroke one of her long, slender legs with it, "These coins are coming from deep pockets somewhere here in Waterdeep. Whose, I know not-nor even to whom precisely they roll when they reach the Forest Kingdom, but I abide in hope that ye . . ."
Asper smiled. "Will find out for you, lord? Of course."
Mirt grunted agreement and passed the bottle back to Elminster.
It was almost empty, of course.
* * * * *
Tirelessly, the tattered clouds chased each other across the sky, so many silver wraiths fleeing a deeper darkness. From the battlements and windows and guardposts atop Mount Waterdeep, watching men shivered and looked away. Breath curling like gusting frost in the chill night air, each reflected some melancholy variation on the thought that there'd be nights like this long after he was dead, just as there had been nights like this long before his birthing.
Unwarmed by such cheery thinking, each man clutched his cloak or nightrobe tighter around himself, shook his head, and tried to call to mind more pleasant things.
* * * * *
Elminster lifted his head to regard the rushing, ragged clouds. So many flames of silver in the moonlight in a silent, raging hurry to be elsewhere.
"On a moonfleet night like this," he murmured, "anything can happen-and all too often does."
He ducked through a narrow, noisome arch into the dung- and refuse-choked run of an alley.
A dead-end alley. The shadow overhead frowned at that and stole forward over a shallow roof-peak like creeping smoke.
Those cursed merchants had come light-coined to their fateful meeting, all of them. Oh, the satchel she'd cached where none but her would ever find it was full of bright gems and deeds that made her the owner of three buildings-in Castle Ward, yet!-but her lure-coins were gone, and she'd only three coppers left between her and starvation. And now this muttering old man comes blundering along right under her best hiding-place . . .
He didn't look the sort to carry much coin-but then, she didn't need much. A handful of gold to replace what she'd lost, but a handful now.
Across soft moss on old silver-worn wood shingles, Narnra crept to the ruins of an old bell-spire that perched above the midpoint of the alley, just as the old man passed below. . . .