“It doesn’t matter,” Regis said again, but more quietly, and contritely, for he recognized the lie.
Of course it mattered. It had to matter. If it did not, then what claim might a miserable and ungrateful Regis ever have to stand beside the Companions of the Hall?
But what could he do?
He glanced to the north, in the general direction of the fine Morada Topolino. Shasta’s warning echoed in his thoughts, and he knew that she wasn’t exaggerating. Pericolo was the Grandfather to all who knew him, and that meant that he was the Grandfather of Assassins. One didn’t easily attain such a title as that.
Regis entertained a fantasy of returning to Delthuntle from Icewind Dale with Drizzt and the others beside him, to properly repay the Grandfather.
It was just a fantasy, however, for Eiverbreen couldn’t wait that long, and the Grandfather himself was not a young halfling.
Regis moved to a different track, wondering if he could indeed stop, or at least slow, the take of oysters. Perhaps if he claimed only a couple each day, Pericolo would see his “gift” to the Parrafins as a losing business proposition.
Even that seemed a fleeting possibility-for what then would be left for Regis and his father? If he tried it, the Grandfather would monitor them closely. They would have to remain utterly destitute or invoke his wrath.
Regis sighed. He looked again in the general direction of Morada Topolino, but hopelessly.
The situation didn’t improve over the next few tendays. With a bottle ever in hand, Eiverbreen stumbled around the tavern and the streets, covered in vomit and a multitude of small wounds, from tumbling into a chair or a wall or onto the street. He had more than a few bruises and cuts from knuckles, as well, as in his drunken stupor, he often insulted others.
Regis returned to their room one afternoon, his pouch half-filled, to find his father in a very agitated state. Broken glass and a puddle of semi-translucent brown liquid near one wall offered a clue.
“Ah, good that you’re ’ere,” Eiverbreen slurred. He laughed and nearly fell over from his seated position near the mess. “My legs’re a bit wobbly,” he said, struggling to stand.
Regis helped him to his feet, though Eiverbreen fell immediately against the wall for better support.
“Be a good brat and go get me another bottle,” Eiverbreen instructed.
“No,” Regis replied, and hearing the word escaping his lips only bolstered his resolve. He couldn’t do much about the larger situation around him, but perhaps he could resolve the problem more directly.
“No?” Eiverbreen stared down at him hard.
“Too much, Da,” Regis said calmly.
“Eh?”
“You are too much in the bottle, Da,” Regis said. “You need to slow down. More food and less drink, yes?”
He noted that Eiverbreen wasn’t blinking.
“And you need to get out of this tavern-you hardly ever go outside anymore!” Regis said, trying to sound as cheery as possible. “Oh, but it’s a wonderful season, full of sun and a cool wind;}span.bigI wooden axeon off the sea. Let me get you some food. We’ve time before sunset for a walk to the shore-”
The last word came out with a yelp attached, for in an explosion Regis had never before witnessed, so sudden and primal in its ferocity, Eiverbreen sprang at him and slapped him hard across the face, sending him sprawling to the floor.
“Go fetch me a bottle!” Eiverbreen yelled, storming closer and stamping his foot heavily against the wooden floor. “You little rat! Don’t ever tell me what to do!” He reached down and grabbed the stunned Regis by the collar and hoisted him from the floor, lifting him right up off his feet before dropping him back down. Eiverbreen didn’t let go, shaking him violently and howling at him with spittle flying.
Regis hardly heard the words, he was so stunned by this abrupt transformation. Eiverbreen finally let go, sending Regis spinning back against the room’s door.
“Go!” Eiverbreen demanded.
Tears welling in his eyes, Regis scrambled out of the room. He rushed down the stairs, but didn’t go to the bar. Instead, he burst out of the tavern’s door, onto the street.
Before he had even realized his course, the young halfling found himself in the alleyway beside the fabulous Morada Topolino.
He waited for the sun to set, waited for the dark of night to fully fall, then Spider began to climb. His love for Eiverbreen drove him upward.
He moved right to the roof and crept to the window of the widow’s walk, his vision following the moonbeams inside.
“What am I doing here?” he quietly asked. What could he hope to accomplish? What difference might anything he did in Morada Topolino make to the death spiral of Eiverbreen?
He would steal-a lot-and with that wealth, he would take Eiverbreen away to a better place, and to a situation not dependent upon the whims of a heartless Grandfather and an uncaring barkeep.
“Yes,” he said and nodded.
He ran his sensitive young fingers around the window encasement, feeling for trip wires or other potential traps. How he wished he had a glass cutter, and even more so when he realized that the window was locked.
Regis pulled a small knife from his pouch, one he used to pry up oysters stuck under rocks in the depths of the Sea of Fallen Stars. The window was divided into two panes that could slide past each other to allow the sea breeze to enter. The higher pane was inside the lower, he noted.
He eased his knife into the tight crease between them.
Slowly, very slowly, his face pressed against the glass below as he pushed the blade down.
And there it was: a tripwire.
Regis nodded, having seen this particular trap design many times in Calimport. The movement of the sliding windows would set it off, one or the other taking the wire with it. Each pane’s frame would have on it a small sharp edge, designed to cut the wire when it pulled tight.
Regis worked his knife around the top lip of the top pane, and found just such a blade, cleverly embedded. He removed it with ease.
Back in went the knife, this time tapping the locking mechanism. With a subtle twist, Regis threw the lock.
Slowly he lowered the top pane. He would have preferred to lift the lower one, obviously, for easier access, but he couldn’t easily get to the embedded blade asked, and Catti-brie nodded.igh wooden axeonon that one, for, as that pane was in front of the other, the blade would be between them. No matter, though. His name was Spider, after all, and it was a moniker he had properly earned.
The window half down, Regis glanced around to ensure that no one was watching, then up he went, climbing the side of the dormer, then twisting over, inserting himself into the room above the window.
He clung there, in the room at the top of the window, for some time, inspecting the floor. Likely there was a pressure trap in place, he told himself, and so, still up on the wall, he moved to the side before dropping down lightly.
The room was sparsely furnished, with just a chair facing out the window, overlooking the vast sea, and a small table beside it-for a dinner tray, perhaps.
Behind the chair was a trap door, open now, and with a secured ladder leading down into the main house.
The main house and the Grandfather’s treasures.
Down went Regis, creeping into the darkness. He padded around on bare feet, getting a lay of the various hallways and doors, stopping and listening at each. Around a corner to the narrow corridor leading to the back of the house, he saw a small light peeking around the edges of a slightly opened door. Every step taken with care, every movement in complete silence, the burglar peeked into the room.
A single candle burned, and burned low. He could see a grand desk across the way, one too ornate to be that of a minor clerk. Thinking this to be the place of the Grandfather’s business, the halfling dared push the door a bit further and peer in.
To his great relief, the room was empty.