The breeze was blowing strong ashore this night, bringing wafts of the salty seacoast tang of dead things with it—and bringing the stink of the harbor to better wards of Water-deep.
Both of the men in the many-shadowed upstairs room over The Laughing Lass festhall were used to the smells; they hadn’t bothered to light the perfumed oil lamp that sat on the table between them—nor called for ale or soft and affectionate ladies to serve it to them, for that matter.
The sensuous, coiling music of the dancers made a muted throbbing beneath their boots on the bare board floor, punctuated by occasional high-pitched cries and peals of laughter—but neither man had a moment of attention for anything but the man across the table from him and the items on that table. Only the occasional scrape of a boot heel from closer at hand—the room outside the door, where bodyguards of both men lounged facing each other in uneasy, silently insolent tension—made the two merchants so much as flicker an eyelash.
“Come, Mirt!” the man with the slender, oiled-to-points mustache said, just a hint of anger in his brisk impatience. “Dawn comes, and I’ve other deals to make. I grant the quality, the amount is ideal, even the casks are to my liking. So let’s sign and seal and be done.”
