Erin Evans - Lesser Evils

“Well met, girly,” a voice called out. She startled. A halfling man-the shop owner-stood beside a rack of staffs, watching her, much as every shopkeeper had watched her, with a cautious, appraising eye. Only, Goodman Florren seemed assured that she posed no threat to him. He may have only come to Farideh’s hip, but the halfling held himself as if he knew exactly how to bring her down, should it come to that. “You lost?”

“I’m looking for a ritual book,” she said. “Someone told me you had them for a fair price.”

“ ‘Someone,’ eh?” Goodman Florren’s dark gaze swept over her. “Seems I do excellent business with Goodsir Someone.”

“I’m sorry,” Farideh said. “What I meant-”

“Ritual books are on that shelf,” he said, waving a hand at the far end of the shop. One of the staffs spit a jagged spark of purple energy. He cursed and turned back to arranging the implements.

The shelf was sagging and the options sorry. Three worn books slouched against each other: the first thick as her fist, but with a binding so worn it might not make it out of the shop; the second better, but full of faded, yellow inks and missing pages that left a hollow, fragile feel to the magic; and the third blooming with mildew and missing any sense of magic around it at all.

“How much are these?” she called.

Goodman Florren came to stand beside her. “Fifty. Forty-three. And … Hells, let’s call that one twenty-two.”

“Gold?” she said. “That one’s not even a ritual book.”

“I’ve got better in the back, if you don’t like the quality.”

“For double the price, I’m sure.”

He chuckled. “More like triple.”

“That’s robbery.”

He shrugged, unperturbed, and went back behind his counting table, climbing onto the high stool there. “I’ll take a trade. Weapons, scrolls, jewelry. Might make the price more palatable.” He gave her a wicked smile. “Mayhaps I can think of something.”

“You want me to steal for you?”

“Did I say that?” Goodman Florren said, all innocence. “It sounded to me like I was trying to make you a good deal by offering to take what you don’t need. For Someone’s sake.”

Farideh hesitated. The rod tucked into the sleeve of her blouse was probably worth purses-how much, she didn’t know. Lorcan had given it to her, called it “the Rod of the Traitor’s Reprisal.” Dead useful, and she might need it to cast the ritual. If she could find the ritual …

Instead, she undid her sword belt, said a silent apology to Mehen, and laid it on the counter. “How much for this?”

Goodman Florren reached down, lifted the weapon and shrugged. “Fifteen.”

Farideh bit back a curse. “It’s a good sword.”

“Girly, I can get a sword just as battered for fifteen anywhere in the city. You want easy coin, take yourself down to the dockside. Young thing like you might fetch a copper or two from the sort wanting to play at devil’s punishment.”

She flushed and he cackled. “Fine,” she said. Farideh reached inside her shirt and withdrew the amulet Tam had given her in the ruins of Neverwinter. It was, to the untrained eye, only a medallion of silver, etched on one side with the symbol of Selune-a pair of eyes in a circle of stars-and shaped on the other into a spiral made bright by the polish of too many worried thumbs. But the weak light reflected threefold off the metal and the halfling’s eyes widened. He beckoned her closer.

Better this than the rod. Perhaps. If she could get the book, get the ritual, cast it, and pull Lorcan from the Hells … surely she wouldn’t need the amulet, enchanted to bind fiends. Surely he’d be grateful. She hoped.

“Very fine,” the halfling said. “Let’s say … eighty.”

Farideh closed her hand over the amulet. “Do you think I’m a fool?”

Goodman Florren’s dark gaze met hers. “You have a source and a story, we’ll talk about …” He frowned and peered at her face a moment more. His expression closed. “Son of a barghest.”

“What?”

He slid off the stool. “Sun and moon eyes. Tluin and buggering Shar. Should have said something!” he called as he disappeared into a room at the rear of the shop.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Farideh shouted after him. “Hey!”

The bells over the door jangled, startling her. A blaze of sunlight sliced through the gloom.

“This is on your list, then?” a familiar voice said. Tam held the door open, blinking up at the cluttered rafters, the covered windows. Farideh sprinted back behind a shelf before his eyes could adjust to the gloom.

“The last before the showing.” She peered between a stack of scrolls and a collection of brass goblets. Trailing Tam was the pale, rude man from the tavern. His gray eyes darted all over the shop, as if he were searching for something. “It’s … not pleasant, but Goodman Florren has connections with adventuring companies, historians, and the like.”

“Hmm. I’ll bet.” Tam surveyed the rest of the shop with a skeptical eye. “Listen, Dahl, I know that Aron said this was important-”

Dahl’s expression tightened. “This isn’t important. I know that. This is just the only thing they’ll approve me to do. I can read up on antiquities. I can’t read up on running down threats. And so I cut my teeth again and again.”

Tam hesitated and tried once more. “Sounds as if Aron’s not using his resources all that well.”

Dahl shrugged, still avoiding Tam’s eye. “I’d be happy to take on something more challenging, certainly. But I do what’s asked of me.”

“Not one of these items has proven out.”

“But they might have,” Dahl said. “These are the items that had the highest likelihood, the best provenance. I already ruled out six times as many.”

Tam sighed and shut his eyes a moment. “What are we here for?”

“Goodman Florren!” Dahl called. “Are you in?”

“A moment, a moment!” the shopkeeper’s voice called back. “With a customer!” He came tromping back into the front room with a flat package, wrapped in brown paper. Farideh cursed to herself as he looked around for her.

“Where’s she gone?”

“Who?”

“That tiefling wench.”

Tam’s brow rose, and Farideh cursed to herself. There weren’t scads of tieflings in Waterdeep, but there were surely enough that he couldn’t assume it was Farideh.

Tam seemed to make the same calculation. “There was no one in the shop when we arrived.”

“Godstlarning hrast it,” the halfling said. He spat. “ ’Tis what I get, agreeing to run errands for that …” He looked the two men up and down. “And who might you be?”

“Dahl Peredur,” the younger said. “And this is my associate, Tam Zawad.” Tam sighed and covered his face with one hand. Dahl didn’t seem to notice. “A friend of ours says you’ve got something powerfully valuable.”

“Everything I got,” the halfling said, “is valuable. So you’re going to have to be more specific, boy.”

Dahl, to his credit, didn’t flinch or fluster. “The Lantan artifact,” he said. “We’d like to consider adding it to our … collection.”

The shopkeeper considered him a moment. He set the package on the counter. “That’s no gewgaw. Don’t pull it out for sightseers.”

“We have coin,” Dahl said. “If it’s worth it.”

Goodman Florren grunted and disappeared into the back again.

“Better,” Tam said. “Though, again, don’t give them your name. No one knows you here. Keep it that way. And put that pin someplace he can’t see.”

That seemed to fluster the younger man, and Farideh felt a pang of sympathetic shame. Tam certainly had a way of knocking your heels loose.