"I-"

Mirt's hand went up again. "Spare me your protests, but mind ye tell someone who can hold his tongue, or ye'll discover the hard way that I've never seen ye before, an' this little chat never happened."

Korvaun nodded. "I quite understand."

"There's something else ye should know, wise young noble, something to tell ye not to always trust in what ye see."

Mirt brought something else up from behind his battered chair: something small enough to fit in his palm. It gleamed, yet bent easily in Mirt's stubby fingers-but slipped back into its former shape as he shifted his grip. It looked like a miniature shield, with a flat top and sides but a rounded bottom, or at least it did until Mirt turned it the other way up and held it forth. Leather thongs dangled from it, making it now look more like an eyepatch than anything else.

"This," Mirt said simply, "is a slipshield. Touch it."

"A what?"

"A little secret of the city. Touch it."

Hesitantly, Korvaun did as he was bid. It felt… hard. Like wood, solid and smooth, neither hot nor cold.

Mirt had muttered something, and now drew back, fastened the thongs loosely around his arm, pushed the little shield against his arm with one finger, and murmured something else Korvaun couldn't hear.

The Old Wolf's features melted, blurred-and Korvaun was looking at himself.

"Aren't I handsome?" his own voice asked him. "Give a young noble a kiss? No? Look down at your hands."

Korvaun did so-and discovered to his horror that they were hairy and knobby-knuckled, with stubby fingers and calluses. They were the hands that had waved him to silence and hefted decanters. Mirt's hands.

He looked up at his double, but its shape was blurring, and his own hands were, too. Then the image of Korvaun was gone, and the stout, shaggy old moneylender was holding the little shield in his hand and grinning at him. Korvaun quickly looked down. His own hands were back, too. So the slipshield was a device that let two men trade shapes.

"Let that be the secret I'll test your keeping of," Mirt said as he dropped the shield into Korvaun's palm. "Now be off with ye, before your bodyguards reluctantly decide something's happened to ye and they'd better start earning their pay. Back on the streets with ye, an' back to getting rich. From the day ye pick up my coins, ye've a year to pay me back."

Korvaun discovered his mouth was still agape. He closed it hastily to stammer his thanks.

Mirt snorted and showed him to the door, slapping the unfinished firebelly decanter into his hand. "A gift. Ye'll be needing it, Lord Helmfast."

Korvaun managed a smile. "You speak with conviction. Are you a seer?"

The moneylender snorted. "Ye're tryin' to do the right thing, lad. D'ye think to be the first man who won't be punished for it?"

Mirt sneezed again and slashed aside another black, clinging armful of cobwebs. Well, 'twasn't as if this tunnel got used every day. The lantern in his hand was getting uncomfortably warm, so he must be almost there by now.

Aye, there 'twas. And at least he wasn't making this trip at the dead puffing run, with some disaster or other rocking the city above him. 'Twas good some of the young noble pups were finally showing signs of taking up the mantle of responsibility. At last. At far too long and bleeding last.

And wonder of the gods, if young Helmfast wasn't actually seeing for himself that the common folk had true cause for complaint!

Mirt passed his hand along the wall at ankle height, and was rewarded with a momentary glow. Aye, right here.

He trailed his fingertips up the rough stone to the familiar knobs, curled his palm around one of them in such a way that his fingertips pressed onto the stones in spread array, and a door-sized oval of wall abruptly swung inward, revealing faint blue gloom beyond.

Mirt stepped through, to be greeted by the sound of a young lass choking.

The duty apprentice was seated at the usual desk, with a glow-stone resting on the pages of what might be a spellbook but then again might just be a heaving-bosoms chapbook. She'd dropped both book and stone in haste as the opening of the seldom-used secret door startled her, and grabbed for a ready wand beneath the still-bouncing book.

That wild grab had forced her to hastily swing her feet down from their perch on the far end of the desk, and her fashionable boots had brained her backup-who was now slumping senseless to the floor. So much for Tower guardroom rules about the backup sentinel watching from no closer than the far doorway.

Mirt put away his growing grin and set down his lantern as it became clear the tangle-haired young mage was in real trouble. The wand shook in her hand, and she was making strange gargling, mewing sounds as she spat out too little of a hot-mussels-and-gravy bun.

Mirt could lurch forward with surprising speed when he had to, and in a trice he'd snatched the wand from her trembling hand and flung it aside, then come around the desk and laid hold of one booted ankle. Thankfully these slender, high pointy-toed jobs didn't come off all that easily, so he could do this:

He hauled hard, put a foot on her stool, pushed off as if he was starting to climb a steep stair-and the choking apprentice was suddenly upside down.

Her fashionable skirts fell away to reveal old petticoats with holes in them and a stained undersash that wasn't much cleaner than Mirt's own customary clout. Her face promptly changed from trying to turn blue to also trying to blush crimson at the same time.

The Old Wolf shook the lass once, vigorously, then thumped her on the back hard enough to make her limbs bounce and flail like a rag doll's.

"This'll clear your pipes!" he announced heartily, watching hot mussels, gravy, and half-chewed bread shoot past his boots. Before she could even begin to sob for breath, he threw her up into the air, caught her waist in both hands, and spun her upright like a wheel.

She was taller and more gangly than Asper, and Mirt got an unintentional elbow in his face for his pains, but in another moment she was coughing and crying all over her desk, with Mirt resting one hand on her flank to keep her standing.

It took her some time to recover her breath, and Mirt passed it by reading her book-it was a heaving-bosoms affair, by Sharess!-aloud.

"'The bruising strength of his grip made her gasp, and even as she twisted furiously away, cursing her silks for their lack of handy daggers, she knew she'd been dangerously-possibly fatally-wrong about him.'

'"A moment later, her fingers found what they'd been straining for… and a moment after that, he knew it too.'"

Mirt chuckled. "Ho-ho, but this is ripe stuff!" He thumbed a few pages, ate the discarded end of her bun with lip-smacking enjoyment, then glanced at still-heaving shoulders and asked, "Are ye all right yet, lass?"

"M-my… my…" She was still fighting for breath and turning to face him slowly, hands far from her belt dagger-or the one strapped to her ankle that Mirt's rough medicine had just revealed.

"Wand? 'Tis under my boot-and staying there, until ye settle down."

"Who are you?"

Mirt grinned at what he could see of the tear-streaked face through all the hair. "Call me Elminster-and get me Laeral straightaway, aye?"

Large, dark eyes goggled at him as frantic fingers dragged hair out of the way, then the still-raw voice that went with them managed to stammer, "The L-Lady Laeral is, uh, elsewhere at the moment."

"Then," Mirt growled grandly, "I suppose Old Windbag-Khelben, to ye-will have to do."

A strange expression crossed the guard-prentice's face as mirth rose to join anger and embarrassment. Abruptly she gasped, "Stay here!" and rushed out of the room, looking even more like she was struggling not to laugh.