Free R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation by Richard Lee & Reid Byers

That’s certainly the way our agents operate in marketplaces elsewhere in the Underdark.”
    An orc female came scurrying through the crowd with her head down and a parchment clutched in her hand. Perhaps her master had threatened her with a whipping if she didn’t deliver a message quickly. She tried to dodge through the narrow space between Pharaun and another pedestrian, misstepped, and bumped into the wizard.
    The pig-faced slave looked up and saw that she’d just jostled an elegantly and expensively dressed dark elf. Her mouth with its prominent lower canines fell open in terror. With a flick of his fingers, Pharaun bade her begone. She turned and ran.
    “Then the Council should control the Bazaar properly,” said Ryld. “Don’t just send the occasional patrol marching through to discourage thievery. License the merchants. Conduct routine searches of their pack animals, tents, and kiosks.”
    “From what I understand,” said Pharaun, “it’s been tried, and every time it was, the Bazaar became less profitable and wound up pouring fewer coins into the coffers of the matron mothers. I daresay the same thing would happen today. Regulation would also inconvenience all the Houses who are themselves running illicit operations hereabouts. I assure you, a goodly number of them do.”
    Pharaun should know. Before his exile from his own family, he and Sabal had played a substantial role in House Mizzrym’s covert and highly illegal trade with the deep gnomes, or svirfneblin, arguably the deadliest of the dark elves’ many foes.
    “If you say so,” said Ryld. “Not being a noble, I wouldn’t know about things like that.”
    The wizard sighed. It was true, his friend was about as humbly born as a dark elf could be, but during his climb to his present eminence, he had perforce become fully acquainted with the ways of the aristocracy. It was just that at odd moments he took an obscure satisfaction in pretending to a peasantlike ignorance.
    “Well, I rejoice that you remain so close to your roots,” Pharaun said. “I’m counting on your familiarity with the slums to see me safely through my encounters with the lower orders.”
    “I’ve been wondering when that’s going to happen. Shouldn’t we have gone to Eastmyr or the Braeryn straightaway?”
    “No point going there blind if we can acquire some intelligence first.”
    Pharaun supposed that in fact, they’d better collect it quickly, but it was a pity. He could have used some idle time drifting through emporia like, for instance, Daelein Shimmerdark’s Decanter with its astonishing collection of wines, liquors, and, for those who knew how to ask, potions and poisons from all over the world. Perhaps it would clear his head.
    Or maybe it would only give him another enigma to ponder, for though there was still plenty to buy, it seemed to him the Bazaar as a whole was offering fewer goods than usual. Why was that? Could it possibly have anything to do with the runaway males?
    And what about the demon spider that had materialized above him and Ryld on the plateau and proceeded to break into ArachTinilith? Did that tie in, or was it simply a gambit in one of Menzoberranzan’s innumerable secret feuds that had nothing at all to do with his concerns?
    He had to grin. He knew so little, and what little he had gleaned was scarcely a source of reassurance.
    “There it is,” said Ryld.
    “Indeed.”
    Carved from a long, relatively low protrusion of stone, the Jewel Box sat just inches beyond what custom decreed to be the limits of the Bazaar, where all traders were required to shift their stalls to a different spot every sixty-six days. Despite its lack of a signboard or other external advertisement, the establishment had always attracted a steady trickle of shoppers and merchants, and when the two masters descended the stair that ran from street level to the limestone door, Pharaun could hear considerably more sounds of revelry that usual. There was laughter,