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"And yet . . . Yes, I know exactly how it might have happened.
You know how we use hoopaks?"
"Vaguely." Kender could move a hoopak stick, in combat or to
make a noise, faster than men could see. Otik had once seen a
drunken swordsman lose a fight with an apparently unarmed
kender. At the start of the fight, the kender had been five feet from
the hoopak.
"Yes. Well, I was singing, and accompanying myself by
whirling my hoopak to get a high note-on a dry day with a little
wind, I can get two notes at once- and I twisted it with my wrist
as I spun it, and I must have caught the purse-string just as I
twisted."
"Ah. That must be it."
"You can see how it would happen." Moonwick spun the
hoopak over his head and, incidentally, over the bar and nearly
against the back wall. "Because it's hard to see exactly where the
'pak-end moves when it twists-"
"I see that." Otik deftly retrieved the tankard which had
slipped, seemingly of its own will, over the end of the stick.
"Accidents will happen."
"Of course." Moonwick looked at him with insistent
innocence. "Because I would never, ever, ever simply steal a purse
from someone."
"Of course not."
"Especially from this man. He was so nice, and so
knowledgeable." Moonwick leaned on his staff. "We shared our
lunches, and traded for variety, and he told the best stories. He'd
swum to the bottom of Crystalmir Lake for stonefish, and
picked plants from the edge of Darken Wood
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